For information on Internet chat systems including IM and IRC, which used to be on this page, see my Internet chat page in this section.
PCs always have an internal clock, and modern operating systems by default display the current time. One way or another, you should keep your PC's clock set to the correct date and close to the correct time, so that backup and file synchronization utilities work correctly.
You can synchronize your PC clock online with super-accurate Internet time standards, using a 20-year-old Internet service called NTP, Network Time Protocol. There are two versions of NTP. In SNTP, Simple Network Time Protocol, the client queries one NTP server and then sets the system clock. Full NTP supports querying several servers (NetTime uses five) and averaging the results from servers that agree closely.
Windows XP and 2000 have native NTP support, and it's a free download for Windows NT (see the NetTime home page for the link). You should probably also check for native NTP support on Mac OS X or recent Linux versions. If you have "always on" Internet like DSL or cable, you can configure your PC to synchronize its clock automatically.
For most people without native NTP support, NISTIME and SNTP should be sufficient.
NIST also offers a PDF file on how to install, configure, and use NISTIME, which is a lot simpler to do than the PDF file makes it look.
To install & configure NISTIME:
Then when you're online and want to synchronize, open NISTIME and do Query Server, Now.
If you use NISTIME on a dialup/modem Internet connection, you'll probably want to skip the steps in the PDF instructions for automatic periodic synch and loading NISTIME on startup, and just run it manually every few months when you're online.
Telnet is a text-based protocol that allows you to use the Internet to connect to a remote computer, usually a mainframe, and operate it as though you were on a terminal connected to that computer. If you have a graphical telnet client, the window and menus will be graphical, but the terminal session you see in the main part of your telnet window will still be text-only. Generally the public login and password strings to be used will be given as part of the telnet address.
Typically you can also use a telnet client to get to your provider's Unix prompt, to set your Web page file permissions for public access, for example ... assuming of course that your provider lets you control your own Web page files. You could do that by dialing in with something like Windows Terminal, of course, but if you use a Winsock telnet client instead, you don't have to close Winsock or disturb your other Winsock clients. In this case you would use your actual shell-account login and password.
Windows 95 and later has its own undocumented telnet program, which you'll find in the Windows program directory. You can run it from a DOS prompt, or create a shortcut for it wherever you want. Once you start it, a separate black-on-white telnet text window opens, with its own graphical menus. It works great. I found a telnet help page which covers Windows telnet.
NCSA Telnet is a freeware telnet client for Macintosh, available from an NCSA ftp server.
I haven't identified a telnet client for Linux yet. As usual with Linux, if all else fails one could obtain source code for and compile a text-based Unix-prompt telnet program. Or maybe my Unix ignorance is showing and Linux people actually do this sort of thing with rlogin or something.
Gopher is an older text-based Internet browsing system that was around before the Web was invented. (Yes, there really used to be an Internet with no Web pages.) When Web stuff came along with graphics and formatting there was this huge stampede to do Web pages, and Gopher sort of got left in the dust. Most Gopher-based resources have long since been converted to Web sites, but some things are still Gopher-based, especially in some of the more inert parts of the US government. There are also still some Gopher enthusiasts.
Everything in Gopher is either a menu item or a document. A menu item always either takes you to another menu item (possibly on a different computer) or sends you a document. A Gopher document can be a text file, or a picture or zipfile or other binary. Gopher clients usually have some way of recording and editing bookmarks, to help you return to a location later.
You can tunnel through what's left of Gopherspace using Web browsers including Firefox with no problem ... until you run into a Gopher-specific search widget. Then you'll need a real Gopher client. Should you feel inadequate if you don't have a Gopher client installed? Well, no, not if you know where to get one. If you look up US government information frequently you probably will need a real Gopher client sooner or later. See also the Wikipedia article for history, clients, gateways, and current status of the Gopher protocol.
For Windows users, WS gopher seems to work well, and besides, I like the toothy gopher icon. WS gopher is available from TUCOWS.
Turbo Gopher is or was a freeware Gopher client for Macintosh. I had an opportunity to actually use it in the 1990's, and it worked dandy. The Gopher protocol was originally developed at the U of Minnesota; it was named partly after the school's emblem, the Golden Gophers, and the UMN site was the home of the "Mother Gopher" and the "Metaburrow."
Xgopher is an X windows Gopher client for Linux.
finger and whois are Unix commands that tell you things about people and computers on the Internet, respectively. The bad news about finger is that it turned out crackers could use it to gain unauthorized access to carelessly set-up systems. A Unix whois client consults a server to look up a domain name (like "sourceforge.net") and return some minimal information about the site; like where it is geographically, and usually a couple of contact names and phone numbers.
The usefulness of whois is mostly restricted to Web gateways now, complicated by the fact that there is no central database for Internet domains any more. Usually you can still find out who a domain belongs to and where. Try these:
WS finger was a single Winsock client that handled both finger and whois.
There's an old system for sending Internet email to fax machines for free; see the TPC.INT fax homepage for details. This is only appropriate for recipients with a phone line and fax machine but no Internet access; if they have Internet you should just send them regular email.
ISPs and other organizations sponsor a local-dial "cell." They benefit by getting to put modest advertising on the transmitted fax cover sheet, and in the confirmation email back to the sender.
There's software and a Web gateway you can use to send these, but all you really have to do is use an email address of the form:
remote-printer.Jane_Doe/Room_403@13035551234.iddd.tpc.int
... which encodes the addressee/routing info and fax number in the email address. The underscores get converted to spaces on the fax and the forward slash to a newline. (Internet email addresses can't include spaces.)
Unfortunately if you're reading this from the Inland NW local area, there appears to be no sponsored cell coverage anywhere in area codes 509 (eastern Washington) 208 (Idaho) 406 (Montana) 541 (eastern Oregon) or 250 (eastern British Columbia). But supposedly you can use this system to send to Seattle, Portland, other big cities, and with appropriate international prefix, a lot of the rest of the world. The site can tell you quickly whether a specific fax number is in a covered area.
You can also look into eFax. Its eFax Free mode allows you to receive a limited number of faxes a month in your email. There are a couple of pay modes as well, which allow you to also send faxes from an email account.
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