The Portable MBA in Finance and Accounting, 3rd Edition

Information Technology and You 167

typically cost $20 to $30 more than the normal $20 per month for modem
speed (56K) access.

World Wide Web

Though the terms Internet, World Wide Web, the Web,and the Nethave be-
come synonymous, the Web is actually a subsystem of the Internet. One of the
major attractions of the Web is that it is quite easy for the average person to ac-
cess any of the millions of sites on the Web. All you need is a Web browser and
a connection to the Internet. Web browsers are merely software programs that
allow users to navigate the Web. The two most common browsers are Microsoft
Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Internet Explorer comes free with Win-
dows, and Netscape Navigator can be downloaded for free from Netscape’s
Web site.
Every site that appears on the Internet has an address composed of a
company or organization name, called a domain name, and a domain type. For
example, “www.GenRad.com” refers to the Web site of a commercial company
named GenRad. These addresses are referred to as universal resource locators,
or URLs. Some of the more common domain types are as follows:

.com commercial organization

.org not-for-profit organization

.gov government organization

.mil military group

.edu educational institution

Each Web site displays its information using a series of Web pages. A Web
page may contain text, drawings, pictures, even audio and video, as well as blue
text called hypertext. Position your mouse pointer over one of these words, and
the arrow changes to a drawing of a hand. Click the mouse, and the computer
will automatically move to a new Web page. This move is called a hyper text
link.Using these hypertext links, a user can move around the Internet, from
page to page, company to company, state to state, country to country.
Internet e-mail addresses often consist of a username followed by the
symbol “@,” followed by the domain name, followed by the domain type. Thus,
Bill Smith’s e-mail address at GenRad might well be [email protected].
Many companies have put much of their literature on the Web, thereby
using the Web as an electronic catalogue. Home pages are the first page of in-
formation that you encounter when you reach an organization’s Web site. Com-
panies use their Web sites for marketing and distributing information about
their products. Instead of waiting on a telephone line for customer service, the
user can go online to get expert help about frequently asked questions (FAQs),
at any time of day, unattended. For example, the AICPA (American Institute of
CPAs) has a Web site at http://www.aicpa.org. Available at that Web site are many of
the AICPA services, including information on their membership, conferences,