mini MHA
health informatics

A Quick View of Tools on the Internet

Overview
For information about the origins of the Internet and some general definitions, look at the Internet Basics page. Other starters include: Internet History; What is the Internet?; How the Web Works. Don't forget your Glossary. If you want to know the history and how it works, look here.

Email
If you wonder just exactly how email works, or why someone would want to use it, please read the document, What Is E-mail?. Even if you are not curious, this document provides a nice historical background for the technology.

Before you send significant amounts of email, you should review the Points for Effective Computer Mediated Communication, Netiquette, and what is Spam.

Some free E-mail sites include:
| HotBot | iName | Rocket Mail | MailCity
| NetMessenger | Internet Mailbox | CNN Interactive |

Chat Rooms
While e-mail allows one to send messages back and forth, it is not really like talking on the phone, because people might not all be on the web at the same time. An alternative is to "chat." Chat services allow two or more people from anywhere in the world to communicate by typing messages back and forth in real time. There are a variety of tools that one might use, as well as web-based chat rooms. It is different from a telephone in that such chats are generally public, and you may or may not really know with whom you are talking. You can get more information from the Web-Monkey Introduction.

Some of the chat rooms I know of are Healthcare Informatics Chat Room, Nursing Forum Chatroom, Public Health Informatics Resource Chat Room

Newsgroups
The Internet is much bigger than just the World Wide Web. Here is some material that will help you learn all about newsgroups - chances are, there's one just for you. You can learn more about them at the news.newusers.questions site. Or, you can view Lists of Newsgroups .

To access the newsreader in your browser, type news in the location where you would normally type the URL, as shown below.

To find listservs on a particular topic, send email to listserv@listserv.net with the key term list global / followed by some keywords describing your interest area, as shown below.

Hang Ten
What kinds of Resources are available on the Web?
Guide to Surfing the Web
Search engines
PC Magazine Online's 100 Top Websites

Cookies
Have you ever wondered what "cookies" are and how they affect your ability to use the Web for business applications? Here are some insights.

Building Your Own WebSite
Beginner's Guide to HTML
Web monkey: Build your own Web Site
HTML Primer
HTML Help Page
Free Web Site Hosting

Web Design: Principles for Building Smart Web Sites
The Foundations of Web Design
Web monkey: E-business


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