FPGA Newbie with a DE3 Board trying to use hyperterminal

Hi,

I just got a terasic altera DE3 board and am trying to program it to be used with a daughter card to be used for testing. I need help with trying to figure out how to have the FPGA send and receive data over either an ethernet cable or usb that is directly connected to my laptop. I hope to use something like hyperterminal to communicate with the FPGA board. I've been looking for examples on how to do this but with no luck. If you could help me by pointing me to some examples or giving me some sample code that would be great! Also I am not sure whether it would be easier to use usb or ethernet.

Thanks

Inquisitor