The Internet can be quite an overwhelming place for someone who never used it before. In this article, I'll try to guide you around the World Wide Web. I'll divide the web in four parts: productivity, entertainment, knowledge and communication. I'll tell you more about how to use the Internet to boost your productivity, kill some time and learn more about anything you want to. Last but not least, I will show you how to use the Internet to connect with other people, be it unknown people or your own friends and family. Enjoy!
Part One Of The World Wide Web: Productivity
There are lots of tools available on the Internet to boost your productivity, ranging from online organizers to word processors, you can find anything on the World Wide Web. I'll sum up some of the best.
Google Documents
Google Documents, or Docs, is a webbased service which allows you to create documents without having a word processor installed. The advantage of this is that you do not have to stuff your computer with pre-installed and most often expensive software such as Microsoft Office. Another advantage of Google Docs is that you can share documents easily with your colleagues, and even allow them to edit your documents if you would like them to do so.
Remember The Milk
A weird though funny name for a must-have application if you're a busy bee who tends to forget things often. Remember The Milk allows you to create to-do lists easily. You can maintain tasks easily and fast and you can then ask Remember The Milk to remind you of them. There's loads of ways to do this. You can ask Remember The Milk to send you reminders via e-mail, text messages on your mobile phone, AIM, Windows Live Messenger, ICQ, Skype, Yahoo! Messenger and lots, lots more! Other interesting features include maps, to-do list sharing and more.
When Is Good
When Is Good allows you to easily schedule your meetings with your colleagues, and if I say easy, I truly mean easy. You do not even have to sign up to make use of this website. Just fire up a calendar, click the grid for all the times that suit you and enter your e-mail address. You'll then receive an e-mail containing a link to e-mail to your invitees. They can then see your proposed times and they can do the same thing as you just did: click on the times that they are free. When everyone is done, you can visit your results page and quickly see when everyone has the time for the meeting.
Part Two Of The World Wide Web: Entertainment
As you could see in the first part, the Internet offers many tools to organize your tasks and much more, but there's lots more on the Internet than just websites helping you with your business. If you're done with your job for the day, you can relax on the Internet with plenty of websites offering entertainment. Read on to learn more about them!
Youtube
More experienced Internet users will think: "That's an old one!", but then again, this article is written for beginners. But even beginners might have already heard about Youtube in public or by reading the newspaper. Yes, the site is THAT popular. Basically, Youtube is a website that allows everyone to publish their very own videos. "What's in it for me?" you might ask. Well, not only can you publish videos, you can also watch them, and I'll tell you this: once you get on Youtube, it's hard to leave. You can find all kinds of videos ranging from educational videos to music clips and videos that will have you wet your pants. Don't forget a diaper!
MiniClip
You've had enough of all these videos and want to play a couple of games? Then you'll find what you need at MiniClip. MiniClip is an online gaming portal that offers tons of free games for you to play. Whether you're a fan of sports games, puzzle games or strategy games, you will definitely find a game (and more than one) that suits you.
The Hype Machine
Are you bored of the music you hear on the radio stations too? Do not fear! The Hype Machine will come to the rescue. On The Hype Machine, you can discover new artists and their songs and listen to them. If you like what you hear, The Hype Machine can link you to a website where you can purchase the track you like.
Part Three Of The World Wide Web: Knowledge
The Internet can be seen as a library. A huge one, that is. Unlike libraries, the Internet is opened 24/7. Lots of knowledge and information is freely available for you to read, whenever you want to and about whatever you would like to read. I'll show you some of the best educational websites available on the Internet.
Wikipedia
You can see Wikipedia as a HUGE multilingual encyclopedia. Unlike a written encyclopedia, the information on this website gets updated and refined voluntarily often by people like you and me! That's right, everyone can write an article for Wikipedia and edit information on the website. Of course there are responsible people who voluntarily supervise any changes made to make sure that bored teenagers and alike cannot vandalize articles or add wrong information. On Wikipedia, you can find lots of information about almost anything. The greatest advantage of Wikipedia is that it is multilingual, so you can find information on any subject in your very own language!
WikiAnswers, Yahoo! Answers & Vark
Like I said many times before, the Internet is a very huge library of information. Despite its size, there are still many questions left unanswered. In that case, you can ask your question to people like you who also use the Internet. WikiAnswers, Yahoo Answers and Vark are three free well-known websites where users gather to answer and/or ask questions. Just fire up your question and it'll get answered in no time at all!
Google & Bing
Searching the web on your own without any help at all would be quite painful. That is exactly the reason why search engines were invented. Search engines make use of 'spiders' who crawl all over the web and save any page that crosses their paths in a large database. Let's say you search information about dogs, you can simply go to Google, enter your search term(s) (in this case, your search term will be 'dog') and the search engine will match your search term(s) with the information in its database. All the results will then be shown neatly for you to choose what you would like to read. If you think you found a good article, you can click on its title and you'll proceed to the website containing the article.
Part Four Of The World Wide Web: Communication
We arrived at the last chapter of this article, but therefore not the least important one. Communication on the Internet can be very rewarding, informative and fun. Users on the Internet can get in touch with each other in many ways. There are forums, there are comments sections on blogs, there are social networking websites and much more. Enjoy the last chapter!
Facebook
Facebook is a free social networking website that allows you to stay in touch with your friends and family. You can add as many friends as you like, send messages to them, update your personal profile, join networks, play games and compete with your friends and family and much more.
Twitter
Twitter allows you to share and discover what's happening at the very moment that you're writing or reading Twitter messages. Did you know that people on Twitter often announce breaking news right as it happens? The tragic news about Michael Jackson's dead for example was known right after he died, and at that moment, even newspapers didn't know about it yet. That's exactly the power of Twitter. The site allows you to write what happened to or around you in just 140 characters. You can also add friends or follow them. This feature allows you to easily see what your friends are doing or going through at the moment.
GMail & Windows Live Mail
Facebook and Twitter are websites where you can meet other people and keep in touch with those people and your friends. GMail and Windows Live are webmail services that allow you to privately keep in touch with your friends and other acquaintances by sending them e-mail messages. You can write letters, add pictures, music, videos and any other file you'd like to send.