Electronic Communications

IRC or Chat
Internet Relay Chat
��A method of "talking" to one or more people through the Internet using channels. You pick a channel and are able to write messages to everyone else who is on that particular channel. IRC was developed in 1988 by Jarkko Oikarinen in Finland and has become of the the most popular Internet resources.

WAIS
Wide Area Information Service
��WAIS is a lot like Gopher except that when using WAIS you type in a subject and WAIS will search in the indexes and give you the information. You don't have to search the card catalog like when using Gopher. WAIS is also a text based system, no pictures.

Gopher
��Gopher is a tool that is a lot like the Web, only gopher doesn't have any graphic. Gopher allows you to search the entire internet (not the web) using menus. It's a little like using a library card catalog only when you find the card you want, gopher gives you the book as well. Basically you look down the list until you find the topic you need and then gopher will give you the information. Gopher got its name from the University of Minnesota, home of the Golden Gophers. Since its main purpose was to "go fer" things, the name gopher stuck.

USENET News
��This lets you read and post messages to public "newsgroups" or "bulletin boards" as they are sometimes called. These are large discussion groups that cover all sorts of topics.

Email
Electronic Mail
��Electronic mail is a letter or document composed, mailed, received, and read by using computers. Email is generally used through the Internet, but there are a few commercial online service that provide email without Internet access.

Archie
��Archie is a whole bunch of computers (called servers) spread throughout the Internet that are designed to help people find computers that allow FTP. When you need to find a FTP file or directory, you tell Archie what you want and it'll go find it for you. Archie got its name because it sound a lot like archive, which is what it searches.

FTP
File Transfer Protocol
��This is a method of downloading a file from someone else's computer without having an account on that computer. FTP is often called anonymous FTP because anyone can download information.

Take your pick of the selections shown on the right. The first five links take you to new pages. Click on the Electronic Communication title to return here.

Remember, feel free to email me at [email protected] with any questions or suggestions.

Telnet
��Is used to log into other computers on the internet. Telnet allows you access to someone else's information that they have stored on their computer. One of the most common uses is to give people access to a library card catalog.