VBOK Edition # 19 - Why you should get an e-mail alias February 1, 1999 ______________________________________________________________________ Last month's question was "How many computers do you own?". There were 80 voters and they voted a little something like this: Votes Percent 1 20 25 2 24 30 3 9 11 4 16 20 5+ 11 14 This month's question is "What type of input device do you use most?" Go here to vote: ------ Speaking of voting, click here to vote for VBOK as one of the best newsletters in the "E-zines Top Ten Poll"! It's just a couple of clicks to vote and rate! ------ Come visit the VBOK forum and live chat. You may discuss anything computer related and it's a good place to get help with any computer questions you may have. Go here to check it out: ------ Thanks to K. Dharmajee rao who was VBOK's 1000th subscriber. He wins a free subscription to VBOK! ;-) ______________________________________________________________________ TOC 1. Why you should get an e-mail alias 2. Software Review 3. Cool Sites 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's 5. That's the news! If the columns in the below articles appear misaligned, it's because you are using a non-fixed width font. If you would like to see them nice and straight, change your e-mail font to Times New Roman. ______________________________________________________________________ 1. Why you should get an e-mail alias ------ What is one of the worst things about moving? For me, it's having to fill out all those change of address cards for every magazine subscription, credit card, catalog, and friend we know that will be sending us mail. Wouldn't it be nice to have a permanent mailing address that you would stay with you for the rest of your life? No more missed bills, letters from friends/family, issues of your favorite magazines. This would be great. The only problem is it's not feasible. Why not? It takes a while for a piece of mail to get to you in the first place. Now imagine it having to go to a permanent address and then get sent from there to wherever you may be. Not only is it slow, but I'm sure it would cost quite a bit more. So you can't do this with snailmail (U.S. Postal Service), but you can do it with e-mail! Speed isn't a factor anymore. E-mail is almost instantaneous. You may have a delay of a few minutes if backbone traffic is really heavy, or if the alias e-mail provider has a slow connection, but that isn't really much to worry about. What about cost? There is always a cost involved. You may never see it, and you will most likely will not be able to figure out who will, so it's nothing to concern yourself with. An alias e-mail account serves a few purposes. The most important being the above example. Another, is that alias e-mail addresses are generally much easier to remember. Let's take for example a fictitious ISP provided POP3 (Post Office Protocol version 3) e-mail address. Getting someone to remember this address in passing conversation could be difficult. That's where the easy to remember alias comes into play. Here are a few examples. See, much shorter and easier to remember! Besides being free, one reason to have multiple alias accounts is to use them for different purposes. For example, you might use the biogate.com as your lifetime address that you give to everyone. You then might use the usa.net address for mailing lists and newsletters that you subscribe to. Finally, you might use the Hotmail account as a spam catcher for when you are required to provide an e-mail address on those pesky on-line forms. The different types of alias accounts ------ Forwarding -- The whole purpose of this type of account is to forward messages to whatever address you designate. This is the type of account that you want to use for your lifetime address. POP3 -- This type of account can be checked with an e-mail program like Outlook, The Bat!, Eudora etc. It works just like your ISP's POP3 account. Web Based -- These are good if you need to check your e-mail, but will not have access to anything other than say a library computer with a web browser. I suggest getting one of each. Why? Well, let's look at this scenario. Everybody sends mail to your forwarding alias, which then sends it to your normal ISP address where you check it with your e-mail program. Let's say that you have to go on a trip. If you will have access to a private computer with a POP3 account, then you just edit the configuration of your forwarding alias to send mail to the POP3 account (fz.ml.org for example). Now let's say that you will only have access to a web browser where you are going. You edit your forwarding alias to send all of your mail to Hotmail for reading with a web browser. Where to get the alias accounts from ------ Ok, you're saying. I've got the point, so where do I sign up? Here are some places to look. I'll explain just a few of the ones I like (I've tried a really good number of them, so you can benefit from my experience.) Forwarding aliases ------ The best that I have seen is at . - They have a good number of domain names to choose from. This is the part that follows the "@" in your e-mail address. For example: or, or, etc... You can also get a web page alias from here. Instead of typing something that looks like this: You can get an alias that looks like this: This way, no matter where you move your web site, people can always find it with the alias. The down side to using Netforward is that they put this text at the top of all your *incoming* messages: "Thanks for using NetForward! http://www.netforward.com v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v" While annoying, what can you expect for free! POP3 aliases ------ The one I like the best is at . They are very fast and generally reliable. There have been times where they were down for quite a few hours. However, they don't munge your mail (adding extra junk like advertisements) and are free. Web browser aliases ------ Pretty much all of them are the same. or, or, etc... Final recommendations ------ One I will recommend that does all three types of accounts is at: Geocities is a good catch all place that is really great for newbies too. You can get all of the following from them: - Free POP3, forwarding and web browser alias (you configure your account for which ever you want.) - 11MB free web site space to put up your web pages. You have to let them display ads from your page, but that's about par for the course. There is also quite a bit of support for help on building your web site. - A host of other services. If the above don't suit your needs, then check out some at the sites listed in the database below. http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Vista/8015/free.html Play around with different options and alias hosts. When you find the combination that works best for you, then send an e-mail to everybody in your address book to notify them of your new, worldwide, lifetime e-mail address. Good luck. ______________________________________________________________________ ** A word from our sponsors ** Get more traffic to your website! How? Get the Wealthgram Newsletter This daily e-zine is packed with traffic building tips and ways to sell more of your products and services on the internet! To subscribe mailto:subscribe@wealthnexus.com with "Subscribe Wealthgram/vbok" in subject or visit http://www.wealthnexus.com. ------ FREE Computer Giveaway ... FREE Email LOTTO ... FREE Internet Money Making Newsletter ... FREE Classifieds ... FREE Postcards ... FREE Reminder Service ... Get it all NOW at http://www.wealthtrain.com FREE Report: GET YOUR OWN INTERNET CASH MACHINE… mailto:webmaster@wealthtrain.com ------ Want to see your advertisement here? Send mail to with the text 'Advert' in the SUBJECT line for more information. ______________________________________________________________________ 2. Software Review ------ I've decided to create a VBOK Superior Software Award for those really outstanding programs that come along once in a blue moon. If you see that a site is displaying this award, you can rest assured that it is the best of the best. I will let you know if one of the pieces of software reviewed in the VBOK newsletter is one of the recipients. While I will never write a review for a mediocre piece of software, I did think that the really outstanding ones deserved an award. To see what this award looks like, click below: ------ Name: Zing Genre: Browser add-on Platform: PC Win 95/98/NT and IE 3/4 or NN 3/4 Type/Cost: Freeware Size: 1,227KB Homepage: Download Software: If you're one of the unlucky like me, who don't have a blazing Internet connection, then Zing is for you. Once loaded, Zing waits until your browser is busy loading a page where it pops up to show you comic strips, pictures, music and even insults. It's a great way to pass the time in-between page loads. What really makes this program stand out, is that it doesn't in any way interfere with your browsing. Not only does the Zing window disappear as soon as your browser loads a page, but it doesn't take up any bandwidth because it downloads new information only when your connection is idle. You can have Zing display the fun stuff in one of three ways. 1. Display until the page is first readable. 2. Display until page is fully loaded. 3. Display until the Zing spot is finished. Here are some of the "channels" that you can view: Art Gallery Butterfield & Butterfield Comix Culture Shock Burning Man Digital Art Entertainment Weekly French Insults Jokes On This Day Photography Quotes Retro Rolling Stones Spanish Spotlight on Universal Surfer While most channels are for general consumption, you may want to exercise caution when enabling Culture Shock and Burning Man as they contain mature themes. If you would like to learn French or Spanish, enable those channels for a quick spoken and visual lesson. ------ Name: Clipmate 5.0.2 Genre: Clipboard replacement Platform: PC Win 95/98/NT4 Type/Cost: Shareware/$20.00 Size: 952KB Homepage: Download Software: !!! Recipient of the VBOK Superior Software Award !!! Everyone at one time or another has wished that the Windows clipboard was just a little more intelligent. If you're a cut and paste freak like I am, then you've probably cut something to the clipboard and suddenly remembered that you just copied over something that you wished you hadn't. While I've done this more times than I can count, it was running multiple mailing lists and discussion forums via e-mail where I wanted to be able to paste very common and repetitive responses, that really turned me on to seeking a better mouse trap. The clipboard manager that I needed had to be very robust and not only allowed multiple cuts without overwriting the old data, but had to offer an easy to manage archive. Not only did I find this in Clipmate, but much, much more. First off, it has a very nicely laid out interface, which made navigating my multiple cuts as simple as pie. Secondly, was that I could organize my items into easily navigated groups. To give you an example, I have a group named TBUDL FAQ'able. This group contains all of the little pieces of information that new subscribers to this particular forum generally ask. Doing it this way allows me to provide speedy responses without actually looking in the FAQ or trying to find an old e-mail where that same response was posted. Remember how I was saying Clipmate makes it easy to find the information you're looking for? Here's where Clipmate makes it a snap. When you cut from a document, Clipmate makes the first 60 characters the clip title. Once it does that you're free to rename the title to whatever you wish. Say you cut the information on repairing a stuck hard drive to Clipmate. You place it in the "Hard Drive" group, which is a child group of "Hardware", and you rename the clip "Stuck Hard Drive". Now it's forever ready when you need it. One other feature that just floored me is the power paste function. How many of us have filled out those countless on-line forms? Everybody is probably saying "Been there, done that, got the tee-shirt!" Try this on for size. What if you already had all the responses (Name, address, phone number, e-mail address etc.) stored in a group under Clipmate, and then were able to paste them into each field? Well, ok, so what's so special about that? Wouldn't all clipboard managers allow that? Yes, but not all clipboard managers have power paste! What power paste does is automatically advance to the next stored clip in the group. No need for you to manually do it. It's now a matter of mouse clicking the correct field and hitting CTRL-V (or whatever you normally do to paste.) With power paste, I can whip through forms almost as fast as they can throw them at me. Here's a little list of some more features that Clipmate has to offer. - Converting the clip to all lowercase, uppercase or sentence case (capitalizing the first letter of each sentence.) - Explorer like interface with full drag and drop capability. - If a clip is cut from a web page, it remembers the link in case you ever need to go back. - Each clip is denoted with an icon to let you know if it is text, graphic, or if there is a remembered link. - Organizes graphics just as easily as text clips. Clipmate is the kind of software that has helped to propel us out of the dark ages. ------ Name: CWebMail Genre: E-mail Platform: PC Win 95/98/NT4 Type/Cost: Freeware Size: 298KB Homepage: Download Software: You just gotta love it when someone comes out with something to make your life all that much easier. CWebMail is a program that allows you to check your Hotmail account via POP3. What does that mean? For those of us with e-mail client softwae that allows for multiple accounts you no longer will have to use your browser to log onto Hotmail and put up with all those advertisements. The installation and implementation is a no-brainer, so there is no reason not to use it. ______________________________________________________________________ 3. Cool Sites ------ I decided to create a VBOK Superior Web Site Award for those really outstanding web sites that come along once in a blue moon. If you see that a site is displaying this award, you can rest assured that it is the best of the best. I will let you know if one of the web sites reviewed in the VBOK newsletter is one of the recipients. To see what this award looks like, click below: ------ PC Guide !!! Recipient of the VBOK Wicked Web Site Award !!! You know, I've been using and learning about computers for a very long time, but this guy blows me away. Not for the faint of heart, this site is full tilt, hardcore knowledge of all that is PC. Without a doubt this place has earned a very hard earned bookmark in my browser as well as a place in my heart for the true geek. ------ NetZero Free Internet Access Mostly everyone has heard of Juno. If you haven't it's a free e-mail service for those who can't or won't pay for an Internet connection. Of course with anything free, there is always a hitch. NetZero has the same hitch, which is that you have to see advertisements while reading your mail. Both services provide software and a local phone number (NetZero isn't quite everywhere locally yet, but it's getting there) for you to dial. You can send and receive e-mail using their software to anyone on the Internet as well as other users of NetZero. The major advantage to NetZero is that you can send and receive attachments (up to 3MB), which in my mind was a severe limitation to Juno. Now that Juno has some competition, I expect to see quite a few new features for users of both services. ------ Hard Drive Resources If you're ever in need of a quick fix on hard drive specs for that emergency hard drive replacement, this is the place to go. They also host a forum where you can read and post questions for all sort of hard drive related stuff. ______________________________________________________________________ 4. Tips, Tricks, Do's and Don't Do's ------ I've notice on some lower resolution screens that the Start Menu/Programs is too large for the screen. If you're constantly scrolling up and down through your Start Menu, then here's a tip that you'll like. While scrolling, hold down the CTRL key to increase the speed scroll speed. ------ Something that really annoys me is having to reboot because I forgot to turn on a SCSI device before turning on the computer. Here's a tip to save you the time and irritation. 1. Turn on the SCSI periphrial 2. Go to My Computer->Control Panel->System->Device Manager Tab 3. Scroll down to "SCSI controllers" 4. Click the plus next to it. 5. Single click the SCSI device that you just turned on. 6. Go down and click on the "Refresh" button. That's it, the device should function now. This tip is also useful if say your scanner locks up. You can turn it off and back on, and then do the above steps. ------ Did you know that if you hold down the CTRL key while double clicking on an icon, it will open in the background? This is good if you are working on multiple things at once and want to open something without losing the focus on your current window. ------ If you want to find out the size of all the files in a folder and it's sub-folders, right click the top level folder and select properties. It'll tally up all the files as well as the total size for you. Great for when you want to move/copy a whole folder and need to know how much room it will take up. ------ Here's a neat trick for quick shortcuts to documents and spreadsheets. 1. Open Word. 2. Highlight some text a few pages down into the document. 3. Right click and drag the highlighted text to the desktop. 4. Let go of the right mouse button. 5. Select "Create Document Shortcut Here". 6. Close the original document. It will ask if you want to save changes. Say "Yes". Now whenever you double click your new shortcut, it will open Word, and jump down to the text you dragged and highlight it for you. Another option you have in step 5, is to "Create Scrap Here". You will not have to save changes to the original document, and when you double click the scrap, it'll open Word and the only text displayed will be the text you dragged and dropped. Both of these tips are great for making quick bookmarks to important information. ______________________________________________________________________ 5. That's the news! ------ Intel to officially name the Katmai processor Pentium III. Katmai includes the 70 new instructions for better multimedia handling. ------ Iomega (maker of the ZIP, JAZ and Ditto drives) bought SyQuest for $9.5 million. Iomega now owns all of their inventory, intellectual property, and fixed assets. To make the deal even sweeter, Iomega didn't get the baggage of customer support for customers who bought SyQuest products before the buyout. To make it sweeter still, this effectively ends SyQuests patent lawsuit against them. ------ Sixteen year old Irish girl with a love for mathematics devises a new algorithm to speed e-mail up by 10 times. ______________________________________________________________________ Well, that concludes this issue. Have fun. Leif Gregory Copyright © 1999 by Leif Gregory. All rights reserved. You may share this copy of the VBOK newsletter with others as long as it is reprinted/resent in it's entirety to include this copyright notice. If you've received this edition of the VBOK newsletter from a friend or colleague and wish to start receiving your own copies, then click the below link and send the generated e-mail message. I have made every attempt to ensure that all information contained in this newsletter is accurate to the best of my ability. Due to the myriad of possible configurations in the PC platform, information and software discussed here may not always work with your particular configuration. That being said, Leif Gregory and the VBOK newsletter can not be held liable for any damages you may incur from the use of anything contained herein. VBOK does not endorse any of the products or services provided by advertisers in this newsletter. As with anything in life, please check the credibility of the advertiser as well as to use common sense. 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