Newsletter ArchiveSUBJECTs:Reader Feedback - Getting Started The Internet 800 Directory - http://www.inter800.com The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter This issue is for Friday, May 03, 2002 Table of Contents 01. Reader Feedback 02. Getting Started 03. Tip Of The Week-Don’t Hide Extensions *01 Reader Feedback Welcome to The Internet 800 Directory Newsletter, this week I thought I would share some of the feedback we received from a couple of our readers. <--Pres Pumphrey wrote concerning spam:--> While the pornography, medical quacks, and transparent Nigerian investment scams are the most annoying, the supposed legitimate senders are crashing the system. Firms I regularly do business with, blitz me with email because it is so cheap for them to send it. For example, Staples sometimes sends two emails in the same day! <--End Quote--> In my estimation, E-mail marketing to your customer base is a critical part of building Internet sales. However, Pres' comment reminds us how important moderation is to increasing your sales. If you bombard your customers with e-mail solicitations, you can harm your relationship and lose customers instead of gaining sales. <--Paul Davis wrote me on his personal experiences with auction fraud:--> Auction fraud: OK, everyone's aware of auction fraud, and you mentioned the importance of doing due diligence before you send money. But here's a wrinkle you didn't mention: 1.Scammer advertises something on e-bay, usually a computer or other high-value item, and says he's "with" our company, The Davis Company. He might even show our main url ( http://davis-company.com ), so people can see it's a big, well established site. 2.When the bid is won, scammer advises the winner to send the winning bid amount to us, usually by cashier's check or wire transfer. 3.Scammer goes to http://e-gold.com and opens a free account in the victim's name. e-gold assigns a number. 4.Scammer advises the victim to put a "transaction number" (which is really the e-gold account number) with the funds, either on the check or on the comments field of the wire. Scammer requires victim to advise method of intended payment. 5.Scammer goes to our e-gold exchange site (see link below), and fills out our form indicating an intention to send us funds for the purchase of e-gold. We are directed to deposit the gold into the scammer's account, but the name entered for the transaction is the victim's. 6. We get the victim's money, we match it with the website order, we go to the e-gold site, we see the victim's name on the account. All appears to be in order, so we send the gold. About a week later we get a phone call from the victim: "Where's my computer?" What computer? We don't sell computers! "Don't you have someone named "Joe Scammer working for you?" Nope, sorry, never heard of Joe Scammer. "Well what happened to the umpty thousand I sent to your company then? Joe Scammer said The Davis Company was sending me a computer!" You ordered a batch of e-gold, and we filled an order for purchase of e-gold with that money. " I never heard of e-gold, and I sure never ordered any!" and so on, you get the idea. We now have countermeasures in place that seem to have plugged this hole, but several people lost several thousand dollars on it, and numerous other e-gold market makers who apparently don't use our countermeasures are still reporting it.” <--End Quote--> If you have any thought or ideas you would like to share with me, please send them to Chuck Arning at chuck@inter800.com We’re Talkin’ Serious” Bone Suckin’ Sauce ! Winner: “Battle Of The Sauces.” Created in true western North Carolina style. Tomato based all-natural, sweetened with honey and molasses. Order your Box of six today for $39.99 +s/h. Toll-Free 1-800-446-0947 or online http://www.BoneSuckin.com *02 Getting Started This article is designed primarily for the new or intermittent computer user, however, some more experienced users might find a useful crumb or two as well. If you're like me, at some point in the not-too-distant past, you felt this overwhelming need to purchase a computer and join the online community. As soon as you set up your machine, turned it on and hit the Internet, your first thought might have been, "Now what?". Unlike TV, the Internet requires some direction from the user. You can simply turn on the TV and let it send you it's scheduled programming. Conversely, you have to tell the Internet what you want to see. On one hand, this is a great improvement. I choose the content I view and I view it at my leisure. On the other hand, this can frustrate new users, as some really don't know where to begin. Before you sit down at your new computer, I recommend making a list of things you want to see. This list may include questions you want answered, gathering info about products you're interested in buying, or simply being entertained. Speaking in generalities, almost anything you might want to know can be found on the Internet. The best source for finding information on a particular subject may vary depending on the subject matter, but in most situations, Google (http://google.com) is the place to start. Google acts the way we would expect a search engine to act, scouring the web for any trace of the words we set it to search for. If you're looking for a company's phone number, type in the company name, city, state and/or a word or two describing their product/service. Even if the company doesn't have a web site, you will most likely find some web site that lists their contact info. I've been sent hundreds of requests for contact info for specific businesses and Google seldom lets me down. Travel is one area the Internet can be most useful. My wife was reluctant to use the Internet until we planned our vacation. She found that she could actually see the hotel rooms before we made our choice (as well as their pool), compare rates and find other activities in the area. Discounts and coupons abounded. Local weather reports, maps and the ability to purchase tickets to upcoming events are a few of the other benefits of doing your travel preparation online. The Internet is also extremely useful in finding rare or hard to acquire products. eBay (http://ebay.com) is an excellent site to find things that don't appear in your local stores. Overture (http://overture.com), a pay per click search engine, also works well if you're searching for a specific product. Their listings pay for placement on the results list for their specific key words, so if you type in "paintball", you get a list of companies that sell paintball related products. Since advertisers pay for this exposure, unlike Google, all of the top responses will be companies selling what you seek. Comparison-shopping from your own home is also much easier than the pre-internet alternative (especially at 10:00pm) and offers many more options. Many of the things we do offline, can now be done more effectively online. For example, both my wife and I have replaced reading the local paper and watching the local news with the Internet. News, sports and weather can be viewed from a variety of different sources, from national media outlets like CNN to local enterprises such as your hometown paper. Unlike my local TV news program, I choose which stories I want to read and abandon those that don't interest me. With the local newspaper, I'm limited to those stories the paper's editors deemed important. Online, I can pick from a variety of sources, including those that cater to my specific interests. The variety of information available on the Internet is extensive. You can play cards with real live people or find a recipe to fit that salmon you bought, but don't know how to cook. You can read about the developments in the Middle East from a national news source, and then again from the Israeli perspective and one more time from the Palestinian point of view. Here is a list of sites I use most often: http://google.com http://gotollfree.com http://allrecipes.com http://sportingnews.com http://cnn.com http://mapquest.com George Paul (http://gotollfree.com) The Internet 800 Directory 800-299-1879, george@gotollfree.com Vegas Vacation has the best rates on Las Vegas Hotel Rooms. Don't make a reservation without calling us first! Call 800-637-6442 or visit our ad in the Internet 800 Directory: http://inter800.com/02281174.htm Tip of the Week <---Frank Schaedlich provided a useful tip when he wrote:--> One thing that strikes me as totally brain dead is a default setting of Explorer that is to: HIDE EXTENSIONS FOR KNOWN FILE TYPES That way, even if someone is smart enough not to open an email attachment from within their email program, they can get clobbered later by trying to open a file named something like: coolphoto.jpg.exe Which displays in Explorer as coolphoto.jpg” <--End Quote--> Thanks Frank, that’s a great tip and one of the first things I change when setting up a new machine. Here is how you change the setting so you can see the file extensions while using Windows Explorer.
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