As you access the World Wide Web for information and research you should become familiar with what is known as File Transfer Protocol (FTP) and mirror sites.

FTP is merely one way of retrieving files over the Internet for your personal archiving. Mirror sites are sites that carry identical information as a parent site.

Because of heavy traffic at a parent site, which may slow or even hinder access to that site, mirror sites are built to relieve some of the traffic pressure by taking users away from the parent site. This is especially crucial if many people are trying to download the same application from the same site.
Thankfully webmasters have been using mirror sites to allow you access to the information you need from the parent site without tying up the phone/modem lines and hindering other users from the same information you seek.

Mirror sites are usually accessed by links on the parent site that may look like this : ftp.mirrorsite.org or ftp.mirrorsite.com or even ftp.mirrorsite.edu.
Many sites nowadays make it even easier for you by simply having a button or graphic link that will simply say "Download". All you do is click on the link and the document or application will automatically begin downloading onto your computer (see example below).

Because many applications are too large to download in a reasonable amount of time they are compressed (many large applications will still take an hour or more to download!). You will need Stuffit Expander© to be able to 'expand' the file(s) for you.

Fortunately, Stuffit Expander© is available at the SFSU Computing Services' Help Desk. If you are a Windows/DOS user, you will need Winzip to decompress files that have a name which ends with ".zip". This is also available at the Help Desk.

You will find many applications that can allow you to better utilize your computer. This will not only make your online sessions more productive but they will increase your offline productivity as well. You can find many applications such as text editors for a nominal fee. There are even programs that are free!

Applications that can be bought for a small "shareware" fee (usually $5-25) are programs that are provided to the cyber-community in the belief that information should be readily available and accessible. You download the application and are expected, after a reasonable period of time to see if the program is one that you actually use, to send the small fee to the programmer of the application. This is all done on the "honor" system; there are no bill collectors, credit agencies, or lawyers.

One place to begin searching for shareware titles is SHAREWARE.COM (http://www.shareware.com). Another site is located at http://www.jumbo.com. Both of these sites have search engines that allow you to search for a particular program that you may have heard about and links to the various categories that you may wish to investigate. For example you may have links to types of programs (system utilities, text editors, games, etc.) or platform choices (Macintosh, Windows95, Unix) or any other category that will allow you to refine your search for a particular application.