My 2¢ Worth

y heart goes out to the family and friends of the brave astronauts who lost their lives when the space shuttle, Columbia broke up upon re-entry Saturday. May God grant you comfort in your time of mourning.

ou know, tragedy strikes someone every day; yet it is events like these that effect the whole United States, if not the world.

here is another reason why I, personally am saddened by Columbia's accident. People are already demanding that we do away with manned space flight and some say the space program altogether, just as they did after Challenger accident 17 years ago.

 have always been a big supporter of the space program. Yes, even while most claim that it's a big waste of tax dollars. I can think of bigger wastes. Like the 3 million spent on the study of the flow of ketchup!

hat most folks don't realize is that there are many practical benefits to space exploration. Advances in space technology have a dramatic effect on Earth technology. Benefits range from new ergonomic solutions for people who do repetitive work to industrial medical X-ray machines.

early all of the biggest advances in technology in the last 50 years have come about either directly or indirectly as a result of the space program. Perhaps the best example of this is the computers you are using to access this E-zine today.

 can still recall when computers with far less power than the desktop computers of today filled a whole room! In high school, we used to connect to the huge computer at the University of Minnesota via modem. The modems of those days were cradles where you put you telephone handset. That was cutting edge technology! We've "come a long way, baby!"

Feature Article

What Good Are Autoresponders Anyway?

by: Dan B. Cauthron Earn-Revenew.com

From time to time, we find ourselves mildly amazed by the fact that some aspiring Internet business people are attempting to conduct daily business without the aid of a simple autoreponse system. Now, many types of online business contact and communication should still be done by personal email. In those cases where specific issues need to be addressed, a hand drafted message is the only answer. It also serves as a demonstration of respect and appreciation toward the recipient.

Yet we wonder just how anyone can successfully operate an Internet based business without the aid of an autoresponse system to handle at least some of the daily email load. We can easily equate it to something like a carpenter trying to work without a hammer.

Let's clarify what an autoresponder really is, and then describe some of the types that are available. This may be mundane fodder for some who already know the answers. Still, we receive numerous questions each week on this very topic from folks who don't.

AUTORESPONDER: Any software system that automatically delivers a pre-written message or sequence of messages after being triggered by an incoming email inquiry.

There are three basic types of autoresponder systems. Each one has its own pros and cons. It's up to you to do the homework and decide which type best suits your own needs.

1. WEBHOST BASED AUTORESPONDER

Most of the better webhosting services offer an unlimited amount of autoresponders that can be easily configured from the domain control panel. These are an essentially cost-free feature of your hosting service, and can be put to good use in some areas of business.

Advantages involve your ability to configure an unlimited number (typical with most webhosts) of autoresponse addresses that come direct from your domain. Set up usually takes five minutes or less, and can be a life-saver when you've came across a ripe product or program that you want to get quickly into the promotion loop.

Disadvantages surround the (again typical) inability to deliver more than a single message. For the most part, webhost based autoresponders are one-shooters, without the capability to deliver a pre-written promotional sequence. In addition, none that we have seen allow for personalization tags (!fname - !firstname! etc.) within the headline and message body.

2. ONLINE BASED AUTORESPONDER SERVICES

These are typically presented as a subscription service, where you are required to pay a monthly fee for ongoing use of the system. Costs can vary, and have of late begun to vary greatly. By all means, do your comparison shopping before you sign anything.

Advantages include ease of accesibility and absence of maintenance requirements on your part. Typically, you will have full customizing capability of outgoing messages, and will be able to pre-program a sequence of up to 52 follow-up messages. In addition, you'll have the advantage of automatic unsubscribe/removal functions, meaning less work for you.

The big disadvantage is, of course, that you pay through the nose each month for the service. That makes it all the more critical that you get the fullest possible advantage from this type of service.

Based on the extensive array of features offered, we're particularly interested in the online service offered behind this link: Earn- Revenew.com/wmail even though we haven't yet subscribed. We do know and trust the operators as being totally ethical and above board in everything they have ever done on the Internet.

3. DOMAIN BASED AUTOREPONDER SOFTWARES

These are free standing autoresponse software systems that actually "live" on your own domain. In other words, you own and operate the autoresponder from your website.

The big advantage here is obvious . . . you have no monthly subscription payments. You'll also have the capability for unlimited numbers of addresses/message sequences and typically an unlimited number of follow-up messages. In actuality, you'd be able to pre-program, in advance, any number of message sequences to run for literally several years.

Disadvantages surround the fact that you are responsible for maintenance and breakdowns. With a well written program, this shouldn't happen. Stars shouldn't fall from the sky either, but they do. Additionally, some domain based autoresponder systems are configured only for form-box sign ups, meaning you would not have an actual mailto: address to plug into your advertising. Check before you buy. We make daily use of, and recommend the domain based system behind this link: www.Earn-Revenew.com/lmail

No matter how you choose to approach the issue of autoresponder usage, one thing is a sure bet. If you're not using at least some sort of autoresponse system in your daily business online, you're not only working too hard, you're missing out on a majority of the potential for growth and development of your business.

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Dan B. Cauthron offers original marketing insights and a 7-Volume eMarketing Library to all new subscribers.
Join his list by visiting www.Earn- Revenew.com or send your name and email address to Dan@Earn-Rev enew.com

Always use proper file naming conventions

One of the most common mistakes web design newbies make is to use improper file naming conventions on their images. Then when their images won't display, they wonder why. The problem is that not all Web servers and browsers display the same way. The trick is to use HTML and file naming conventions that are common to all systems and browsers.

When you save an image in an image editor like Adobe Photoshop, you can name it whatever you want. However, there are several characters you should never use in a filename:

It's often convenient to use a long descriptive name like "My dog Rex.jpg" but when the Web server sees this it will stop reading the file name once it gets to the space. It will then look for a file called "My". The solution for this is to use underscores ("_") instead of spaces People also often include dates in their filenames, such as "WifePix-6/20/00.jpg". In this case, the Web server will think that the slashes actually indicate directories. It will assume you mean that there is a file called "00.jpg " which is inside a directory called "20" which is itself inside a directory called "WifePix-6" The solution here is to use some other syntax for dates. A common way to express dates on the Web is to indicate the year, month, and date in that order without punctuation. For example, the filename indicated above could be written as: " WifePix-20000620.jpg". Another common mistake is to use apostrophes as in: "My_dog's_pic.jpg". In this case, the Web server will think the apostrophe is a quote and will look for a file called "My_dog". Never use apostrophes or quotation marks within a filename.

Nearly all other punctuation marks can also cause problems. In general, it's safest to use only lower-case letters, numbers, and underscores.

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Second Article

DVD Backup Made Easy

by: Johan Malmberg LIUtilities

If you are running backups on a regular basis, you have probably come across the problem that CDRs or CDRWs are simply to small for some backups. While you could split your backups to multiple CDs, this is not a very good solution if you have to backup 10GBs of data. The solution to this problem is to use DVDRs or DVDRWs instead. Since a DVD can easily store as much as 7 CDs, you could backup 5 to 10 GBs to a single DVD with a little compression. Using DVDs instead of CDs will speed up large backups considerably and will also greatly simplify storage.

Compression In order to use the DVD media more efficiently you will probably want to compress your backup before writing it to the DVD. Compression can often reduce the size of a backup by 50% or more, doubling the capacity of your DVDs. A DVDR can usually store 4.7GBs of data and with compression you should be able to store about 10GBs on a single DVD. If you have ever tried to compress a 10GB file you probably know that this will take a lot of time. If you have a 20GB harddrive you might also have a problem storing the temporary uncompressed backup file. Since WinBackup compresses files on-the-fly backup operations are performed considerably faster. The built-in compression also reduces the need for a large temporary storage location and makes it much easier to run large backups to DVD-R or DVD-RW.

Encryption When storing backups on CDs or DVDs, security can easily become a problem. Since DVDs can easily get lost or even stolen, you need to protect your backups from unauthorized access by using some kind of password protection or even encryption. A backup often contains emails, important documents and other sensitive information. In fact, if you backup your entire harddrive, your backup could even contain passwords to computers and websites. WinBackup allows you to password protect and encrypt your backups with up to 256 bit encryption, making it virtually impossible for anyone without the correct password to access your files. Since encryption can be performed automatically on all backups you do not need to worry about security every time to save a backup to DVD.

Integrated DVD Writing Even though many pc owners have a DVD writer installed in their computer, surprisingly few use it to backup important data. One reason for this could be that many users feel that writing to DVDs is a little complicated. With WinBackup this is no longer true. WinBackups integrated CD/DVD writing features makes it easier than ever before to write backups directly to CDs or DVDs without knowing anything about DVD Writing. Storing your backup on a DVD is as simple as inserting an empty DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM, DVD+R or DVD+RW into your DVD Writer and clicking on "Run Backup". You can even leave a DVDRW in the DVD writer and schedule WinBackup to automatically update the contents daily. WinBackup also makes it easy to backup emails, documents or internet favorites with built-in shortcuts to important user data.

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Johan Malmberg,
j ohan@linteractive.com
www.liutilities.com
Johan Malmberg is working as an marketing manager for LIUtilities.

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