by Technophobes;the Kicking;Screaming Is This Thing On?: A Computer Handbook for Late Bloomers
SPONSORED LINKS
Sponsored Links, Sponsored Results, or Ads are websites that paid the search engine to appear on the site. I click on them only when I’ve exhausted all the other likely possibilities because the websites that open from a sponsored link often have nothing to do with the search made. They want to lure you to their site in hopes that, once you’re there, you’ll decide to buy what they’re selling, regardless of whether it was what you were looking for.
Once you’ve found a website you want to view, click on the blue underlined link. Scroll down the pages of our results and read the web addresses until you find freerice.com. Click on the link for that site. Voilà!
This is a wonderful site where for each answer you get right, the website’s sponsors donate 10 grains of rice through the United Nations World Food Programme to help end hunger. You can click on Subjects at the top of the page to choose which subject you would like to answer questions about. You can also change the level of difficulty of the questions by clicking on Change Level. The better you do the more rice is donated to the World Food Programme. Truly amazing, isn’t it?
My mother and I visit this website daily and answer questions until we’ve hit 1,000 grains of rice.
Don’t forget to bookmark a website you may want to visit again. (See page 179.)
• Click to choose an answer to donate free rice. Visit freerice.com every day to make a donation of food and more without ever opening your wallet.
You’ve Got My Number
What if you find a piece of paper in your wallet with a phone number you’ve scribbled down, but no name? Visit reversephonedirectory.com and be sure to use dashes when you type the number in. If the site offers you the name associated with the number for a fee, use the back arrow to return to reversephonedirectory.com and scroll down until you reveal the form for “white pages.” Click in that text box to activate it, type the phone number, and click Lookup. Now, you see the information and no one is asking for money. Remember, unless a website is selling something, most make their money from advertisers. Some of these advertisers deliberately make their ads look like they’re part of the website. If you find yourself being solicited for money, close the website or use the back arrow. Start your journey again and look at the entire page (don’t forget to scroll!) before you click on anything.
In Google, you can also type in a telephone number to find a person. Try it with your home phone number. Use the dashes between each set of numbers—it improves the search. Click Google Search. Did your name and address come up? If your number is unlisted, you’ll come up dry, but for those of us that are listed in the telephone book, our names, phone numbers, and addresses are public information. Try the same search in Yahoo! and Bing.
• Reverse phone directory website.
If this revelation upsets you, keep in mind you didn’t uncover anything private. A phone book would have revealed the same information (albeit by searching by name, not phone number), but I understand how it can put you off to feel so exposed. Public information is just that. The Internet makes public information more easily accessible, but it doesn’t reveal anything that isn’t already available.
MISSING PERSONS
If you’re trying to track down that long lost someone, start your search with these websites: switchboard.com, whitepages.com,123people.com, people.yahoo.com, and of course there’s also facebook.com.
Detective Work Continues…
Search engines aren’t the only way to find people, places, or things on the Internet. There are websites designed to offer specific information depending on what you seek. What if you have someone’s mailing address but not the zip code? Visit usps.gov. Click on Find a zip code at the top of the window. Fill out the form with the information you do have and click Submit. Handy, isn’t it?
• The U.S. Postal Service’s website where you can search for a zip code and buy stamps.
Next challenge. You have the street address of your destination, but you want to see where it is on a map. Visit mapquest.com. Click in the address box of the form to activate it and type the street address. Continue to fill in the form with the necessary information. Move your mouse onto Search and click. Amazing! MapQuest also offers driving directions, which include length of trip, estimated travel time, and turn-by-turn instructions, along with a map. Play with this site to see all it has to offer. It’s one of my favorite websites. (Accordingly, I put it into my Favorites! See page 179.) Come back to the book when you’re ready for more.
• MapQuest provides driving directions as well as maps.
Elementary, My Dear Watson
Let’s go to amazon.com now. Look across the top of Amazon’s home page to see if there’s a table of contents, in the form of a list of topics or shopping areas, to guide you where to go. The table of contents can also appear as a sidebar on the left or right of a window. If you click on an item to see where it leads you, remember to use the back arrow (near the word File at the top of the window) to return to the previous web pages.
Some websites offer a text box built into the site where you can type keywords to search for information on that particular website. These are internal search engines. An internal search engine points you to where you want to go on that site (as opposed to the entire World Wide Web). Some of the same rules apply: Type keywords for your search. The text box is not case sensitive, so caps don’t matter. Type quotes on either side of your keywords to narrow your search results.
Less talk and more search…
• The table of contents gives you choices of where to visit on a website. The internal search engine allows you to search for keywords within the website, not the entire Internet.
The Doctor Is In
One of my favorite websites for medical information is mayoclinic.com. My confidence in the site is based on the extraordinary reputation of the wonderful Mayo Health Clinics located in Scottsdale, AZ, Jacksonville, FL, and Rochester, MN. Their website is one of the best designed for finding information about ailments, treatments, medications, and more. Join me at mayoclinic.com to practice some searching techniques.
Click on Health Information at the top of the page. The search box is to the left, and “Find it Fast” (an alphabetical search) is below. I prefer the alphabetic search method because it doesn’t require that I spell the ailment—instead I need only know the first letter. Let’s look up De Quervain’s tenosynovitis. (See my point about spelling?)
• Click on D in Find it Fast.
• Scroll down the page to De Quervain’s tenosynovitis.
• Move your mouse onto De Quervain’s tenosynovitis and click.
(Did you notice your old friend, the hand, indicating the cursor was on a link?)
HOME SWEET HOME
To return to the first page of a website, click on the word Home or Main. Either word could appear at the top or bottom of the page.
Look at the wealth of information available on this condition! They’ve broken down the information into manageable chunks. You can click on the section that interests you or read each small article and click at the bottom of the page to continue. Notice that at the top of the page it lets you print either just this section or all sections, and it offers you the opportunity to view the site in larger type. Very thoughtful and practical of the website designers. If you click on Print the page is modified to have only the text of the article and none of the additional information on the page, simplifying the reading and saving you ink.
• The Mayo Clinic’s website offers information on medical conditions, treatments, and much more.
CLICK AND GO
1. Click on D in Find It Fast.
2. Click on De Quervain’s tenosynovitis.
3. Click here to print.
Linger on this site as long as you want. When you’re ready, we’ll sleuth out some more information from the Internet.
Encyclopedia Brown
Have you ever wished you had an encyclopedia at your fingertips to support your vers
ion of the facts? Just the other night at dinner my sister and I could not agree about when the first crossing of the English Channel happened by air (1909 by French aviator Louis Blériot). You don’t have to always search around the Internet for what you seek. You can go directly to a known source of information, as you would if you were in a library. Feel free to access the many encyclopedias offered on the Internet.
CAN’T FIND WHAT YOU SEEK?
If you’re having trouble locating a topic on a web page, click on Edit in the toolbar, then click Find or Find (on this page). Type the word you’re seeking and click Find Next.
Here are a couple to start:
britannica.com
wikipedia.com
I’ve always considered the text in an encyclopedia to be unquestionable and almost sacrosanct. Wikipedia, which launched in January 2001, is an exception to that rule. It is self-described as “the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” Interesting notion, but it does make me a bit leery about what is fact and what is opinion, or even a prank. That said, I haven’t heard much about people abusing the power given to them to edit the facts, and in my experience, Wikipedia has proven a great resource every time I’ve visited. Still, proceed with open eyes.
• Encyclopaedia Britannica’s home page.
• Wikipedia’s main page.
Variety Pack
Whatever your interest, there’s a website chock full of information for you. Start to notice and make note of interesting website addresses that cross your path. Web addresses are often referred to in newspapers, magazines, and on TV. If there’s the slightest chance the site mentioned is of interest to you, jot the address down. Computer magazines, as I said earlier in the book, can be overwhelming. However, if you see a magazine cover with “100 Best Websites” or some other in-depth review of the Internet, it may be worth picking up. Because the Internet is constantly evolving, there is no single directory listing all websites. If you’re considering buying a book with a directory to websites on the Internet, be sure to check out the copyright dates and buy the most recent book published.
Here’s just a sampling of what’s out there for you to enjoy. When you’re ready for more surfing, take a look at the websites listed (by category) on page 416 or visit my website (abbyandme.com), to see other recommended sites.
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“As a retired librarian, I had no idea of the impact of search engines and other research tools on the Internet. It’s extraordinary.”
—Rhonda
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• For movie buffs, one of the best sites is imdb.com (Internet Movie Database). Here you can look up a movie using the names of the people involved both in front of and behind the camera, the movie title, the plot, and so on. I’ve found the most consistent results come from searching for an actor, director, or character name. This website has settled many a movie trivia debate!
• If words are what you seek, there are a multitude of resources. Here are a few:
m-w.com (Merriam-Webster’s site)
rhymezone.com (rhyming dictionary)
oxforddictionaries.com (Oxford dictionaries)
• The sports-minded can look up scores, view schedules of competitions, and get the inside scoop on espn.com. From the editors of Golf magazine, there’s golf.com. The complete TV listing of ice-skating events is available on usfigureskating.org.
• Foodies, make sure you spend some time at foodnetwork.com and epicurious.com. They are both excellent sites to find recipes, cooking instruction videos, and party ideas.
• There are websites for every hobby and interest: For toy soldier collectors, there’s toysoldiersgallery.com. Siberian husky owners will want to check out the Siberian Husky Club of America’s site, shca.org. There’s even a site for time travelers (time-travel.org). I kid you not.
• The jackpot of all research websites is refdesk.com. If there was only one website on the Internet to lead you to all other sites, this would be it. The amount of information it contains is extraordinary, but a bit overwhelming when you pay your first visit. Take your time and enjoy it in small bites. Anything in blue may be clicked on to lead you to more information on the subject. The home page is very long—be sure to utilize the Scroll Bar to its fullest. During my first visits to this site (found by my mother, by the way), I would alternate starting at the top of the page and then the bottom to be sure to take advantage of all it offers.
• Refdesk.com’s home page.
Are you beginning to get the picture? You name it and you’ll find it on the Internet. Each of the sites I mentioned offers a way to navigate and search the site. The more you travel the Internet, the more adept you’ll become at finding what you need.
The Guessing Game
Never underestimate your own powers of logic. Let’s say there’s an organization you’d like to find on the web. Feel free to take a stab at its web address. Type www.(yourguesshere).com. When guessing, I would type www., in case it’s necessary for the website to open. Keep in mind that there are no spaces in a website address. Revisit page 175 for web address basics. If you’re wrong, either a website you’re not interested in will open or you’ll get an error message because no website exists under that address. (Is it possible that you could be led to a fraudulent website that registered a similar name hoping to snag viewers who made typographical errors? Yup. And beware: These websites are often pornographic.) If you really get muddled up, close everything until you’re back at your Desktop, and make a fresh start. Losing your way, bungling a website address, and ending up someplace completely unexpected is part of the learning process. Every time you turn on the computer, have a research challenge at the ready so you can hone your skills. Do I have to repeat myself? Okay, I will. It is only with practice that you will tame the computer beast. Practice, practice, practice!
Homework Assignment
I’m sending you on an Internet Treasure Hunt. See if you can find the answers to the quests below (FYI: The answers are at the end, but don’t peek):
1. Do a good deed—help save the rain forest. (How many square feet did you save today?)
2. Read a headline—find out what’s going on in the world.
3. Check the weather for tomorrow—here or somewhere else.
4. Find yourself—remember to use the exact listing from the phone book. Are you correctly listed in the web directory?
5. Find yourself by using only your phone number.
6. Figure out if you are notable enough to be listed on a search engine.
7. Get directions—How do I get to Carnegie Hall (57th Street and 7th Avenue) in New York City from Faneuil Hall (75 State Street) in Boston?
8. Go shopping—look for this book.
9. Find out how batteries work or why biting aluminum foil is painful.
* * *
Possible answers (remember, there’s usually more than one route to the information you want): 1. therainforestsite.org; 2. cnn.com or nytimes.com; 3. weather.com; 4. switchboard.com; 5. reversephonedirectory.com; 6. google.com; 7. mapquest.com; 8. amazon.com; 9. howstuffworks.com
Q: Is there a website where I can find someone’s cell phone number or e-mail address?
A: At the moment the answer is no. Tracking e-mail addresses is particularly difficult because people register new addresses every day, and they do not always use their real names to do so. I’m not sure why there isn’t a registry of all cell phones, but there isn’t.
Q: Is there a definitive website to visit for research?
A: Of all the search engines we’ve discussed in the chapter, my favorite research site is refdesk.com. My mother found the site when I was working on this book. The site is so jam-packed with information that you have to take it in small bites or you can get overwhelmed. This is the one site to visit if you need to find a doctor by area of expertise, to contact your congressional representative, to convert a cooking measurement, to read a Tel Aviv newspaper, to see the time in Hong Kong, do today’s crossword puzzle, to translate a Germ
an word… Are you starting to get the picture? Visit the site and don’t forget to use the Scroll Bar to reveal all it has to offer.
Q: Can someone trace what I’ve researched online?
A: The websites that you’ve visited shouldn’t be tracing your steps, but your computer keeps a history of what websites you’ve visited. So, if someone has access to your machine they can see where you’ve been. To clear the history on a PC in Internet Explorer, click Tools, then click Internet Options and, under Browsing History, click Delete. To clear the history on a Mac, when in Safari, click History and then click Clear History. To clear the history using Firefox, on either a Mac or PC, click Tools, then Clear Private Data, and finally click Clear Private Data Now.
CHAPTER 22
Shop Till You Drop
Shopping, auctions, airline reservations, prescriptions, and online banking
Shopping online may be one of the greatest assets the Internet has to offer. No lines to stand in, no one trying to hard-sell you, and no need to leave your home. I have a student who likes to get out of the house to grocery shop, but she has trouble managing all the bulk items like paper towels and cleaning products. She buys those items online, along with heavy canned and bottled goods, but goes to the store for fresh produce, milk, and meats. (She could buy those things online as well, but she chooses not to.)