MY WORLD: [my
favorite things][writings & musings]
CYBERGRRL WEBSTATION: [planet cybergrrl] [cybergrrl village] [webgrrls] [femina] [womenzone]
as published in the Resident Paper, NYC - written 1995
So what is the World Wide Web? Inquiring minds want to know! Is it all that the hype says it is? Is it worth your time and money? Is it where you should be?
The World Wide Web is the interactive, multimedia portion of the Internet. When you are on the Internet and access computers on its vast, loose network, you are actually viewing and retrieving data that is mostly in text form. But when you are on the World Wide Web, which spans across the Internet, you are accessing special hypertext documents which can also include photographs, graphics, sound and video clips.
To best understand how the World Wide Web works, you need to understand how "hypertext" works. Basically, hypertext means that there are words within the text document that are actually links to other documents anywhere else on the Web. Hypertext on the Web can be viewed simply as text through a browser called Lynx or with a graphical browser such as Mosaic, Netscape, MacWeb, etc. When you are browsing the Web, you are actually retrieving information from Web sites all around the world and this information is interpreted by your Web browser. You can interact with the information you have retrieved from a "Web page" that is located on a Web site, much like you can interact with a CD ROM. Think of the World Wide Web as a library of primitive (and slow, for now) CD ROM's on almost any subject imaginable where you just point and click to maneuver through the information.
For instance, if you were looking at the World Wide Web right now through a graphical browser and you saw the word music on your computer screen and that word was underlined, you could click once on the word music and you could end up on a Web page of information about music. Once on the Music Page, you would then see the word Jazz and could click once on the word Jazz , ending up on a page with color photographs and information about Jazz artists such as Wynton Marsalis. Then clicking on the artist's name could automatically download a short audio clip of music by Wynton Marsalis which you could play. Clicking on the words Wynton Marsalis video could then download a short video clip onto your computer that you could view.
The vast number of Web pages and seemingly endless number of topics covered in Web pages makes the Web a rich resource for information and fun. The beauty of the World Wide Web is its ease of use. Once you are connected to the Web, you are literally pointing and clicking your way through databases around the world.
You need to get an account with an Internet Service Provider (ISP), preferably a local one, and ask for a SLIP or PPP account. This type of account can run you anywhere from $20 to $50 a month. You want to find a provider who will give you at least 40 hours of online time - without time restrictions - and no extra charges for making a SLIP or PPP connection. My current provider, Interport, charges $25 for 60 hours of online time a month and they don't limit me to certain times of the day or night. They also do not charge a surcharge for the PPP connection. Other local ISP's are listed below. You also want to make sure you will receive good customer service and detailed explanations and support for setting up your software and connection. A company called TunaNet will actually make a house call, if you are located in the city, to help you get up and running.
If you are on one of the big commercial online services, you cannot access the World Wide Web yet, unless you have Windows and are on Prodigy. America Online and Compuserve will be rolling out their Web browsers sometime this year (but when?). The smaller ones like ECHO and the WELL, however, do give you the SLIP or PPP connection to get onto the Web.
Stay tuned to the next column to find out what you can do on the World Wide Web.
I'm sure you've noticed by now, the hot tips all point to the Web. That is where you want to be! So for entertainment and arts with a New York City flavor, browse on over to http://www.pmedia.com/.