By far the easiest way to find information on the Internet is to use a "search engine". Essentially, these are vast databases holding Internet or WWW addresses. You simply enter the topic you wish to find information on, and the search engine will search its database and return a list of pages containing a match for your search. Types of Search Tools for General WWW Searching fall into two large categories
1 Subject Directories.
2 Keyword Search Tools
What type of search engine should I use?
For comprehensiveness, you should use keyword search tools (such as Altavista). However, subject directories (such as Yahoo) are valuable for their smaller size of handpicked, usually "good" sites.
For topics with vast quantities of information on the WWW, beginning in a Subject Directory often helps sort out meritorious sites from those that may mention your topic without in-depth treatment.

E-mail simply means "electronic mail." To use e-mail, you must have an account somewhere on an Internet mail server (a computer that has a permanent Internet address like some.computer.com. Think of it as an electronic post office, except it never closes). Having an account can be as simple as having a username and a secret password for privacy reasons. A typical e-mail address is set up like this: someone@some.computer.com this can be understood by just reading it: "someone at some computer". The part after the @ sign tells what mail server (post office) on the Internet the e-mail should go to. The part in front of the @ sign tells who (which user) it is meant for at that mail server. The mail server (in this case, some.computer.com) sorts any incoming mail by the username in front of the @ sign (in this case, someone) into the correct mailbox (a folder that can only be accessed with the secret password associated with it), which the user can check at any time and anywhere as long as they have a direct Internet connection.
Examples of this are Yahoo.co.uk, Hotmail.com and Excite.co.uk. You can sign-up (register) with the company and then you can access your e-mails from anywhere in the world. You decide on a name and a password that you will remember and that is not known to anyone close to you and then you register. If the name is already in use by someone else you may be given suggestions of alternative names you can choose, or just add numbers or letters to the name, but you need to remember the name and password that you finally use to register.
To send an e-mail, simply click on the "New message" icon in your e-mail client (this will probably look like an envelope). You will see a screen with a "To:" field, where you type in the e-mail address you wish to send mail to. In the "Subject:" field type in a short subject line and type the body of your message in the white space beneath this. Then simply click on the "Send" icon to send the message!