In this universe of bits and bytes that we call the Internet, words have enormous power. Your writing ability is the single most important weapon you can wield in cyberspace. Using words like "you", "we", "us", and "our" makes a message more personal. Everyone who reads your message should feel as if the message is directed specifically at them. So choose your words wisely because, there is no voice inflection, body language or eye contact to help close the sale.

The good news about the Internet and is most visible component, the World Wide Web, is that there are hundreds of millions of pages available, waiting to present information on an amazing variety of topics.

The bad news about the Internet is that there are hundreds of millions of pages available, most of them titled according to the whim of their author, almost all of them sitting on servers with cryptic names. When you need to know about a particular subject, how do you know which pages to read? If you're like most people, you visit an Internet search engine.

Internet search engines are special sites on the web that are designed to help people find information stored on other sites. There are differences in the ways various search engines work, but they all perform 3 basic tasks:

o They search the Internet or select pieces of the Internet based on keywords
o They keep an index of the words they find, and where they find them
o They allow users to look for words or combinations of words found in that index

Today, a top engine will index hundreds of millions of pages, and respond to tens of millions of queries per day. Once the spiders have completed the task of finding information on web pages (and we should note that this is a task that is never actually completed -- the constantly changing nature of the web means that the spiders are always crawling), the search engine must store information in a way that makes it useful.

© 2005 by Afromerica

Ms. Deborah Maisonet will be keeping the Black community updated on the most current in technology and Internet etiquette. Visit regularly for new information that could help you pursue a more positive technological lifestyle.

To subscribe to Deborah's column join the Afromerica email list to receive new information as it is updated. Or E-mail Deborah at: grvc@worldnet.att.net

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