You can always read a book, listen to a tape, or watch a video to learn how to do something, but, in end, learning from a live teacher who can answer your questions on spot works best.

Until recently, Internet resembled a large "book" of electronic text and pictures where any extended "human" interactivity could only take place offline by tele- conference or in-person meetings.

Now, however, appearance of cheap "web casting" creates an inexpensive opportunity for mass interactive communication between people spread all over world.

"Web casting" (broadcasting through web) enables a presenter to transmit a live presentation over Internet to as many as 10,000 participants.

For most online events, participants only need an Internet connection through a standard phone line and audio speakers.

In post-9/11 era, people simply don't like to travel as frequently. The meal and hotel costs associated with attending seminars or other adult education events make it even harder to attract a full audience.

However, with web casting, you can pull together a large group of people from around world at a specific time on a given day, teach them something, and then let them all get back to their lives without traditional interruptions and expenses of travel.

Web casting enables you to literally present just about any type of information or educational material you want.

Search engines - those sites that allegedly help you find what you want online - can cause no end of grief if you don't know some simple tricks that will vastly improve your search results.

Suppose you wanted to find information regarding 1954 Ford truck parts. Most people would search this subject by going to their favorite search engine and typing in 1954 Ford truck parts. The search engine would hopefully return results for sites that matched those keywords.

However, search engines usually also return results including sites containing only some of words in your search. So in this example you would also get sites not only about 1954 Ford truck parts, but on 1954 Fords, Ford trucks, truck parts, and trucks.

Virtually everyone knows frustration of typing keywords (the topic of your search) into a search engine, clicking search button, and then facing prospect of sorting through a million pages (literally) to find what you want.

For everyone experiencing search engine frustration, these suggestions should quickly improve your results.

Tip #1 - To aid you in searching more efficiently, most search engines allow surfers to perform "Boolean" searches.

This feature narrows results to only those websites containing all words specified, but not necessarily in exact order.