The Internet Guide by Mark M. H. Goode © 1 PC GUIDE 2 THE INTERNET GUIDE. By Mark M. H. Goode ©. November 2007 Last update Nov 2007 Copyright Mark M. H. Goode Department of Economics and Business Swansea University, UK 1 The Internet Guide by Mark M. H. Goode © 2 This guide has been written to help students on the undergraduate and postgraduate degree schemes at Swansea Business School and is the result of my use of the web over the last eight years. It is not intended to be a definitive guide, but simply a starting point and reference for your adventure into hyper-space. The guide contains around 1,200 Internet sites. Introduction. The Internet is growing at an exponential rate, with approximately 0.25 million new web sites being added each month. At present there are over 3 million companies with web addresses, 0.25 million organisations, 5,000 educational establishments and 500 government sites listed on the World Wide Web. Over 153 million people in over 150 countries are using the Internet, however over half these people are located in North America (See the table below). This percentage will reduce as more people from other countries start to use the Internet. People Online Country People in Millions Percentage North America 87 57% Europe 34 22% Asia and Pacific 26 17% South America 4.5 3% Africa 1 0.5% Middle East 0.7 0.4% Total 153 100% Source: http://www.nua.ie/surveys/how_many_online. This guide has been sub-divided into fourteen subject areas or sections (namely a through n) as listed below, each section may have a number of major sub sections as shown in italics. The N values shown at the end of each section indicate the number of web sites listed in that section. At the start of some sub-sections a web site in large italics may be given, this is either a general web site for that sub-section or a special organisation which companies in that sub section may be linked to. Throughout this guide a number of special codes are used, firstly if a web site is followed by FT-100 this company is from the Financial Times 100 stock market index. Secondly, if the web site is followed by B???, this is one of the world’s top 100 brands, as defined by Hankinson & Hankinson (1999). Finally if the web site is followed by E, this site offers e-commerce facilities. Within each of these thirteen sections, the web sites have been sorted by subject then by web site name. You should also check the information Gateway section for interesting jump points on numerous subjects. The Internet is slower at some part of the day so European users will get quicker response time in the morning as American users come on line in the afternoon. You should also be very careful in typing http:// addresses as they need to the absolutely correct to connect to that site. Most Internet browsers (e.g. MICROSOFT EXPLORER or NETSCAPE) allow bookmarks or favourites where you can store commonly used web addresses. Most web browsers will automatically add the http:// part of the web address so you don’t need to type it. 2 The Internet Guide by Mark M. H. Goode © 3 a) Information on the Internet. [N=10] General b) Sport. [N=26] General Motor Sports Football c) News, Television & Weather. [N=62] News & newspapers, Magazines, Television & satellite channels, Digital television information, Weather, General d) Data bases & References. [N=48] Company information, Government databases, Academic databases, Health & Health Care Statistical databases, Telephone numbers & address, Jobs & vacancies. e) Leisure Interests (other than sport). [N=33] General Movies Museums and Art Galleries f) Travel. [N=31] General Travel Tourist Organisations Motoring Associations Wonders of the World g) Space. [N=14] General Spacecraft Engineering h) Information on Companies. [N=663] General Stock Market Information Standard Industrial Classification i) Academic Subjects. [N=172] Accounting & Taxation Economics Law Geography Management Operations Management Politics & Government International Organisations Professional Organisations and Institutes. Quantitative Methods Science Social science Sociology j) Europe [N=39] k) Information Gateways. [N=20] Educational Gateway Business Gateways Politics & Government Gateways Television Gateways Special Interest Gateways Popular Attractions & Events Gateways l) Searching on the Web. [N=23] m) Shopping. [N=39] Bookshops General Shopping Car Sales & Purchase Purchasing Computer Hardware & Software Music & Videos n) Building your own Web site [N=16] Finally due to the ever changing nature of the Internet some addresses will change or be deleted over time, if you can not connect to a site it could be due to the address being 3 The Internet Guide by Mark M. H. Goode © 4 changed or the site is under maintenance and is temporarily off line. If you have problems connecting to a site you should check the Internet address in one of the many directories on the web (see the section on Data bases & References in this guide). The History and Development of the Internet. The Internet started life in the late 1960’s with ARPAnet, a long distance computer network for the US Government Advanced Research Projects Agency. This linked 4 computers in 1969 and the network grew over the next 10 years to include over 200 computers in the USA. The main reason for linking computers together was to minimise the risk of nuclear warfare destroying important computers, therefore a number of geographical separated computers were linked together. These computers included military, research and government agencies. By the 1980’s a number of academic networks joined, which included Usenet, BITnet, CSnet and NSFnet. NSFnet, National Science Foundation’s Internet, uses very high speed links and forms the basis of the Internet in USA. These networks formed the start point of the modern Internet. Up to this point most of the computers connected to the network were mainframes using the UNIX operating system. In the early 1990’s PC’s and Macintoshes computers joined the Internet with the introduction of ease to use software like Netscape and Windows. The Internet then spread crossing the Atlantic to the United Kingdom and from here into Europe. By the mid 1990’s over 4 million computers were linked to the Internet and over 35 million people were using it on a regular basis. Understanding World Wide Web (WWW) Addresses. The Universal Resource Locater or (URL) is comprised of three basic components firstly the http://www part, however this is not used for all web addresses as a very small proportion use different conventions (i.e. Siemens electronics, http://w2.siemens.com). Secondly the site name such as Siemens and thirdly the type / location of the web site (therefore .co.uk is company located in the United Kingdom). If no location is given it will probably be the USA. The following list shows some of the more common types and country locations used in web addresses. Table of Type and Country Location Abbreviations Type Country Location .com or .co Company .ar Argentina .gr Germany .no Norway .gov or .gc Government .at Austria .ie Ireland .pt Portugal .org Organisation .au Austrailia .il Israel .ru Russia .edu Education .br Brazil .in India .se Sweden .ac Academic .ca Canada .is Iceland .sg Singapore .mil Miltary .ch Switzerland .it Italy .tw Taiwan .net Internet gateway .cn China .jo Jordan .ua Ukraine .cy Cyprus .jp Japan .uk UK .es Spain .kr Korea .us USA .fi Finland .mx Mexico .za South Africa .fr France .nl Netherlands Newsgroups. A newsgroup is an open discussion forum and there are around 30,000 different groups on the Internet, catering for almost every subject imaginable. There is often a 4 The Internet Guide by Mark M. H. Goode © 5 protocol or hierarchy in each newsgroup and not all newsgroups are what they may first seem. It is often a good idea to view, before joining in the discussion or you may get flamed. E-Commerce. Increasingly companies are using the Internet to market their products and services to an international consumer market place. The Internet has numerous advantages firstly, it is a global network and can reach millions of people 24 hours a day 365 days a year. Secondly, it is quick and easy to update your web site and very cost effective to run it. Thirdly, once you have credit card facilities goods and services can easily be bought and despatched. Fourthly, it is any excellent way to see what your competition is doing both in terms of web site design and new price offers and discounts as well as new product launches. One of the most important aspects of e-commerce is taking secure payments for goods and services, this is normally done by credit card transfers. The airline EasyJet has been one of the companies in the UK at the leading edge of e-commerce with more than 50% of its business conducted online. The first bank in the UK to embrace both e-commerce and online banking is Sunbank (http://www.sunbank.co.uk). However a number of other banks have started to look seriously into e-commerce, these include Natwest (http://www.natwest.co.uk), Barclays Merchant Services (http://www.bms.barcays.co.uk), e-banx (http://www.ebanx.net) and the Royal Bank of Scotland (http://www.rbos.co.uk). Numerous companies have started to exploit the advantages of the Internet, one very successful company is lastminute (http://www.lastminute.com) which sells luxury items and residual tickets for concerts, theatre and shows which have not been sold in the normal way. It has been predicted that online retail market in the UK by the year 2003 will have reached over £3,000 million.