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But exactly what do people actually use the Net for these days?

Facilities such as email have obviously gone a long way towards replacing the fax and postal service as a way of communicating the written word, pictures, and even audio/video material -- but what are the other key uses?

Kids will tell us that they need the Net in order to do research for their homework assignments -- although an unannounced spot check will usually reveal that they're in a chat-room or exchanging instant-messages with someone.

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Time was when one of the most popular uses of the Net was the search for information related to genealogy, however this seems to have been overtaken by other interests as the general Net-population has swollen.

Of course there's the ever-present spectre of Net-porn which, if the contents of your average ISP's proxy cache is any indicator, is still a very popular thing.

Now that most of the world's major news sources have a presence on the Net, it has also become a key source of information about what's going on around us. Indeed, news and sports information queries tend to feature strongly in search-engine logs -- albeit often taking second place to the searches launched by fans of pop and movie stars (sigh!).

Let's not forget just how much music and video is now downloaded or exchanged through the Net these days. It seems that almost every teenager has at least two or three P2P clients running on their computers and their modems tend to run red-hot of an evening.

But what does a "thinking" person (that's you) use the net for?

I know that I spend some time visiting the various online communities I'm a member of (mainly related to technology of all sorts) and I also find myself downloading a lot of datasheets for various devices.

I used to use usenet quite a bit but found that the signal-to-noise ratio declined to the extent that it's hardly worth the effort now. Well-targeted web-based forums are now a much better option.

While visiting one of these online communities I came across a very interesting little concept based on GoogleMaps. The big problem with Net-based groups is that the members can be quite geographically distant from each other, making it difficult to determine the distribution. Well Frapper seems to be a cool way to add some "reality" to such a virtual community, by allowing the members to add themselves to a map of the country or world.

It's a freebie (at least for the time being) so if you're part of an online community, take a look -- it might add an interesting "extra" to your group.

Are some Aardvark readers already using this service? If so, what are your opinions? Useful? Interesting? Just fluff?

Go have your say in The Aardvark Forums

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