PC NEWS DIGEST: October 24, 2000 PC computing, hardware, software, searching, closeouts, news, sites, web design, humor. PLEASE NOTE:
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The SHOP-TALK FORUM for things automotive. 1.0 SUBMITTING YOUR WEBSITE TO SEARCH ENGINESVisitors to our WebShop often ask whether it's "okay" to use a paid service or automated software to submit their website to search engines and directories. Here's our answer, based on our own experience, and on the advice of professionals like Danny Sullivan, editor of The Search Engine Watch -- the bible of the industry. In short, paid services don't pay. You can do a better job yourself by using a combination of manual and automated submission. For the major search engines, and the smaller topical directories that are relevant to your website, manual submission is best. These engines and directories account for more than 90% of search traffic, so it is well worth the minimal time it takes to submit to them by hand. If you do, you'll know for sure it's done and done right. For a step-by-step guide to preparing your webpages and submitting to engines, read the Search Engine Tutorial prepared by our U.K. colleague, Jim Rhodes. On the other hand, automated submission is the smart way to deal with the thousands of minor engines and directories. These places don't generate enough traffic to justify submitting to each of them individually. For automatic submission, try the FREE set of JimTools by Jim Wilson. These are online tools that do a pretty good job, when they're available and when they're working. But this is a popular -- read "overloaded" -- service so don't count on it for critical submissions. For quick and sure submission to over 1400 engines and directories with control over inclusion, keywords, etc., Jim Rhodes' Promotion Artist software is the way to go. It's available FREE in a limited edition, sells for $60 for the standard version, and $99 for the Pro version. The Pro version submits multiple pages and multiple sites simultaneously -- a webmaster's delight. The
Search Engine Watch (Danny Sullivan) Search
Engine Tutorial (Jim Rhodes) Jim
Wilson's JimTools Promotion
Artist software 2.0 INSTANT MESSENGER FOR WEBTV -- IT'S AIMLESS!Although the number of WebTV users keeps growing and growing, WebTV'ers sometimes feel like stepchildren to "real" computer users. In fact, there are many computer programs that won't run on WebTV because it is not possible to download executable files and, more to the point, there is no hard drive to store them on. But WebTV users can exchange messages with their friends online using MSN Messenger, which is now a part of the WebTV service. That includes live chat with friends using PCs or MACs, once they download and install MSN Messenger. However, WebTV users cannot communicate with users of America Online's (AOL's) Instant Messenger (AIM). This is unfortunate because AIM is popular and boasts the largest number of users of any instant messaging service. AIM and MSN Messenger are not inherently incompatible, but when Microsoft and several leading companies called on AOL to join them in establishing an open instant messaging standard, AOL refused. AOL supports its free AIM service to attract subscribers to its profitable Internet service; interoperability would detract from that proprietary goal. MSN
Messenger Service AOL
Instant Messenger 3.0 TV GUIDE GOOD. TV GUIDE ON THE WEB BETTER.You've heard this from us before. We think computers should make life easier and more fun. Apparently, the people who publish TV Guide agree with us. They've put the Guide and then some on the web. What's so good about having TV Guide on the web -- besides the fact that it's free? It's searchable! Lots of the folks we know are TV-phobic. They watch, but not very often, so they don't know what's on, and worse, they have no way to find shows they might like. The online version of TV Guide, which seems to have all the usual features for TV-holics who want to keep up with their favorite personalities, shows the schedule all on one page and lets you search for shows by title, actor, description, category, time slot, etc. And linked to the Guide is a motion picture database, also searchable. Now that's what we call using a computer to make life easier and more fun! TV
Guide Online 4.0 WANT A WEBSITE OF YOUR OWN? LOOK HERE!For websites that work -- the WebShop at SERVENET.COM Ready to join the Internet explosion? Let our experts build a website for your business, school, club, or group. Call or write today for a quote. Want to see a sample of our work? Check out the site we're working on currently for Service Tech Tools, an automotive tools and equipment distributor in California. Service
Tech Tools The
WebShop at SERVENET.COM 5.0 SMILE: THE WORLD WIDE WEB IS ON CAMERAA webcam is a live camcorder set up so that its images are visible to you over the Internet. Because images require great gobs of bandwidth, most webcams don't provide continuous streaming. Rather they refresh the image at intervals from 15 seconds to 5 minutes. Since we're New Yorkers -- and proud of it -- our favorite webcams show off Gotham, sometimes quite spectacularly. Here
(cam1) are three views, including the Empire
State Building, from atop Friday's restaurant at
8th Avenue and 34th Street. Don't look now -- it's
a long way down! And here (cam2) is what you'd see
while dining at Houlihan's on the ground floor of
the Empire State Building. Beats a sidewalk cafe
in Paris any day! Like
more action? Here's a webcam transmitting
live from a New York City taxicab. (Can you smell
that passenger's cigar?) This
is our favorite tech-toy. Provided by France
Telecom (whatever happened to Ma Bell?), this is a
frequently refreshed view of Rockefeller Center
which is unique because you can control it -- pan,
zoom, focus -- from your own PC. And
one last unique New York image: a view of the
Brooklyn Bridge from the Manhattan side. If you got a kick out of these webcams, there are many, many more. A search in Yahoo for webcams will keep you busy for weeks. You can watch editors in their offices (don't ask why), the sun rise over Japan's Mt. Fuji, trains pulling into the station in Stuttgart, the courthouse square in Morgantown, VA. The list is endless. The quality varies -- webcams are expensive to operate, yet some are provided by private individuals. Some are turned off at night, some when the monitored facility closes. Some have color renditions reminiscent of 1950's TV shows. Your mileage may vary, but the trip should be fun. Yahoo! 6.0 OTHER WAYS TO SEARCH: ASK SCOTT, ASK JEEVESHave you ever been impressed by the helpfulness of reference librarians? Faster than you can do an online title search, they're pulling together books they think will be relevant. It's as if they have everything in the library at their fingertips. Ask Scott is like that! This delightful site, which is nicely executed, but not slick, was put together by a real-life librarian. Like a good librarian, Ask Scott will point you in the right direction and help you to understand the how the resources are organized. Ask Scott helps you search, and teaches you how to search on the Internet. But sometimes you just want answers without working too hard at forming the questions. That's when you want to Ask Jeeves. This hybrid resource, programmed with databases and branching look-up tables for many common types of questions, harnesses the power of the computer to serve up information. Ask Jeeves is surprisingly good at retrieving relevant information in response to questions asked in common English. It's so good and so much fun that other search engines and major corporate websites have licensed Ask Jeeves' technology. Ask
Scott Ask
Jeeves 7.0 IBM PENTIUM 166 THINKPAD LAPTOP ONLY $625Need a laptop for class notes, email, or writing the Great American Novel at breaktime? Here's the perfect notebook PC for that, for word processing, and just for fun. Cheap enough to knock around! This factory refurbished IBM Pentium 166 MMX ThinkPad comes with 32 MB of RAM quickened by a 256 KB cache. It has a 3 GB hard drive with Windows 95 pre-installed with an original license and distribution media included. It has an 8X CD- ROM and 1.44 MB floppy drive. The 12.1 inch XGA TFT display is driven by a Trident video system with 2 MB RAM. You'll enjoy Sound Blaster compatible MWave sound and communicate with an internal 33.6 KBS faxmodem. The price for the ThinkPad is $625, plus shipping, and tax where applicable. PayPal, X.com, M/C, Visa. Limited time offer. U.S. orders only please. One year warranty. No warranty on the battery. Call 1-212-567-3705 mailto:specials@servenet.com 8.0 LINKS TO OVER 10,000 INTERNET RADIO STATIONSWhat has radio got to do with your PC? Not much, unless you just happen to like to listen to jazz (or classical or oldies) in the background while working on your term papers (or love letters). The Radio-Locator, maintained by Theodric Young at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's WMBR-FM, is a searchable database that lets you find a radio station by geographic location, call letters, music format and more. For each station, you'll get an information page giving technical details (frequency, power, antenna pattern) and good practical stuff like the URLs for its website and audio feed. So warm up the players -- you'll want both Real Player and Windows Media Player to handle all the audio formats -- and settle back for an evening of sound computing! Radio
Locator Real
Player Windows Media Player 9.0 SHUTEYE: SLEEP FOR THE WEARY DOWNLOADERIt's good practice to turn off your office PC when you leave for the day, and your home PC when you turn in for the night. But what if you're downloading a megafile or two -- a large database, some MP3s, or perhaps a computer game or two? ShutEye, a FREE program from Mark Balthazor, will shut down your PC when the downloads are done, or, instead, just terminate your dial-up Internet connection, or just play a tone or sound, It's your choice. ShutEye incorporates a calculator that computes download time based on file size and measured Internet connection speed. Now why didn't Microsoft build this one in? ShutEye 10.0 HUMOR: YOU MIGHT BE AN EMAIL JUNKIE IF ...You wake up at 3 am to go to the bathroom and stop to check your email on the way back to bed. You get a tattoo that reads "This body best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.3 or higher." You name your children Eudora, Mozilla and Dotcom. You turn off your modem and get this awful empty feeling, like you just pulled the plug on a loved one. You spend half the plane trip with your laptop on your lap ... and your child in the overhead compartment. You decide to stay in college for an additional year or two, just for the free Internet access. You laugh at people with 28,800-baud modems. You start using smileys in your snail mail. You find yourself typing "com" after every period when using a word processor.com You start introducing yourself as "JohnDoe at AOL dot com" All of your friends have an @ in their names. Your cat has its own home page. You check your mail. It says "no new messages." So you check it again. You move into a new house and decide to Netscape before you landscape. You start tilting your head sideways to smile. THE PC CLINIC AT INSTALLATIONS PLUS+PC PROBLEMS? Help is just a mouse-click away! PC News Digest subscribers get priority treatment at the FREE personal computer clinic at Installations Plus+. The
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