Towards Freedom

There are many search engines (some generalized some specialized).

Task: Goto google.com and type search engines and you should see a page like this:

You have searched for and found search engines on the net! Notice that your page may look a bit different from the above because the internet changes rapidly and search engines often customize their searches to your browsing habits. The key point to understand though is that there is much more than the familiar google search engine. If you go to the Wikipedia article List of Search Engines, you will find lots of information on the different search engines that are out there and what they are for.

The ones we mostly use are:

• duckduckgo, because we like the fact that it scrolls infinitely
• bing, because it integrated with chatgpt giving 'complete' answers
• google, because there will be a lot of goodies coming eventually

You will notice that the search engines often provide additional assistance such as definitions, wikipedia links and even questions (with answers) based on what others have asked about your topic.

This is a excellent boon to the internet with content curated by the community. Some peculiar people like to claim that Wikipedia is "unreliable" or "untrustworthy". These people not only have low self-esteem which they try to bolster by being critical, they often have poor research skills preferring faith (which does not require researching) to facts.

Nothing stays for long on Wikipedia because someone 'believes it to be true'. Statements have to be verified often from multiple sources and if there is insufficient support for an item it will be stated as such. Furthermore, the actual documentation used as support is footnoted. As such, looking for a particular topic on Wikipedia not only provides the summary the volunteer editors have produced and verified, you get a list of the references used to produce the content. It is a great starting point for any honest researcher who is willing to check out the links and citations provided in the article!

Task: Goto wikipedia.com and type into its search bar "search engine". You should see the following:

Presently, the page acknowledges the need for better citations and asks for help to improve the article. Also notice how well referenced and linked various items are in the article. Finally, there is a section at the bottom of the page which lists material for "Further Reading".

Wikipedia is a superb resource that search engines often link to and could form an important component in your set of tools!

Captain Kirk, landing on planet Earth, contacted the Enterprise stating with some insistence:
"Beam me up, Scotty! There's no intelligent life here!"

Well now there is!!

Task: Goto google and type in "what is a chatbot". You will see results from the dictionary stating that it is "a computer program designed to simulate conversation with human users".

Task: Goto wikipedia and type in "chatbot". You'll find lots more information.

In fact, why don't we try to see what a chatbot knows about chatbots!

Task: Goto to bing and type into the "Ask me anything" box something like "Tell me about chatbots" and press your enter/return key. If you don't see a "Ask me anything" box, click on "Chat" in the upper bar and you'll be able to get a place to type your request. The bing ai chatbot will answer you.

The most famous (for now) chatbot is ChatGPT and it is particularly well-suited for generating text, but it doesn't give you link references for its answers.

Bing's chatbot is fairly good too and does provide links for reference and follow-up.

Our favorite (at present) is Perplexity though. It combines, in our opinion, the best features of a chatbot and search engine. It writes well, though not as well as ChatGPT (unless you ask it to use ChatGPT!!), provides reference and follow-up links, is easy to set up an account, and just works very smoothly!

There is also Google's Bard, which looks very impressive because it will work with other programs like your wordprocessor or spreadsheet, but it isn't available everywhere yet. It's likely going to be worth the wait!

Well! You've just made a great friend! Actually, I kid you not: Woman creates and 'marries' AI-powered chatbot boyfriend.

What can this friend do for you? Well just ask your new friend (one of the above chatbots)!

Task: Type in the send message box, "What can a chatbot do for me?"

Your friend, btw, has many similar acquaintances. Find out who some of them are.

Task: Type in the send message box, "What other chatbots are there?"

A chatbot is not quite a substitute for a search engine. For instance, it will not give you the volume of information. However, it can certainly do what any good friend will - be at your side with encouraging information, possible solutions and even companionship!

Certain websites have content that is directly suited to your needs. If you are interested in a specific area, you may want to look for things with something other than the general search mechanisms outlined above.

For instance, say you are interested in academic research on the "retrieval effectiveness of search engines". Instead of typing that into google.com, go to the scholar version of google instead.

Task: Goto Google Scholar and type in "retrieval effectiveness of search engines". You'll get something like this:

Notice that you are not taken to typical sites, but are given links to actual research papers that have been published in journals!

An additional approach to try is going to an academic site which collects and organizes papers.

Task: Goto academia.edu and type in "retrieval effectiveness of search engines". You'll see a collection of papers as well as some other goodies:

This site lets you access a lot of papers relevant to your topic, but with a premium membership, it will give you a lot more of particular benefit to active scholars.

There are many sites similar to academia.edu that some researchers may prefer.

The bookmark system on your browser is a most valuable organizational mechanism. It can bookmark webpages you visit so you can go to these when you want to. If you make the effort to sort these bookmarks into proper categories, you may find it easier to access them later. In conjunction with the categorizing method is often found a tagging setup where you give certain webpages a tag. Then when you ask for that tag in your browser, all the pages with that particular tag show up!

Some well known browsers are Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Whale and you can find about their merits here.

Our browser of choice is Vivaldi which has more surprisingly helpful utilities than any other browser we have worked with.

Browsers usually have third party extension written for them which can do specific tasks. For instance, here is the Chrome Web Store which you can search for the Chrome Browser extensions. Extensions install in seconds and are often quite useful.

Browsers often have synchronizing abilities so that if you use say Vivaldi on your phone and desktop, your bookmarks and histories can be made the same.

Each browser is setup differently and has some unique capabilities, so the best way to get to know you browser is through its help page. Often your browser will have several youtube videos other users have posted which can help you to learn how to use it better.

Task: Learn about your browser by opening it and pushing the F1 key (which will usually bring the help page).

Bookmarks are great for keeping track of websites and webpages. A similar mechanism which offers different opportunities are personal online library sites. These let you store articles (and other items) from the web for later retrival in more ways than one!

The best example of such a system is Pocket. When you save an article to pocket from the web, it will be accessible much as it would be with a bookmark on your browser. However, the items can be accessed from your desktop or your phone or some other computer so long as you log into your pocket account. You can tag the articles and keep things organized.

Even more spectacular is that Pocket grabs the text of the article and stores it so that if the original webpage disappears in the future, you still have the text of the article! The premium version of Pocket also lets you do text searches in your collection.

If all this is not enough, Pocket will even read the article to you if you don't feel like using your eyes!

Task: Learn about Pocket - it'll be worth your time if you read a lot!

Do you need to do more than accumulate information which you are quite competent at doing by now? Do you actually need to get things done?

There are two mechanisms that can be particularly helpful to you. The simplest is to create a tasklist and just work on things one after the other. You can learn about this revolutionary method in this Time Management Essentials article.

However, if you want to be more than revolutionary, you need a calendar because you can not only put down tasks, but you can indicate when these need to be done. The best calendar software should be webbased, so you can access it (and vis a versa) from anywhere.

We use Google Calendar because we've always used google calendar and for no other particular reason. The software lets you create appointments, reminders, and tasks. You can view in various formats such as weekly or daily.

How it rates with other calendars such as Microsoft Outlook Calendar, Zapier Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Fantastical, we haven't a clue.

Task: Check out The 5 best calendar apps in 2023 and try them if you want to.

Just remember you want to access your calendar from both your destop and your phone, so be sure that there are suitable apps for your phone or tablet.

Ah so!! You niet speckenzie anglais, eh?

Not a problem because these days you can convert one language into another through the miracle of translation.

There are many sites that will do this sort of thing for you. Some sites even have translators built into them so you can read what's on the site if it is written in a language you don't speak. Translators are getting better and better, some even incorporating artificial intelligence.

Task: Go to the Cambridge Dictionary Translator and type "How are you?" into the English box. Then in the box below pick Czech as the language to translate your entry into. Click translate and voila (pardon my French), you get "Jak se máš?". How about that, eh?! Is it correct? I haven't the faintest idea, but you can czech it out yourself.

Not only are there converters that let you express yourself in different languages, you can do neat things like change all British units of measurement all over the planet into metric (which is what they should have been in the first place!)

Task: Go to calculator.net and you'll find an excellent system that provides multiple conversions at once. Using the Length tab put a 10 into the From: box. Then click on mile and you'll see the results in the adjacent box!

This is setting the world right one metric at a time!

In addition to the above, there is a myriad of document converters that come to the rescue when required. For instance, fine Linux folks have to endure awkwardness caused by Apple and Windows (ok so I married a windoze user, but I hadn't got wind of it back then!) which use propriety protocols so that only their software can open their documents (they can't even open each others' stuff!). Such deplorable behavior is overcome using various online tools. For instance, say some unfortunate sends you a ".pages" document and you can't open it because you are not an Apple user! Just go to FreeConvert and change it to a pdf! These conversion sites can be a documentsaver in an emergency!

There are other converters designed for various uses, but you can find these when you require them (since you know how to search).

Writing emails to others is a primary form of communication for most people. One sends text (or more elaborate html) messages to others. To do so, one can use a standalone software (eg Outlook Express, Evolution, Thunderbird) or one that works through your browser (eg Gmail, Yahoo Mail).

These items are known as email clients and often they also work with Calendars, Tasks, Contact Lists and other things to provide an integrated experience. Additionally, emails can send attachments such as photos or pdf documents. Good email clients will also let you do complex searches through all your emails so you can find just the one you are looking for.

Sometimes, you may want to send the same email to multiple recipients. There are 2 primary ways to do this.

If the list is fairly small you can put the primary recipient in the To: field and others in the Cc: or Bcc: fields. The difference between Cc: and Bcc: is that the Cc: email addresses are visible to everyone receiving the email, but ones in the Bcc: field remain invisible. One would use the Bcc: field when the email address of that recipient does not want to be identified. Email addresses are usually separated by commas or semi-colons. The receiver of the email can press 'Reply' (to reply to the original sender) or 'Reply All' (to reply to everyone on the list).

If the list is large, you'll have a lot of email addresses to put in the To: or Cc: fields! Furthermore, you email may not even get out because some email client put limits on how many people you can send to. For example, Outlook has a maximum 500 recipients per message which is more than enough for most people, but it's still pretty messy. A better solution to handling large lists is to use a Listserv such as Gaggle. People can get onto the list and any email they send to NAMEOFLIST@gaggle.email goes out to everyone. They can reply to the group (by default) or to the individual sender. You can also get daily digests of email conversations on the list if you don't want to receive large numbers of emails.

Remember that emails sent to lists should follow rules of email etiquette. After all, other people have to read your work so here are some things practice:

1. Always have a relevant title in the Subject: field. People who leave this field blank or put something useless like "Hello", make it difficult for readers to know what they are opening.
2. Post with precision. Don't go spilling your innermost guts in your posts. Not only does it make for nauseating reading, it can be bothersome to do so. Also do not reply just to say thank you! It's not worth the trouble of opening the email to read such heartfelt gratitude! By all means, express your appreciation, but add something useful along with it such as how you intend to use the info (that might help others too), or suggestions for modifications, or listing others who might find such items of interest, or …
3. If your post contains information that should be examined further on the web, provide the links! Be helpful to your readers so they don't have to surf the net all night to see what you want them to see.
4. Minimize the frequency of postings. By all means, post when you should, but responding to every person (unless doing so is important) becomes a disturbance to members of the list.
5. Do not spam! Do not post off topic items! If the list is for discussion on sportscars, then do not post something regarding jellybeans. It will annoy people. If the topic is related, say racing buses, may be that might be alright, but you should be cautious. If there is any doubt, check with the administrator of the list. If you keep posting spam, you run the risk of being removed from it.

Email on a list should be mostly viewed not as a conversational hobby, but as a communications facility. Treat it and your readers with the respect they warrant.

A variation of the email system is texting on your mobile phone though this is best suited for individual conversations rather than group texting (though that can be done as well with something called SMS).

Some people find receiving email convenient, but some don't! For the latter, there is the forum mechanism. Also, known as bulletin boards, these systems let people post and read posts on a website. These systems are particularly effective when specialized notation is required (something that isn't always possible with email). For instance, take a look at the Continuation of Coordinates Across Black Hole Horizons on the PhysicsForums. Beautiful isn't it!

Here is a forum for programmers who use the Clojure Language called Zulip. Notice it is able to insert computer code for discussion.

Forums usually have advanced search, follow a particular author, notification of new postings and many other features that make this venue a very powerful one!

The same etiquette rules for email lists apply to forums.

If you want to go all out and have your place on the internet, you need a website!

The steps to follow are outlined in this article (and many others - just use your find skills!), but the essential ideas are

• to create content (designing), which can be done in a wordprocessor and converted to html (the website scripting language that let's browsers display your work) or with blogging software such as Wordpress
• put it somewhere on the net (hosting), on someone else's site or on your own site (with your own domain name)

There are many organizations that you can do these things through. Some have a turnkey operation where you build your site with its own domain name from their templates. They will have software with which to create content, get you the domain name of your choice (provided it is available), and host the site for you. Examples of such outfits are bluehost, wix, godaddy, and weebly.

Variations on the website theme are social media (eg facebook, instagram, mastedon) and video channels (eg youtube, vimeo). Many find building a presence using these systems simpler and more effective (for their purposes) than having an actual website (though some use combinations of all).