Welcome to our first Small Bytes column. This space will be devoted to the use of technology as a tool in prevention. The explosive growth of the Internet has provided us with a new opportunity to gather and share information about ATOD, and we will be using this column to provide some insight into how best to get at this information. In the issues to come we will explore how to use the tools of the Internet, how to use search engines effectively, as well as other topics that will help you use technology efficiently. You will also notice that some sections of the column are highlighted. This is to let you know that we are defining a word, so that you can use these columns as a quick glossary to Internet and technology terms.

Internet basics
To kick off our new column let's review some basics about the Internet. This new resource comes with its own jargon and in some ways its own culture. To start simply, the Internet is a collection of computers all over the world that are connected, and can communicate with each other using a common language. All of the computers agree that if they get a message that doesn't belong to them, they will pass it on until it gets to the proper location. The Internet is different than (but related to) on-line services such as America Online or CompuServe since those companies offer information directly to people who call their central computers. However, these services in the past few years have connected their computers to the Internet so that their customers can gain access to other Internet resources.

The most popular way of organizing information on the Internet is through the use of the World Wide Web. Using the Web, pages of information containing text, graphics, sound and video can be linked to each other, thereby creating a 'web' of information. To view these pages requires a 'browser', and the two most widely used browsers are Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer. Web sites are being created and updated daily, and they contain a great deal of helpful and useful information. In future columns we will review specific sites and define more of the tools of the Internet.