I quite often come across home where the one spouse wants nothing to do with 'the Internet' and the other is quite in to using the computer. Interesting to ask the one that 'doesn't have time for...' is only missing out on some wonderful adventures. Yes, I say adventures because you can quite honestly lose yourself in some web application and find that you have completely been 'wasting your time' as it may be fun, it is not very productive. I have also had questions like 'what can you do with the Internet' and so I figured I would point you in some sort of directions.
You want to listen to music, nothing more then like turning on the radio... then do it.. go search for your favorite radio station, odds are they have a website and you can listen to them by clicking on the 'listen live' button typically found somewhere on the page. The next thing if this is truly what you have now found interesting, is to recognize what web applications that radio stations web uses, such as Real Audio Player, which will require you to first have the real audio player installed. Now this is where all hell breaks loose, in the fact that you click on www.realaudio.com and get to their website only to learn that you are downloading a 'free' program but will be constantly hounded to buy the premium version and to get out that credit card.. that is typically where most will just turn off the computer and say... "exactly what I expected..nothing for free!".. .well that isn't true, it is more like you just need to know what you are installing and what to watch out for.
First of all your Windows Operating system will have a 'windows media player' and therefore if you care to pay attention to most websites, that will have the Real Audio icon, they may also have the Windows Media icon, in which case you don't have to install anything.. now again, I'm not saying you shouldn't install the Real Audio player, just be aware of how you install it and learn the correct way. At this point you may want to read my OPTIMIZING TIP before continuing.
The podsafe music network and places like podshow will allow you to not only listen to music, but create your own radio station! Podsafe means this music is completely free to listen to and download without the Fed's knocking at your door for downloading music that belongs to a record company.
This brings up RSS which is simple to say, the format in which the music you want to listen to, gets to your device such as an IPOD. By subscribing to websites with the RSS logo you can have this information pushed to you. This can be any information from websites that have just been updated, to news stories using an RSS news reader (google reader is quite easy to understand for those that are new to this)
Just understanding the SEARCH itself may take some real new users a while to comprehend, especially since after you choose the item to search for, a page with many links appear causing many to just not know what to do next. There are many 'search engines' available with Google, Yahoo, MSN making up a majority of the big players, but don't let the little guys go without notice. Why not try searching for other search engines... you may be pleasantly surprised to find some specialty search engines that deal with the topic of interest to you!
Yes, there is a lot of reading that one does when surfing the Internet and the more you use it, the easier you will find yourself finding where to look and what NOT to click on! One thing I have told many newbies when dealing with a computer is to take advantage of F1 . The Function-one button (F1) has always been the emergency key for instructions and because it brings up a different set of instructions depending on where you press it, it does make life a little easier, so long as you don't depend on it! The best thing you can do with those 'Internet for dummies' type books is to use them as a reference only.. read only a section at a time that you are currently having issues with. Most importantly, when you get to the point where frustration is taking over, get up and walk away from the computer... come back when you are ready to tackle it once again.
