Number 13  

October 20, 1999
Announcements
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@educyber.com)

 

Inside Edunotes
Do You Need a Web Site

Eduwords

Ask Ed Cyber

Web Site Reviews

Office 2000 and the Internet

AOL Upgrade

Software Y2K Compliant

Educyber Site Guide
Educators
Computer Users

NOTE: Links and Web sites change frequently. All links and web sites were accurate at the time of publication.

Do You Need a Web Site?

Dot.com this, dot.com that.  www this www that.  Every where we turn these days, it seems like we're confronted with web site addresses.  Commercials and advertising exhort us to get online or get left behind.  Getting online is one thing but do you really need to have a web site? 
Whether you approach the question from the point of view of the individual or of business, there are many good reasons to have a web site. 
For individuals in our increasingly mobile society, families and friends often are hundreds or thousands of miles apart.  A web site can be a good way to communicate with them.   When our fourth child was born last week, we saved both time and money by posting the birth announcement to our website and sending the URL to friends and family.  Had we done it the conventional way, family in Japan would have had to wait more than a week to get cards with pictures.  If you are looking for work, posting your resume on your website can also increase your chances of getting a job.  A personal website is also a modern soapbox.  You can sound off on whatever issue or problem you feel passionate about.  Of course, getting people other than family and friends to visit can take time and/or money.  On the other hand, not advertising your site and password protecting your pages can make it easy to share personal information with those whom you want to know while keeping outsiders out.
For businesses, web sites offer a wide range of options from being a means of communicating with current customers to acquiring new customers to improving communications between office branches.  The idea, however, that having a web site equals advertising should be quickly negated.  Building and maintaining a website should be part of any growing company's business plan but, as mentioned above, getting visitors to a web site requires allocating resources (both time and money) appropriately.  For a small business serving a local clientele, may seem like an unnecessary nuisance but as the Internet is literally changing the business model, it would certainly be a good idea to rethink the need for a web site and research the clientele's needs.  How many of your clients/customers/partners/vendors use computers in their business?  How, when, and how often do they need to communicate with you?  Could you benefit from allowing orders or inquiries to be made 24 hours a day, even on weekends?  Do you spend a lot of time answering the same questions over and over?  If you answered yes to even one of these questions than you should give serious consideration to developing and maintaining a website.

Edunotes Newsletter
This newsletter is created by Brian and Maki DeLaet and Nick Lee at Educyber, Inc.
Subscriptions in the U.S. are free. Subscribe online at www.educyber.com or call (303) 268-2245.
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Edu Words (a glossary for computer users)
Forwarding e-mail: Forwarding an e-mail is sending a message (e-mail) that you have received to someone else.  This allows the recipient to see the original message.  In AOL, this task can be done by clicking on the "Forward" button to the right of the message window.  In Microsoft Outlook, this can be accomplished by clicking on the "Forward" button above the message window when reading an e-mail.

Spam: Spam is unsolicited e-mail, generally considered to be a waste of time and disk space.

Attachment: A file that is added to an e-mail message so that the recipient can download the file and use it.  When composing an e-mail in AOL, this can be done by clicking on the "Attachment" button below the text area and then selecting the file to be attached.  In Microsoft Outlook, click on the menu heading "Insert" and then click on "File.".


Ask Ed Cyber

Q.  Dear Ed,
I'm thinking of getting a new computer as my old one up and died on me last week. What kind of computer would you recommend and what things should I be looking for?   - Ready to Upgrade 

A.  Dear Mr. Upgrade,
You haven't really provided enough information for me to make a recommendation.  Let's assume you want a computer that will get you on the internet at fast speeds and will be powerful enough that you should be able to use for several years without having to upgrade.  Of course, budget is always an important factor and one that you didn't provide any input on.  Let's assume you're looking for a low- to mid-level computer.
If you are a Mac user, the answer is relatively simple.  The iMac is a great little machine that should meet your needs.  iMacs start at $999 and come with an Ethernet card which you'll need if you intend to use any of the high-speed internet access options (cable or DSL) available.  The only thing I don't like about the iMac is the monitor.  You're stuck with the one size.   If you've got a bigger budget try one of Apple's new G4 systems.  I haven't tried one yet but they're supposed to beat the "Wintel" (Windows + Intel) machines hands down.
If, on the other hand, you're like most of the rest of us, you'll be looking for a PC.  I've been a Gateway owner for several years and am quite happy with the machines I've had.  Other good makers to look at include Hewlett Packard (very durable machines) and Dell (mail order and made-to-order  just like Gateway).
If you want it to last, make sure it's at least a 400 MHz Celeron (or Athlon) and has USB ports.  I recommend getting 64 MB of RAM or more as applications are becoming memory hogs.  If you're going to have a dial up account, you'll need a 56 modem.  If you'll be using cable or DSL, be sure to check with your Internet Provider before buying a network card (NIC) as they may provide one or require a specific brand.
And when you find the deal that sounds too good to be true, remember . . . It probably is.
Hope this helps,
 - Ed

Correction: Thanks to reader Jane Arnold for pointing out a glaring gaffe in September's issue: Motorola (not Intel) make the chips that make Mac's go.

Office 2000 and the Internet

Though Microsoft dropped the ball with the Internet, when they finally got into it, they did a lot of things right.  Office 2000 is definitely a suite of web-ready applications.  Each application allows you to open and save files in HTML (the language of the Internet).  But, in an even more web-oriented vein, PowerPoint allows you to save entire presentations in a form that lets the same presentation be posted to a website for viewing.  Access is also very accessible for the internet, a simple to use wizard walks you through the steps necessary to allow web site visitors interact with or extract information from your database.  One of the best Internet tools that comes with some of the Office 2000 packages is FrontPage.  This is the one application that Microsoft finally got right.  It is easy to use for beginners and yet a very powerful tool for advanced users.  If you decide to make your own web site, FrontPage is probably the tool you want.  In an effort to learn html and to stay "pure" (as in hand coding everything) we have designed and maintained most of the Educyber website by hand.  However, FrontPage is now the tool of choice, saving massive amounts of time as well as enabling us to provide a more sophisticated look (stay tuned as we roll out parts of our redesigned website). 

AOL Upgrade

Attention AOL users: 5.0 is now available as a free download from www.aol.com.  The disks will probably be in the mail soon as well. 
Who should upgrade?  If you are still using 3.0 or lower, wait no longer.  The new features give you more access to the things you do.  They are also more intuitive and provide a sleek look.  If you are using 4.0 you can probably get by fine for a while but might want to take a look at the new features in 5.0 that aren't available in 4.0.
AOL continues to be the best choice for people who want to get on the Internet without having to get into the nitty gritty details of the Internet.  Go with another provider and you'll likely need to change your TCP/IP settings and set the DNS.  Confused?  Then AOL is probably for you. 
New features in AOL 5.0 include:

 -          Seven screen names per account.
 -          Screen names up to 16 characters
 -          "My Calendar" allowing you to put your schedule online.
 -          The ability to retrieve deleted mail for up to 24 hours after it was deleted.
 -          A "Locate" feature to find those files you download from email and then promptly lose.
 -          A not-yet-released feature will give even more information and resources to AOL users who connect at high speed.

 

Web Site Reviews

Urban Legends  

Urban Legends Reference Pages:

http://snopes.simplenet.com/

Urban Legends and Folklore:

http://urbanlegends.miningco.com/

 Just like old chain letters, there are numerous messages circulating in this digital world of email. Since some of them sound so real, many people promptly pass them on to their friends and acquaintances, which is exactly what the authors of these messages want. A key to determining whether the message about some incident or comment made by some celebrity that you received is true is to read the content carefully. If the message includes links to the sites you can refer to, there is a good chance that the claim is true. If instead it just tells you to pass the message along to everyone "you care about", it might be another hoax. To check whether it is a hoax, though, you can visit some of the Urban Legends sites listed above and see if the story you received is listed. There are many sites where you can go and search for the story or report any new ones you receive. The two that are listed here are just examples. It is interesting to see the kind of stories that are listed, as most of them are real enough to believe. These sites also offer newsletters via email to let you know if any new stories come up. You can also look into their archives to see the old urban legends.

Will It Work?

http://www.willitwork.com/

 Are you Ready for Y2K? Some people might be tired of hearing this already. And yet, you do want to make sure your life will not be affected by this infamous millennium-bug. There are many web sites that are dedicated to this topic and help you be ready for the future. Educyber will introduce some useful sites regarding this issue in future newsletter, and this is the first of our reviews.

WillItWork is a search engine that helps you find some answers to questions concerning the upcoming year 2000 issue. You can search not only your computer software and hardware, but also topics such as Laboratory Equipment, Medical Devices, Aerospace/Air Traffic Control, Telecommunications, and Industrial Equipment.  The site also posts Y2K related news and other topic-related web site links that you can get more information from. Computer hardware and software search can help you get to the right resource page of each company and product you use, so you can cut down on the browsing time on each company web sites to find the update information you want.

Virtual Hospital

http://www.vh.org/

 Created in 1992 at the University of Iowa, the mission of The Virtual Hospital is to provide both patients and health care providers the most current, authoritative information concerning their needs through their digital library on the Internet. Physical difficulty in attaining specific information of certain illnesses, lack of knowledge in proper care for those who in need have been the biggest problems for both doctors and families of the patients. This site has been successfully meeting such challenges and devoting itself to educate those who seek information. The site also has Virtual Children's Hospital that contains useful information for parents. You can use its search function to find information faster.  

Is Your Computer with Microsoft Software Y2K Compliant?

 

Some of you have probably received an email warning about your Windows 95, 98 or NT computer is not Y2K Compliant. According to Microsoft's Year 2000 Portal Page (http://www.microsoft.com/y2k/), there are several Email hoaxes circulating that tell you how to "fix" your computer to be make it ready for the new millennium. The hoax tells you to open the regional settings in the control panel and change the year settings to four digits instead of two. While making the changes will not harm your computer, it is not necessary to make this change. 
Microsoft states that they are not distributing any of their upgrade programs via Email, which means, you have to go get it yourself.but how? There is an Internet site where you can download a program called "Microsoft Year 2000 Product Analyzer." It is a very small program that you can download in two minutes or so and the Intel version of it is only 485k. 
When you run the program, it scans through your hard drive and recognizes what software you have installed and whether it is Y2K compliant. The form it creates is in HTML. If necessary, you can just click on a hyperlink to visit the site where you can download upgrades for each non-Y2K compliant software product.
When I ran the Analyzer on my computer, all of the software was Y2K compliant with a few conditions. Most of them had "patches" that needed to be downloaded and installed to fix minor date problems. Microsoft recommends most of the patches be installed unless you don't use any financial or spreadsheet programs in which the data depends on its date input. For the most part, the issues didn't seem that important for home computing.
To learn more about Y2K issue and to help you determine whether you need to upgrade your software, visit MSN Computing Central (http://computingcentral.msn.com/guide/

year2000/msy2k/introducing/y2khome.asp) and to download Microsoft Year 2000 Product Analyzer, visit (http://www.microsoft.com/technet/year2k/pca/

pca.htm).

This Newsletter is published by Educyber. For more information, or to subscribe, call (303) 268-2245 or Email edunotes@educyber.com ©1999 Educyber,Inc.

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