iRADiX

A decade ago, a dial-up Internet connection was a big bonus. Now, if there is no Internet connection, computer is nothing. Internet has opened the gates of endless source of useful and useless source of information to the extent to make us nettoholics. For people who live on net, net-books are cheap alternative to laptops and can be carried in handbags very easily. Internet is also available on all new smart phones.

Speed is the key:
With the current complexity and content on the web page, it is nearly impossible to browse the Internet with dial-up connection. Broadband speed one needs depends on the type of establishment, the amount of information sent to and received from Internet during working hours, and number of computers connected to Internet. More the speed, more the subscription. All new laptops and smart phones come withWiFi; hence there is no need of any connecting wires.

Browser:
I am sure we all know that browser is the one which primarily connected computers to the world of Internet. Hence it is the most important software in the computer which needs to be chosen with great care. As soon as we are connected to Internet, the computers are exposed to security issues (viruses, worms, Trojans, ad-wares,malwares etc). One might be having very good broadband connection, but the browser may take more time to load. There should not be too many toolbars (the ones which are on the top) so that we should get more space to read and view what we are browsing.

For most, browser is synonymous with Internet Explorer (IE) as it comes as default with Windows. But there are many browsers in the market (and all of them are free!), which are gaining popularity even outside the network of IT professionals.

As IE (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer/default.aspxcomes as default with Windows (they are going to change that with Windows 7), Safari (http://www.apple.com/safari/download/comes with Mac (Apple computers). Safari not only works with Mac, but also with windows.

According to me, the best browser available today is FireFox (www.mozilla.com/firefox/). The main advantage of FireFox is stability, security, and more importantly one can customise and modify the browser with various add-ons (e.g., read it later, morning coffee, ad-block plus etc).

Google's Chrome is new in market, which is supposed to be the fastest browser, and I think it is true (www.google.com/chrome).

Opera is the other one to try (www.opera.com/download/), which comes with some of the features which are missing from other browsers.

Linux has slightly limited options, but firefox suits the best for Linux users.

Additional essential software:
There are some software which are very much essential to get the full use of Internet, viz., Flash player (http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/) , Adobe acrobat reader (http://get.adobe.com/reader/, WMV player (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.mspx, Quick-time player (www.apple.com/quicktime/download/) to name a few.

E-mail and Calender:
Microsoft Outlook is one of the most used e-mail client in corporate market. Mozilla provides free alternative to Microsoft Outlook, calledThunderbird (http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/). Alternatively, free e-mail service available on Internet can also be used, especially in a smaller organization. For example,Google's GMail provides easy solution for integration of e-mails and calender (events) for a smaller organization.

Search:
As Windows is synonymous with Operating system, Google has become synonymous with Internet search (www.google.com). There is no doubt, Google offers one of the best search results in simple and quick way. The other popular search engine is Bing (www.bing.com), which runs both Microsoft and Yahoo searches.

As radiologists, we need much more than conventional search engines. PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/) is the most popular search engine for doctors, which indexes most of the medical journals. PubMed is very much essential for literature search, especially for writing articles and for dissertations.

Google's Scholar (http://scholar.google.com/) is another efficient search engine to search original articles. Google's books (http://books.google.com/) will also help us to search relevant literature from thousands of radiology books.

We have exclusive radiology search engine, Yottalook (http://www.yottalook.com/), which is actively developed and maintained by radiologists. One can search specifically into web, journal, books, anatomy or images. I more often use this search engine than any other search engines whenever I stumble open a problem while reporting.

If there are any queries, please drop in comments, and I will try to answer to the best of my knowledge. In my next blog, I will try to explore more about how to make best use of Internet apart from search engine.