The world has changed quite a bit in the past decade, and
so has our way of living. With everyone on the move all the time, keeping
in touch with friends and family members means establishing lines
of communication that do not depend on being in the same place at
the same time.
For the example in this article, let's say you are
trying to find an old friend named John Doe, but you don't
have the contact information needed to get in touch with him. You
are hoping to use the Internet not only to make contact with him,
but to keep in touch with him as well.
Note:
The Internet sites described in this section may change.
That's the way it goes with the Internet. But don't
worry, these scenarios will help you understand principles that can
be applied to many such sites and services.
The first thing you must do is search for John. The most common resource
on the Internet for searching is the World Wide Web, since it holds
such vast amounts of information. MindSpring offers
People Search
from your personal Start Page at start.mindspring.com .Using
this service requires that you know the basics of using a web browser
such as Internet Explorer (See Introduction to Web Browsing ) for Windows 95/98/NT, or (See Using Internet Explorer ) for MacOS.
Start by entering start.mindspring.com into
the
Address
or
Location
field of your web browser. Once the web page has finished
loading, click on the
More Search Options
link in the Search box (top-left). This will bring you
to the MindSpring Advanced Search Page. Next, click the
People Search
tab. Type John's first and last name in the box
labeled
Person's Name
, and click the
Find
button.
The next page will present you with a list of ten John Doe's throughout
the country. It also displays, if available, a city and state. Search
through this list until you find the correct John Doe. If the right
one does not appear in the list, press the
Click here
link at the bottom of the page to see the next 10 listings.
Continue doing this until you find the correct e-mail address.
Now that you have a few potential John Does to pick from,
you may want to contact each one using e-mail. Sending the message is
virtually instantaneous and the recipient receives it as soon as he
or she checks for new messages. Of course you will need to use an
e-mail program such as Outlook Express (See Creating, Sending and Reading
E-mail ) for Windows 95/98/NT or
for Windows 95/98/NT or (See Using Outlook Express for E-mail ) for MacOS. When you send your e-mails you will want
to include information that John can use to recognize you such as "This
is Bob Smith who used to work with you at Dominos in St. Louis."
If all goes well, the right John Doe will reply to your e-mail,
and you're back in touch! You can add him to your e-mail
address book for future use(For more information, see Creating an Address Book Entry ) (See Creating a New Contact ) for MacOS.
Now that you have gotten in touch with John using e-mail,
you may decide that you would like a more interactive way of talking, but
don't want to run your phone bill up. The answer to this dilemma
is using an instant messaging program such as Excite PAL(See Getting Started with Excite PAL ) for Windows
95/98/NT or for MacOS.
An instant messaging program allows you to talk in real-time
by typing a message and reading a response. The advantage over e-mail
is that you don't have to wait as long for a response,
since it is as interactive as talking in person. However, for those
same reasons it requires that both you and John be signed on to
the messaging program at the same time. It also requires that you both
are using the same messaging program such as Excite PAL. If John
doesn't have the software already, he can download Excite PAL
from http://www.excite.com/communities/pal .
Other messaging programs include AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ. For
this example we will use Excite PAL(See Excite PAL ) for
Windows 95/98/NT or for MacOS.
Check In to the Members Only Section (where the Depot resides).
Select
Excite PAL
from the
Macintosh
drop-down menu along the left side of the window.
Choose
PowerPC
or
680X0
, according to your Macintosh model, then click
Download Now
.
Locate the file named BL3MS1194 on your hard drive and double-click
it.
Note:
The actual name of the file downloaded is BL3MS1194.sea.hqx.
If Stuffit Expander does not automatically decompress this file
(resulting in the file named BL3MS1194),then you will need to drag-and-drop
it onto the Stuffit Expander icon.
Once the two of you are set up and signed on with Excite PAL, communicating
is as easy as double-clicking on John's name in your buddy
list, typing a message, and pressing enter. John
will instantly get your message. He can then type a response in
the same manner (See How to Send a Message ) for
Windows 95/98/NT or (You can view online documentation
about PAL at http://help.mindspring.com/docs/001/pal1/mac/pal.php3 ) for MacOS.
After having been in contact with John for some time using
your instant messaging program, you may decide you would like to introduce
him to some of your other friends and family members as well. Most
instant messaging programs allow you to conference your buddies
together so they can all talk to each other as group rather than
just one on one. With Excite PAL, you just hold down shift while
clicking on the names of the buddies you want to join in, then right-click
on one of the listed names and select
Conference
. The others will be sent an invitation asking them to
join in. Keep in mind that everyone you want to invite must be signed
on to his or her instant messager at the same time.
Now that you have a pretty good communication between you and
John (as well as your other friends), let's say you want
to send him a photo of your family and pets so that he can see how well
you are looking these days.The most personal way to do this is to
include the photo in an e-mail message. That's right, you
can send files through e-mail as well as messages (See Attaching a File to a Message ) for
Windows 95/98/NT or (See Attaching a File to a Message ) for MacOS. John too can send you pictures using this
method. These attachments are intended for small files like individual
pictures so if you have a lot of them that you want to send, you'll
want to put them up on a web page for viewing.
One disadvantage to sharing pictures over e-mail is that if
you want a lot of people to see them, you have to send them to everyone,
and sending them takes longer than sending a text message. This
is where having a web page such as the one included with your MindSpring
account comes in handy. While writing a web page goes beyond the
scope of this guide, you can read all about building your own web
page at the My Web Page section of the MindSpring Help Desk (help.mindspring.com ).
On your own web page, you can keep a large collection of pictures
for everyone to see at any time, and without having to send them
to everyone. In addition to your photo album, you can also keep
current information about the happenings in your life for all to
see. After all, it can get tiresome typing the same story to every
one of your friends.
There you have it. Not only were you able to find a long lost friend,
but you set up steady contact with him and introduced him to others
as well. In this example, Internet communication was broken into
three areas. E-mail for casual contact, information, and sharing
files. Messaging for real-time interactive communication. Web Pages
for communicating shared information to many people. There are many
other ways of keeping in touch over the Internet, these are just
a few to get you started. Keep in touch!
