COMPUTER NOTES: INTERNET

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      TOC

  1. HISTORY
  2. FUTURE
  3. PRESENT
  4. BROWSER
  5. PROVIDERS
  6. SURFING
  7. URL-Uniform Resource Locator
  8. EMAIL
  9. WEB PAGES
  10. WEB SITES
  11. SEARCH
  12. COOKIES
  13. HTML Code


1. History

The DOD-Defense Dept. wanted a secure communications system

setup in case of nuclear disaster.
The DOD Advanced Research Projects Agency was in charge and

parceled out the duties to lots of universities.

The universities started a simple bulletin board system and a simple email system using the telephone system  .

Eventually, the National Science Foundation got involved.

Many college types were using the system on a daily basis, and of course, students noticed.

The system just got bigger and bigger. Soon the internet was using commercial resources for funding

and we have today’s world wide internet system. The original methods were called PINE, FTP, Gopher, and Telenet They still exist but are seldom used except for FTP. File Transfer Protocol is used to send files between sites, sort of like email. There is an Internet Society that makes policy. And an Internet Engineering Task Force that sets standards. These do not have too much power. The system is a self regulating, self generating, fantastic method of communicating.

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2.  FUTURE

The incubator for some of the emerging technologies that are shaping the future is known as Internet2. Formed in 1996 and administered by the University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development (UCAID), Internet2 is a partnership between universities, corporations and government agencies.  It transmits data at speeds up to 2.4 gigabits per second--45,000 times faster than a 56 Kbps modem (630,000pages vs. 14pages per second).

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3.  PRESENT

Some uses of the internet:

· World Wide Web · Email · New groups · Mail lists · File Transfer Protocol (FTP) · Chat · Games · Radio · Telephone · Video · Conferences with audio and video · Secure transmissions-cryptography · Control of a distant computer

Operation of the internet: Just turning on your computer doesn’t get you on the internet. Turning on the modem does nothing. Opening your browser does nothing. UNLESS you have contracted with a provider for software to hook up your computer to their system through the telephone system which in turn connects you to the internet.

Cost for the service is anywhere from.... $10 to $50 per month.

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4. BROWSER

Most computers nowadays come loaded with Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer. After your computer is configured, you can get connected to cyber space.

· Start your browser (Start-Programs-IE) which starts the provider’s software

· The provider’s software starts your modem, and connects it to your telephone and dials the provider’s number.

· The modems talk to each other, checking your name and your password and make a connection to the internet.

· Your browser comes to life and loads the start up home page, usually the provider’s page. This first page can be changed to whatever page you prefer.

· You are hooked up to the world.

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5.  Providers

Value added and Internet Service Providers (ISP). Both usually provide you with an email account which work thru the browser.

Value added: Commercial giants like
American Online (AOL),
Microsoft Network (MSN),
Prodigy,
ATT Worldnet,
or CompuServe.

They provide many services besides the connection/software. From their front page you can easily connect to the news, stock market, media, chat, shopping centers, email, medical, sports, weather and more. The costs are similar to ISP’s. Most of the services provided, you can find by yourself on a standard ISP connection.

· ISP or standard:  CTLnet or KConline 


Besides the connection/software, not much else is offered.

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6.  Surfing

Surfing is the process of travelling around the web by following hyper text connections that show up on web pages. EX: in a dictionary, you find "See also…" Then you turn the pages to that word to read it. On the web, instead of "See also…" we use hyper text. A word or a picture may be underlined, colored differently, or brightens up when you move the pointer over it. That means if you click on it, you will be transferred to that web page immediately. You might find a new idea on the next page and click on it and off you go to somewhere else in cyber land. Surfing!

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7.   Uniform Resource Locator (URL)

rfbohn@nmanchester.net


www.users.hoosierlink.net/rfbohn

A fancy name for an address or like a telephone number. We have to be able to find you, so you get an ID when you sign a contract with the provider. This ID is yours exclusively all over the world. Actually you only get an email address, a type of URL, because you are the resource. People who start web pages get a URL also, so others can find the web pages.

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8.  EMAIL

Your provider usually gives you an email account. If you don’t own a computer, then you have to get a free email account from HotMail or Yahoo or several others. You can also pay for an email account. Pick an appropriate URL name. Also pick a simple password, and write down both in a safe place.

My ISP  email URL is
rfbohn@nmanchester.net

and my HOTMAIL URL is
rfbohn@hotmail.com

A.  rfbohn is a sort of simplified box number or like the telephone number. There probably wouldn’t be enough numbers, so we use a name for the box ID.
B.  The @ tells us it is an email URL.
C.  Then nmanchester.net is the place where my email account sits in their computer, like the town in an address or the telephone area code.

To send email if you have a provider email URL, start up the email program. If you have a HotMail or Yahoo! email account, start the browser, click on Hotmail or Yahoo! and follow the above.  In either case, Fill in the blanks:

TO, Cc, Bcc, Subject. Type the text ---  and click on SEND.

Your mail is in cyber space on its way.

=======================================

TO

Fill in the email URL or address---has to have a @ sign in it.
Most emailers have an address book you click on so you don't have to type in an address each time.  

Cc

This means carbon copy, it sends a copy to this address also.

Bcc

This means blind carbon copy.  The person in the TO address can't see who else it getting the carbon copy.

Subject

Try to make it pertain to the subject.

· REPLY TO

This means answer immediately.  You can easily reply to any email by clicking on "Reply To" and filling in the text that you want to send. Simple, no address to retype.

· FORWARD

You can forward emails on to somebody else without having to retype all the info or cutting and pasting it. Click on "Forward" and fill out a new address, add a message and that is all.

· To check for ISP email

get to your email page, click on Send & Receive and the computer will hook up and get your mail.

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9.  Web Pages

The URL for the Town Life Adult Center is http://members.kconline.com/shepcent1  

The URL for the town Library is
http://www.nman.lib.in.us/  

My own web page’s URL is
http://geocities.datacellar.net/Heartland/Village/7889

A.  The http tells the computer that hyper text is being sent.
B.  www.geocities.com is the computer where my pages reside.
C.  Heartland/Village/7889 is an address on the provider’s computer to find my pages.
D.  Notice, the shepcent1 URL does not have www. Most web pages do have the www, but not all.

· If you have a URL, you know where you want to go, you just type it in and the computer does the rest: connects you to that page or mail box.

FAVORITES::: A short cut so you don’t have to keep typing the long URL’s into the computer is available. On the browser is an item called ‘Favorites’ on MS or ‘Bookmarks’ on Netscape. Once you get to your site, you click on either one, click on ‘ADD’ and the address is saved. Next time, you click on ‘Favorites/Bookmark’ and go to your address, click on it and off you go. No typing.

On email, it has an address book where you can keep all email addresses and more. Then when you write an email, to fill out the ‘TO:’ spot, you click on your address book, click on your person’s name, and the email is addressed.

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10.  WEB SITES  

 In order to set up your own web site, you need several things.

A. · Programming knowledge. You must know something about the language called HTML, Hyper Text Markup Language. Click on VIEW menu then...Source or go to bottom of page.

B.· An HTML software program is needed to make it easy to write the code.  Many are on the market, some are included in browser software. Netscape has one built in.  A free one on the internet is Amaya.   Microsoft has one called Front Page

C.·  A place on the internet to set up the pages.  Pages take lots of memory. They can’t stay on your computer, you are not set up for the world to get to the data. So usually you go to your provider and ask for some free space. Most provide 2 to 5 MB of free space for non commercial users. They give you a URL for that space so others can find it.  KConline gives 5mb.  Some commercial sites like Geocities provide free space also.  Many sites do charge for web space.

D.· A method to send the web page code to your provider’s computer at your URL. Many programs do this, all have FTP in their name. It is the most efficient method to transfer lots of data.

E.· A reason! Why do you want to do this?

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11.  SEARCH

If you don’t know what the URL is, you have to use ‘SEARCH’ A search engine company has small programs that actually are out searching every web site for subject words and then putting the words in a very large database.

Alta Vista, Excite, Lycos, Yahoo, Google, Hotbot, Infoseek, and NetGurus.

When you click on the search icon, a search engine screen shows up. The browser is set up to activate one special search engine. You can change that or type in the URL of your favorite search engine. What does a search engine do? You type in a subject, say: Baseball teams. The engine looks through its monstrous list and puts on your screen a long list of entries that it thinks you want to see. Some searches find nothing, some find only one or two pages. Some, like the above, could find thousands of pages or hits. ‘Asthma’ revealed over 43,000 places to look. So you have to be careful using a search engine or you might be overwhelmed with data. Use the engine’s guide for hints on how to narrow the search criteria.

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12.  COOKIES:

Cookies are message files placed in your computer memory by others! They are not viruses! Technically they are very non-dangerous, they make the internet easier.  BUT, they do have a bad reputation, some companies have used them for more than is legal. They can be denied by you, but that slows down web sites. They can be removed manually or automatically.
Here is what cookies are legal to do:

· Keep track of how often you visit a site

· Can only be accessed by the site that place it on your computer

· Must have an expiration date. Lots of companies put that way in the future.

· Can save your name and password, so you don’t have to enter it for that site again the next time.

· Can save other data like your billing address and credit card number.

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Go to home page

Go to page 1 of the computer course  -  Hardware

Go to page 2 of the computer course  -  Software

Go to page 3 of the computer course  -  Computing

Go the GLOSSARY at BBCi

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13.  CODE-HTML

Hyper Text Markup Language

This is the code that creates the Town Life Adult Center front page (several revisions ago). I wrote this code with the help of a program that takes what I want on a web page and translates it to this HTML code. Then I make modifications.

<HTML>
<HEAD>
  <META http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html">
  <STYLE type="text/css">
  <!--Created with AOLpress/2.0 
H1              {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: white;  text-align: center;}
H2              {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: white;  text-align: center;}
H3              {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: white;  text-align: center;}
H4              {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: white;  text-align: center;}
P               {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: white;  text-align: center;}
TD              {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: white;  text-align: center;}
A               {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: white;  text-align: center;}
A:link          {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: white;  text-align: center;}
A:hover         {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: white;  text-align: center;}
A:active        {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: yellow; text-align: center;} 
A:visited       {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: yellow; text-align: center;}
A:visited:hover {font-family:tahoma,verdana,arial; color: yellow; text-align: center;} 
-->
 </STYLE>
  <TITLE>Town Life Adult Center</TITLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgcolor="#408080">
<TABLE cellspacing="1">
  <TR>    <TD valign="top"><H1> The Town Life Adult Center      </H1>      <P>      <BR>      <BR>
      <CENTER>
	<TABLE border="0" cellspacing="5" cellpadding="2" align="center" bgcolor="#60A0A0">
	  <TR>     <TD><H2> 	<A href="tlacfun.html">FUN at the Center</A>       </H2>     </TD>   </TR>
	  <TR>     <TD><A href="tlacweek.html">Weekly Activities</A></TD>   </TR>
	  <TR>     <TD><A href="tlaccal/tlaccal.html">Monthly Calendar</A></TD>   </TR>
	  <TR>     <TD><A href="tlactune.html">Keeping Fit During Winter</A></TD>   </TR>
	  <TR>     <TD><A href="tlacspns.html">Adult Center Sponsors</A></TD>   </TR>
	  <TR>     <TD><BIG><A href="suggest.html">SUGGESTION BOX</A></BIG></TD>   </TR>   
<TR>     <TD><A href="tlaclink.html">Links</A></TD>   </TR>   
<TR>     <TD><A href="tlachard.html">Beginners Computer Course</A></TD>
	  </TR> </TABLE>      </CENTER>    </TD>
    <TD valign="top"><TABLE cellspacing="1" VALIGN=top> 
<TR>   <TD><IMG src="ek_1_2.jpg" align="right" width="291" height="244" border="0"></TD> </TR> 
<TR>   <TD><BR>
	    7th and Bond / North Manchester <BR>
	    982-0535 <BR>     <BR>
	    <SMALL><SMALL><A href="mailto:shepcent1@kconline.com">Send email to the AdultCenter</A><BR>
	    <SMALL><A href="mailto:rfbohn@nmanchester.net">Send email to the Web  Master</A></SMALL></SMALL></SMALL> <BR>      <P>
	    <FONT color="#ffffff"><SMALL><SMALL><SMALL>Updated 21 Jan 2002&nbsp;
	    <SMALL><SMALL>&copy; 2001</SMALL></SMALL> Town Life Adult Center</SMALL></SMALL></SMALL></FONT>     <P>  	    <P>
	    <IMG SRC="FHL03.gif" WIDTH="360" HEIGHT="24"></TD>
	</TR>        </TABLE>      </TD>    </TR>
</TABLE>
</BODY></HTML>

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