Posted on February 6, 2006 at 2:56 PM in how-to
Note: The below is an archived entry from Earthling, formerly EarthLink's official blog. The blog itself has been decommissioned and is no longer updated, and comments are trackbacks are no longer accepted.
Do you remember the first time you fired up a web browser?
I'm not sure if this was my first time, but one of my strongest memories of early browser experience took place at Butler Library at Columbia while I was in college. A friend in the engineering school (was it Michael Feldman or Mike Malm maybe?) pointed out NCSA Mosaic on one of the X Window terminals. For old time's sake, here's the e-mail announcement that NCSA sent out when a Beta version of Mosaic was first available.
What if you were doing that today, for the very first time -- what's the one site you'd recommend a brand new internet user start with? Would you tell them to start with your favorite tutorial, or a Wikipedia entry, or something else?
Over the weekend, a brave reader named Brenda posted the following comment on Earthling:
As, I'm new to this web surfing business/play seeing a lot of abbreviations. Is there a place that has a dictionary just for this web world? For instance What is URL stand for.
In my reply I pointed her to the tutorials on the EarthLink Personal Support Center. I might also recommend checking out Answers.com and the BBC's Webwise site.
What else do you recommend, as the one site to hit if you were arriving at the information superhighway through a browser for the very first time? And if you're new to the web, which of these suggestions do you find most helpful?
Comments
Hmm first day on the web... I would probably send them to something light hearted... something fun so they won't feel too intimidated by the web... how about... this?
http://www.cuteoverload.com
heh
Posted by BoBo | February 7, 2006 10:04 AM
My suggestion would depend on the person's interests. If it were my grandmother, I'd send her to my home page, or my Flickr account. Etc. etc.
If it were *my* first day on the Web? I'd want you to point me at http://www.songfight.org
Posted by JB | February 7, 2006 12:05 PM
WHAT DOES html mean
I am a senior citizen with the use of one hand, and it is difficult to figure out how to use the Internet.
Posted by Rosemary Schmidt | February 9, 2006 5:04 PM
BoBo and JB: Thanks for your suggestions.
Rosemary: HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It's the code that most web pages are written in.
Posted by earthling | February 16, 2006 10:35 AM
The best Web dictionary for computer terms, abbreviations ect is whatis.com. Though a bit technical, it covers literally everything cyber!
Posted by JP | April 10, 2006 10:36 AM
Nice ... I had a flashback to the lab in the basement of Rutherford Library, UofA. I hadn't heard about WWW but I knew SGML so when I Viewed Source I knew that something really hot had occurred.
p.s. don't most browswers have a toolbar search box? Just for fun I typed "url" in google and 3 guesses what the very first link was: "What is URL? - A Word Definition From the Webopedia Computer". Hand-holding doesn't help folk. (I recommend a thorough re-reading of Paolo Freire on "agent of extension".)
Posted by Bernard D. Tremblay (ben) | July 15, 2006 11:22 PM
That's a great point, Bernard. I missed one of the most obvious pieces of advice -- go out and try finding information yourself, or use google define: . I guess at the time I was thinking more of making it as welcoming as possible.
And that would be a first read of "Agent of Extension." The only Paolo Friere I've read is "Pedagogy of the Oppressed," back in my debate days.
Posted by Dave Coustan | July 17, 2006 11:35 AM
If it was someones first day on the web I would definately recommend 'google' as a search engine to find what you want.
I would also recommend 'yahoo answers' if your looking for the answer to a question, its very quick and easy to get a reply.
I also like 'google earth' http://earth.google.com for exploring the world.
On a lighter note, I also like looking at cute pet photos at http://www.dailypets.co.uk.
Cheers
Mark
Posted by mark | July 3, 2007 6:59 AM