| Internet and Email |
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| INTERNET What is the internet/world wide web/web/net/information superhighway? It's basically pages of information that you can get to using a computer. Where is the internet? Companies and individuals own websites. The pages which form a website are stored locally. When pages are uploaded to the web, anyone who knows the web address can access the information. Sometimes an individual can own a website, like this one, without really owning it. For example, Geocities allows people to sign up for free web space, where you are then free to put anything you like onto pages. I have the user name and password for this website, so it could be considered 'mine'. But technically, I am just borrowing the space from Geocities, who actually owns the web space. Wherever Geocities is located physically, that's where the internet pages are stored. The great thing about the internet is that you dont have to go to the physical location to read the information, like you do when you use a library. How do I look at the internet? There are several ways: (1) click the blue 'e' down in the bottom left corner near the Start button (2) you may have a Microsoft Internet Explorer shortcut button on your desktop. If so, double click it! (3) some keyboards have a shortcut button which you can press to open a browser (4) if all else fails, open My Computer > C:\ > Program Files > Internet Explorer and right click on Iexplore and choose Create Shortcut. Make sure the shortcut button is created on the Desktop and called Internet Explorer or something else that you know you will remember as being your internet button.. You can now access the internet by using that shortcut button. Searching for information Luckily, companies have created websites designed solely for searching for information. These websites are called Search Engines, including Yahoo!, Lycos, Ask Jeeves and Google, probably the best search engine created to date. Basically, you are required to type in keywords into the search box. The engine will then scan its database for websites related to or using those keywords e.g. You want to find information on a celebrity - simply go to a search engine and type in the celebrity's name into the search box and begin the search. Any websites found that relate to that celebrity will then appear. Click those links to go to the related websites. It may take some practice at first. Searching is an art form. What is a homepage? A homepage is the first page that opens when you connect to the internet. Often, people have their ISP's (internet service providers) websites as their own homepages e.g. you connect to the internet using AOL so your homepage is www.aol.com. Other people have a search engine (Yahoo!) as their homepage, which can save time. Sometimes, websites have a feature where you can create the content of your homepage. What this means is that you can choose from a variety of options (weather, news, sports scores, horoscopes etc) which will be placed on your homepage ready for you to browse through when you connect to the web. This is a useful feature because it saves you from having to memorize different websites that have the information you want. Instead, all the information is placed on one page for you to read through. Try using My Yahoo! and creating a homepage with the content that you want to read about (note: you will need to sign up for a user name and password). What is email? Email stands for electronic mail. You can send letters much faster using email than you can using the postal service (snail mail). Microsoft Windows automatically installs Outlook Express, which most people use. There are several important buttons that you need to know about in order to send and receive emails: |
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| Button A Create Mail - Will open a new email box, where you can put in the person's email address and then send them a letter. Button B Reply - After reading someone's email letter, you can easily respond to it by pressing Reply. That person's email address is automatically inserted to save time. Button C Reply All - If someone sends you an email and has sent it to several other people, you can respond to the whole group using this button. Button D Forward - Sometimes you will receive emails that you like and would like to pass on to others. By clicking this button, the contents of the email are included with spaces for the people you want to forward it on to. Button E Print - Will print the email message. Button G Send/Receive - Will send any emails you have written and will check for any emails addressed to you. Button H Mark Unread - Outlook Express will place in bold the emails that have not been read yet. This makes it easy for you to know which emails are new. Button I Mark Read - Sometimes you may want to stop the email from appearing in bold. You can do so using this button. Button J Addresses - Let's you add and remove names from your address book, which prevents you from having to remember everyone's email addresses. These are just the essential buttons. There are lots of other buttons which you can add into the toolbar if you like. You can customize your toolbar by right clicking on it and choosing Customize. Checking for emails automatically Instead of manually checking for emails each tim, you can schedule Outlook Express to check for you, every 5 minutes, every 20 seconds etc. Click on Tools > Options > General tab. Under the Send/Receive section you can schedule how often to check for emails. |
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