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Tuesday, December 15
V.90 upgrades
Am-Jet
Japan Computer
and Communications' MediaSurf
"Waaaaaahhh! My email address died!"
Daniel Rosenzweig forwarded a link to a CNN
story about NetZero and some previous attempts at
creating a free ISP (see last
week's news here at 56K.COM). The story notes that most
free ISPs have gone bankrupt or suspended operations until
they can get additional funding.
When an ISP suspends service, members are left scrambling
to change the email address on their business cards and
letterhead, and sending out urgent emails to let their
friends and clients know about the change. The pain and
burning of losing your email addresses is no fun, and it can
happen for any number of reasons: moving to a new state,
getting or losing a job with free Internet access, or
(waaaaaahhh!) graduating college.
Email addresses can be forever
Here are a couple of ways you can keep your email address
no matter what cruel fate hands you.
Web-based email services offer free email accounts
and easy-to use web interfaces for reading and writing mail.
Hotmail is the
original, but Yahoo!,
Netscape, and
lots
of others offer free web-based email. Beware of small
outfits that may disappear.
Pros The
browser-based email interfaces are pretty good, and
novices may prefer them to Eudora or Outlook. You can
check your email from any computer equipped with a
browser. Some of the services let you keep an address
book of email addresses and phone numbers. Free.
Cons The downside is that you're
limited to their email interface instead of your favorite
email program. The interfaces tend to be awkward for
handling large volumes of email. (You also have to endure
ad banners, but 56K.COM is in a glass house on that
count.)
Email forwarding services give you a permanent,
lifetime email alias, like lesjones@usa.net. All mail sent
to that address is forwarded to your current email address.
If your email address changes, you visit the forwarding
service's web page, and point the alias to your new address.
Some companies offer this service for free, but beware of
small forwarding services that may go out of business.
USA.net and Bigfoot
are the big names, and there
are others.
Pros You can use your
favorite email program to send and receive mail. Some
services offer autoresponders, spam filtering, reminders
for birthdays and other events, and other innovative
features.
Cons You need to remember to use a
reply-to address in your email program.
With your own domain name, you own the part of the
email address to the left of the @ sign, so you own all of
the addresses to the left of it.
Pros Not only can you keep
the same email address, you keep the same web site URL
forever, too. Highly recommended for businesses who want
a prestigious net.presence.
Cons $$$. Minimum cost is $35 per
year for the InterNIC fees, plus the virtual web hosting
costs, which are typically $40 per month and up.
Individuals who can't afford their own domain should
consider email forwarding services (like Bigfoot)
who also offer URL forwarding.
Reader survey
(Monday's results were lost when I added the last
option.)
Friday, December 18
Andrew
Cray of Data Communications has a nicely done piece on
56K modems in the corporate environment. The last paragraph
notes that, according to Dataquest, Multi-Tech was the only
modem vendor to make a profit last year.
Netscape has developer versions of Mozilla, its open
source browser, available for Windows,
Mac and Linux.
Shiva
now has 56K modules for its four- and eight-port LanRover
Plus remote access servers.
Have you voted in this
month's poll?
Message board proceeds
The 56K.COM
Modem BBoard continues to be very active. We've been
able to help a lot of people through the message board, and
it's much more effective than email because more people can
participate. I'm also starting to pick up more news items
through the board. I'm currently working on a project to
integrate the news and the message board, Slashdot-style.
Look for version 1.0 after the new year.
Rabscuttle notes that Windrivers.com has Logicode
modem drivers. Other fun stuff found through the board:
Hit
counter in decimal, hexadecimal, and octal at
Computer Geeks Hardware.
Wacky
animated floppy disk icons at Web Excel.
New call waiting solution
David Bevins of Mountain
Systems Inc forwarded us information about his company's
new product for dealing with Internet-related
busy signals.
Busy
Buster works by using a separate phone
number to be given to your friends, family and
associates.
Here is how it works:
1. You download and install the BusyBuster 1.0
software, free of charge
2. You complete the sign-up process, giving us the
telephone number the service will work with
3. You give a special phone number to your friends
and family to call when your phone is busy, (or enable
busy forwarding from your phone company)
4. When they call this number, they are answered
by an operator and are instructed to type in your
telephone number
5. Our system finds you online, you receive a pop
up showing you the Caller-ID name and number of the
caller
6. You can respond to the caller in one of four
ways.
1) Inform the caller to call back in a
few minutes
2) Inform the caller you will call them in a
few minutes
3) Inform the caller you are unavailable
4) Record up to a 10 second audio response
using your PC's microphone
7. The caller gets a message based on your
response.
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