Stay Connected

There has never been an easier way to keep in touch with coworkers, friends and loved ones around the world. The Internet offers a variety of social networks, which are places where people can connect with one another and share messages, pictures, videos, their favorite sites and much more.

Social Networking

MySpace is a great place to meet new people and find and connect with people you already know. Everybody is linked together on one network, and there is an endless possibility to the amount of people you can meet.

On MySpace you can create your own profile to share as much or as little personal information as you feel comfortable with. Then you can browse and search for people you know and add them as friends. If you keep your profile private, only your friends will be able to view your information and anything you would like to upload to your profile. If you keep your profile public, anyone on MySpace will be able to view it.

Several easy-to-use tools come with MySpace and allow you to upload photo galleries or even video to your profile. Friends can comment and exchange messages with you, so your MySpace profile can almost become your personal web page.

There are dozens of other social networks you might want to try. Two other popular ones are Facebook and Orkut. You can connect to as many or as little as you want, just depends on how much information you want to publish about yourself and where you think you’ll connect with most of your friends.

Online Photo Sharing

Flickr is a great website for hosting family photos, vacation photographs, weddings photos, or any digital image collection intended to be shared with friends or family. A basic account is free, and once you upload your photos to Flickr you can open them on any computer with an Internet connection.

Flickr even provides tools to edit your images so they are in the best condition for others to view them. You can also easily print or order prints from here as well as turn your picture into a mug or t-shirt.
Other popular photo sharing sites include: KodakGallery and PhotoBucket

Online Video

Not long ago, the web was a collection of text and static images. Today, thanks in a large part to Broadband connection speeds, you can find and watch literally hundreds of videos from movies and television shows to home-made content from people like you.

YouTube is online video sharing site with millions of videos from people around the world. Anyone can upload (or post) their video clips to YouTube for the entire world to watch. Not only has it unleashed personal expression, but it has enabled citizen journalists to bypass established media channels to show unvarnished views of events like the war in Iraq and the London subway bombings.

You can upload your own videos onto YouTube by opening a free account on the site. A helpful introductory video will show you how it’s done, but keep in mind that videos cannot exceed 10 minutes in length if you are using the free account.

With sites like Hulu.com and Fancast, you can now watch some of the most popular television shows right from your computer for free. They even offer free movies that you can stream to your computer. For a better selection of free movies to watch instantly online visit Netflix, here for a small monthly charge you can watch as many movies as you like instantly from your computer, but only if you have broadband.