Last week the Internet Tutor discussed what made up the Internet.

As was mentioned, the Internet is actually very boring since it is nothing more than hardware connections and TCP/IP (a common computer language or "protocol"). It is the Internet applications that make the Internet come alive.

Older Internet applications that are still used include electronic mail (e-mail), Telnet, Gopher, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), Usenet (or newsgroups) and Internet Relay Chat (called IRC or just chat).

E-mail lets you send "stored and forwarded" messages from one Internet location to another. Somewhat similar to postal delivery where a message is routed from one location to another until the final recipient eventually gets the message. More e-mail is sent than postal mail each day.

Telnet is an archaic, but very flexible means of movement throughout the Internet. Telnet is still widely used by network administrators for many functions exclusive to this application..

Gopher is the mono-sized, text-only predecessor to the World Wide Web (WWW) that allows navigation through directories and viewing of text files. Gopher is all-but extinct except in the use of multi-user, role-playing, fantasy games called MUDs, MUSHes and MOOs.

When you want to do more than just look at files, you need FTP. FTP is the means to transfer files from a remote "server." The cryptic, raw functionality of FTP has also been widely replaced by easier WWW interface.

A newsgroup or Usenet is most often compared to a bulletin board. Visitors "post" messages to be read and responded to by anyone reading the newsgroup. Currently there are over 26,000 newsgroups. As with any collection of discussions, some are extremely educational or valuable while others are a complete waste of time or exceptionally lewd.

While newsgroups were never intended to provide real-time conversations, IRC was. IRC allows one-to-one or one-to-many conversations via immediately-viewable typed responses over the Internet. Participants choose "handles" like those used in CB talk and select a common "channel" or "chat room" in which they meet to converse.

Relatively new applications of the Internet include the World Wide Web, instant chat and paging, streaming video or audio broadcasts, Internet telephony and Internet conferencing.

The single most significant event to happen to the Internet was the creation of the World Wide Web in 1994. Replacing the comparatively boring Gopher, the WWW offered graphics and animation. With these new capabilities, the Internet became a viable and inexpensive advertising and publishing medium and was immediately embraced the corporate world.

While the "old" chat necessitated that people agree to meet in a certain chat room at a certain time, "instant chat" allows users to automatically "page" selected friends when they get online and then begin immediate discussions without a separate chat room. Yahoo! Chat, AOL Instant Messenger and ICQ are popular examples of instant chat applications.

Streaming video and audio applications (i.e. RealVideo) has become commonplace on WWW news and other "progressive" sites. Unlike traditional AVI or QuickTime movies which had to be downloaded (transferred) completely before seeing anything, streaming video users can begin viewing the pre-recorded or live broadcasts in only seconds since the video images are being transferred and "cached" just in time to be played.

Internet telephony (i.e. NetPhone) has traditionally been a poor-quality attempt at getting around long distance costs, but "compression" technology has improved in recent months. New high-quality "voice-over-IP" phones are slowly being deployed in businesses like gas stations or grocery stores. These sites usually have a large number of remote locations that may need to communicate daily with a central office and want to use their existing wide-area computer network.

Finally, Internet conferencing applications (i.e. NetMeeting) are making their way into corporate board rooms and used to allow remote viewing and manipulation of certain programs. These collaborative tools are enabling more people to telecommute, cutting wasted time and money.

It is these applications that draw the masses of people to their computers each day to connect to the Internet and often share information over it.