In the last lab, we learned about many different ways to use the internet. If you need to, click here for a review. Today, we are going to cover a few of these methods, and learn how to use the internet more efficiently. To skip directly to the needed section, click on the links provided below. All of the following sections will involve using Netscape. Feel free to open the application now.
CAUTION: be forewarned that many of the links that you try may not work. Due to the nature of the internet, each computer is maintained by the owner. If the computer is off-line for whatever reason, a link that you normally use may not work. |
Now for the useful part. In case you haven't guessed, the internet is LARGE! Very, very large! Because of this, and because anyone can post things to the internet, there needs to be an easy way to find information. The way this is done is with a "Net Search".
By clicking on the button Net Search, you will be brought to a page with a number of search engines. Scroll down the page until you find one that meets your criteria. After clicking on that link, you should be brought to a page that has a box and a button. The box should say "Find:" or something like that, while the button should say "Submit" or something like that. Click on the box, type in the keywords you want to find, and click on the button. What comes up next is a list of links to sites that contain these key words.
One thing to be aware of in using the search engines is that there are so many documents out there that you will generally have more trouble finding too many documents, than not enough (I once performed a search that gave me 11,000 matches). Be sure to list as many words in the search engine box as you can think of to limit your search.
For practice:
- Find a document dealing with legos (the toy).
- Try a search on your name (first, last or both), see what's out there about you, or others with your same name.
- Perform a search on both the words "avocado" and "zebra" see if you can find a document with both of them in it (I found one). Find the words!
- Try to find a page about Albert Einstein.
- Look at today's Dilbert cartoon.
- Find a site that contains information on magic tricks.
- Wander through a virtual shopping center.
- Get one of your favorite recipies, save it to your disk. Use Netscape to view the file on your disk.
- Find the Bingo Zone, and play a game of bingo over the web.
Under the Window menu of Netscape is the choice "Netscape News". By choosing this you have access to many newsgroups. A new window will open that contains 4 major areas. The menu bar at the top, the area that shows the newsgroups to the left, the area which shows the articles to the right, and the area that shows the text of the article on the bottom.
To be able to see all the newsgroups, go under the "Options" menu at the top of the screen and choose "Show All Newsgroups". Due to how many newsgroups there are, it may take a minute or two to load them all. Notice that all of the newsgroups are arranged alphabetically. Scroll through them to find a few that you'd like to "subscribe" to. Most of the fun newsgroups have been put in the "alt" category. This started when the idea was the newsgroups would be for the scientific community. Well, now everyone uses them, but most of the groups are still located here.
By double clicking on any of the newsgroups with an arrow by them, you will be able to see all of the sub-newsgroups inside of it. When you click on any of the bolded newsgroups, you will open up the newsgroup itself, and list the "threads" on the right hand side. (a thread is a group of articles all about a specific topic). Finally, by clicking on the non-bolded newgroups, which actually are a single article, the text will appear along the bottom for you to be able to read.
If you can't see the names of the newsgroups, or the names of the articles, try resizing the columns to allow you to. Do this by going up to the top of the subwindow, so that your mouse pointer changes shape, and then drag the column to a new spot.
To Practice
- Find a newsgroup about mud.
- Find a newsgroup about legos (if you need a hint, what are legos?)
- What are the two groups about elvis?
- What is the title of the most recent article about lycra?
- See if you can find the last word, of the last article, in the last newsgroup.
You will now use your e-mail username (or login id) and password to access your account within the "GOLD" system at the University. To do so, we will need to use a program called Telnet to make the connection to that server. Telnet basically allows you to connect to various "host" machines that you may have access to in order to obtain materials contained or use programs available there (in your account, for example).The Telnet program is located within the My Computer icon in the top leftmost corner of your screen. Double click on it; you will now see a window with several folders -- double click the on C: drive icon. You will get another window, from which you should click on the yellow Windows folder. Finally, using the scroll bar with your mouse, locate the Telnet icon (the one with the computer). Next, you may want to create a shortcut to the application by holding your mouse arrow over the icon and dragging it onto the desktop (the aqua blue background). Double click on it. This will start up the application.
From the Telnet window, move your mouse to the Connect menu and choose the Remote System... option. This will launch a subwindow, from which you may select the individual host machine for which you wish to connect. Enter this (for example, gold.tc.umn.edu), and hit the Connect button with your mouse. You will then be given a session window on that particular host; enter your username and password to login. You have then successfully completed a telnet connection!
If you are connected to your "GOLD" account, you will be able to do many of the applications that we have done in Windows directly from your account. (For instance, Gopher, E-mail, Ftp, etc.) Logging out of your account will then terminate your Telnet session.
Practice using these utilities and compare the ease of this interface with that found in Windows. What advantages or disadvantages can be said about either or both of these approaches?
Click here for a list of the items to hand in.
If you'd like to test yourself on the skills.
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