world’ so if you still don’t know much about the Internet then you’ll find this
section extremely useful.
In order to guide you step by step, this section has been
divided into the following categories: Get Started, Net Use, Net Fun and
Tutorials. The Get Started section is especially helpful to those people who
have absolutely no idea about the Internet, Net Use shows beginners how to use
the internet, Net Fun details all the fun stuff that you can do on the Internet
and in the last sub section Tutorials you’ll find many useful tutorials on the
Internet.
Get Started: This section will Get You Started in no time. In fact you’ve already started using the
Internet because you are reading this.
This section contains three parts: The first part will show you
how to set up an Internet account, the second discusses
how to setup an email account, and the third will tell you how you can setup your own web
page.
How to set up an Internet
account?
In order to use the Internet, one needs an Internet account. Internet accounts
are obtained from Internet Service Providers (such as Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, WOL, Cyber.Net etc), which
are commonly known as ISPs.
The ISPs may offer different types of connections such as: a Dial-Up Connection,
which requires a phone line to connect to the Internet or a Broad Band DSL
Connection that does not require phone lines. Since in Pakistan the dial-up
connections are more commonly used especially in households we’ll just stick to
such type of connections.
The Internet accounts can be obtained from any ISP of choice either from the
ISPs customer services or other outlets. Different ISPs offer different number
of hours for the same amount of money. ISPs also offer Internet cards that are
available at different prices depending on the number of hours.
Also, I must point out that the cable networks that can be now found in every
nook and corner of Pakistan are different from the connections that are provided
by the ISPs. In cable Internet, your phone line is not used to access the
Internet but instead the cables (called Ethernet cables) are used.
A dial up connection is possible only when you have a modem installed in your
computer and a telephone line. A modem is a device, which is inside your
computer and uses the telephone lines to connect to the Internet. So the first
step is to check whether you have a modem in your computer or not. Setting up a
dial-up connection is very simple and all one has to do is follow the wizard
that is provided with the Windows operating system. A complete guide to the
whole process can be found at the following links:
How to set up your own webpages?
It’s always a good idea to have a personal web page. A personal web page may
consist of your personal details, pictures, and messages and just about anything
you want to have in it.
Browsing the Net
The term surf means the same as the word browse. In simple words browsing or
surfing refers to exploring the Internet. In order to browse one needs a web
browser like
Netscape Navigator 7 and
Microsoft Internet Explorer-the two most popular browsing tools. Without a
browser one can’t explore the net. Usually the operating systems provide a
browsing tool in their installation so it’s probably installed on your system
already.
In a browser, one writes the URL of the website which one wants to visit and
then the browser opens up the website. The URL can be thought of as the address
of a destination whereas the browser is analogous to a vehicle, which is used to
reach a destination. Check out the following websites that will guide you on how
to use the browsers to surf the Internet.
Searching Online
If you don’t know the URL (or the address) of the websites then you can search
the Internet for them. Searching can be done topic wise, date wise, using
keywords almost in any way you want. For example let’s assume I want information
on the music band Metallica also that I’ve never visited Metallica’s website.
Then I can use a search engine to find the link of Metallica’s official website.
There are many search engines available on the net such as
Google,
Yahoo,
Ask that have powerful search engines to scan the Internet. Also try out the
following:
How to Download
Downloading refers to copying files onto your machine from another
location. It is a simple process in which you click the program icon, which you
want to download and a window automatically opens up asking you where to save
the file on your PC. You can find many useful
tutorials on the net detailing the whole process of how to download and what
exact buttons to click to complete a download.
You can download all sorts of stuff online. You can download movies,
songs, softwares etc. Some of the popular websites for downloading are
Cnet and
ZDnet which have huge variety of items available for download There are many
downloading softwares like
KaZaa ,
iMesh, DAP etc that can be used to download material from the Internet.
Using credit cards online
Credit cards can be used online for buying, selling, doing trade and banking.
However using credit cards on a website is not secure and involves a lot of
security risks.
Many sites offer credit card transactions online. If you have a credit card then
you can experiment it using it online to buy books, flowers, or any thing you
want. Try out the following links:
Amazon The largest and the best site on the planet from where you can shop
online
Desi Store The Pakistani version of Amazon.com
Net Fun
You can have lots of fun online. You can chat online, send e-cards, read
newspapers, online window-shopping the list is endless.
Chat Online
It's one of the most popular attractions of the Internet. You can chat
with almost anyone online…it could be your relatives living outside the country,
or it could be your friends, or it could be complete strangers. Many people use
chatting software to find romance online. Some of the most widely used chatting
software are
MSN Messenger,
Yahoo Messenger , and
AOL IM . Also
ICQ and
mIRC are popular chat softwares.
You don’t have to be a whiz to chat online as all of the chatting softwares have
a friendly user interface and have help files, which guide on how to use the
software. However there are some rules that should be followed by the chatters
when chatting and when on the Internet in general. These rules are called the
netiquettes and represent the
code of conduct for the net users to use the Internet.
Sending e-cards
E-cards are the Internet versions of greeting cards. Many websites offer e-cards
on a wide range of topics. One can chose any type of greeting cards such as Miss
You, Love You. Hate You etc, personalize it and email it to a friend. It’s a
simple process which requires only the email address of the person you want to
send the e-card to, i.e. the recipient and of course your own email address. The
best part of the e-cards is that they are absolutely free so it can save you
money on buying the cards from the stores and the money spent on postage. Some
of the best links on e-cards are as follows:
Tutorials
You can find tutorials on almost any subject online. If you want to know the
hows and whys related to any subject then chances are that the answer to your
questions are already there on the net. It’s all a matter of searching a bit
online and viola you’ll find a tutorial that details everything on the subject
you’re looking for. Some of my personal favorite sites are as follows:
If the above sections don’t satisfy you and if you feel that you need to
learn more then check out the following sites that provide excellent guidelines
and courses for Internet beginners:
Spam
spam is junk mail – uninvited e-mails that flood your inbox every morning
cramping the world’s bandwidth and wasting your time. Who is sending this spam?
Emarketers, mischief makers and people with a lot of time and free Net
connections on their hand. Safe to say they are nuisance to society at large.
Their messages are unwelcome and they impeach on your privacy. How do
spam spammer’s get your e-mail address?Through websites, directories,
newsgroups and guesswork.
Spam dunk!
You can sift through the pile of junk manually or you can use software. Software
to combat Spam has developed as quickly as the problem itself. Yet there is
always a 50-50 chance that spam busting software or mail filters as they are
known will also eat up relevant messages.
For a list of email filters that can stop spam (to a degree), see
1StopSpam. The filters listed here include free and pay-for. Cnet visitors
rate filters for effectiveness at
Download.com.
PassTheShareware also maintains a huge list of free e-mail filters
downloadable from the Net.
Most web-based services such as Yahoo!, Hotmail and Lycos have spruced up their
junk mail fighting capabilities. Several spam busting websites are there for
help such as
Fight Spam,
CAUCE,
ORDB, and
UXN Spam Combat.
If you use Microsoft’s Outlook or Outlook Express, you can get add-ons and
help here. If you are browsing with Mozilla, their
Spam Filtering page can help. For Eudora, see the
GetNetWise tutorial. Using IncrediMail is cute and you can still activate
the spam filter by reading instructions
here.
PC Mag ran a timely article in February 2003. Here are tips from Microsoft
on trimming
Spam from your Email Diet. Another good article on what are the costs
involved for business is by
Shelley Lowery.
Scambusters.org maintains a huge page on tricks to fight spammers.
Concepts
Email mailto:msaqib9@hotmail.comfor more ideas.
ePublishing
Electronic
publishing is a booming business and a
‘revolution’ in media. Broadly speaking, electronic publishing was first
considered as a threat to wipe out the existence of books, newspapers and the
anything printed from our tabletops and shelves. The availability of text on the
Net, mass circulation of multimedia CDs, easy transfer of documents in the
popular
Acrobat Adobe format and the growing industry of e-paper were some of the
indicators that led people to view it as a new revolution. Hype aside,
electronic publishing has vastly complimented the print industry in moving to
the digital age. Publishers attach CDs with books, authors such as Stephen King
have marketed their novels online exclusively before actually printing it and
epaper is in evolution. For the Net community, downloading
ebooks is a major fascination but it hasn’t quite replaced the need to curl
up in bed with a paperback. Maybe downloading ebooks to PDAs would be a good
supplement. Plus there are copyright issues and a look at
Digital Rights Management will help understand the complexities involved.
This is a fundamental issue and you can look at websites such as
Project Gutenberg to
deliberate over the future.
eCommerce
eCommerce refers to online business and commerce. The Internet community
finds itself at crossroads today.
Ecommerce threatens to overtake its ‘free-dom’. To the horror of the old
guard, nearly every website and service is turning towards a pay-for model. From
web-based e-mail to
weblogs, it appears soon every online service will be accessible if you
become a premium member. See
The End of Free which “chronicles from free to fee”. Lets face it, the costs
of hosting and running websites, plus offering commercial services over them is
substantial. To the industrialists who watched the Web transform from a military
project to one exclusive to researchers and programmers, the Net was going to
play a major role in globalizing the worlds trade and commerce. This is why
Amazon and
eBay are brand names – two ecommerce examples that combine the ease and
access of shopping online with first-rate delivery. Yet the bigger picture is
that ecommerce promises to transform home owners into global brands as was the
case with Amazon and eBay. For more fresh thoughts and stats, see
eMarketer.
Virtual Community
Howard Rheingold’s optimistic
‘The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier’
characterizes the essence of the Internet’s role in enhancing personal
communication. His book discusses the success of
The WELL as a model for emancipation, open democracy and the twenty-first
century actualization of ‘a global village’. The ‘invisible’ network of friends
Rheingold keeps bringing up in The Virtual Community is one way of understanding
how powerful the Internet has proven in creating communities of people who are
linked in cyberspace for a mutual ideology, purpose, interest or vision.
Anything can draw people together and start a virtual community or mailing
group. This is the “borderless society” postmodernists speak of, however,
identity and deception on the Net is a major drawback in determining member
authenticity. Can the Internet uphold democratic values where corruption in
governance is rampant?
Open Democracy thinks so. Even weblogs are now being touted as the pillars
of new age democracy. Does the hype ever stop?
Intellectual Property
Our lifestyle is defined to a large extent by brands and ideas we adopt
from all around us. This is the reason why intellectual property is the most
contested theme of our times. Registering patents has a
history going way back to 1449.
Copyright dictating protection of books and written material materialized in
the 1700s. Intellectual Property is thus serious business since modernity. With
the Internet, several new aspects have been added including combating digital
piracy in entertainment, plagiarism on the Net and patenting websites to name a
few. On one hand is the commercial sector or private owners and on the other are
civil liberties or copyleft activists who say the Internet was a meant to end
social barriers on access.
WIPO safeguards IP in the digital age. Norman Lewis illustrates this well in
Repose the debate. The New Scientist explored the debate and received
exceptional response to its ‘copyleft’ exercise titled The Great
Giveaway. You can view a debate online about the
Future of IP or see the
Economic Times Survey of the tangled web surrounding IP.
Top 5 Viruses
Viruslist.com: Click on the Virus Top Twenty link to find the latest global
viruses threats.
Advisory
CA: Computer Associates eTrust Threat information center. They support a
safe initiative computing philosophy and give a virus information center and
latest vulnerability alerts.
Antivirus.about.com: Every thing you need to know about viruses, how to keep
them at bay and the most effective anti virus programs available.
CERT: The Computer Emergency and Response Team /Coordination Center
(CERT/CC) is an Internet security expertise center located at the Software
Engineering Institute and is operated by Carnegie Mellon University. Excellent
resources on security practices and evaluations are available here with updated
news and listings on network vulnerabilities, statistics and research reports,
training courses and certification programs, guides, tutorials you name it!
My personal favorite in this website is the tutorial on
home computer security. Also if you access the Internet from your home using
a broadband connection or a dial-up connection then there you must read the
security threats associated with it. In general, the
net security issues are comprehensively described here.
PakCERT: Although having no affiliations with the international CERT center,
this website can be labeled as the Pakistani version of the CERT website.
PakCERT is an Internet security company and the brainchild of a former hacker
turned security guru Qazi Ahmed. The website has a virus alert and security news
section, tools and softwares, plus loads of information on viruses, listings of
best firewalls and anti-viruses etc. Although the layout of the site needs to
improve the information contained in it is updated. Also here you can find the
listings of the Pakistani sites which have been hacked.
CIAC: Computer Incident and Advisory Capability (CIAC) is an internationally
acclaimed advisory body that features an updated Bulletins and Advisories
section at its website besides a huge collection of articles on network and
internet security. Like CERT, it lists and provides solutions to security
threats.
The Network Security Library: Hundreds of articles on network and Internet
security, FAQs, white papers, books etc-truly a fantastic resource which is
rightly labeled as the Network Security library. The best part of this enormous
information resource is that it’s free and no strings like submitting credit
card numbers to view the entire contents are attached to it. Download entire
tutorials, books, articles or just about anything related to network security
then from this website. Finding a topic of your interest is easy too because the
site has a search engine of its own as well. Tons of information on windows
security is also available here.
Internet Security Alliance: The Internet Security Alliance is an advisory
body that monitors all the security threats associated with the Internet and
provides updated news. This alliance is a collaborative effort between Carnegie
Mellon University’s Software Engineering Institute (SEI), its CERT Coordination
Center (CERT/CC), and the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA), a federation of
trade associations. A must visit for a security guru.
Center for Internet Security: The Center for Internet Security mission
statement reads as follows:” to help organizations around the world effectively
manage the risks related to information security. CIS provides methods and tools
to improve, measure, monitor, and compare the security status of your
Internet-connected systems and appliances, plus those of your business
partners.” The site features internet security guidelines and risks that are
specifically targeted to the organizations. The security specialists working in
organizations will find this site particularly useful.
Microsoft Security Guidelines: If you use Microsoft products such as the
Internet Explorer, Microsoft Office, and Windows Operating Systems then you must
visit the giant corporation’s website to download the latest security patches
and guidelines. The security bulletin section at the site provides information
on threats specifically targeting the Microsoft products. The best part is that
there are separate security guidelines for IT professionals, developers, home
users and businesses. The site also boasts of a security support newsgroups
section where you can post your questions. To protect your PC it’s always a good
idea to update your
windows and to also
update your
MS Office .
Tools
Firewalls
ZoneAlarm: Download the free version of Zone Alarm that protects your PC
from hackers and other intruders. ZoneAlarm also includes an interesting feature
called the stealth mode for ultimate PC invisibility. Definitely, the best
firewall around.
Sygate Personal Firewall: Download the free personal firewall provided by
Sygate that provides top-notch security for your PC.
Kerio Personal Firewall: Kerio features three security levels for easy
configuration and options for advanced users to create their own rules.
Ad Filtering Tools
Pop-Up Stopper Free Edition: This product successfully eliminates the
annoying pop-ups and gives a unique peaceful browsing experience. It has a
simple menu and also has the option of informing whenever the pop up ad is
blocked.
Web Washer: Powerful software capable of filtering unwanted advertising
banners, pop up windows, animated images, java scripts and java applets from web
pages. At the site you get to download the Web Washer Classic for free.
EMS Free Surfer: This pop up stopper has two surfing modes: natural and
strict both of which offer different levels of protection. At the site download
the EMS Free Surfer mk II, version 2.1.026 multilanguage which is freeware.
Network Scanning Tools
NAPA: Intel's open source Network Analyzer and Performance Application. An
underlying network performance and application tool that lets developers remove
inefficiencies.
Nessus: It is free powerful easy to use remote security scanner than does
not take any thing for granted. It scans ports and test them for security and
supports both *NIX and Windows platforms.
Network Probe: A free utility that gives an overview of networ traffic in
real time. Helps network administrators remove those traffic bottlenecks.
Nmap: A free open source utility for network exploration, port scanning,
detection and security editing. Runs on most computers types and is able to scan
thousands of computers in a large network. Check out the well-supported
documentation link to have all you queries answered.
Spy Removal
Ad-aware: This free spyware removal utility scans the memory, registry and
hard drives for known spyware and scumware components and lets you remove them
safely. Very powerful tool and a must have for every internet user.
SpyBot Search & Destroy: It works superbly well and the best part it’s free.
So don’t wait and download this freeware.
Pop-Up Scanner and Messenger Service Ad Stopper FREE: Blocks messenger
service ads, detects and removes PurityScan and NetSearch spyware/scumware
products from the computer for free. Has limited features in its free version.
Download Free Anti-Virus Programs
Avast! home: Avast is a complete anti-virus package that has an on demand
scanner, as well as an embedded email scanner that scans incoming and outgoing
messages. The home version of the software is available for download free of
cost.
AntiVir Personal Edition: This free download includes a resident Virus Guard
that monitors file movements automatically, e.g. downloading of data from the
Internet besides providing virus scanning and deletion.
GRC: If you’re on the lookout for free software that can enhance your
internet security then check out the Gibson Research Corporations website that
hosts many useful free software.
Besides this you can find security alert notifications and updated news.
System
Microsoft Baseline Security Advisor: A security and vulnerability checker
against exploits. It has a graphical and a command line interface that checks
for system misconfigurations and whether your pc is up to date with all the
security patches from Microsoft.
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