Futurist Marshall McLuhan predicted some day we'll be able to retrieve any piece of information at the touch of the button. Web sites are a step in that direction.

Web sites are locations on the World Wide Web. You access them with an Internet account, software called "a browser" (such as Microsoft's market leader, Internet Explorer, which is included in Windows, or a program such as Netscape or Opera), and a site's specific URL (its "address" on the Internet)

The White House has got a web site. So does General Motors, IBM, Microsoft, General Mills, Wonder Bra, and me. (Don't I belong on this list?)

The Queen has a site. So does every TV network, every TV show and sponsor. Everyone with something to say has figured out that web sites are the most effective tool available today for getting their message out. They're cheap, immediate, easy and always on, allowing site visitors to access any web site at any time, even when the office is closed.

Back in the 1960s, if you wanted to start a business the first requirements were a phone number, business cards, and letterhead stationery. Twenty years later your business didn't seem real unless you also had Fax. For the last five years you have needed a web site too.

Those who don't have a site are pulling Rip Van Winkles. They just don't know it. Those who update their site less than once a week (some would say daily) are watching their business wither on the vine and wondering why.

Web sites are collections of web pages, dynamically linked to each other. Web pages are combinations of text and graphics, created with software called web site development tools, such as Microsoft's Front Page, Macromedia's Dreamweaver or Abode's GoLive. (At their designer's option, web pages may include sound files, video files, animations, PDF files, "shopping carts" (for selling things), access to radio stations, and much more.)

To help site visitors (called "surfers") find exactly what they want, web sites typically include dynamic internal links to their various subject-matter-specific web pages, and external links to other sites. (One genealogy site typically links to another genealogy web site, which links to another genealogy web site, which links to ...)

Search engines. Rather than surf the web by the hour, hoping to trip over the data you seek, there is an alternative: "search engines." Search Engines like google.com are web sites devoted to helping you find whatever you are looking for. Type "John Cardiff" into a search engine, and it will display a list of all the web pages it knows about that mention "John Cardiff." (Go ahead, try typing in an ancestor's name.) You can even use one search engine to find other search engines.

Found a favorite web site you will want to re-visit? Browser's include "bookmarks" that allow users to build and organize lists of their favorite sites so they can revisit again and again at the click of a link. No memory work involved.

Whatever you want to tell the world, you can, for free, instantly. Most ISP email accounts include free web site storage space. So anyone with an email address (and who is on the down side of a small learning curve) can publish whatever they want  in just minutes.

I recently found my paternal great-grandparents marriage date and place (which I had been searching for since 1993) on a State of Illinois web site. But others publish junk genealogies on the web. Do yourself a favor: online or offline, when you find an answer, verify it. It ain't necessarily so just because somebody else says so.