Web Feats

Internet has made a practical impact on us in the past few years.And there's no going!

Everybody can get information if they learn how to look for it
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Irritated by the half-remembered lyrics of a song ?Chettinad fried chicken in a hurry ?Want the price of Infosys shares?
In pre-Internet days ,finding answers would have involved looking through reference books ,scanning a newspaper or even making a trip to the library--all with no gurantee of finding the factual nugget .Now ,Google,the Internet search engine ,can deliver even the most obscure bits of information to your desktop computer within a matter of seconds.

Everyone can get breaking news
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You can read daily newspapers from just about any part of the globe online.Try thepaperboy.com for a list of papers from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.Google's news service is pretty neat,too,and even more useful is a new service that allows you to specify words of interest.When a news story on that topic pops anywhere in the world ,Google will email you the link.Look it up at www.google.com/alerts.

Everyone can be an expert
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If you're halfway competent at using the most the net as a research tool ,you're in a great position to get morte from your doctor , lawyer or banker--in fact ,anyone providing a cervice .If you use a credible website ,like webmd.com or mayoclinic.com,you can visit your doctors armed with well-informed questions about a condition and a good idea of tratment options.

Cheap,near-instant communication
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To those who have grown up in the era of the ubiquitous @symbol ,it's easy to trake e-mail for granted ,but the ability to flash messages around the globe with documents ,images or applications attached is revolutionary.Of course ,with e-mail you cannot ignore the pernicious activities of the spammers and the inconvenience of having an inbox flooded with offers of cheap drugs and penis-enlargement techniques.

The bank on your desktop
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Plenty of retail businesses have tried to harness online power to amke their services cheaper and easier to use ,but it is in the banking sphere that the effect has been astounding.When banks started providing online services we were initially impressed that we could check our account ballances online.

Everyone can be a publisher
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OK ,the Internet is not going to turn you into Rupert Murdoch overnight,but the ability for everyone to publish their thoughts online is atremendous change.Publishing used to be concentrated in the hands of a few wealthy people and organizations that could afford the expensive infrastructure to print and distribute newspapers ,magazines or books.Now everyone can do so for free through personal websites or,more likely these days ,by joining the blogging phenomenon ( blog is a new word derived from web log).Try blogger.com(wow ! I'm also using thier space now to reach you all)or geeklog.net for a taste of blog power or even to set up your own.How you make people read your blog is a different question.

The world market comes to your doorstep
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The Internet has now turned the connected world into one huge marketplace.This is primarily through the online monolith eBay (or its local counterpart baazee.com)but there are many others --Google lists hundreds of different auction sites.These sites have evolved into an incredibly efficient marketplace.

Music
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Driven initially by the conventional Napster and other peer-to-peer systems ,the Internet has revolutionised the distribution of music.Taking up running now is Apple's iTunes ,which sold more than 70 million songs in its first year alone.

No-one is anonymous any more
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Try a search on your best friends' names in Google and chances are they will be on the Internet ,especially if they are under30.