Internet Skills Page:

Please do at least two from each group

    Basic Web Tricks

    1. Set up a personal Web page and post the URL to the class list
    2. Download and play MP3 files
    3. Use Napster and Gnutella
    4. Configure your browser to warn you before accepting cookies
    5. Look something up on Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, DejaNews UseNet Interface and Google
    6. Enable your computer to read documents in .pdf format with Adobe Acrobat
    7. Find phone numbers and addresses in the White Pages

    Privacy: Yours

    1. Browse anonymously, using the Anonymizer
    2. Look yourself up at http://www.anywho.com , then click on "maps" and on your address
    3. Look yourself up at http://www.anybirthday.com
    4. Visit http://www.privacy.net/analyze
    5. Read about, and install, Bugnosis (only works for IE, alas)
    6. Go to the cookie check page and see how many advertising site have given, or might be able to give, you cookies.  Then, opt out of internet advertisement tracking cookies at The Network Advertising Initiative

    Privacy: Other People's

    1. See who's registered a domain name that's already taken
    2. Visit Metaspy and spy on a few search requests, then check out Google's Zeitgeist
    3. Trace a spammer (or trace the path of any other e-mail sent to you)
    4. Look up someone you know at Altavista's Image Search
    5. Look up someone you know, or wish you knew, in the Miami-Dade County Property Appraiser Public Access pages

    Commerce

    1. Browse eBay and (locate and) read its User Agreement and Privacy Policy
    2. Buy a book or compact disk online and (locate and) read the site's User Agreement and Privacy Policy
    3. Surf stock message boards at Silicon Investor, Raging Bull, or Yahoo
    4. Look up five of the most dangerous or dirtiest pages you can think of on the Internet Censorship Expolorer
    5. Use a price-comparison service to find the lowest online price for a 64MB Compact Flash Memory Card

OPTIONAL

    Advanced Web Tricks

    1. Play internet radio stations from shoutcast
    2. Find and review your browser's cache and cookie files
    3. Privacy: Install PGP from http://www.pgp.com
    4. Install an ad and cookie blocker e.g. Ad Subtract
    5. Install a free firewall
    6. Translate web pages in a foreign language into English (or other languages) at BabelFish
    7. Talk to friends and relatives over the web in real time with an instant messenger AOL, Yahoo
    8. Install parental control filters web filters from the Internet Rating and Content Association (ICRA)
    9. Find a wide range of Internet tools at Geektools

    Extra Advanced Web Tricks

    1. Try to locate a privacy policy posted on any .edu site for a US institution
    2. Suggest something that should be part of this web page.
Thanks to Prof. Walter Effross, who compiled the original list from which this is adapted

Return to Syllabus, Part One

Last Modified Aug 27, 2002