June 18th, 2010 | 
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As a backpacker you can spend quite a bit of time using the World wide web to research your destination, make reservations and staying in touch with friends back home. Follow the below tips to refrain common pitfalls and get the most out of the web.
Picking an World wide web café
These days you can find World wide web cafés nearly everywhere. Ask which connection the World wide web café has, it is a massive difference between dial-up and 100 megabit broadband so it might be worth going to the more costly place if their connection is significantly faster.
Usually the customers share the acquirable bandwidth in the World wide web café which means the more clients the slower the connection. An empty café might therefore not necessarily be a bad thing. Check the prices and if there is a minimum time consumption before using the computer.
Hotspots which enable wireless access are spreading quite fast these days. You can find them in airports, shopping malls, restaurants, etc. Sometimes they are free for clients so if you bring your mobile device (laptop, cell phone, etc) you can connect without the need to visit an World wide web café. There is also a service called FON which is a massive wireless connection community where you get free wireless access to the World wide web if you share your connection at home.
If you need to connect your digital camera/media player etc bring a USB-cable. If you do not have one check with the café if they have a USB-cable or a card reader so that you can remove the memory card from your device and connect it to the computer.
Surfing the web
More than once we have composed a nice mail, hit the send button only to get an error message in return. Hitting the back button then only returned a blank screen. ¤&#¤/&#/&¤!! The ideal way to refrain this is to open up a text editor (e. g. notepad or WordPad) and write your message there. When you are completed choose the text, copy it, switch to your e-mail and paste the text.
Those from countries using unusual letters (such as the Swedish letters å, ä, ö) might find it very frustrating trying to find out how to type these letters on foreign keyboards. There are several approaches to solve this:
• Open up Microsoft word. Go to Insert, Symbol, choose Normal text, choose your characters and press the button Insert.
• Send an e-mail to yourself which contains the special characters while you are at home.
Open the mail when you are in the World wide web café
Select all the special characters.
Copy them (use the keyboard shortcut for duplicating – it is normally ctrl+C).
Switch to your e-mail program.
Start writing your e-mail.
When you need to use your special characters paste them (use the keyboard shortcut for pasting, it is normally: ctrl+V) then delete the ones you do not want to use.
Next time you need the special characters just paste them again (there is no need to copy them again unless you copied something else later).
• Learn the ASCII-code (a three digit number) of the character you want to type. You can then type the character by holding down the alt-button and typing the ASCII-code. Do not release the alt-button until you have typed all the numbers. If you want to type the letter Å for example just hold down alt and type 143. For a complete listing check out Wikipedia. Below you find some common examples:
Å 143 é 130 ñ 164
å 134 ê 136 ç 135
Ä 142 è 138 â 131
ä 132 ß 225 ç 135
Ö 153 Ø 157 ¿ 168
ö 148 ø 155 ü 129
ë 137 æ 145 Ü 154
If someone with a different character set than yours has been using your personal you might find all sort of strange things happening when using the keyboard. Maybe someone from Nihon just used the personal and switched to Asian character set. If the personal has another language set (e. g. Japanese) you can change back to English by right clicking the language bar (bottom right corner with two capital letters e. g. EN) and selecting your preferred language.
If you are on a really slow connection and have a lot of e-mails to open it is useful to right click apiece message and choose open in new window or open the messages in a new tab. While you begin reading the first mail, the others will be loading in the background. It might take longer for the windows to open but you save time instead of opening one mail, reading it, going back, opening another mail, etc.
If you are on a slow connection you can disable pictures to make downloading go faster. In World wide web Explorer go to: Tools/Internet Options/Advanced. Scroll down to Multimedia and uncheck the checkbox Show pictures. This can drastically speed up your surfing.
It is also a good intent to have several windows open if you are visiting different web sites (in the World wide web Explorer menu bar select: File/New/Window). Type the URLs in the different windows and read the one which loads first while the others load. Switch between the windows as they finish loading.
Sometimes you get asked if you want the browser or chat program (e. g. MSN Messenger) to remember your password. DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT choose yes if you are on a shared computer. Choosing yes means that your password is saved and the next mortal who surfs to the same site can get into it without knowing the password. Also do not forget to log out after you finish, do not just close the window. Many times we have been to World wide web cafés where someone left MSN Messenger open while they were logged in. We could easily have opened their mail, sent messages to their contacts, etc. Log out.
If you enjoy playing video games you can often find the same game installed on the World wide web cafés. If you want to keep going you can save your save game to the hard drive and e-mail it to yourself. Next time you want to continue playing just download it to the save game directory and you are set to go.
If you connect your camera/media player/memory card to a personal you should take care when disconnecting your device. Before you disconnect your device click on the picture in the lower right corner called Safe removal of hardware (if available). Choose your device in the window which pops up and choose disconnect. Wait until you get a confirmation message that your hardware can be removed safely before disconnecting your device. This process informs Windows that you intend to remove the device and ensures that you do not run into problems e. g. by removing the device while data is being saved.
A good way to get information you need while on your trip is to post a question in a web community such Virtual Tourist, move one or two days and then check it again. You can get notifications to your e-mail if someone replies to your post on the discussion forum so you do not have to log in to the community to check if you have received any answers.
Chat programs
Using a chat program such as Windows Live Messenger), Skype or ICQ is a great way to keep in touch with people at home. You can keep conversations going with several people at the same time, send pictures, etc. Many programs also grant you to use a web cam and a microphone which enables you to make easy video calls to people. You can sometimes also make calls to fixed telephones and cell phones at very competitive rates. Check out your preferred service for details.
Personal Experience – The Evil E-mail Esquapade
Once when I was logging in to Hotmail on an remote World wide web café the guy before me had forgotten to log off. I could not resist the opportunity and swiftly sent a imitation love letter to a woman randomly chosen from his contact list. As if this was not enough, I came back a few days later and, can you believe it, the same guy had forgotten to log off again. Evil as I am (sometimes) I read her reply. She stated she was a bit unsure of what he meant – for obvious reasons. I replied to her once more telling how much I really loved her. Perhaps they are married now. Sometimes you have to help people getting their feelings kick-started 
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