Last updated May 27, 2002
| What's this about? Well, I've been cruising the 'net for a while. I'm a
technophile (lots of gadgets), but I find my friends and family are always looking for
some help where to look for answers [and perhaps some questions!] - here is a short list
of resources that I have found to be the best. ALL ARE FREEafter all, I
am a cheapskate! If you've found something better than one of the below, |
Places To Go
A Place of
Your Own
 | Free
E-Mail![[EXTERNAL]](images/leave-site.gif) [Yahoo] Nice thing about free mail services is that you can read it from the
web . |
| Permanent E-mail with Forwarding [I
recommend IName.com, see tips
below] |
| Build it yourself Home Page with News, etc. [Yahoo]
Sign up for free mail with Yahoo first (first bullet above). |
| If you want to create your own web pages, there are lots of choices. For simple
starters, I recommend "Front Page Express" which comes with Internet Explorer.
If you have Internet Explorer, click the "Help->Product Updates" and follow
directions. |
Finding Things
| Chat with a friend ONLINE AOL Instant Messenger, Excite PAL,
Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger, ICQ. You can then chat
with them, send 'em messages, files, web addresses, etc. In fact, check below and you'll
notice if I'm online or not. |
| Find a Person (or a business) via SwitchBoard
(also try Four11) |
| Find a Subject:
 | Google The best search engine bar
none.
beware, however, you may get "nasty" results from innocent searches. |
| MetaCrawler searches using the other search
tools - usually with good results.
beware, however, you may get "nasty" results from innocent searches. |
| Altavista still one of the FASTEST search
engines. |
|
| Find a place (maps, driving directions)
[Yahoo] |
| Find a Business (in any area) [yp.yahoo.com] |
Booking Travel
Reservations
Play GAMES
Online
| Check out games.yahoo.com for some good Java based
games. You should first sign up for Yahoo Mail, though. |
| There are others, of course, LOTS of others. For a list try HappyPuppy, MPOG |
Family
Resources
Things To See
Cool Pictures
Humor
Good Deals,
OnLine
Tech Stuff
E-Mail, SPAM,
and Mail Forwarding
| Obtain TWO freemail or mail forwarding service addresses.
Hopefully your PRIMARY address is easy to remember but doesn't give away too much
information about you. Your JUNK address can be anything. |
| NEVER give your PRIMARY E-mail address out to anyone but the people you HIGHLY trust.
This includes online registration - some of them are notorious for sending you junk mail. |
| Be sure if you do signup for something online, check any boxes to "don't send me
any mail" unless you really do want to hear from them. Use your JUNK mail address. I
usually don't give my real home address or phone number either! [I give 'em the local
number for weather or time :-)] |
| Forward your PRIMARY mail to your "real" E-mail address. |
| Optionally forward your JUNK mail to your PRIMARY address (which will be forwarded to
your real address). If you do this, be careful not to reply to anything that was
originally addressed to your JUNK mail address. I don't recommend that you forward your
JUNK address directly to your REAL address. It would be better to just use your JUNK mail
interface to read the mail. |
| Whenever you send E-mail to an unknown source, use the JUNK mail service (but you
may include your PRIMARY address in the text). This may be a little extra work, but it
WILL pay off. |
| NEVER NEVER NEVER reply to the "take me off your mail list" thingys. DON'T
reply to ANY junk mail. If you do this, you will have given them your REAL
address, or you have proved to them that your JUNK mail address is legitimate - it's
better if they don't know. |
| When the JUNK mail gets unpleasant, stop forwarding it. When it gets too nasty, drop it
altogether and create a new address. |
| If you post anything to a newsgroup, webpage or an online discussion group, use your
JUNK mail address. Posts are the primary way junk mailers get your address. My current
JUNK mail address is "()
" |
| ONLY put your JUNK mail address on your web pages - or hide your address
using the tool below. If you need to put a "good"
address on a web page, make a graphic and don't use the
"mailto:" tag. There are web page scanning tools that will pick up
E-mail addresses - but none are smart enough to look at a graphic and figure out what it
says!
| Note: Here is something you can cut and paste to hide
your e-mail address from "web scanners". Modify the em1
and em2 part in quotes to correspond to your address.
(<script language=javascript>
<!--
var em1 = "stevenc";
var em2 = "cheerful.com";
document.write("<a href=" + "mail" + "to:" + em1 + "@" + em2 + ">" + em1 + " @ " + em2 + "</a>");
//-->
</script>) |
|
Additional E-Mail Tips: Privacy
| You can take steps to limit the proliferation of your E-mail address, and you can help
to keep other people's E-mail addresses private as follows:
| When you send mail to a list of people that may not know one another,
send the mail as "BCC" which means "blind carbon copy". |
| Remove all of the "headers" except perhaps the originator (you can remove
that, too if you don't need to show who the originator was). |
| Ignore mail that is not addressed TO: or CC: with your e-mail. It's
probably junk mail unless some is using the first trick above. |
|
Internet
Service Providers (ISPs)
| Earthlink.net One of the better, more reliable,
more featured services that is also national. Includes dialup, 56K access, and Web space
for a flat $19.95/mo fee. [When I last checked, Mindspring, Concentric, and
others charge a signup fee and extra for web space and/or 56K access]. America Online
is notoriously slow and the web access (to build your own) is hideously ugly. |
Windows 95 and
Windows NT
|
