Where to start
There’s Bring your daughter/son to work day. Why not bring a friend or relative to the Internet Day. In this case though, the day can be any day of your choosing. As the person that “knows computers”, do them a favor, make it sooner rather than later – they’ll thank you (or curse you) for it later. Help them take the first steps on the net’s “yellow brick road”.
Yes, believe it or not, there are people, a surprising large number of people that don’t spend most or even part of their day on the computer. I know, crazy ain’t it? You must know someone like that. They’re intelligent, busy individuals that work outdoors or if they’re indoors they do other things.
Most of these folks have computers for offline purposes like game playing or to use their home finance software. The computer is usually turned off and they either plant themselves in front of of the TV, read a book, watch a move, play a sport, or meet people in real life.
Fortunately or unfortunately sometimes, lots of information is now presenting itself online without an offline equivalent. Sure, a lot of it is garbage but there is some valuable content available for the first-time that would have been impossible to appreciate otherwise.
For example, there are medical sites like WebMD. Here you can click on the model of a human body, enter your symptoms, and be presented with a wealth of medical literature about possible causes. Fine art sites like the Louvre online allow you to take tours of themany galleries
And a huge number of news outlets running 24 hrs a day with multi-media rich content. Not to mention the enhanced coverage of any sport you can think of, local, national, or international.
These reasons alone are usually not what drives one to get online.
Inevitably, one gets interested in getting online after hearing someone talk about it. “Twitter, what the heck is Twitter? And why does Oprah use it now? Can the wife talk to her on it?”
This is when you become the computer help desk so you might as well be prepared. Here and in future posts, I take a stab at listing some things that will get anyone a great start. No, Solitaire is not one of them – even if there is an online version. (Actually, Solitaire is a great way to teach someone how to use the mouse which we assume one knows at this point).
So grease your scroll wheel, here we go, let’s answer some questions!
How do I log on to the Internet?
You don’t actually “log on” to the Internet, you navigate a connection. So first they’ll need to call their local cable provider and have them explain the particular Internet offerings available. Dial-up is pretty much non-existent these days except in some very rural areas. Once installed and configured at their computer either directly or via a wireless router they can now proceed to “browse” the web.
To navigate the Internet highways you’ll need a tool – that tool is called a browser, and there are a number of them. Above you can see the icons for four of them. Virtually all browsing is done using one of these browsers.
Google put together a video describing what a web browser is:
Internet Explorer comes with your PC running Microsoft Windows and Safari comes with your Mac running the latest version of its operating system, OSX (not really important). I should mention, however, that there’s a version of Safari available for your PC as well if you so choose.
Next to Internet Explorer(blue), Firefox(yellow) is the most used browser. Below is a graph of browser usage from Wikipedia. From a security standpoint, Internet Explorer(IE) has been the most vulnerable to attack since it’s the biggest target. This has improved greatly since the release of IE8 however. And Microsoft does release regular updates so if you choose to stick with the your preloaded IE you’ll most likely be OK; so long as you have a virus-protection program running just in case.
Firefox’s popularity is due in part to
1)It’s not IE: There exists a long history of security vulnerabilities that make some people still gun shy to use it.
2) Customizations and Add-ons : There are hundreds of third-party extensions that have been written to extend the capabilities of the Firefox browser. Some popular add-ons include
- Adblock Plus – like it says, block ads,
- Xmarks, synchronizes your bookmarks across multiple computers,
- WeatherBug – local weather conditions, radar and alerts
Plus hundreds more that you can find here: Add-ons for Firefox
3) Speed – websites load faster
Other web browsers:
Opera and the new browser from Google – Google Chrome are also fine choices. Google’s latest version is quite snappy. Links to each are here: Opera, Chrome
In our next posting to donstech – How do I send and receive email?
Next to browsing, reading and sending email is the most popular activity to perform while online. There are several applications available to manage your email. As with browsers, both the Mac and PC come equipped with their respective versions of an email client that run locally on your computer and connect remotely to a computer to download and send your email.
Or you could use one of the Internet hosted (in the “cloud”) clients like GMail,Windows Live or Yahoo Mail. The advantage to using the hosted email is that you’ll be able to see your email from wherever you are as long as you can get online since access is via the web browser.
First you’ll need an email address. Let’s start there in our next article.
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