Many forms of communication and presentations of information are available through the Internet. A wide range of resources can be found which describe thoroughly the endless and ever growing possibilities of forms and ways in which to communicate through information technology. Many resource guides for the Internet have been written and are, of course, available on-line. Rudimentary, this section will only look at and briefly explain the terms which are referred to often in this guide.
The Internet is like a spider's web in which information is made available at connecting points in the web by institutions, organizations and people who choose to provide this information. These connecting points are called Internet sites, web sites, or servers. To obtain information from the web, you must connect to a server or web site. Each server has its own address which is called a Universal Resource Locator or URL. You can reach an Internet site or server by opening a connection to a specific URL. Other sites can then be reached from this site by using hypertext links or again by opening another connection. The hypertext links, or pointers, are usually of different color from the rest of the text and are underlined. By choosing a particular hypertext link, you have requested information from a particular section, or page, of one Internet site (connecting point in the spider's web). You are viewing this information by using a browser. A browser is the navigational software used to surf the Internet, such as Netscape, Internet Explorer, Qmosaic and others. The information is downloaded to you from the server through the Internet.
The WWW or World Wide Web can take on the form of text documents, images, sounds,
movies,
programs and more. Although the information received through the Internet can come in
various shapes and forms, and through a vast range of resources, by following the links
mentioned in this guide, the information provided will come in the forms of: (1) HTML
documents or web pages in web sites, which means documents with image, color, sound and
animation capabilities (or text only versions for DOS/terminal-like computer screens), and (2)
subject trees in gopher sites. For gopher sites, you can access information through a
classification of subjects, or search for keywords in the various menu titles as well. At web
sites, the very first page is often called the homepage. If you wish to visit the same web page
often, you can set up a permanent link in your browser's memory by bookmarking (saving to
memory) the URL. This way you can directly access the web page without having to search
for the correct URL.
Not discussed in this guide, other sources of information can be obtained through the Internet using resources such as:
Another way to communicate through the Internet is by electronic mail or email. Primarily meant to exchange messages and information, the use of email has flourished into mailing lists or discussion groups (different from Usenet newsgroups), and are often referred to as a listserv, listproc or majordomo. By joining these email-based discussion groups, you can receive up-to-date information or questions, or post them to the list yourself. They can be a good source of information and publicity. You can also view the archives of past discussions.
For those who do not have access to the WWW, another possibility for the use of email is
to download or request information from the WWW as text, images, and files in different
formats such as pdf (portable document file, also called Adobe Acrobat format), simply by
giving the URL. Thus, you may have access to any information available on the WWW
through email! A good example could be daily markets prices. Via www4mail, Getweb, and
Agora type servers, you can fetch documents from the WWW. To do so, send an email addressed
to www4mail@unganisha.idrc.ca with
requests for a WWW document denoted by an URL in the body of the message. Documents and
files under protocols like http, ftp, wais, or gopher may be downloaded. The web site can be
visited at:
http://www.bellanet.org/email.htm
Of the thousands of lists, a few of the related lists to market information will be presented
in this guide. For those who would like to search for interesting mailing/discussion lists, one
of the better sites for descriptions, subscriptions and questions can be found at "Inter-Links" of
Nova Southeastern University. Their URL is: http://www.nova.edu/Inter-Links/listserv.html