You can do a lot on the Internet, or not so much. Or you can do a lot without accomplishing much. It’s a very strange, almost alter-universe to the real world, where there is more advertising and everything is more accessible. There was a recent series of Internet events that has probably occurred many times in my life. It left me wondering where the last couple hours of my life went, but if you were looking for some online entertainment, these events could have been very helpful to you.

I was checking my e-mail or some social networking site, both of which are easy to set up with basic Internet training, and one of my friends recommended a web site with some funny stories on it, so I got hooked on those for entirely too long. At some point while I was reading through the material on this site, it mentioned another comedy site with bitter rants and someone mocking children’s artwork, right up my alley. As you can imagine, I wasted plenty of time reading through the different work on this page. One of the items I was reading made me remember a funny video clip I had seen a few days before so I went to a different site to watch it and then got sidetracked with all the other clips on that page. After I realized I had spent so much time wandering around the Internet, I realized I needed to do something “productive” so I promptly checked my favorite sports site and then my e-mail once more before finally pulling myself away from the computer.

Now, if you have several hours on your hands and would like to find some time to just waste away, it could be to your benefit to seek some basic Internet training and learn how to quickly find these sources of entertainment. One of the biggest wastes of time online, and I’m not talking about the activities I just described, is searching for something you want through a search engine. Often times, the search engine will not bring you what you are looking for, or you will have to spend too much time wading through other web sites that are useless to you. Basic Internet training will show you how to more effectively use search engines to your advantage.

Just knowing how to utilize keywords better will make a huge difference. Being specific and using punctuation are just some of the tips that you can learn from basic Internet training tools. You should also experiment with a few different search engines to find one that works best for you.  

Just typing in “video clips” will likely get you a slew of pages that do not give you what you want. So if you know the subject that you want to search for, but not the web site’s address, some basic Internet training can go a long way for you. We don’t all have friends that are more than willing to provide us with hilarious distractions.