• Intro - Direct Marketing Dilemma
  
• Interview with Will Bontrager
  Choosing A Web Host: Part 1 of 3
  
• Word Processing Tips
  Reveal Codes in Microsoft Word
  
• Free Stuff
  
• Tech Tips - Upgrading Your PC Operating System: Claudia Slate
  
• Writing Tips
  When Do You Capitalize The Seasons Of The Years?
  Difference Between "Bring" and "Take"
  Using The Word "Media" Correctly
  
• Writing Resources
  BrainyQuote
  Email Or E-mail? Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
  Secrets Of Writing For The Internet: Nick Keith
  Writing Focus: Trevor Lockwood
  
• Presentation Tips
  White Space Between Text And Borders
  
• Recommendations
  Customer Focus Calculator
  Grok.com
  HomeBusinessOnline
  How Surge Protectors Work
  Daniel Will-Harris Typofile
  
• Trivia
  Gene Pool
  This To That
  Work-At-Home Scams

Welcome! I hope you enjoy the first issue of Communication Expressway, and I hope you make some valuable discoveries. We have some dynamic talent in each issue. People like Will Bontrager and Claudia Slate. And more to come. Our feature interview on how to choose a Web host was so rich with data that we're breaking it into three sections. This is a Must Read if you want to offer robust communication features on your Web site.

I have a lot of fun analyzing presentations: the way business documents and Web sites look. May I give you an example, then ask for your opinion?

Recently I got a piece of local direct mail. Hand-written address and a three-color logo return address. First class postage. Two sheets. Both photocopies with lots of smudges, since they'd copied from paper that had shaded areas.

This was from a sales rep for a company selling warehouse shelving, work benches, racks, etc. The opening page had a heading in all caps and underlined, and the following four paragraphs were also all upper case. A few words were bolded and underlined. His signature was photocopied. This page had a form to fill out and fax if I wanted their new catalog.

Page 2 paper was in a day-glo color, with smudges where the original had shading. The sales rep has penned in a few brief things, and at the bottom of the page, also in ink, it said, "John Doe - sales rep." Not a signature: his name was printed.

SURVEY TOPIC: How could the sender have done a more effective job, assuming the text is satisfactory?

I have a survey at ossweb.com and invite you to participate. Plenty of room for comments. I'll publish the results in the next issue of Communication Expressway.

CHOOSING A WEB HOST: PART 1 - GENERAL QUESTIONS
Interview with Will Bontrager

Q. Most people understand a bit about what to ask for when seeking a Web host: POP3 e-mail accounts, aliasing, and forwarding; FTP access; FrontPage extensions; and disk space. But how should people who want to use WillMaster CGI forms (a standard in the industry) look for a Web host that has what you consider important features? What are those features?

A. Mainly, look for a UNIX/Linux hosting account with a CGI-BIN THAT'S CUSTOMIZABLE. Some accounts provide a cgi-bin, but only for THEIR scripts: you can't provide your own. That's not good unless everything they provide is all that you will need in the foreseeable future.

PERL. Almost every hosting company that provides Perl, provides version 5+. If they don't, run the other way, because they're years behind the times. Ask if they have all modules of the standard Perl distribution installed or, if not, if they're willing to install what may be needed in the future.

RESPONSIVE CUSTOMER SUPPORT is important, especially after the sale, when a quick answer can make a lot of difference.

Budget hosting companies must save operational money somewhere. Often it's customer support, because it's expensive. Sometimes it's tech staff availability that suffers. UNIX server gurus (and NT gurus, too) can demand very high salaries. Sometimes the server is slow because there are too many hosting accounts on one machine. (We'll go into the details in Interview 3)

Paying higher rates for hosting does not guarantee service and responsive servers. But paying budget rates guarantees that expenses are cut somewhere, that the hosting division is being subsidized, or that the company is slowly (maybe quickly) sliding into the red.

Q. Can you recommend a good Web host? A. The only company I can recommend from experience is iServer.com. We've been with them almost since the beginning.

Q. Do you like NT servers? If not, why not?

A. I almost always recommend UNIX/Linux servers. For several reasons:

• Our Master Series of CGI programs are built for UNIX/Linux.
  
  
• There are more UNIX/Linux servers in use at hosting companies than there are NT.
  
  
• Almost all server attacking virii released during the past year were directed at NT servers.
  
  
• The majority of readily available free Perl CGI programs, are built for UNIX/Linux.

Q. Some of my readers may wonder why they should have ANY forms on their sites. They may believe that simply having good presentation and getting a lot of visitors will be enough to successfully sell their products or services. Comments?

A. At the barest minimum, provide a feedback form and a "recommend this site" form. Do so even if you have to use a free services like freedback.com and recommend-it.com

The feedback form will be used a lot more than a mailto: link. The form is right there on the page. The "mailto:" link requires loading the visitors' email program. People like things easy. Give it to them. They'll make it worth your while with suggestions and even reports of broken links you might have missed.

The "recommend this site" form because no site visitor is more valuable than one pre-qualified and recommended by a friend. It is free publicity, a good service to your visitors (again, making it easy), and there is always the chance that one single recommendation can lead to loads of business.

Master Feedback and Master Recommend are free programs from the Master Series. As an added bonus, both are designed to help you spam-proof your site. See willmaster.com

(We grew a numerology site from less than 100 page views a day to more than 2000 page views a day in about 18 months, primarily by making "recommend this site" forms available at any point where the visitor might think of someone who might like a feature, such as at the reading forms and following the readings themselves.)

NEXT ISSUE: PART 2 - TO PERL OR NOT TO PERL? An interview with Will Bontrager

REVEAL CODES IN MICROSOFT WORD
Recently a colleague who is a Virtual Assistant asked the following question, and received three complementary answers, which goes to show there's more than one way to use Microsoft Word!

I'm trying to get rid of this stupid line in formatting and nothing I do will get rid of it. How do I turn on the feature in Word that shows the symbols of every command you've typed in a document? I know there's something similar to it in WordPerfect called "reveal codes" that shows all the commands you use in a document.

1. Go to Tools, then Options, then View and under Formatting put a check by ALL. Claudia Slate
2. Shift + Control + * (asterisk) will turn it on and off. Jackie McGinnis
3. Go to the top menu. You'll see a paragraph marker symbol. Click on that and your "codes" will be revealed. Angela Allen

FREE BOOK! Subscribers are eligible to sign up to win a free copy of "The Home Office and Small Business Answer Book: Solutions to the Most Frequently Asked Questions About Starting and Running Home Offices and Small Businesses" by Janet Attard. Sign up once a month at www.ossweb.com/freebook.html - Winners announced here!

FREE EDITING! If you like this e-zine, recommend it to your friends. Each month I'll have a drawing for those that participate, and the winner gets two hours of editing or site analysis by...yep...me. Here's the URL: www.ossweb.com/recommend-ezine.html

FREE DICTIONARY! Webgrammar offers all site visitors the chance to win a free Webster's dictionary, monthly. Visit! Sign up! www.webgrammar.com/contest.html

DO YOUR HOMEWORK BEFORE UPGRADING YOUR PC OPERATING SYSTEM
Claudia Slate

How easy is it to upgrade your PC's operating system? It depends. Upgrading from NT or Win2K is generally not too bad and may provide access to a bit more hardware than W2K did. But moving from ME or 9X to XP is going to cost a lot more than the expense of the OS software alone. It could also mean waiting to use some items until the manufacturer provides the drivers.

I had some of that happen with my move to Win2K. My HP5200C scanner still doesn't load correctly with Win2K, despite purchasing an upgrade CD from HP. My smart Intel keyboard is not smart with Win2K. It's still a nice keyboard, but the extra buttons just collect dust, and My trusty Lexmark 1100 inkjet printer will always print through the Win98 bootup mode.

None of these items were major hassles for me, as I've got other, higher end equipment that does work with Win2K. But I would have been up a creek if I hadn't known how to create a system that can boot to either Win 98 or 2K.

There are a number of ways to tell how easy the upgrade will be for you:

1. Microsoft offers the Microsoft Hardware Compatibility List and, if you can handle a 30MB download, run the Windows XP Upgrade Advisor.

2. Also worth a visit is NT Compatible as it carries info on win2K and XP as well.

Caution: the LICENSE ACTIVATION SCHEME may prevent you from installing and using all of the features of XP on, for example, a laptop, if your purchased CD has already been installed and activated on another computer system. It may work for a while, but eventually--if you do not go through the process of activating the license--some features of XP will be disabled. The whole purpose of the new licensing activation program is to keep users like you and me from installing one copy of the operating system on more than one computer.

I have not read the licensing agreement for Office XP – used to be you had the right to install it on two systems, so you could put it on your laptop as well as your desktop, but there are a limited number of installs even for that – 25, I think. I don´t know what the current license for Office XP says in that regard.

P.S. Here's a site to bookmark: THE DEFINITIVE PRINTER REPAIR RESOURCE

WHEN DO YOU CAPITALIZE THE SEASONS OF THE YEARS? In ordinary writing, spring, summer, autumn, and winter are rarely capitalized. You'll find them capitalized in poetry when they are personalized, and in titles like "Winter Olympics."

WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN "BRING" AND "TAKE"? "Bring" suggests motion toward the speaker, while "take" suggests motion away from the speaker. Examples: "Please bring chocolate cake with you when you come to the office....Please take this to Jon when you go to see him....You may take my copy with you if you'll bring it back by Friday."

"MEDIA" According to Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, the singular "media" and its plural "medias" originated in the field of advertising over 50 years ago; they are apparently still so used without stigma in that specialized field. In most other applications media is used as a plural of medium." Strictly speaking "media" can be singular or plural in construction. However, the Associated Press Styleguide (2001) considers "media" as plural, in the sense of mass communication. You choose.

NEED A GOOD QUOTATION OR TWO? TRY BRAINYQUOTE

EMAIL OR E-MAIL?
Internet pioneer and writer Kaitlin Duck Sherwood gives her relaxed, reasonable opinion on this style issue. Sherwood is author of the Author of the "Overcome Email Overload" series.

SECRETS OF WRITING FOR THE INTERNET - Nick Keith is a writer, author and editor, and has been in the business for 30 years. www.keithnews.com/winninginfo/writing/writingsecrets.shtml

WRITING FOCUS - Trevor Lockwood shows writers how to focus on writing skills. Lots of resources, and be sure to visit the page, "Tools of the Trade" if you're doing any kind of publishing, DeskTop or otherwise. http://www.author.co.uk/write/index.html

WHITE SPACE BETWEEN TEXT AND BORDERS
It's a good idea to make space for text in tables and boxes a bit away from the edges. In Web design, you can usually do this by using cellpadding. In DTP, it depends on the program. In Microsoft Publisher, go to Format/Text Frame Properties and change the inside margins.

If you like the box size, and the default design makes the text too close to the edge, highlight the text and decrease the font size.

For a visual explanation of the benefits of white space in a box, go to www.webgrammar.com/whitespace.html

CUSTOMER FOCUS CALCULATOR
A unique, free analysis tool that counts certain words on your site that are key indicators of whether or not your focus is on the customer. Also offers the Customer Focus Calculator on text or ad copy. If you're wondering how your visitors or target market will respond to your writing, test it here.

GROKDOTCOM, an online sales newsletter that covers online conversion techniques, web design, usability, and consumer psychology. Also has a terrific interactive e-zine moderated by Adam Boettiger.

HOMEBUSINESSONLINE.COM FORUMS, operated by Dave and Heidi Perry. Your editor is moderating a couple of them, as well. Drop by and share your knowledge and wisdom. And sign up for Heidi's excellent e-zine.

HOW SURGE PROTECTORS WORK

DANIEL WILL-HARRIS: TYPOFILE
About the love (and use) of type (and technology).

GENE POOL: A Chart for Figuring Relationships Ever wondered what to call your grandfather's brother's son?

THIS TO THAT: About glue and related products. Helps you choose the right glue for your bonding requirements. Drop-down lists so you can choose, say, the products that best bond ceramic to styrofoam.

WORK-AT-HOME SCAMS: The National Consumers League Internet Fraud Watch (IFW) says that during the first ten months of 2001, work- at-home scams are in the top ten in terms of consumer loss. Online auction sales remained the number one Internet fraud. Other top frauds for 2001, in order: non-auction sales of general merchandise, Nigerian money offers, Internet access services, Internet adult services, computer equipment/software, work-at-home plans, advance fee loans, credit card issuing, and business opportunities. More at: www.nclnet.org/shoppr1101.htm

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Contact Judy Vorfeld at www.ossweb.com.contact.html

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