| A PIECE OF MY MIND:
The color of digital money I still don't quite understand how money works. I remember my mother taking me to open my first
bank account. I only wanted one because when you opened an account, the savings and loan gave you a coin bank in the shape of a Ford Model T. I handed over my $5 and in return the nice teller presented me with the car, and a little blue bank book. My mom got up and we were leaving and I said, "Where's my money?" The teller said, "In the bank." I shook the toy car bank and heard nothing. I started to get cranky. "No it's not," I said, getting all teary-eyed. " "It's in *our* bank," she
said. I looked at the car. I looked at her. I looked at the little blue book. And then, at the top of my lungs, I screamed, "I gave you five dollars and all you gave me was this stupid little book!" The young woman explained that they kept my money for safekeeping, and when I wanted it back, all I had to was show them the book. It sounded like a racket to me. I showed her the book and said I wanted it back—now. She said, "all right, but you'll have to give me back the book and the car."
My brain froze. This was too complicated for a five year old. Money. Car. Book. Book. Money. Car. What did these people want from me? I wanted the money. I wanted the car. And now I even liked the little blue book because it was the littlest book I'd ever seen and it had gold stamped on the cover. I decided to outsmart them all. I'd take the book and car now. Then I'd come back tomorrow and get the money. I put the little blue book in a place so special I immediately forgot where it was.
But I loved the car and still have it in a box in the garage (which, given the fact that we have a couple hundred boxes, is like saying, "It's somewhere in the state of California"). My wife will tell you that my grasp of money hasn't improved much since then. I know if you do something people want, then they'll give you money. And I know money is necessary to get toys, but that's about as far as my comprehension has ever progressed. It must be even more confusing for kids today. Often
there's not even any actual money—just numbers on a screen. As the web progresses, payment systems like Paypal let anyone send money to anyone else, via e-mail. You can probably understand that. But what about kids? How hard must it be to understand that you can type $20 in one place and it means nothing, but if you type it in another it means you get a genuine birchwood model of a T. Rex? When young web designers and builders ask me how to get their start, I tell them to start by trading.
Build a web site for a local restaurant or store in trade for food or toys (though I tend to say "peripherals" which is the new word for toys). Not only can you learn a lot by working directly with a local business person, but you get something tangible out of it, not just some numbers on a screen. Because, as little as I know about money, I do know this much, courtesy of Thornton Wilder's play, The Matchmaker: "Money is like manure. It's not worth a thing unless it's spread around,
encouraging young things to grow!" Daniel Will-Harris, editor www.efuse.com
SAVE MONEY:
NETOBJECTS FUSION FOR $49! Speaking of money, it now takes less money than ever to buy a copy of NetObjects Fusion 4.0. NetObjects Fusion really is the most efficient way to build and maintain a web site. It's what I use to build eFuse.com.If you've got a credit card, you can download NetObjects
Fusion from the web for JUST $49 in the US, and $59 around the world! That's the best price ever—for the best software. One of the wonders of the web is how it's changed distribution for the first time since the invention of the wheel. And this is a perfect example. You can start using NetObjects Fusion in just the time it takes to download 29MB. No waiting for a box, CD and printed matter to arrive (in fact, you won't get a box, CD or printed matter, just the
software and documentation in Acrobat PDF format so you can print it yourself). (If you have NetObjects Fusion 2 or 3, this is a great way to get even easier web building power and upgrade your existing NOD files! But this offer is good even if you _didn't_ own a previous version) At this price, you can save more money in the first day you use it than it cost. So, using Lucynomics (based on the economic theory of Lucy Ricardo), you'll *make* money by buying it! TO BUY IT NOW:
just click here.If you want the box and CD, you can still get it all for $99. Just click here.
Workflow, Part II
Organizing Your Files And Folders At eFuse.com, we add new articles on a regular basis—every two weeks. That adds up to a lot of articles and illustrations in a lot of files. If you don't keep track of these, you can end up with either hundreds of files all over your hard disk (making it next to impossible to find things), or one gigantic directory with hundreds of files in it (slowing down your computer). Either way, it's messy. The simplest way to keep
track of your articles is to start making and methodically using folders on your hard disk. I¥ll tell you how, read all about it. It's A Pixel Eat Pixel World
(can you protect yourself?)
Your content on the web may be copyrighted, but that doesn't mean it's safe by any stretch of the imagination. Mary Carter tells you about technology that can help you protect your intellectual property— and why this technology may not be all it's cracked up to be. Read the article.
Make $5 - Cash - Free
(and give $5 to a worthy cause) (I know, this sounds like a scam, but it's legitimate.) Years after I opened my first bank account, I heard people talking about a "cashless society" where people would no longer carry money. Things haven't gone that far, but now you can use your credit card to *safely* send money anyone who has e-mail. The service, called PayPal, is *free* to both you and the person you send money to. And you make $5 for simply signing up. It couldn't be easier to sign up. Just click here. (when you sign up, *you'll* get $5, *and* $5 will get donated to a surgery fund for Maryory, a little girl you can read about at the end of this FuseLetter). You can use PayPal to let customers pay you using their
credit cards—think of it as very simple, free e-commerce. You can also use it to send money to friends, family, kids away at school, whatever. And once someone sends you money, you can have it direct deposited into a bank account, or have PayPal mail you a check. If you've cruised eBay (as everyone I know has), then you've probably already heard of PayPal, it's the most popular payment system on eBay. Why? Because it's free, fast and
easy. It costs nothing to sign up. It costs nothing to send or receive money. So sign up now. How does PayPal make money? On the "float"—the interest they accrue on the few days they hold the money. Why does PayPal pay you to join? Well, big companies routinely spend
a lot of money to get you as a customer. If you look at companies like AOL, you'll see that they'll basically give you $400 to get you to sign up (for a length of time in which you end up paying them more than they paid you). Companies, especially web companies, can live or die on the number of customers they have. Even if those customers aren't active, it lets them show their investors how fast they're growing—and they figure that you will *eventually* use their
service if you've signed up. So paying you $5 is a small price for them to pay. And for you, PayPal's free service really is useful, efficient, safe, and did I mention, free? The only drawback is that it currently only works in the United States (and not even Canada, although I'm sure they're working on that). If you're under 18 and are looking for a web-way to bank, buy, and donate to worthy causes, check out www.doughnet.com Free Forms Processing Today one of the big buzz words is ASP. This stands for "Application Service Provider," and it means that you are
getting a service through the web. One of those services which I relied on and recommended was response-o-matic.comBut one of the dangers of using any kind of service provider is that if they go out of business, you're stuck. That's what's happened with http://www.response-o-matic.com —the
simple and free way to process your forms on the web without having to learn how to code. Some idiot spammer sent out millions of e-mails that *claimed* to be from Response-o-matic but were not. This so overwhelmed and disgusted the owner of Response-o-matic, that they simply gave up—they said they were closing down for good. Happily, they are back up today. Their trouble was caused by spammers—people who were doing the wrong thing and knew it and so they usurped
someone else's domain name. It's just another example of how Spammers are evil and cost us all time money with their "free" e-mail! Read why spamming is bad, and how you can avoid doing it yourself.It's great that Response-o-matic is back online, but what do
you do if they disappear? Response-o-matic points you to http://www.cgi-resources.com/ but if you are like me and any kind of programming gives you a headache, this isn't much help.If you use NetObjects Fusion, coolmaps has a component called the "Club Mailer" which processes forms easily and e-mails you the results. The Club Mailer component is included in a standard membership that costs $39 per year ($10 off the normal membership price). Sign up for a free trial membership.Then upgrade to a standard membership. The standard membership includes Club Mailer, Club Poll (for easily
adding polls to your site), Webbies (get listed on their web developer map), xChange (advertise your biz on CCC and other member sites), and discounts in their software store. Their Gold membership costs $230 (a $19 savings if you first sign up as a guest) and includes _all_ their components and services. The most through system for forms processing is www.Boomasoft.com WebForms. Not only does it build forms, but it then creates a database of responses. You can use this database to communicate with your customers. There's no coding of any kind. If you do a lot of forms, it's something to consider for $99.There are some general purpose free form processing sites, too. I have not personally used these systems, so I can only say they're there, not how well they work: http://www.Freedback.com is an advertiser-supported free forms processing system. http://www.formsite.com/ offers a free level, as well as a
$19 a month level (with more features, of course). So, for now, http://www.response-o-matic.com is alive and useful. But the lesson is—always have a back-up plan. Jumpola For Designers Artist, author (and, we think, genius) Chuck Green (he write eFuse.com's The Mix column) couldn't find what he was
looking for. He wanted a non-partisan home page with the tools and information a designer uses day-to-day. Can't find it? Do it yourself. In May, Chuck launched the Designer's Jumpola — The ultimate start page for desktop publishers and web designers at Jumpola. Go visit it today! Schminovation Microsoft has gone on lately about how they have to be "free to innovate," as if they're the only people on the planet who know how. In 1997, a group of women on the web created the "Digital Divas." In 1998, they trademarked DigitalDivas and bought the domain name. Their members offer "articles, tutorials
and advice about computer and Internet use and applications." In April 2000, Microsoft launched a web site called digitaldiva.com, offering "articles, how-to tips, and advice on computer and Internet use and applications." How *did* they think of that? Must be all that "innovation" they're so famous for. The original DigitalDivas sent a "cease and desist" letter to Microsoft, who has yet to respond. You can read more about this, and do what you can to help by visiting
http://www.digitaldivas.com/gol/ How safe is *your* domain name from "innovation"? Feed The Hungry
With Just A Click
Here's a great idea. All you have to do is visit this site and click on the Donate Free Food button. When you do, a sponsoring corporation will make a donation to feed a starving person for one day. You can do this once a day, and it costs nothing to you personally. Also visit their Rain Forest Site where a click helps buy land for the Nature Conservancy Help A Little Girl It's great to donate to charities that help lots of people. But
sometimes, it's good to help individuals. Here's a case. Friends of mine adopted a 2-year old named Maryory from Central America. She's a bright little girl and is very loving. She also has multiple birth defects and needs heart, spine, and kidney surgery soon if she is to survive. This little girl could use *your* help. If you wish to make a donation, a fund has been set up for her at Oak Grove United Methodist Church. You can send you inquiries or donations
to Oak Grove United Methodist Church, c/o Donna Langford, 97 Elias Whiddon Rd., Hattiesburg, MS 39402 or e-mail any questions to mailto: thehill@netdoor.com. You could also use Paypal to send them a donation; that's where my portion of the money is going if you use the link mentioned earlier to sign up for Paypal :-)
One Final Word I use a lot of italics, but since there are no italics in ASCII e-mail, I've been using _underscores_ like this. A few readers suggested I try using *asterisks* instead, like *this* so I'm trying it. If you have any preferences, let _me_ know! And if you're healthy and happy, be grateful and try to spread it around ;-)
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