costs away from the consumer--temporarily. Services such as Delphi offered free web pages, chat rooms, and message boards for community building. Online sales have grown rapidly for such products as books and music CDs and computers, but the profit margins are slim when price comparisons are so easy, and public trust in online security is still shaky. Business models that have worked well are portal sites, which try to provide everything for everybody, and live auctions AOL's acquisition of Time-Warner was the largest merger in history when it took place and shows the enormous growth of Internet business! The stock market has had a rocky ride, swooping up and down as the new technology companies, the dot coms encountered good news and bad. The decline in advertising income spelled doom for many dot coms, and a major shakeout and search for better business models is underway by the survivors It is becoming more and more clear that many free services will not survive. While many users still expect a free ride, there are fewer and fewer providers who can find a way to provide it The value of the internet and the Web is undeniable. but there is a lot of shaking out to do and management of costs and expectations before it can regain its rapid growth 3.2 Internet Service And Tools 3.2.1 World wide Web(www) The World Wide Web(Www) is the latest development in network technologies for information presentation. It allows people to publish a vast array of information using text documents, pictures, sounds, movies and other types of documents. The documents that are published are placed on a networked computer(the server). People can then use other computers (usually desktop-based Macintosh and PC computers, called clients) to connect to the server and look at the documents that reside there. When a person wants to look at www documents, they have to use a browsing program that knows how to connect to the server and how to display the information that is stored there Two popular browsing programs are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape The greatest innovation of the Web is that it eliminates the need to know the network address of a computer-rather computer addresses are stored as hyper-text links that one can click on with a mouse to move from one document to another. Each of the links can point to documents that are on the same server or on a different one across the world. Thus, getting from a computer here at UCSB to one in Australia or Germany is simply one mouse-click away -no complicated addresses to remember or complex instructions to execute. In addition, the Web allows transparent access to both text documents and binary documents (such as graphics, sound, video and other binary data types). This permits liberal use of pictures and sounds in the information presentations that are created Another advantage of the Web is its ability to recognize a special formatting language called HTML(Hyper-Text Markup Language). This permits fine control of the appearance of document that are sent over the net-thus, authors can use boldfaced or italicized type for emphasis, insert tables in their documents, and place pictures and other graphic elements throughout their acumen Finally, many Web browsers(including Netscape) are capable of communicating via the older network protocols like ftp and gopher as well. Thus, from within a browser like Netscape one can view Web documents, do FTP transfers to your computer, read Net News, send e-mail and look at Gopher sites. all that from one program 3.2.2 Electronic Mail(Email) 1. General Description of Electronic Mail Electronic mail, sometimes called email, is a computer based method of sending messages from one computer user to another. These messages usually consist of individual pieces of text which you can send to another computer user even if the other user is not logged in(i.e using the computer)at the time you send your message. The message can then be read at a later time. This procedure is analogous to sending and receiving a letter Originally, email messages were restricted to simple text, but now many systems can handle more complicated formats, such as graphics and word processed documents. Just as you can send attachments with your letters in the normal post(snail mail) you can also send computercosts away from the consumer--temporarily. Services such as Delphi offered free web pages, chat rooms, and message boards for community building. Online sales have grown rapidly for such products as books and music CDs and computers, but the profit margins are slim when price comparisons are so easy, and public trust in online security is still shaky. Business models that have worked well are portal sites, which try to provide everything for everybody, and live auctions. AOL's acquisition of Time-Warner was the largest merger in history when it took place and shows the enormous growth of Internet business! The stock market has had a rocky ride, swooping up and down as the new technology companies, the dot.com's encountered good news and bad. The decline in advertising income spelled doom for many dot.coms, and a major shakeout and search for better business models is underway by the survivors. It is becoming more and more clear that many free services will not survive. While many users still expect a free ride, there are fewer and fewer providers who can find a way to provide it. The value of the Internet and the Web is undeniable, but there is a lot of shaking out to do and management of costs and expectations before it can regain its rapid growth. 3.2 Internet Service And Tools 3.2.1 World Wide Web (WWW) The World Wide Web (WWW) is the latest development in network technologies for information presentation. It allows people to publish a vast array of information using text documents, pictures, sounds, movies and other types of documents. The documents that are published are placed on a networked computer (the server). People can then use other computers (usually desktop-based Macintosh and PC computers, called clients) to connect to the server and look at the documents that reside there. When a person wants to look at WWW documents, they have to use a browsing program that knows how to connect to the server and how to display the information that is stored there. Two popular browsing programs are Microsoft Internet Explorer and Netscape. The greatest innovation of the Web is that it eliminates the need to know the network address of a computer - rather, computer addresses are stored as hyper-text links that one can click on with a mouse to move from one document to another. Each of the links can point to documents that are on the same server or on a different one across the world. Thus, getting from a computer here at UCSB to one in Australia or Germany is simply one mouse-click away - no complicated addresses to remember or complex instructions to execute. In addition, the Web allows transparent access to both text documents and binary documents (such as graphics, sound, video and other binary data types). This permits liberal use of pictures and sounds in the information presentations that are created. Another advantage of the Web is its ability to recognize a special formatting language called HTML (Hyper-Text Markup Language). This permits fine control of the appearance of documents that are sent over the net - thus, authors can use boldfaced or italicized type for emphasis, insert tables in their documents, and place pictures and other graphic elements throughout their documents. Finally, many Web browsers (including Netscape) are capable of communicating via the older network protocols like ftp and gopher as well. Thus, from within a browser like Netscape one can view Web documents, do FTP transfers to your computer, read Net News, send e-mail, and look at Gopher sites. All that from one program! 3.2.2 Electronic Mail (Email) 1. General Description of Electronic Mail Electronic mail, sometimes called email, is a computer based method of sending messages from one computer user to another. These messages usually consist of individual pieces of text which you can send to another computer user even if the other user is not logged in (i.e. using the computer) at the time you send your message. The message can then be read at a later time. This procedure is analogous to sending and receiving a letter. Originally, email messages were restricted to simple text, but now many systems can handle more complicated formats, such as graphics and word processed documents. Just as you can send attachments with your letters in the normal post (snail mail) you can also send computer