Those of you who may be familiar with my background will know that my regular day job is in the world of Information Technology or IT as it is commonly called. Though I have been involved with computers for most of my working life, I am still constantly amazed with how fast this field of technology has evolved and changed our day-to-day lives.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the veritable explosion of the Internet as a medium of communication and learning. One of its capabilities, e-mail, is rapidly replacing both the telephone and conventional letter mail as the most common means of person-to-person communication. The World Wide Web or "Web" as it is commonly called, is becoming a primary source for information access as well electronic commerce.

All these new capabilities are having a profound impact with the way we work, shop, keep in touch, learn, and have fun. As well as the more generic benefits, it has made being "Ukrainian" a lot easier as well. I will give you some real-world examples from various ways I have put this technology to good use in the recent past.

There are of course the obvious applications. I now have a network of contacts in Ukraine with whom I keep in regular touch through e-mail. Some have their own computers and private dial-up links to the Internet, others have access through their places of work. The most prevalent form of access though, is through Internet cafes that have sprung up in most of Ukraine’s cities and towns. As well as standard e-mail, I also post scanned photographs of family and events to a private electronic photo album, which my friends and acquaintances in Ukraine can view from any Internet browser. Most of the large Internet portals such as Yahoo, MSN and AOL provide this photo album service at no charge.

Last week, I did some Christmas shopping on-line at a purveyor of all things Ukrainian by the name of Yevshan (www.yevshan.com). Through their website, I am able to order Ukrainian books, music, cards, videos, souvenirs, embroidery, ceramics, software.

Some time ago, I wanted to find the location of a small village in Ukraine that an acquaintance had mentioned to me. I went to an interactive Ukrainian Map Server web page (http://www.infoukes.com/ua-maps/) and was able to locate the village with little trouble. The same page also has Ukrainian road maps, as well as a map of the Kyiv subway system.

If you are planning a trip to Ukraine, you can find a wealth of information including the current weather forecast in Lviv (http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/Lviv_UR_c.html) or Kyiv (http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/Kiev_UR_c.html). You can find visa information as well as download a visa application from the Ukrainian embassy in Ottawa web site (http://www.infoukes.com/ukremb/consular.shtml). At http://www.brama.com/travel/lviv.html, you can find a wealth of tourist information including pictures and suggestion for walking tours of Lviv. If you want to know the current exchange rate for the hryvnia, you can find it at http://www.brama.com/travel/currency.html.

On a regular basis, I check the websites of some of the more prominent and informative newspapers published in Ukraine. The best of these in the English language are the web pages of The Kyiv Post (http://www.thepost.kiev.ua/data/main.html) and Lviv’s Ukraine Today Weekly (http://www.ukrainet.com.ua/infobank/). In Ukrainian, two that I regularly scan are "Den" (http://www.day.kiev.ua/) from Kyiv and Postup from Lviv (http://postup.brama.com/dinamic/). To get Ukrainian News in the diaspora, two sites worth visiting are those of The Ukrainian Weekly published in New Jersey (http://www.ukrweekly.com/), and of course our own New Pathway website (http://www.infoukes.com/newpathway/). The most comprehensive source for all kinds of news on things Ukrainian is the Brama news web page (http://www.brama.com/news/index.html).

There are thousands of useful sites with Ukrainian content. A good place to start no matter what you are looking for are some of the comprehensive Ukrainian "portal" sites that have collected and organized links to Ukrainian web sites by category. The two best ones are www.brama.com and www.infoukes.com. From these, the Ukrainian "electronic" world is at your fingertips. Happy surfing!