TEC's Internet Tips and Tricks

TIPS ON:

• Using Google, the most popular Search Engine
• Buying a Digital Camera
• Using the Internet for Research
• Who pays for the Internet?
• How do I access the Internet?
• Using Search Engines
• Bookmarking, what is it?

TRICKS ON:

• Shortcut keys
• More Shortcut Key tips
• Customizing your work area
• Making text on websites larger
• Having two webpages open at once
• Making a window larger

Do YOU Google?

To Google or not to Google? Increasingly, that is the question for people searching the Internet for shopping information, travel options or background for a term paper. Choose to google and you’re in good company. Google is the most-used search engine on the Web.

But how much do you really know about Google and what it can do? Did you know Google can also help you manage your finances or check your child’s algebra homework? “Almost everyone I know uses Google, but few use it to its full potential,” says Michael Miller, author of 75 best-selling how-to books, including his latest tome “Googlepedia: The Ultimate Google Resource,” from Que Publishing. Google searches are highly customizable. You can use the search engine to ferret out address and phone numbers of long-lost acquaintances; search scholarly information; find word definitions; perform complex mathematical calculations; create detailed maps; e-mail, chat, and blog; search and download video, images and music; and track headlines.
Google is a tool like any other.

• If you’re searching for an exact phrase – such as a famous quote or person’s name – but don’t remember all the words, put the phrase in quotation marks and use the wildcard character (*) to stand in for the missing word. For example, if you can’t remember Richard Nixon’s middle name, try the search “Richard * Nixon.”
  
  
• You don’t have to include every single synonym of your keyword in your search. Instead, tell Google to look for similar words by using the (~) symbol in front of your keyword. For example, a search for “~car” will also find results for “vehicle” and “automobile.”
  
  
• Google automatically excludes common words such as “the,” “where,” “what,” “and” or “how” from a search. To include those words, but a plus sign in front of the word: “+where the red fern grows.”
  
  
• To exclude results that contain a particular word, put a minus sign in front of it. So if you want to search for a “bass” singer, not the “bass” fish, you search would read: bass –fish.
  
  
• If you know the specific file type you’re searching for, you can narrow your search by adding “filetype:” to your search. For example, of you’re only looking for Word documents, your search query would read: “filetype:doc.”
  
  
• If you are looking for a specific number within a range of numbers use the ellipsis to indicate the range: 100 … 300.
  
  
• Found a Web page you like and want to see more similar to it? Use Google’s operator “related:” followed by the original Web page address. For example: “related:www.cnn.com” will return news Web sites similar to CNN’s home page.
  
  
• Finally, did you know you can use Google as a calculator? Just enter a mathematical equation into the search box and hit “enter” on your keyboard. Google will supply the answer – for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and algebra. You can also find the value of many common constants, such as Pi, Avogadro’s Number, and the mass of the sun. So get Googling and get more enjoyment from your Internet experience!

Article submitted by Buell Harris

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Buying a Digital Camera

Article by Kay Marshall
Read this article in Alabama Living's October 2002 issue!

If you stop to look around in the fall and spring of the year, you're sure to find something beautiful in nature that you might want to capture on film. In the past, after making a trip to the film processor, we'd have to wait at least days before our photographs were ready, and then we'd make yet another trip to pick them up. That is no longer the case now that the digitals have made the scene.
"Once captured, digital photographs are already in a format that makes them incredibly easy to distribute and use," says Dennis P. Curtin, online digital camera guru and author of Choosing and Using a Digital Camera."
"You can send digital photographs by Email to friends, post them on a Website, or insert them into word processing programs," Mr. Curtin continued, "and digital photography is instant photography without the film costs!"
For more detailed information on digital cameras, please visit Mr. Curtin's online reference at: www.shortcourses.com/choosing/contents.htm for several sections of fabulous digital camera information and resources.

Types of digital cameras
Camera prices have drastically dropped since January of 2002. That camera you had an eye on earlier in the year might now be within your budget. Check out the latest and greatest at my personal favorite resource for all things computer related - www.cnet.com. This useful Website offers editors' choices, rankings by value, brand, and comparative prices.

Talk about easy to use!

Sony Mavica series - for floppy disks and CDs - $700 - $1000
You can't beat the convenience of the Mavica line of digitals. The MVC-CD300 stands out most for its unusual storage media; mini CDs and CD-RWs. Specs: Digital photo camera, 6x digital zoom, 3x optical zoom, 3,340,000 pixels (effective), LCD display

More to do, cheaper in price.

Canon PowerShot A30 - $250.00-$350.00
The Canon PowerShot offers a chance for digital novices & snapshooters to gain experience with advanced controls.
Specs: Digital photo camera, 3x optical zoom, 1,200,000 pixels (effective), 1 x 8 MB - CompactFlash, LCD display.

Pro Series

Olympus E20-N - $1100.00 - $2100.00
If you really have the camera bug, you might want a camera with the ease of digitals and the feel of a standard SLR (35mm) camera.
Specs: Digital photo camera, 4x optical zoom, 4,950,000 pixels (effective), 1 x 32 MB Flash - SmartMedia Card, LCD display.

Using the Internet for Research
The Internet is a network of computers sharing information through the World Wide Web. Think of the Internet as the Interstate system and the World Wide Web (WWW) as the actual roads. When you make an inquiry of an Internet site, your request has to go through a series of paths on the WWW to get to the computer on which the site is located. Each time that path needs to change direction, it does so through a hub. Once your request reaches the website, the information has be determined and sent back through the same hubs. If any of these hubs gets too busy, another hub might be used, or.... the packet of information might be lost.

Who pays for the Internet?
You do, in part. The money you pay to your Internet Service Providers (ISP) for your E-mail and Internet access helps support their server, which might well be one of the paths your informational requests takes. In addition, Web site owners pay their for the space their site takes on their server. They, in turn, make money from the sale of goods and services through that website or from advertisers using banners, pop-ups, pop-unders and affiliate programs. There is no authority agency or company that decides what can and cannot be published on the internet. This means that virtually anyone can publish anything. Their only cost is the cost of renting space on a server.

How do I access the Internet?
To access the Internet, you need to use a web browser such as Internet Explorer, Netscape or Opera. These tips refer specifically to Internet Explorer, but can be used in other browsers as well.

Customizing your work area.
Open Internet Explorer and look at the Menu bar. In the pull down menu under Tools, choose Internet Options. Click on the general tab. This tab gives you several options. You can choose your home page, which is the first page that see when you open your browser. As you are exploring the Internet, the pages you view will be stored in your browsers history to improve download time the next time you view that page. You can reduce the amount of time these pages are kept in the history, and clear the files (cache) of the pages you have already seen on this tab.

You can also influence the way you view web pages from this tab. If the page designer did not specify a font (letter) or size, you can change this in the Fonts area. I suggest Verdana, which is an font specifically designed for easy reading on the Internet. You can override the designer if you must by using the accessibility button on this tab. Use the colors button to choose a "hover" color which which highlight links when you hover your cursor over them.

The text is too small, what can I do?
If you find yourself on a web page which has too-small text, you don’t have to go to the Tools button to change the text. You can go to View/Text size or simply hold the CTRL button down while scrolling on your mouse wheel, if you have one.

Can I have two webpages open at once?
If you are on a web page and would like to open another one, you have several options. You can use CTRL -N to open a new copy of that page, or click on a hyperlink while holding down the shift button to open that hyperlink in a new page. Use CTRL-O to open a dialog box which will allow you to type in the URL of a new page.

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How do I make a window larger?
To make an open window bigger, you can either click on the square open box in the upper right hand corner next to the X or you can double click on the blue bar at the top of the window. Reverse the process to minimize this window. To minimize all open windows at once, use your WIN key (left) WIN-D minimizes all open applications. Do it again to reverse the process.

Another key which is very useful is the Application key, (right) which isa specialized key with a picture of a tiny menu with pointer on it. While you're working in any program, pressing this key will open the shortcuts menu for that program. Right clicking does the same thing.

To quickly close a pop up or pop under, you can click on the X in the upper right hand corner, right click on the application in the task bar and choose close (Alt-F4 works here, too) or use CTRL - W. If a window opens off to one side and you can’t reach the X button on the side, just left click on the blue bar and while holding the mouse button down, drag the window off to the left. If the window opens up too high and you can’t reach the blue bar, click anywhere on the page and choose ALT-spacebar to bring up a menu.

Part of your web page viewing area is taken up with the tool bar (on top) and the task bar (on the bottom.) Right click on a blank area of the tool bar and uncheck some or all of the buttons to get rid of them. To get rid of the task bar, right click on it and choose "auto hide" to hide to hide the task bar when not needed. Pull your cursor over it to get it to pop up. For a quick fix, just hit F11.

Using Search Engines
Search engines index the information on the Internet. Since different search engines work on different principles some engines are better suited for certain searches than others. Engines like Google, are good for pulling up results in response to general search terms (also see our other assembly of search engines on our SEARCH page. These engines monitor how popular pages are and the more popular pages will rank higher in your search results.

To avoid getting too many results, be as specific as possible with your search terms. If you need words in a certain order or as a phrase, use quotations around the phrase. If you are going to search for something common, you can qualify that search by using a second word with a + or - in front of it. For example apple -computer will bring up more information on something you eat than something you use.

Sites like Yahoo are actually compiled directories. They only contain sites that have been registered by the creators, and there are usually short descriptions. These sites are organized by categories, and you have to use drill down menus to get to what you want.

If you get a "site not found" error, it may still be possible to find the site. Keep going backwards on the URL until you come to the root.

For example:
http://www.website.com/page/missing/web.html might be http://www.website.com/page/missing/ or it might be http://www.website.com/page/ or just http://www.website.com.

Keep trying! If all else fails, Google offers you the chance to look up sites that are in their cache. Just click on the word "cached" next to the search option. You can also check the WayBack Machine to see what a particular web page looked like at some time in the past.

Shortcut Key tips:
To quickly find information on a page full of text, use CTRL-F. To copy the information you find, hold the mouse button down and drag it over the text. It will become highlighted. Use the edit pull down menu to select "copy". Open a word processing program and use "paste" in the edit menu to paste the text on this page. Most word processing applications also have a clipboard icon in the tool bar which is also the paste function. To quickly go back and forth between open windows, use ALT-TAB. If there is a great deal of text to be selected, you can use CTRL-A to select it. CTRL-C will copy it, and CTRL-V will paste it on the new page. If you make a mistake, CTRL-Z will undo it, as will the "undo" function in the edit pull down menu.

If you navigate off a page and would like to find it again, you can keep hitting the back button, the ALT-left arrow key or CTRL-H to see your history. If you have been surfing where you shouldn’t, you can clear this history from the general tab of Internet Options under tools as shown in the picture above.

Bookmarking, what is it?
If you find a really great site, you can bookmark it through the Favorites pull down menu, or by using CTRL-D. To see these favorites, use the Favorites menu again or use CTRL-I. To organize them, use CTRL-B. You like a page so much you want it as a shortcut on your Desktop. Use Shift+F10 and the menu drops down. Type the letter "T" (or click on Create Shortcut). This puts it on the Windows Clipboard. Minimize all your windows until the Desktop appears. Right click in an open space, then choose "Paste Shortcut" from the drop-down menu. An icon appears, and the next time you want this page, click on it.

More shortcut keys:

• Shift+F10
  Is the same as a right mouse click for opening a context menu.
• Ctl+Esc
  Displays the Start menu.
• Alt+Esc
  Switches to the next window currently active in the taskbar
• Alt+Tab
  Toggles to a new active window with each touch of the Tab key.
• CTRL- R
  Is refresh
• CTRL-P
  Brings up the Printer dialog box.
• SHIFT-TAB
  Tab backwards through a form
• SHIFT & Restart
  To restart just windows and not your whole computer, hold down the shift key when you click the OK button on the shutdown screen. Saves lots of time.
• Ctrl + C
  Copies selected or highlighted text or graphics.
• Ctrl + V
  Pastes selected items into various programs.
• Ctrl + P
  Initiates your printer interface to appear.