NOTES FOR THE MEETING ON 29TH SEPTEMBER 2001
SPANISH ISPs
---------------
The two main Spanish ISPs are Terra (aka Teleline)
owned by the Spanish telephone company Telefonica,
and Wanadoo,
owned by its French parent of the same name,
and it is on these that we will concentrate.
Other large ISPs are:
Eresmas http://www.eresmas.com
Arrakis http://www.arrakis.es
Retevision http://redestb.es
and a newcomer:
Telepolis http://www.telepolis.com
ACCOUNTS
All the ISPs offer "free" accounts. With these, you pay the ISP
nothing, but connect through a phone call charged at local rates.
Other offers vary from month to month - you will need to check the
websites of the ISPs.
Terra currently offer a "Tarifa Plana" for 2.750 pesetas a month plus IVA
through which you can have access between 1800 and 0800 and at weekends
through a free dial-up.
Wanadoo offers "Bonos" whereby you have a fixed number of hours per
month through a free dial-up for a flat fee.
Other ISPs offer schemes of their own, which are always changing!
Be aware that Terra's Tarifa Plana is greatly over-subscribed, leading
to slow transfer rates and even disconnection at busy times.
In a later session, we will set up an account with Wanadoo
TECHNICAL SUPPORT
Both Terra and Wanadoo advertise telephone and e-mail support in
English 24 hrs a day 7 days a week. Feedback I've received is that
this facility is indeed available, although you may need to wait.
WHAT DO I GET WITH MY ACCOUNT?
You get a name, password and phone number to use to dial-up into your connection.
With that, the main thing you will be able to do, of course, is to use the World Wide Web - browse or "surf".
With all accounts you will get at least one (and sometimes more) e-mail address - somebody@terra.es, etc, which you can use to send and receive e-mail and attachments.
You will also get access to the Usenet newsgroups. We are fortunate in that all the major Spanish ISPs have perfectly adequate news servers, unlike their British counterparts.
With most accounts you will be given a small amount of free webspace, maybe 5 or 10 megabytes; enough to publish something like a personal page or similar if you have (or learn) web publishing skills.
All these activities (with the exception of publishing your own page) will be explored in later sessions.
"SURFING",
or BROWSING THE NET
On 15th September, we had a brief look at the World Wide Web in a rather aimless, meandering manner. Today, we will use various features of the Internet to achieve specific goals. We will make use of search engines to point us to the information, which we will then access and, where appropriate, download it. These notes are not going to reveal what the results will be - if you wish, you can make your own notes, and I will make further comment in our "matters arising".
(1) Asking a simple question: What is the population of Guatemala?
(2) Research: What does a giant millipede look like?
(2) Internet related: Finding out details of the Freeserve UK ISP (I'm using Freeserve to keep English as the language)
(3) Internet related (again). Finding out about Hotmail
(4) Exploring on line banking (using BankonLine)
(5) Real time information: What is the state of play regarding arrivals at Alicante Airport
(6) Software: downloading an alternative (free) news reader to Outlook Express
(7) Discussion Groups: The Costa Blanca Expats.
Finally, I have been asked to explain "Boolean Algebra, the system used for advanced web searches.
a AND b
means that BOTH a and b must be present for the site to be a "hit"
a OR b
means the EITHER, or BOTH a and b must be present
a XOR b
means either, but NOT both
NOT a
means that a must NOT be present.
NEAR is used by AltaVista and some others to mean "within ten words"
The logic of the search can be clarified by the use of brackets, such as:
(a AND b) OR (c AND d)
Search terms with spaces in them are best used in quotes to avoid ambiguity, as some engines consider a space to be the same as AND, i.e
"Bill Hayles" AND "Clive Read"
That's it for today. I hope you've enjoyed it. The next meeting is on October 13th.