| BUSINESS
WEBSITE TIPS. Check your site everyday to ensure it's available;
Add something no less frequently than weekly; periodically check
all links. Websites come and go and "dead links" are
irritating to your visitors. |
| GOT XP?
Be sure and download Microsoft's neatest utility (Powertoys).
It's the same as that used in previous operating systems and very
handy. Get it free at http://microsoft.com/windowsxp/pro/downloads/powertoys.asp. |
| BACKUP!
We keep reminding you of this because of its importance. Backup
your important data. One choice is to use an online backup service.
Check out http://www.backup.com and http://www.virtualbackup.com.
These services are fairly inexpensive and great insurance. |
|
SEARCH ENGINES. There are hundreds available
but here is searchenginewatch' current listing (4/99) of the
largest and most useful.
AltaVista http://www.altavista.com/
Ask Jeeves http://www.askjeeves.com/
AOL NetFind http://www.aol.com/netfind/
Direct
Hit http://www.directhit.com/
Excite http://www.excite.com/
Go http://beta.go.com/
Google http://www.google.com/
GoTo http://www.goto.com/
HotBot http://www.hotbot.com/
Inktomi http://www.inktomi.com/
Infoseek http://www.infoseek.com/
LookSmart http://www.looksmart.com/
Lycos http://www.lycos.com/
MSN (Microsoft) http://www.msn.com/
Northern Light http://www.northernlight.com
Search.com http://www.search.com/
Snap http://www.snap.com/
WebCrawler http://www.webcrawler.com/
Yahoo http://www.yahoo.com/
|
| A CLEVER UTILITY. Coloristic
is a free utility that magnifies the area of the screen surrounding
the current mouse position. It will also display the color value
for the pixel that is exactly under the mouse position and allow
you to copy that color value to the clipboard. Get it at http://www.bubblepop.com/coloristic/index.html |
| PRINTING
MAILING LABELS. Many of us only need to print one label at
a time and using the same page of labels more than once in a laser
printer can cause the remaining labels to detach and possibly
damage the printer. Avoid this problem by using only *good* quality
laser labels (I use Avery) and wait at least 10-minutes between
uses. |
| COMPUTER
TIP. Let me again remind everyone that e-mail attachments
received from anyone you don’t know should not be opened – it’s
a good way to get a computer virus. |
|
TELEPHONE
CAUTION: Ensure that your ISP does not utilize "roll-over"
telephone exchanges that are outside free calling area. For
example a roll-over exchange might be one that is in your "extended
call" area and subject to additional "local" charges. Heed our
previous warnings: Carefully check every telephone bill.
|
|
SETTING
MONITOR RESOLUTION. There are not too many small business
owners who don't spend considerable time in front of their computer
monitors! Setting the monitor's resolution is important in order
to reduce eye strain. Here are the recommended resolution settings
for the most popular monitor sizes:
14-in:
640 x 480; 15-in: 1024 x 768; 17-in: 1024 x 768;
19-in: 1280 x 1024; 21-in: 1280 x 1024
|
| FREE
e-MAIL. Try Yahoo for a free e-mail account. (http://www.yahoo.com).
Sign up is quick and easy and the e-mail interface is excellent.
|
| BACKUP
NOW! Remember us telling you about the importance of computer
backups? Hopefully you are all making backups of critical information
but how many of you are also keeping an OFF-SITE backup copy?
Do it now, folks. I just heard a terrible story about a fire in
which a small business lost all their data which essentially put
them out of business. What would be the effect on your business
if you lost ALL your computer files? Think about it.
|
| MICROSOFT
APPLICATION HELP. Got a question about some Microsoft sottware?
Ever try to find the phone number? Here is some help - a listing
of tele numbers for various popular Microsoft applications. (I
can't guess how long you will have to wait!). Unless noted the
area code and prefix is (425) 635
Excel
7070; Money 7131; Bookshelf 7172; Office 7056; PowerPoint 7145;
Project 7155
Publisher 7140; Schedule+ 7049; Word 462-9673; Works 7130
|
| LOOKING
FOR AN ISP? Considering your own website and need a good ISP?
There are so many, the choice can be tough. Get some help with
your choice at http://www.webhostlist.com. A neat resource. |
| INTERNET
DOMAINS. Many of you have Internet sites (good!) with your
own domain. Check with the Internic (http://rs.internic.net/)
using Whois search to determine who the administrative contact
is. Is should be you! If not, get it changed immediately. In the
event you ever have a problem with your ISP and need to switch
your domain to another provider, the process will be much easier. |
| NEED
BATTERIES?
Here is a one-stop shop for notebook, cellular phone, radio, camcorder
batteries. 1 800 Batteries or www.1800Batteries.com |
| FILE
NAMING HINT. After a while various folders get quite large
with many files making it necessary to scroll to find what you're
looking for. If you have a couple of favorites (like "TODO"),
rename them starting with the underline (_) character. That way
those files will appear first in the list making them easy to
find. |
| "404
Error." This is the error message returned if a link is bad
or incorrect in your website and can cause you to lose a visitor.
I recently was made aware of a very clever way to solve this problem.
When the fix is implemented, clicking on a bad link will return
a page of your choice instead of the useless "404 Error" message.
Here is what to do: Find the file named ".htaccess" which is located
in the root directory of your website (get there via ftp). Edit
the file to add the following line: ErrorDocument 404 http://www.yourdomain.com/404.cfm.
"404.cfm" is a new html page that can be anything you like. To
see what I did, go to my site at http://www.isquare.com. Now,
change the URL to read http://www.isquare.com/xyz.htm. "xyz.htm"
does not exist so you will be taken to my "404.cfm" page. |
| INTERNET
STATISTIC. A Better Business Bureau study has determined that
the average price limit at which respondents would be uncomfortable
purchasing an item on the Web is $1,500. [Higher than I would
have thought ... ed] |
| WHO'S
LINKED TO YOUR SITE? Here is a repeat (by demand) of a popular
hint. Find out who is linked to your website by using Alta-Vista
with the following search string: +link:http://www.yoursite.com
-url:http://www.yoursite.com |
| DON'T BUY A FAX
MACHINE! JFAX.COM is a better alternative. For $12.50/montlh
you get a telephone line (regular or toll-free) to which all your
fax'es will be sent. They will be intercepted by jfax and sent
to you via e-mail. You read the fax with their free software.
It's great. Check them out at http://www.jfax.com They also
have "jfaxsend" which allows you to send to a fax machine via
an e-mail message. Very handy. Very economical. |
| CHECK YOUR WEBSITE.
You have built your website. Now how do you check to ensure everything
"works?" Like links, e-mail addresses, etc. Check out http://www.greenpac.com,
for a fantastic (free for small sites) service. Their Inspector
Web will find broken links, bad e-mail addresses, overly large
image files, missing and incorrect image sixes, SSI errors (if
you don't know what SSI stands for then you have nothing to worry
about!), and more. Highly recommended. |
| LOOKING FOR AN
INTERNET PROVIDER? The most in-depth directory is located
at http://thelist.internet.com. Results are searchable by country,
state, or area code. |
| MICROSOFT OFFICE
97 USERS. If you have not already done so, download Service
Release 1Patch that upgrades many Office 97 files and takes care
of a few bugs. You can check to determine if you already have
the patch by checking Help, then About in Word97. If the patch
is installed, you will see the words, "Microsoft Word97 SR-1."
The download site is http://www.microsoft.com/Office/Office97/ServiceRelease/?prev=111111 |
| SEARCHING THE
INTERNET. Searching for information on the Internet can be
a daunting task. In fact, just determining what search engine
to use is complex. Here is a listing of the best along with who
does what best. The list is divided into general searching and
people/business searching. If you are looking for something or
someone and don't find it with the first search site you try,
go to another. Each site's database is unique. For general searching:
AltaVista. www.altavista.digital.com
Excite. www.excite.com
HotBot. www.hotbot.com
Infoseek. www.infoseek.com
Lycos. www.lycos.com
Metacrawler. Www.metacrawler.
An excellent metasearch engine
OpenText. www.opentext.net
PlanetSearch. www.planetsearch.com
ProFusion. Www.designlab.ukans.edu/profusion/.
Simultaneously search 9 search sites.
Search.com. www.search.com
WebCrawler. www.webcrawler.com
Yahoo. www.yahoo.com.
Still the best - period.
For people/business
searching:
Bigfoot. www.bigfoot.com.
Searches white pages and e-mail data.
BigBook. www.bigbook.com.
The best for finding businesses.
Four11. www.four11.com.
The best for finding people. (Owned by Yahoo)
Switchboard. www.switchboard.com.
Worldpages. www.worldpages.com.
Use this site when looking for someone in another country.
|
| INTERESTING STATISTIC.
The five websites with the most traffic (currently) are, in order:
Yahoo, Netscape, Microsoft, Excite, AOL. |
| SEARCHING FOR
INFO ON THE INTERNET?. If you think the big search engines
are all that's available, take a look at http://www.internets.com
for links to hundreds of major databases. This is a fantastic
resource. |
| VIRUS! This
word is bound to get your attention! However be advised that most
virus warnings are not warranted and in spite of the hundreds
of reported viruses, very few of us ever "get" one. When you read
about a virus warning, check to see if the virus is real by visiting
http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html which provides a detailed
listing of all virus hoaxes and an explanation of each. |
| E-MAIL BACKUP.
Don't forget to backup your e-mail mailboxes! For Eudora users,
save the files with TOC and MBX extensions. (Each mailbox is comprised
of one each of these file extensions). |
| Y2K CAUTION.
The potential problems associated with computers that are not
Year 2000 compliant are getting a lot of attention and they should
be. It's going to be a mess. As a small business owner, here are
a few items to consider to help keep your business running smoothly:
1. Contact your
suppliers to ensure they will be able to ship your orders even
in the event their computers fail due to Y2K problems.
2. Call your payroll
processing service to ensure they are Y2K compliant.
3. Ask your security
system supplier if your installation is Y2K compliant.
4. Determine if
your cash register (and other point of sale equipment) will
operate properly after 12/31/99.
5. Check to ensure
that your business liability insurance policy will cover any
losses due to Y2K-related problems. Don't take this lightly,
there are going to be a lot of law suits over Y2K-related problems.
6. Ensure that your
computer hardware and all software are Y2Kcompliant.
7. Check with your
merchant card account provider to ensure Y2K compliance.
|
| UPS WEBSITE CAUTION.
When using the UPS website (www.ups.com) to determine shipping
costs, be advised that the amounts returned are for a customer
with a UPS account - shipping costs for those without an account
are somewhat higher! |
| LOOKING FOR A
GRAPHIC? Check out "WebSeer" at http://webseer.cs.uchicago.edu/ |
| CHECK YOUR WEBSITE:
Ever wonder how your website looks on different browsers? Go to
http://www.cast.org/bobby which allows you to input your site
URL and will return comments specific to problems you might have
with Netscape (various versions), Explorer (various versions),
Mosiac, Lynx, AOL (Mac and PC). Give it a try - you will be amazed
at the results. |
| FORGET A URL?
In Netscape, type "about:globalhistory" (without the quotes) in
the LOCATION box and a listing of every site visited in recent
history will be displayed. |
| E-MAIL BACKUP.
Don't forget to backup your e-mail mailboxes! For Eudora users,
save the files with TOC and MBX extensions. (Each mailbox is comprised
of one each of these file extensions). |
| CHECK OUT IF A
VIRUS WARNING is a hoax or real by visiting http://ciac.llnl.gov/ciac/CIACHoaxes.html |
| BACKING UP YOUR
COMPUTER DATA. Here is a tip worth its weight in gold: Be
sure to TEST your backups by attempting to recover one of the
saved files. Better you find out it doesn't work now! |
| STATISTIC.
Just in case you think the WWW appeals just to companies with
national ambitions, how about this study: According to Hambrecht
& Quist Group (NYSE: HMQ) LOCAL ad revenue on the Internet
will exceed half a billion dollars in the year 2000. |
| ON-LINE DIRECTORY.
Finding people and businesses: Check out these two fantastic search
sites: http://www.switchboard.com and http://www.Four11.com |
| ISDN. What
we all want! Check Microsoft's page at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/getisdn
which contains a variety of ISDN related information. This site
also lets you place an order for ISDN service. Microsoft then
sends the order to your local telephone company along with all
the required installation information. But you better understand
your telephone company's ISDN rate structure before taking advantage
of this service. |
| HTML INFORMATION.
One of the best sites we've found for HTML tag descriptions is
at http://www.woodhill.co.uk/html/html.htm |
| SPECIAL EFFECTS
FOR YOUR WEBSITE? Check out this site: http://www.nashville.net/~carl/htmlguide/index.html |
| COMPUTER VENDOR
URL's. Looking for the URL of a computer hardware or software
vendor? Check out this page: http://www.cyberenet.net/%7Emms/vendlnk.htm |
| WEB SITE REGISTRATION.
We frequently get asked for the best way to register a new website
with the various search engines. There are many websites offering
this service and one of the best is found at http://www.mmgco.com/top100.html.
They offer both do-it-yourself for free and various payment options
for them to do it for you. |
| WEBPAGE DESIGN
TIP. Use a META tag to automatically direct a user to a new
page after a predetermined number of seconds. Say a certain page
is currentpage.htm and you want your users to be taken to nextpage.htm
after 3 seconds. Use the following tag in currentpage.htm:
META http-equiv="refresh"
content="3;URL=nextpage.htm">
The "3" is the delay
in seconds and don't forget the <META> tag goes within the
<head> tags.
|
| NEWSGROUPS
are a fantastic source of information. The problem is that many
Internet providers (ISP's) do not provide all the newsgroups available
(over 15,000) due to limitations in bandwidth and other reasons.
However, check out http://sunsite.unc.edu/usenet-i/search.html
for a database of ALL existing newsgroups. |
| LOOKING FOR A
INTERNET SERVICES PROVIDER (ISP)? Check out http://www.thelist.com
for a searchable index of thousands of ISP's. You may search by
state or area code. Listings include rates, services provided
and contact information. |
| WHO'S LINKED TO
YOUR SITE? By popular demand, we're repeating this very useful
tip. To find the URL's of all the sites who are linked to your
site, go to Alta Vista at http://www.altavista.digital.com and
in the search box, type: link:http://www.yourdomain.com |
| WHAT SEARCH ENGINES
HAVE YOUR SITE LISTED? Visit http://www.did-it.com and take
them up on their free offer. |
| WIN95 TIP.
Be safe ... make an Emergency Recovery Disk (ERD). Use a hidden
program on the WIN96 CD-ROM. Find erd.exe in the \other\misc\edu
folder and execute the file to generate the ERD disk. (Format
a disk with the system files included to use for this). |
| WINDOW 95 TIP.
Don't forget the "registry," that magic file that, if corrupted,
can make it impossible to get up and running. To be save, keep
a backup. It's easy to do. Here are the steps:
1. Select Start,
then Run,
2. Type REGEDIT to
open the registry editor
3. Pull down the
Registry menu and choose Export Registry File
4. Navigate to where
you'd like to store the backup file, type in a name for the
file, select All under Export range
5. Click Save
6. To be safe, also
place this file onto a floppy disk.
|
| EUDORA USERS.
A while back we told you how to backup your mailboxes. This procedure
does NOT backup your Address Book entries! For this you need to
backup the file called "nndbase.txt" located in the main Eudora
directory. |
| YEAR2000.
You don't think this will be a serious problem? The IRS has identified
100 MILLION lines of code that must be changed to fix Y2K problems
and they are just now getting started on the fixes - with only
300 programmers! |
| BACKUP YOUR DATA.
This can't really be stressed enough but even if you do backup
your documents regularly don't forget some other data that, if
lost, could be quite inconvenient - namely, e-mail mailboxes,
address books and setup information for your various applications. |
| WEB DESIGN TOOL
Need to figure out what a specific color is on your screen so
you may use it in a webpage? There is a terrific little utility
called "Coloristic" that will display (in hex, decimal, or html
format [#xxyyzz]) the color appearing under the tip of your cursor!
It's VERY handy. It's only a few Kb in size. Get it at http://www.bubblepop.com/coloristic/index.html. |
| X2 MODEM CAUTION.
It sounds good. 56K transfer! Needless to say you must ensure
that your ISP can support X2 technology but this alone is not
enough to ensure rates anywhere close to 56K. Whether or not you
will actually achieve these rates is also a function of the telephone
lines between you and your ISP. In many cases, a new 56K modem
will only achieve 33K rates and you have wasted your $200. To
make matters worse the telephone company probably cannot tell
you in advance if your modem will work. So, the lesson here is
to ensure that any X2 modem you purchase is returnable! |
| BATTERIES.
We need 'em for everything - cellular phones, portable phones,
laptops, digital cameras, etc. A great source is 1-800-Batteries.
(1 800 228 8374). On the web at www.800Batteries.com |
