The internet and the common man

Using the Net

For Executives only
The beginning of the InfoTech age led the world to go on-line. Virtually every major activity all over the world is taking place over the internet. Major commercial transactions are taking place in cyberspace virtually every second.

This Article provides an idea of how the internet can be used by an accountant and also a common man.

Mainly we will discuss about Discussion Board, chat room, search engines and how they work and bookmarks.

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Discussion Board

A discussion Board is a general term for any online “bulletin board” where you can leave and expect responses to messages you have left or you can just read the Board. Bulletin board services were invented for this purpose (as well as to allow for the exchange of uploaded/downloaded files).If you visit ICAI institute’s website (www.icai.org) then at the bottom of the homepage, you will find there is a link to enter the discussion forum.

It is very interesting way to share knowledge with the friends of the Profession or even a student can participate in the raised issue and comment upon it. But the disadvantage in that discussion board is that the user’s identity is not questioned for.

Even a stranger to the profession can write rubbish and defeat the purpose of the whole issue. But that is a separate issue and in democracy we can’t question about the right to speak. To utilize the discussion forum in more meaningful way it is better for the respective websites to issue a separate ID for the user.

There are many websites, which provide discussion boards, which can be utilized by us, are mentioned below:

· www.mahalibrary.com

· www.lexsite.com

· www.economictimes.com

· www.aicpa.org

There are many, which can be explored through the links provided by the different websites.

CHAT ROOM

A chat room is a web site, part of a website, or part of an online service such as America online, which provides a venue for communities of users with a common interest to communicate in real time.

Forums and discussion groups, in comparison, allow users to post messages but don’t have the capacity for interactive messaging. Most chat rooms don’t require users to have any special software; those that do, such as Internet Relay chat (IRC) allow users to download from the internet.

Chat room users register for the chat room of their choice , choose a user name and password , and log into a particular room (most sites have multiple chat rooms like www.englishbaby.com ).Inside the chat room, generally there is a list of the people currently online, who also are alerted that another person has entered the chat room. To chat, user types a message into a text box.

LINKS

A link is nothing but a hyperlink to a different website provided by a webpage (generally the home page or the web page of the search results) of a particular website. You can find at the bottom of the home page of ICAI (stands for Institute of chartered Accountants of India) website that there is Links to Government websites like www.rbi.org and to different other Professional bodies like www.ifac .org ,www.aicpa.org. etc.

Now imagine a situation where you have to send an audit report from a remote location, want to discuss it with your senior who is stationed at your headquarters and the same time you have to edit it according to the senior’s instructions.

Life is easy nowadays. Simply log on to Yahoo Messenger /MSN Messenger or any of your likings send the word document file through it and after it reaches have a chat with your senior who is obviously logged on to have a chat with you. Correct it by editing in your Ms Word document that is obviously opened for editing purpose. All can be done within few minutes.