YOU SNOOZE -- YOU LOSE!

YOU SNOOZE -- YOU LOSE!

The word is out... for the past two weeks the experts have been

taking advantage of a change in Domain Name regulations that

allows up to 67 characters in domain names.

Since 1993, Network Solutions has registered more than 3.4

million domain names -- all limited to 26 characters. Now that

their exclusive government contract is ending, competitors have

tossed this artificial limit and are allowing longer names.

I did some digging into the original name space RFC to assure

myself that the longer names were valid. To quote the RFC, "The

labels must follow the rules for ARPANET host names. They must

start with a letter, end with a letter or digit, and have as

interior characters only letters, digits, and hyphen. There are

also some restrictions on the length. Labels must be 63

characters or less." ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc1035.txt

With this in mind, my advice is to keep your domain name to 63

characters for maximum compatibility. Here is the registrar

recommended by Michael Campbell, Declan Dunn and Corey Rudl:

http://www.activemarketplace.com/domain

Why are longer domain names important?

As Michael Campbell points out, in Nothing But 'Net, "The reason

we want keywords in the domain name is that search engines often

get 'tuned' to find, and give better positioning to, domains

with keywords in them."

He goes on to mention examples like phone-phones.com and

mobile-cellular.com, then notes that "After some experimentation

the hyphenated domains did slightly better in search results

than the non hyphenated ones. The hyphen seems to act as a

delimiter." http://www.activemarketplace.com/net

Declan Dunn, author of Winning the Affiliate Game, sent out a

memo to his affiliates advising "To get on top of the search

engines, one of the critical keys is a good domain name LOADED

with keywords." Declan gives several examples such as:

CellPhone-CellularAccessories-CellularBatteries.com and

Internet-Hosting-Services-Email-Marketing-Search-Engines.com

Declan goes on to say "this news is spreading among WebMasters,

SearchEngine Meisters, Internet marketers, and big corporations.

Don't wait." http://www.activemarketplace.com/winning

Corey Rudl, President of Internet Marketing Center, also told

his readers of the news, saying "When I say this is time

sensitive, I AM VERY SERIOUS. If you do not jump on the

bandwagon now, and if you even wait a few weeks... you are going

to lose out. All of the ".com" domain names that are in demand

over 26 characters are going to be registered. (And trust me,

there are a lot!)" http://www.marketingtips.com

John Audette's I-Search Discussion List, included a new post by

the search engine expert, Webmaster T, who explained "Having a

domain name with keywords in it is very important as it seems

almost all engines are parsing URLs. Not only is the domain name

important but also the directory and file names are definitely

important." http://www.audettemedia.com/i-search

I have been registering hyphenated domains for our clients over

the past year. It works. The past two weeks we have been quietly

grabbing several VERY HOT, very long, hyphenated domain names.

If you don't want to get left behind, get your keyword-stuffed-long-

domain-name right away! Check here to see if the names you want

are still available:

http://www.activemarketplace.com/domain

NOTE: This is the lowest priced accredited registrar I've found,

at only $30 per year, with a two year minimum.

Patrick Anderson, COO, ADNet International Author of "Right On The

Money", Senior Editor of "Hits To Sales" FREE book excerpt at http:/

/www.activemarketplace.com/righton

VALUABLE BUSINESS LINKS ON THE INTERNET

VALUABLE BUSINESS LINKS ON THE INTERNET

Here is a list of websites that contain valuable business information. To save space, the "http://" has been omitted from the start of all URLs.

NAME/URL

25 Proven Ways to Raise Capital

www.ufs.com/gby/

Advanced Business Consulting

addcom.clever.net/abc/

American Success Institute

www.success.org/

Best Businesses To Start

www20.mindlink.net/interweb/bestbusinesses.html

Better Business Contacts

maui.netwave.net/bbc/

Big Dreams

www.wimsey.com/~duncans/

Bregstein's Business Resource Center

www.chesco.com/~rbreg/

Business Development

www.pikeperry.co.uk/ppp/bd/bd.htm

Business Resource Center

www.kciLink.com/brc/

Center for Family Business

nmq.com/necfb/

CyberPreneur

www.cyberpreneur.com/

Effective Web Marketing

www.garlic.com/rfwilson/web-mrkt.htm

Entrepreneur On-Line

www.netaccess.on.ca/entrepr/

Entrepreneurial Edge Online

www.edgeonline.com

Entrepreneurial Web Guide

www.infohaus.com/access/by-seller/AllWrite_Publishing

The Entrepreneurs Bookstore

www.entrepreneurs.net/kwicsys/books/

Entrepreneurs on the Web

sashimi.wwa.com/~notime/eotw/EOTW.html

Entrepreneurs' Exchange

www.astranet.com/eexchange/jc00indx.htm

FranNet

www.frannet.com/

Home Business Review

www.tab.com/Home.Business/

Home Business Solutions

netmar.com/mall/shops/solution/

Home Office Association of America

www.hoaa.com

Home Office Hub

www.gohome.com/

How To Form Your Own Corporation

supermall.com/ndi/loophole.html

How-To Marketing Library

mindlink.net/mej/howto.htm

Idea Cafe

www.IdeaCafe.com/

Ideas Digest ONLINE

www.ideas.wis.net/

LIST International

www.teleport.com/~list/

Maui Small Business Development Center

www.maui.com/~sbdc/

NetMarquee Business Information

nmq.com/

NetWorks Group

webcom.net/~networks/

Resource Center For Growing Companies

www.halcyon.com/midnight/

Results Unlimited

www.widdl.com/results/

smallbizNet

www.lowe.org/

Solidly Successful Entrepreneurs

www.wyoming.com/~SolidSuccess/

THE START PAGE

www.wp.com/fredfish/

TheVault

www.clever.net/thevault/index.htm

U.S. Business Advisor

www.business.gov/

Venture Connect

www.texel.com/home/mehes/vencon.html

Virtual Entrepreneur

emporium.turnpike.net/B/bizopp/index.html

NETIQUETTE - WATCHING YOUR ONLINE P'S & Q'S

NETIQUETTE - WATCHING YOUR ONLINE P'S & Q'S

An easy mistake that many Internet "newbies" make is to forget what the Internet is. The Internet is, for lack of a better way to classify it, a computer network that many people are using all at once. The key word is people.

It's very easy, since you aren't face to face, to forget that people make up the entire Internet. And, as such, you should conduct yourself as good as, or better than, you would when face to face. Manners are just as important online as in the "real world."

Probably the easiest way to give guidelines for good Internet etiquette, or "netiquette," is to show some examples of the wrong way to act. First, and foremost, the worst thing you can possibly do online, that will rile the most people, is spam.

When you talk about spam in connection with the Internet, you aren't talking about the meat product by Hormel. Spamming is sending large quantities of unwanted, unrequested emails, usually containing marketing messages, as well as mass postings to Usenet groups (commonly called cross-posting). It's the online equivalent to sending a mass mailing via carrier route, so that everyone at every house gets a copy. The difference is that, in the offline world, you pay for your mass mailing. Online, the recipient pays, whether through the wasted time it takes to receive your email, or through the fee they pay to access the Internet. While spamming is easy to do, and sounds attractive to the marketer in us, it is definitely the wrong thing to do, and you will be retaliated against, if you do it.

Retaliation for spamming comes in a variety of flavors. For one thing, your mass Usenet group postings may be cancelled by some self-appointed guardians of the Internet who have the technical wizardry to intercept your unwanted messages. They will always send you an email explaining why they did what they did, and, for the most part, they are very fair in doing what they do.

Individuals who are aggravated by your postings and emails may encourage others to reply to your emails en masse, filling your email box and clogging up your service provider's computers. This has happened many times, with spammers receiving literally thousands of email replies and service providers closing the spammer's account. Even worse, some individuals with the proper know-how will look up whatever information they can get on you (personal phone numbers, etc.), and will mass post it, so other aggravated individuals can pester the life out of you. True, it's vigilante justice, but, in the unregulated world of the Internet, it works, and most people don't frown on it one bit. So, in other words, don't spam!

How else can you irritate large numbers of people online? Well, one way is to overtly criticize other people's opinions, taking things to a personal level. This is known as flaming. Here's an example: entering a Usenet group consisting of Macintosh users, and posting a message calling them idiots for using a Macintosh. You're going to get the same treatment as a spammer, and for good reason: they feel the same way you would if someone called you an idiot for using a PC. As I said earlier, never forget that there's a person on the other end of the line. It's alright to have a lively discussion online, but focus on the subject, and think before you post. It's a lot easier to say something degrading to or about someone when you're online and not face to face.

One of the things you will undoubtedly do while online is download files. Some of these files will be large. If you download, for example, a large game file at 2:00 in the afternoon from a University computer, you're tying up a spot where a student could be. Use your head, and download unimportant and/or large files outside of regular business hours, the time when others have important work to be done.

When you send email, you can have what's called a sig (short for signature) at the end of your message. This should be no longer than 4 to 6 lines, preferably as short as possible, and can include information on how to contact you, a very brief description of your business, etc. Want to really get people's goats? Make your sig larger than the email's message itself. Make it a whole page long with all kinds of cute graphics made from letters, and lines of witty sayings. See, the longer the email, the more bandwidth (the capacity of the network at any one time) it takes, and the longer it takes for the recipient to download it upon receipt. The Internet, vast though it is, only has a limited capacity for carrying data. Even though one person could never fill up the bandwidth, excessive junk in your email is still frowned upon.

Another great way to hog bandwidth is to place huge, unnecessary graphics on your Web page. Graphics take a long time to download, and, besides chewing up bandwidth, it frustrates the person trying to view your website. You must remember that most of the people accessing the World Wide Web are still using 14,400 bps modems (many still use 9,600 bps), and graphically intensive webpages can take five minutes or longer to download, all on the recipient's dime. This is an easy sin to be guilty of - even corporations do it (see the Oracle Corporation website at http://www.oracle.com for a good example - unless you have a fast connection or your turn the images off in your browser, it will take you forever to get anywhere).

Suppose you receive an email from someone, and you want to reply to it. In most email programs, you have the ability to include in your reply parts of the message you received. This helps fight confusion as emails go back and forth. However, be sure you delete any nonessential parts of the original message. If your reply deals with one paragraph out of the entire message, then keep that paragraph, but don't include the entire email you received in your reply! This just wastes the recipient's time. Taking care of this problem is simple: judicious use of your delete key while replying to emails.

If you are posting a message to a Usenet group or an email mailing list, in which multiple people receive messages, be sure to identify your opinions and humor. If you make a strong statement, preface it with "in my opinion." If you use sarcasm, make sure that it's verbally understood that you are being sarcastic and not degrading or disagreeable. Remember, people can't hear your tone of voice online, and they can't see your facial expressions, both of which are key factors in understanding underlying meanings to what we say. Express yourself, but also define your expression. This takes practice, but it's easy to learn.

What should you do if someone sends you a derogatory message (whether or not they have a good reason)? Here's what you shouldn't do: get all riled up and reply with as much vitriol as the sender used. I know, in the section on spamming, I said that people will do just that. Well, only a few people will, and those people would really probably be better off to ignore than respond. However, it will happen. Maybe you said something in a message that didn't quite come across the way you meant it. If that's the case, look at the problem with a clear head (sleep on it, if you have to). Then, reply with an apologetic message that explains what you were trying to say. Or, maybe the person who emailed you is just a jerk. In that case, it's better just to ignore the email. Delete it from your system. Just like in the real world, some people online get their kicks from riling up other people.

Have you seen any trends emerging in this report? The trends are friendliness and consideration for others. The Internet is just like a big community and, like true communities, you need to work together. Keep things friendly, and if you make a mistake, own up to it with an apology. And don't take advantage of others online. This will only get you labelled as a troublemaker, and you could potentially lose your Internet access, or worse. People are even starting to get arrested for harassing others (or even stalking) online. Don't do it. Treat others the way you'd like to be treated yourself. It's the golden rule, and it applies as much online as offline.

You might get the impression that the Internet is teeming with people who are just waiting for you to mess up, so they can pounce. While there is the occasional zealot, as in the offline world, this isn't the case. The Internet community is a very supportive, very friendly group. If you're new and you're having trouble accomplishing something, there will always be someone online willing to help. Just make sure you use common sense, and don't break good netiquette!

JAVA, VRML AND OTHER WEB ENHANCEMENTS

JAVA, VRML AND OTHER WEB ENHANCEMENTS

The Internet, and more specifically, the World Wide Web, will eventually revolutionize the way we communicate and share information. Unfortunately, websites are somewhat hampered by the HTML document layout language, which is relatively limiting. Documents written in standard HTML are static; that is, they are lifeless. They just sit there, waiting for you to read them. It takes a talented website designer to put together a website that draws the reader in and involves them. There are some developing technologies, though, that promise (in theory, at least) to change all this and make the web into an active and exciting environment.

You must first understand that, in order to take advantage of any of the enhancements covered in this report, you must, at the very least, obtain additional software. In most cases, the required software works in conjunction with your web browser, and can be downloaded from a website. In other cases, functionality has been built into new versions of browsers, which you must obtain from the manufacturer. Finally, one enhancement in particular requires an entire browser of its own.

JAVA

The enhancement that has been grabbing all the media attention is Java. Created by Sun Microsys-tems, Java is a programming language which lets you create "applets" (small applications) which can be inserted into an HTML document. When the reader accesses the document, the applet downloads with the document and begins running. Currently, Java applets consist mainly of small animated logos, scrolling banners that move across the top or bottom of the browser window, and other small "treats."

Potentially, Java can be used to construct full applications, such as spreadsheets, interactive presentations, etc., all of which will run from within an HTML document. Here's the problem, though: Java is TOUGH to learn. Java is basically a stripped down version of C, a popular programming language. In order to use Java, you really should learn to program in C. In order to write a large application, such as a spreadsheet, you'd have to be a pretty darn good programmer. Sun will have to address these problems if they want Java to become a universal web standard, perhaps with a "drag and drop" Java authoring program that makes creating an applications easy. Otherwise, adding Java to your website will require the assistance of a good programmer.

Currently, the only Java-ready all-purpose browser is the 32-bit version 2.0 of the Netscape Navigator. This requires Windows 95 or Windows NT, and can be downloaded from the Netscape website at http://home.netscape.com. More Java-ready browsers, sample applets, and other information can be obtained from Sun Microsystem's website at http://java.sun.com/.

VRML

Virtual Reality Modeling Language, or VRML, has also been getting the media's attention. There are many VRML software systems in various levels of testing or completeness from a slew of different manufacturers, with, so far, no real standard.

As the name implies, VRML lets you create a virtual reality environment, such as a building, which the viewer can navigate through in 3-D, as if they were really there. Some VRML languages even let you put objects or other people into the environment, which the viewer can interact with. Potentially, with VRML, you could create an art museum that people could "walk" through, or a house in New York that people in France could visit, or any other environment, interior or exterior.

To become successful, the VRML idea has a few major hurdles to overcome. First, there is no standard. A number of companies are working on their own versions, each incompatible with the other, with virtually no cooperation. This will inevitably delay the success of the system that emerges as the winner. Second, VRML sites are graphic-intensive, which means huge file sizes and extremely long download periods for the average person. Third, VRML sites tend to be rather low resolution, in order to lower the downloading time. This results in something less pleasing to the eye than many people might expect. Finally, most VRML systems require a separate browser program, rather than a "plug-in" to Netscape, for example. If VRML can be standardized and can overcome these potential problems, then it may prove to be a viable system. Until then, however, it should be viewed as a work in progress.

(To find various VMRL software systems and test sites, search for VRML in Yahoo [http://www.yahoo.com] and other search databases.)

SHOCKWAVE

Shockwave is a rather unusual web enhancement that just may prove to be one of the best. Shockwave was created by Macromedia, the makers of Director, the leading interactive multimedia creation program. Director has long been used by Macintosh and PC-users alike to create multimedia games, presentations, marketing materials, etc., distributed on diskettes and CD-ROMs. The results are very professional, and the program is relatively easy to use.

The Shockwave plug-in program for Netscape Navigator allows you to add an interactive multimedia presentation right into your HTML documents. The reader will be able to click buttons, hear sounds, and watch animation, right on their screen, as if they were running a Director presentation that had been given to them on disk.

All you need to view Shockwave presentations is the Netscape Navigator browser and the Shockwave plug-in, available for free from Macromedia's website (http://www.macromedia.com). Note that it is only available for PC-compatibles at the time of this writing. To create Shockwave presentations, you must have the Director software, plus the Afterburner software (available for free from Macromedia's website), which compresses and optimizes the presentations for distribution over the web.

Advantages: The Director program is rather easy to use and is widespread. Director produces great quality, reliable interactive presentations. The viewer and compression programs are free. Once the presentation is downloaded, it can run endlessly without requiring further downloading.

Disadvantages: Presentations cannot include data capturing (i.e., forms for the reader to fill out, etc.). Presentations must be kept small, or else downloading time will be long. Director is an expensive program to purchase (over $800 for the latest version).

Disadvantages aside, Shockwave lets you add everything from small animations as an accent, to extensive presentations, all within a standard HTML document. This is one to watch.

BLACKBIRD

This technology was developed by Microsoft, originally for its Microsoft Network (MSN), as a method of easily creating exciting, interactive content for online services and the web. Unfortunately, it was never completed on time for content developers, and, rather than delay the launch of MSN, Microsoft decided to go with another method of creating online content.

This leaves Blackbird relatively in limbo. Microsoft has said that Blackbird is still a viable development environment for websites and other online services, and that it will continue to be supported with new releases. However, any information on it is rather hard to find and sketchy. Personally, I'd chalk this up as a Microsoft misstep.

GIF89A ANIMATION

This technique has been around for as long as the GIF89A graphics file format, but is only now starting to be explored. The GIF89A format allows you to combine multiple GIF images into one file, including headers in front of each image detailing how long to display it and other information. These images can be looped, thus forming a repeating animation.

GIF89A animations are not difficult to produce, and require no software on the reader's side other than a browser that can display the different frames of the GIF (if their browser can't, it will show the first frame only as a still picture). All you need to create one is a graphics program that can save files in the GIF89A file format, and a program that can compile multiple GIF images into one (such as GIF Construction Kit, found at http://www.north.net/alchemy/alchemy.html).

CONCLUSION

As it stands today, the web is, primarily, still a land of plain text and still image documents. Very soon, however, you can expect interactive presentations, walk-through environments, and actual program applications with multiple uses. Pay attention to the websites listed in this article, and you can stay on the cutting edge of the developing World Wide Web!

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS

INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are businesses that own equipment that enable users to access the Internet for sending e-mail, browsing the World Wide Web, and downloading files. Unlike commercial online services (AOL, Prodigy, CompuServe) who have substantial amounts of proprietary content for users to browse, ISPs primarily function as a conduit to the Internet.

VENDORS

Company Headquarters

Phone Number / Technical Support POPs

ANS

Elmsford, NY

800/456-8267 (38)

AT&T

Bridgewater,NJ

800/967-5363 (200+)

BBN Planet

Cambridge, MA

800/472-4565 (311)

GNN

Vienna, VA

800/819-6112 (650)

IDT

Hackensack, NJ

201/928-1000 (under 500)

MCI

Washington, DC

800/955-6505 (around 300)

Netcom

San Jose, CA

800/501-8649 (230+)

PSINet

Herndon, VA

800/827-7482 (300)

UUNet

Fairfax, VA

800/488-6383 (300)

BUYING POINTS ISP Set-Up

It is estimated that there are more than 2,000 Internet service providers scattered around the country. These range from two-person shoestring operations to national companies with thousands of employees and billions of dollars of network infrastructure.

Connection To The ISP

Depending on your expected usage, you can connect to the Internet via a dial-up line or via a dedicated data line. If only one person will typically browse the Internet at a time, you should be fine with dial-up service. This means that you use a modem and a regular phone line to connect to the provider. A regular 28,800 bits per second (bps) modem is acceptable for most browsing; however, users who regularly visit graphic-intensive sites may want to consider using an ISDN connection to the ISP. ISDN offers connection speeds up to 128,000 bps, but requires an ISDN "modem" and ISDN service from your local telephone company.

When examining ISPs, make sure they offer a dial-up number in your local calling area. This will reduce phone charges for the connection. You should also inquire about the number of modems the ISP has to handle incoming calls. A good rule of thumb is that there should be one modem for every ten customers.

Businesses that will have several people simultaneously using the Internet will want to consider a dedicated line. Dedicated lines directly connect your office to the Internet service provider. You pay a relatively high monthly charge, but do not pay for each minute of connection time.

The smallest dedicated lines are 56K lines, which can handle 2 or 3 simultaneous users. However, most users will want to purchase a fractional T1 line, which can be increased to handle higher loads in 64,000 bps increments. A full T1 can handle dozens of simultaneous users, and even larger T3 connections are available for the largest firms.

Differences Between ISP Networks

Most Internet traffic is carried on large national networks that cross the country. Individual ISPs connect to this backbone via data pipes of varying sizes. If the provider uses too small a pipe, you may face long waiting periods when accessing other parts of the Internet.

To avoid this problem, check the size of the data pipes used by the ISP. Many smaller services use a single T1 line, a data line capable of handling up to 1,544,000 bits of information per second. While this may sound like a lot, several dozen simultaneous users can easily overwhelm this link. Most business sites will be better off looking for a provider that uses multiple T1 lines, or even larger T3 lines.

Firms should also look into the provider's network redundancy. Ideally, a provider will have more than one connection to the Internet backbone, so you can send and receive e-mail and browse outside sites even if one link is down.

Finally, check the number of connections, or "hops" between your provider and the Internet backbone. Many providers connect to the backbone through another provider. Using an Internet provider that is more than two steps removed from the Internet can slow the speed at which you can access other sites.

Technical Support

Finding an ISPs that offers strong customer service tends to be a real challenge. Many providers fail to live up to their service promises, with users often encountering long waits for help.

If you are just obtaining dial-up service, your risk is fairly limited. If you are not satisfied with your ISP, you can usually just sign up with another service. The only real difficulty is notifying people of your new e-mail address.

If you are installing a dedicated line, you are making a much longer-term commitment. Make sure to check references to gauge how much support you can really expect to receive from the provider.

Terms & Rates

Internet service providers tend to offer Web and e-mail access at quite low rates. The cheapest service is a basic shell account, which typically offers unlimited browsing for about $10 or $15 per month. The problem with shell accounts is that you cannot use graphical browsers, which means you cannot take advantage of most of the attractions of the Web.

For full graphical access, you need to obtain a SLIP or PPP account. These allow you to use popular browsers such as Netscape Navigator or Microsoft Internet Explorer while connected to the ISP. SLIP/PPP accounts cost $20 to $40 per month. Not all offer unlimited access, but most set fairly high usage limits per month.

A GUIDE TO GOOD WEB PAGE DESIGN (PART 2)

A GUIDE TO GOOD WEB PAGE DESIGN (PART 2)

Rule #4: Be careful with your images!

When designing your web pages, you need to keep in mind that people will not be reading them locally (as if they were saved on their own computer). Rather, they will be down loading it, sometimes over slow modems. This means they'll have to wait for every image to download. This can take a long time.

How to get around this problem? Two ways. First, you should limit the number of images on a single page. Second, the images you do have on your page should be made as small as possible, both in physical size and file size. I'll address these separately.

The first solution should be fairly easy to deal with. Just don't load up your page with graphics upon graphics upon graphics. I've actually had more problems with websites from large corporations being graphically loaded than websites from small businesses and individuals. In my opinion, that's because small businesses and individuals are more likely to be made up of decision makers who are actually on the Internet. The decision makers at large corporations just think they should be on the Internet, and they delegate setting up the website to the same designers who design their print materials. Print and web design are two different animals!

Anyway, for every image you put on the page, decide if it's vital to the topic of the page, or if it's just there to look good. Eliminate unnecessary images, as they only serve to slow down the loading of your web pages.

As for the second suggestion, a little image education may be in order. Physical image size is easy to understand, and has a direct correlation with the file size. The larger the image, the larger the file size, and the longer it takes to download.

If you have a large image that you'd like people to be able to see, produce a much smaller version (called a thumbnail), and put the thumbnail, linked to the larger version, on your page. If a person's interested in seeing the larger version, they can click on the thumbnail. If they aren't interested, they don't have to sit through the extended download time. If you do this, make sure to add text by the thumbnail telling the reader how big the file is, so they know how long they'll have to wait.

To reduce the file size of your images without reducing the physical size (as well as for producing thumbnails), you'll need image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel Photo-Paint. Creating thumbnails is as easy as reducing the dimensions of your image and saving it under a new name.

There are two methods you can use to reduce the file size while keeping the dimensions constant. First, you can alter the image by reducing the number of colors in the image. For instance, say you've scanned in a photo of yourself to put on your website. Typically, your scanner will bring the photo in with at least 4,096 colors (called "true color"). Most people browsing the web will have their systems set for 256 colors. Anything over that is a waste. So, reduce the image's colors to 256 - you'll barely notice a difference, and you'll lose around two-thirds of the file size!

The other method of reducing file size is by saving the image in the proper format. On the Internet, you should only save images in the GIF and JPEG graphics formats. In general, GIF is best for non-photo graphics, such as clip art, and JPEG is best for photos. This is because JPEG is a lossy compression format (it compresses the image, making the file size smaller, by dropping out bits of the image), and photos show less degradation of quality. If you are saving an image as a JPEG, you can control the amount of compression you wish to use. The higher the compression, the lower the quality will be.

The GIF format, on the other hand, is a lossless compression format (it compresses the image as much as it can, without dropping out any data). GIF images retain all their quality, at the expense of usually larger file sizes. One other advantage of the GIF format is that you can set the image's background to be transparent, which can make your graphics look more interesting on the page.

Finally, the latest version of the GIF format, GIF89a, can save graphics in an interlaced fashion (rather than saving the data line by line from the top of the image to the bottom, it saves every fifth line from the top to the bottom, like venetian blinds, then starts again from the top, until the whole image is saved). This is particularly advantageous to the reader who is using a Netscape or other interlaced-compatible browser, as the image will load in from top to bottom quickly, but at a low quality, gradually sharpening up as more lines load. The reader will not have to wait for the entire image to load before they can see what it is and decide whether or not they want to wait for the entire image to load.

Don't feel trapped into using JPEG only for photos and GIF for clip art. If you aren't concerned about your image being interlaced and/or having a transparent background, try both formats when you save it, and use the one that ends up smaller.

Now, don't get me wrong. You can design some beautiful pages that are made up entirely of images. However, you'd better make sure that you've reduced the size of the images as much as you can, or else you'll have a lot of people who stop downloading your page before it's half over, only to jump to someone else's page. Not good!

A GUIDE TO GOOD WEB PAGE DESIGN (PART 1)

A GUIDE TO GOOD WEB PAGE DESIGN (PART 1)

The whole object of getting on the web is to get noticed. Of course, you want good notices, not bad notices. One way to assure yourself of bad notices is to have poorly designed web pages. And believe me, bad pages will get you noticed, most likely by people like a certain Mr. Mirsky, who runs a website called "Worst of the Web." Put up exceptionally poorly designed web pages (or bizarre content), and you could have the "good" fortune to receive a review at his site, which is a dubious honor at best (unless, of course, you're trying to have a bad website - that's another story...).

THE RULES OF GOOD WEB PAGE DESIGN

Rule #1: Make it readable!

It's better to have a plain black and white web page with no graphics whatsoever but with highly readable text, than it is to have a jazzed up page with an intricate Netscape background and purple and green text. You're putting information up for people to read. Make sure they can actually read it!

If you're writing your web pages for Netscape browsers, you have the option of using background colors and images. My suggestion is to stick with solid colored backgrounds, preferably light pastel colored backgrounds (white to mint green) with black text.

An exception to the above rule is when you will be displaying a number of images on a page, such as an "art gallery." In this case, a dark background will enhance your images. However, be sure to limit the amount of text on a dark background, as it is much harder on the eye.

However, if you must have a background image, you'll have the best readability if you stick with a light embossed grey-on-grey graphic, rather than the wildly multicolored graphics I've seen at many websites. In general, though, any background images will decrease the readability of the text on the page.

Text values should be the opposite of the background. If the background is light, the text should be dark. If the background is dark, the text should be light. Enough said.

Rule #2: Break up your pages into chunks!

I can't tell you how many websites I've been to that have this problem: it's one page of text that goes on, and on, and on, and on... scrolling ad infinitum. This is a BIG no-no!

A lot of this falls back to readability. As a rule, I wouldn't go much beyond two screens of information per page, unless the extra information is strictly on the main topic of the page. For instance, a page of links to other web pages can extend much, much farther than a page full of book reviews. I would put each book review on its own page.

This, of course, necessitates some sort of navigation links on each page. However, your readers will appreciate the extra work you put into splitting your pages into bite-sized chunks, rather than one endless tome. If you don't agree with this philosophy, look at it this way: which would you rather have to read, a document printed on a twenty foot long 8½" wide single sheet of paper, or printed on twenty regular sized pages, broken up into sections?

Rule #3: Don't overuse horizontal rules!

One of HTML's built-in features is the horizontal rule. This puts a horizontal line on the page whenever it is invoked. And it's so simple to invoke: just put

---

in your HTML code, and you have a horizontal rule. I wish it wasn't so simple.

The other evening, I was speeding through web pages, and I came across one that had some information I needed. Unfortunately, the author put a horizontal rule between every single paragraph! I don't know if they thought they had some sort of slick design thing going on, but besides being ugly, it made finding the particular information I wanted into a real task. Imagine this report with a horizontal line between every paragraph! Better yet, how about if I do it for awhile, to give you a taste!

Notice how the horizontal line actually makes the paragraphs seem closer together than plain white space does? That's the problem. Even if you allow extra white space for the horizontal rule, it will appear to pull your paragraphs together, rather than separate them.

If you must use a horizontal rule, make sure it's there for a reason. Don't just use them to separate paragraphs, use them to show a change of context. In other words, in this report, a horizontal line would fit just fine in the space between the end of one of these design rules, and the beginning of the next. An applicable web page example would be to use a horizontal rule between the end of your text and your navigation or credits sections.

An even better design option than the horizontal rule, though slightly more work, would be to use a small, unobtrusive graphic to denote a change of context on your page. This doesn't mean one of the "cutesy" versions of the horizontal rule which you'll see all over the web (a mouse with a long horizontal squiggly tail, a wavy ocean, etc.).

The best option, though, is to remove those excess horizontal rules from your web page, and replace it with white space.

"HOW YOUR WEB SITE CAN GENERATE OVER 25

"HOW YOUR WEB SITE CAN GENERATE OVER 25

TIMES MORE BUYING CUSTOMERS IN LESS THAN

A YEAR."

by Michael W. Campbell

Get Rid Of Everything On The Home Page

Put what you now call your home page inside your web site

and use it as a directory to navigate your site. Set up a

new home page, its sole purpose should be to attract a

major search engine and funnel the visitors inside, to your

site's directory. The home page should not contain any

frames, tables or scripts of any kind. Use plain simple

html consisting of title, headlines, links and body copy,

perhaps even a small graphic or two. You don't even need

meta tags on the home page.

Use More Than One Site

Retailers do it in the real world so why limit yourself to

one location in the virtual world. What is hosting going to

cost you, $25.00 a month? That's a drip in a ocean compared

to the enormous boost in traffic that more sites will

bring. Start with six web sites, mirror the content, put

slightly different headlines and meta tags on each of the

mirrored pages. If your original site consisted of 10

pages, you now have 60 pages working for you in the search

engines. Since mirroring is being frowned on by some

lately, you might want to get around this by making each

site into a different product category. Simply make each

site highly targeted to one product line and tie the look

and feel of the various sites together by using the same

graphic design style and logos.

Cross Linking

Very important, make sure each page inside your site (not

the home pages) links to all your other sites and pages.

Each internal page will contain 59 links, the best way to

do this is with a 1x1 pixel transparent gif. Doing this

will beat the link popularity penalty that's employed by

several search engines. It will also create a self

maintaining "stickiness". Now it doesn't matter if the

engine tosses out all your pages except two of them. When

it comes to crawl again, the two pages that stuck in the

index have links to all your other pages, and the crawler

will find them again.

Set Up 150 Doorway Pages (I call them hook pages)

Yes it seems like a lot, but if you have products from 10

manufacturers and they each have 10 different models, thats

100 hook pages per manufacturer or 1000 hook pages in all.

Just start with your most popular makes and models, or

generic product categories. Make two a week and you'll have

over 100 hook pages working for you in the search engines

by the end of the year. Will you be accused of spamming the

engine, no. They are not going to penalize you for

providing legitimate pages that contain content that people

are actually searching for. Do hook pages still work, yes.

Hook pages are my number one source for generating

visitors. They work extremely well.

Invert Your Database

Someone once told you that an online database is a good

thing, well not if you want to be found in the search

engines. If your database contains 2000 items, there might

be 100 different makes or models and they each have 20

different accessories. Make a static web page for each make

or model. That will give you 100 additional highly targeted

pages working for you in the search engines. Price changes

are easy if your html software is like mine and can make

global changes to everything in a folder. Just add an item

number or sku number before the price. Then tell your html

software to search and replace all instances of that sku

number from old to new price.

Submitting an Announcing

Announce only one page per day to each search engine. If

you have 60 web pages it will take 60 days. Just be sure to

track which pages have been announced to which search

engines. If the search engine specifies that only the home

page can be submitted, follow the rules, you have been

cookied.

Summary

Get more than one site, mirror the content or put different

product categories on each. Just be sure to get domain

names with keywords in them. Put up a plain home pages -

but they'll be search engine beauties - that lead to your

"real" home / directory / navigational pages. Cross link

everything with invisible pixels. Write two hook pages a

week focusing on both generic product categories and

specific makes and models. Wait at least 24 hours before

submitting another page from the same domain to the search

engines.

There, in less than a year, you've gone from one site with

10 pages, to six sites totalling 60 pages, plus 100 hook

pages, plus 100 database pages, to a grand total of 260

pages working for you in the search engines. From 10 to

260, that's 26 times more likely to be found, 26 times

greater chance of having just the right keyword density to

be "flavor of the month". If you follow this simple formula

and put in the "sweat equity" required, you'll always have

at least 20 top positioned pages in the 8 major search

engines at any given moment in time.

===========================================

Michael W. Campbell is the author of the new internet

marketing book "Nothing But 'Net: How I Generated

$750,000.00 in Internet Revenues in Less Than a

Year With Virtually No Advertising Costs."

( http://www.palis.com/net )

===========================================

HOW TO USE THE INTERNET

HOW TO USE THE INTERNET

The subject of electronic marketing will not be complete

without at least mentioning the network or all computer

networks, known as the Internet. Founded over 20 years

ago by the U.S. military, and managed in part by the

National Science Foundation, the Internet has 20 to 30

million users worldwide. People who use the Internet

include, entrepreneurs, executives, researchers,

educators, technicians, consumers, activists, students,

and military personnel. Most use the Internet to

exchange e-mail, pursue special interests, search

databases, and conduct business.

E-MAIL

One of the most popular uses of the Internet allows you

to send and receive messages to and from people around

the world from the comfort of your home computer. These

messages, which are free to send, are almost always

delivered faster and more accurately than regular mail.

You can send messages to anyone who has an Internet

address. This includes members of most online services.

It is estimated that over 4,000 e-mails per minute go

through the Internet What this means to you as an

information marketer is that you can conduct "direct

mail" through the Internet to existing and potential

customers. This will eliminate your postage and

printing costs. It will also reduce the amount of time

needed to process your mail.

The Internet also has mailing lists to which you can

have your e-mail address added. These mailing lists are

made up of groups of Internet users with similar

interests. The users send messages back and forth to

each other regarding relevant topics. For example, if

you are selling a publication on gardening, you might

want to join a mailing list of users interested in

outdoor hobbies. Whenever someone sends e-mail to this

mailing list, the e-mail goes to everyone on the mailing

list. Sometimes the mailing list is monitored by an

administrator. If this is the case, you may be limited

to the kinds of e-mail you can send. If you can't find

a list that has to do with your publication's topic, you

can start your own mailing list and wait for others to join.

Once you join a mailing list, usually for free, you can

receive 1000's of e-mails from users you have already

selected based on their interests. You can then respond

by sending an e-mail to each user's e-mail address.

Your e-mail might be a short message where you mention

how your information products can help them. Rather than

responding to each e-mail individually, you may be able

to respond by sending one e-mail to the entire Internet

mailing list.

USENET

The Internet also has what is called, USENET newsgroups.

This aspect of the Internet allows users with specific

interests to forms groups and share information with

each other, usually by posting messages that others

can read. Unlike mailing lists, you do not need to send

or receive any e-mail. You simply connect to the

Internet, locate a USENET newsgroup, and read or post

messages to that particular group. http://www.deja.com

Marketers can also use USENET newsgroups by finding a

newsgroup that focus on interest of specific advantage

to the information products being sold. You can do this

by scanning the messages that have been posted. By

recording users e-mail addresses, you can compile a

mailing list to which you can e-mail information

describing your product.

The Internet also has 100's of free databases that can

be accessed to gain information on practically any

subject. These databases are indexed so that you can

search for information using key words or phrases. Most

are run by volunteers, but, just about anyone can start

one. Publishers can use these databases for two

purposes. First, they are an excellent source of

current information. This information can be used to

help you write your publication. Second, experienced

publishers can create their own database. Once created,

the database can be accessed by millions of Internet

users worldwide. Your own database can contain your

publication(s), much like your own BBS.

Finally, the Internet, like many online services, is

scattered with 1000's of interesting computer files that

is accessible free of charge to Internet users. These

files are usually located in areas called special

interest groups (SIGs). There are over 5,000 SIGs on

the Internet.

Information Marketers can upload free reports,

announcements, press releases, etc., to these SIGs for

others to download. This process is known as file

transfer protocol (FTP).

Using this process, Internet users can send and receive

computer files all around the world. These computer

files may contain more complex information than

contained in standard e-mails. These computer files can

contain text, graphics, sound, or they may be actual

programs. They have all been created, saved, and stored

by a computer connected to the Internet. You can send

and receive advertisements, small reports, or entire

publications using the File Transfer Protocol.

HOW TO REGISTER AND HOST A LONG DOMAIN

HOW TO REGISTER AND HOST A LONG DOMAIN

NAME THE INTERNET GOLD RUSH IS ON!

by Patrick Anderson, author of Right On The Money

In the past two weeks, the word has been spreading about the

recent change allowing LONG domain names on the Internet. In

case you haven't heard, competitors have extended Network

Solutions arbitrary limit of 22 characters to the full 63

character domain name length that is allowed on the Internet.

The American Medical Association is one of the first groups

to capitalize on this. The recent domain changes allowed the

AMA to rename their web site to AmericanMedicalAssociation.com

I interviewed five leading Internet marketing experts and

found out some interesting ways to take advantage of Long

Domain Names. You can read the full report online at:

http://www.how-to-register-a-long-domain-name.com/report.html

While you are reading this, keep in mind that top search

engine experts are busy researching and grabbing ALL of the

LONG domain names that are still available. They are using

the information at GoTo.com to find out what people are

searching for, then registering EVERY combination of domain

names using these words.

I know this for a fact, because we just nabbed over 100

names for ourselves and while we were doing it, we kept

finding that the names we REALLY wanted were already taken

by other people.

Long Domains are so new that most ISP's are not aware of

them. After hours of research, my staff found a free hosting

service and a method to quickly launch a website with a long

domain name.

It is amazing to see how few people know about this -- and

how fast the names are disappearing! Don't be left behind...

Here's the strategy the experts are using:

1) Go to the following page and click on the link to "Search

Term Suggestion List":

http://www.goto.com/d/about/advertisers/othertools.jhtml

2) Enter any phrase or topic that you are interested in,

like Real Estate. This is what you will find:

66261 real estate

1631 real estate listing

1556 florida real estate

1106 commercial real estate

968 maine real estate

890 real estate agent

866 real estate for sale

857 colorado real estate

The number tells you how many times last month these phrases

were used in keyword searches at GoTo.com

3) Use these phrases, with-and-without-hyphens, because some

of the major search engines will parse domain names with

hyphens, looking for keywords. Here is what they would look

like:

real-estate-listing.com

realestatelisting.com

florida-real-estate.com

floridarealestate.com

commercial-real-estate-agent.com

commercialrealestateagent.com

4) Check the availability of the names you want at:

http://www.longdomainregistration.com/

See if any of these names are still available. Combine

phrases together if the domain is already taken. Like this:

florida-real-estate-listing.com

floridarealestatelisting.com

Here's why... this combined domain name will parse out TWO

of the MOST popular real estate search requests:

BOTH 'florida real estate' AND 'real estate listing'

5) Set up your account with an ISP that offers free web

hosting and can get your long domain name 'live' in one or

two days. Read our online report for step-by-step

instructions:

http://www.activemarketplace.com/domain/hosting.html

Free hosting will help you maximize the return on your

Internet investment. Especially if you are using doorway or

hook pages as an entry point to your main website.

Smart netrepreneurs are gearing up for the Year 2000 with

strategies for driving traffic to a site using multiple

domain names and dominating search engines with keyword-rich

domains.

In fact, my good friend, Michael Campbell, just helped a

client register 800 domain names. Do you think this man has

a plan? He just spent $48,000... you can BET he has a plan!

So do the guys who registered InternetServiceProviders.com...

How about you? Get started now and make Y2K the best year ever.

Patrick Anderson

Author of Right On The Money

http://www.activemarketplace.com/righton

HOW TO INCREASE YOUR BUSINESS WITH AN E-

HOW TO INCREASE YOUR BUSINESS WITH AN E-

MAIL NEWSLETTER

It is an accepted fact that a newsletter sent to your regular customers is an excellent way to keep in touch with them about new offerings, special sales, etc. Newsletter publishing is not an easy process, though. You have to write or find articles, lay it out, get it printed up, mail it... it takes time and money, enough that it may not pay off if you do it the traditional way. However, if you publish a newsletter that is delivered by email, you can accomplish the same goals while eliminating most of the time and expense. This report will show you how to put together an email newsletter, how to maintain your database of subscribers, and how to deliver it reliably via email.

First, you need to decide exactly what the intent of your newsletter is. Do you want it to be a line of communication with your present customers? Do you want it to generate new customers? Do you want it to be content only, or include advertising from other companies? How frequently do you want to publish? Monthly? Weekly? No regular schedule? Answering these questions will go a long way in planning your newsletter.

The content of your newsletter is the most important consideration. Articles should pertain strongly to the type of business you run, and the needs of your customers that you address. You, yourself, should be in an excellent position to write articles for your newsletter, if you know your business, products, and services. Write about new developments, new uses for your products, etc. Make sure the articles you write aren't weighted down with sales spiels. It's alright to occasionally put a short sales message at the end of an article, but that's what the rest of the newsletter is for. Your articles should contain a lot of "meat" that your customers will WANT to know about.

What if you don't want to write articles? Then solicit them from your customers, your suppliers, members of related associations you belong to, etc. Let them know that you won't be able to compensate them monetarily, but you can print contact information (their name, address, phone, and a short paragraph about what they do) at the end of their articles. In this way, their articles in your newsletter can draw business for them. Remember, though, it's extremely important to keep the articles concise, beneficial, and on-topic with your customers. Otherwise, they'll gradually cancel your newsletter!

Once you've assembled a collection of material, it's time to assemble your first issue. It's not necessary to use a fancy word processing or desktop publishing program, as people will be receiving this via text-only email, with no graphics. So, you can use a simple word processor (such as Windows Write or Windows Notepad) to put together your newsletter. Be sure to set the left and right margins wide (1.75 inches or better). Otherwise, some people will receive your newsletter with longer lines of text wrapped around to partial second lines, making it hard to read. A good newsletter consists of an "editor's letter," two to three decent articles, and a few ads at the end. Any more than this and the newsletter will be too long.

How should you get email addresses to send your newsletter to? Ask for them. Ask your customers for their email addresses, so you can send them a free newsletter. (IMPORTANT: A customer will be more likely to give you their email address if you assure them that you will not rent or sell it to another company. People, in general, don't like unsolicited junk email. Don't do this to your customers, or you'll lose business.) You can use a database program to store your email addresses, but it's just as easy to use the Windows Notepad program. Just type them in a continuous line, separated by commas.

The method of how you send your newsletter to a long list of people will vary, based on what email software you are using. You may be on an online service, such as America Online, and be stuck using their included email program. Or, you may be using an email program such as Eudora with a regular Internet provider. Regardless, your email program should provide a space for: your return email address; the send to email address; the subject line; and (this is important) cc: (carbon copy - where you put a list of people who should also receive the same message) and bcc: (blind carbon copy - similar to a regular carbon copy, but the recipient will not see the list of other people who received the same message) spaces. If your email program does not have an explicit space for cc:/bcc: entries, check your instructions, or get another program!

When you want to send out an issue, you will want to put YOUR email address in both the return address AND the send to address spaces. Then, copy and paste your mailing list from the Notepad program into the BCC: space. Finally, copy and paste your newsletter copy into the message body space. When you send this email out, everyone on your list will get a copy, as well as you. Nobody will get your mailing list, as it won't be listed in the email.

Some final tips:

Put a writeup about your free newsletter on your webpage, along with an email link, so visitors can subscribe. Put this same information on your stationery, business cards, press releases, etc. The more people on the list, the more business you generate.

Prepare a welcome message to new subscribers, detailing how they can "unsubscribe" (remove themselves from the mailing list), what the goals of the newsletter are, how to submit items for publication, etc. Send this to new subscribers, along with the latest issue.

If a person wants to leave your subscription list, promptly take them off without complaint. Send them a final email message telling them that they have been unsubscribed, as well as how they can resubscribe, if they choose to.

HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO VISIT YOUR WEBSITE

HOW TO GET PEOPLE TO VISIT YOUR WEBSITE

If you want to make money in any sort of way with a website, you have to get people (and lots of them) to visit. Whether you have paid advertising at your website, or products to sell, or just information designed to generate leads or orders, it's all a numbers game. The more people you get to travel through your website, the more income you'll make. Thus, it's crucial that you do two important things with your website: provide content that people will want to make the effort to see, and get the word out about your website.

PROVIDE IN-DEMAND CONTENT

Let's suppose that you want to make money not by selling products or services from your website, but by selling advertising space to other businesses. You could easily create a classified ad website, or even a website with display ads. Big deal. Would you visit a website that was only classified ads more than once, out of curiosity? Probably not, unless...

A. It's devoted to a particular special interest.

There are many websites with general classified advertising, very little focus. I don't look for many of these to generate a lot of long-term income for the person(s) who runs them. There are a few websites, however, with highly focused specialized advertising. These will, more likely, be successful (as long as they cater to a large enough group).

For example, you could start a classified ad website devoted to buying and selling musical instruments. This would greatly interest any musician, who would tend to visit from time to time. The average person will, by nature, visit websites that cater to their individual interests more frequently than a generalized website that may or may not hold anything of interest to them.

But, if the website only contains ads, just how often would they visit? Once a week? Once a month? You want them to visit as many times as possible. So, you need to provide...

B. Free worthwhile content.

If your website is only ads, nothing else, then the only time people will want to visit is when they want to buy or sell something. That's ok, but wouldn't it be better if they wanted to visit ALL the time? You can accomplish this by providing good FREE informational content on your website, in addition to your ads. After all, this is how a traditional printed magazine or newspaper works: they provide information with the ads interspersed.

So, for the Musical Instrument Buy & Sell website, you could include relevant how-to articles written by yourself or others (put plenty of notes in your website requesting articles from readers - you'll get submissions you can use, in return for free advertising or some other remittance that is low cost or no cost to you), short items of interest, etc. Change these frequently (and note on your website how frequently they change - this is important for drawing people back), so your visitors will have a reason to keep coming back.

To sum this section up, in order to have a website that people will want to keep returning to, you need to gear it towards a specific interest that appeals to a specific group of people (called targeting), and you need sprinkle it liberally with solid information that changes frequently. This will help take care of getting people to return. Now, how to get them to visit in the first place?

GET THE WORD OUT

When you want to find a plumber, where do you look? In the phone book, of course. What if you want to find websites that have information about a subject you're interested in?

Luckily, the web has many phonebook-like databases which are relatively easy to get listed in. That way, when your potential visitors consult the phonebooks, your website will pop up in the list of their choices.

The process of getting yourself listed in a search database varies from database to database. Usually, though, it's just a matter of filling out a form with information about the content of your website, the URL (address), your name, etc. Each database is fairly clear about how to do this, with a link on their opening page to their respective how-to instructions

HOW TO FIND ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET

HOW TO FIND ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET

(PART 2)

FILE SEARCHES

Searching for a website is fairly easy. Searching for a single file or program across the wide expanse of the Internet is another story. Suppose you want to find a specific program, say a budget calculator you read about in a magazine review. You know the name of the program (for this example, "budcalc.zip"), but you forgot where you could download it from, and you can't find the article. Time to use a file searcher such as Gopher, Archie, Veronica, or WAIS.

Gopher is a document search and retrieval system on the Internet. It's fairly easy to use and doesn't require special software. Basically, it's a menu-driven system that narrows down what you're looking for, then tells you where you can find it. It is by no means comprehensive, and the results vary from Gopher listing to Gopher listing (there are hundreds of them), but you'll usually find something close to what you're looking for.

To use Gopher, you must first access a Gopher site. Gopher site URLs look similar to website URLs, with the exception that "gopher" replaces "http." You'll commonly find Gopher sites through university and government Internet sites. The University of Southern California's Gopher site is a good one to start out with:

gopher://cwis.usc.edu

When you access a Gopher site, as noted earlier, you'll be presented with a menu of choices. Select the choice that is closest to what you are looking for, and you will be presented with another menu of choices. Each menu you reach will be narrower than the preceding one. In this way, you can manually "zero in" on the information you're looking for.

For a complete guide on how to use Gopher, access this FTP site:

ftp://ubvmsb.cc.buffalo.edu/internet/gophern/

If you want an automated search that you don't have to manually work through, try Archie. Archie is a system developed by two graduate students that scans FTP sites (which contain downloadable files) for the program you want. In order to use Archie, you'll need Archie software. America Online and Compuserve are implementing Archie, and should have it by the time you read this. If you are accessing the Internet on your own through a SLIP/PPP connection, check with the manufacturer of your Internet software and/or your Internet service provider for the program you should use. You should be able to get an Archie program as shareware.

Be forewarned, an Archie search can take a long time. Also, when our example search is completed, we have a list of FTP sites that contain any file called "budcalc.zip." We won't have any descriptions, so we just have to access an FTP site from the list, download "budcalc.zip," and hope it's the proper program. If not, try another site.

Veronica is an Archie-like search tool that works with the Gopher system. When you go through the Gopher menus, you'll probably see references to Veronica searches. If you select a Veronica search, you will be Telnet'ed into a computer containing Veronica software. You can then execute a search as you would with Archie.

The final file search tool is WAIS, which stands for Wide Area Information Servers. A WAIS search produces results that are scored as to the similarity with your search criteria. For example, if you were searching for a particular phrase ("To be, or not to be, that is the question," for example), your first reference in the results might have a score of 1000. That means that the reference (probably a Shakespeare-related site or file) contains the exact phrase you entered. Other references with less precision will follow.

Finally, if you don't want to use a search tool, and are just looking for files, there are a number of Internet sites that contain huge numbers of files ready for downloading. Many of these sites include file descriptions, but some do not. Here are just a few examples of some of the "file dumps" on the Net:

C-NET SEARCH: http://www.shareware.com

FILEPILE: http://www.filepile.com

JUMBO: http://www.jumbo.com/

SHARE: http://www.fagg.uni-lj.si/SHASE/

SIMTEL MIRROR: ftp://oak.oakland.edu

HOW TO FIND ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET

HOW TO FIND ANYTHING ON THE INTERNET

(PART 1)

Millions of people are accessing the Internet, and at least half of them put up "home pages" and websites, as well as information files. That being the case, you'd think that the Internet would be a veritable encyclopedia, and you'd be right. However, there's one small problem...

The Internet is somewhat of a chaotic mess.

This can wreak havoc on the inexperienced Net surfer who needs information and needs it now. However, if you know the secrets, you can get around pretty well on the Internet, with the bonus of being able to find the information you want, when you want it.

Website Search Databases

The first stop on your information-gathering expedition should be a search database. These are like the cardfiles (or, more likely, the computer terminals) at your local library, and contain the URL's, or addresses, of thousands of websites. You can search for websites simply by entering a word or words pertaining to the information you want to find.

For example, suppose I'm writing a magazine article on the deforestation of South America, and I'd like to see what information I can find on that subject on the Internet. My first stop would be the most often used (and, arguably, the most comprehensive) search database, Yahoo. You can access Yahoo by typing this URL into your web browser: http://www.yahoo.com

Yahoo is very simple to use. When you access this website, you will be presented with a box to type your search words in, and a clickable button which will start the search. In this example, I might type "deforestation" into the box and would then click the button. In a few seconds, I will be presented with every record in the Yahoo database that contains the word "deforestation," whether or not it deals with South America (since I didn't specify South America in the search box).

At this point, I can manually look through the entries for the ones I want to investigate further, or I can do a new search (by typing "deforestation South America" in the search box) to weed out the records I don't want. If I see a record I want to investigate, I can click on the record, and I will be transported to that website. It couldn't be easier!

A few guidelines to keep in mind while using search databases:

>Be as specific as possible in your search criteria, or you will be presented with a ton of records to look through.

>No search database contains every reference to a particular subject. In most cases, the only way a database will have a record on a particular website is if someone specifically submitted information to the database. So, it pays to search more than one database, if you want more information.

>Be careful with the words you search by. Some databases will look only for records that contain all the words you typed in, some will look for any record that contains one or more of the words you type in. In the example above, if I used a database that uses the latter method, I would receive all the records that contain "south" and "america" anywhere in their description. This would be a ridiculously long list!

Here's a list of the most commonly used search databases, and their URL's:

APOLLO: http://apollo.co.uk/

GALAXY: http://galaxy.einet.net/

HARVEST: http://harvest.cs.colorado.edu/

INFOSEEK: http://www.infoseek.com/

LINKSTAR: http://www.opentext.com:8080/

LYCOS: http://www.lycos.com/

PRONET: http://www.pronett.com/

STARTING POINT: http://www.stpt.com/

WEBCRAWLER: http://webcrawler.com/

WHAT'S NEW TOO: http://newtoo.manifest.com/WhatsNewToo/

WHOLE INTERNET CATALOG: http://gnn.com/gnn/wic/index.html

YAHOO: http://www.yahoo.com

HOW TO CHOOSE AN INTERNET SERVICE

HOW TO CHOOSE AN INTERNET SERVICE

PROVIDER

Choosing the computer hardware and software for Internet access is the easy part. Selecting an Internet provider is the hard part. There are literally thousands of "onramps" to the Internet, each with their own pricing structures, advantages, and disadvantages. I'm not going to recommend any specific provider in this report. Instead, I'll go through the steps you should take in order to weed out the providers who won't do the job for you, and find the ones that will.

First, you should know about the different types of accounts you can get. Not all service providers will be able to provide all types of accounts. The most common types of Internet accounts are (in relative order of expense):

>Email Only - As the name indicates, these accounts are only for sending and receiving email. These accounts are rarely found today, accept in academic institutions.

>Terminal Dial-Up - A connection to another company's system, which, in turn, is connected to the Internet. An example of this is the type of Internet access you have when you use a service like America Online or Compuserve.

SLIP/PPP Dial In - A more direct form of connection, you are connected to a computer with a dedicated connection to the Internet.

Dedicated - The most expensive type of connection, you are directly connected 24 hours a day to the Internet backbone with a phone line.

Which should you choose? It depends on your needs. I would recommend staying away from Email Only accounts, even if that's all you want, as you can usually enroll with America Online or Compuserve for the same money.

If you're only going to occasionally browse the World Wide Web, and will be putting very little, if any, material up on the Internet for viewing or downloading, your best bet may be America Online or Compuserve. However, if you plan to do more serious work on the Internet, including a website for your business, you should get a SLIP/PPP account.

To identify which SLIP/PPP Internet provider to sign up with, you should start locally. Check with local computer stores and computer user groups for the phone numbers of Internet providers within your local calling radius. Call them and get all the details on their services:

>How much they charge - Many will charge a flat rate per month, others will charge a per hour fee, still others will have a combination of both. Some offer lower rates if you pay in advance.

>How many hours of access you get - Most will have a time limit per month, while others offer unlimited access.

>How much storage space - If you want to have a website for your business, you'll need storage space on your Internet provider's hard drive. How much you need depends on your plans, but 58 MB should be sufficient for most people.

>What "extras" do they offer? - Do they provide all the software you'll need, or are you left to fend for yourself? What kind of technical support is available? Do they have a "secure server" (one that can safely be used to send and receive credit card numbers and other sensitive information - important if you want to do business on the Internet)? Do they have autoresponders?

Write all of this information down for each local provider. Next, check the "big" national providers. They can be found advertising in computer and Internet-related magazines. They may have lower rates than the local providers, but they may have two disadvantages: you may have to make a long distance call, which negates the lower rate; and, technical service may be hard to reach, due to volume of calls.

If you have friends who are on the Internet, ask for their experiences with their providers. And, if you can get on the Internet locally (at your library or a local school, for instance), check out The List, which can be found on the World Wide Web at http://www.thelist.com

This database contains information on thousands of Internet providers nationwide and worldwide, including pricing, features, local calling information, even comments from users (the most valuable information). Weigh all this information, and take your time. Which provider to use is an important decision.