Please read the newsletter this month. It has very important items (#1 and
#2) about upgrades to your account and about problems you may have
in reading Cruzio's bills. Thanks, Happy New Year!
Cruzio/The Internet Store Newsletter - Number 30, December 29, 1999
1) Please watch for your Cruzio bills
2) New features on your account at no extra charge
3) Brown bag event coming up: "Putting your Business Online"
4) Downtime in January? Cruzio classes
5) DSL status: Doing well
6) What Cruzio is doing on New Year's Eve
7) What Cruzio suggests you do on New Year's Eve
8) Getting to your Admin page
9) About This Newsletter
10) How to Reach Cruzio (dial-in or tech support)
1) Please watch for your Cruzio bills
The good news is, Cruzio has a new billing system which will help us
better track accounts and offer options to our members. More good news
is that the billing system seems to be billing our customers accurate
amounts at appropriate intervals -- a very basic requirement which we
are watching closely.
The bad news is, changing a basic system always has its glitches. Please
have patience, we are working on all the issues as we see them. Here are
some things you may need to be aware of:
- If your credit card is automatically billed, you will see
a statement that doesn't mention auto-debiting. Don't worry,
we know who has this service. We will bill your card within
5 days of your due date as usual, and we will let you know if
there are any problems.
- The bills aren't plain text any more. Most e-mail programs will
simply interpret the bills, which are set up for viewing on
the Web. But older e-mail programs will see some computerese
gobbledeegook which you may find confusing. Please let us know
if you get a bill and can't read it -- send e-mail to
billing@cruzio.com (just replying to the e-mail will do the
trick). Or, if you wish to try to sort through it to see your
total due it's an e-mail with this subject:
"Cruzio/The Internet Store, Inc Billing Statement"
and about 2/3 of the way down the mail you can find these lines:
Amount due:
57.00
Note that in the middle of all the "<>"s, there are the words
"amount due" on one line, followed by a line that contains an
amount. That's your payment due.
We are working (hard!) on getting the bills into a universally
readable format.
- The date on the bills is different. It used to be the bills
were dated with the day they were sent. Now they're dated with
the date that they are _due_. You have a grace period of 14
days after the due date before any changes are made to your
account.
- For those of you who are forced, through unusual and
uncontrollable circumstances, to pay your bill late, please
be aware that we are not sending out late notices through
the regular ("snail") mail right now. We will be reinstating
this system as soon as possible.
Thanks for your patience!
2) New features on your account
All accounts on Cruzio have been upgraded. Every dial-up or DSL account
on Cruzio now comes with one cruzio.com mailbox (as always) and an
additional five (5) extra mailboxes with a choice of alternate domains.
All Internet Office, or Custom Domain accounts, receive five (5) extra
mailboxes on their domain.
The 5 extra mailboxes are available to everyone with an existing account.
It's free of charge.
If this service matches one that you were paying for, Cruzio has reduced
your rate accordingly.
But that's not all. Also, effective immediately, each of those free extra
mailboxes has 10 megabytes of web space available with it. That means that,
rather than 10 MB of web space, now 60 MB of web space comes with a standard
Cruzio account (in 10 MB chunks).
How can you use all these new features? You set up and tear down the
mailboxes yourself, from your "admin" page. (For instructions on getting
to your admin page, see topic "Getting to your Admin page", below). When
you set up a mailbox, you get the web space automatically. The URL of
the web space will be www.alternatedomain.com/~your_mailbox_name -- see
examples below. Mailboxes are easy to create and destroy... just be
careful, because when you destroy a mailbox, you lose its associated
web space, too.
Why? Well, Cruzio is examining different ways of conducting business
and personal lives on the Internet. It doesn't take much on our part
to open up a lot of possibilities for our members -- we've got a great
engineering team. We wanted to offer low-cost mailboxes, but we were
worried about using up too many cruzio.com names (so that an email
address would look like "MaryJane1930984@cruzio.com"), so we wanted
to give people a choice of interesting domain names to choose. Anyway,
please enjoy the new features!
Here are examples:
For a standard account:
Joe has an account on Cruzio, with e-mail address snurtz@cruzio.com
Now, Joe can set up 5 new mailboxes, with addresses like
"pete@baymoon.com" "joe@scshop.com" and "twig@rattlebrain.com"
People who share Joe's connection or who have their own
Internet connection can use these mailboxes.
Joe's sister Twig can put up a web space whose URL is
http://www.rattlebrain.com/~twig
And so can "joe" and "pete", the other mailboxes.
(this is just an example, it doesn't really exist!)
For an Internet Office (custom domain) account:
Phyllis has an account at Cruzio, with the domain name bzzzzzz.com
Now Phyllis can set up 5 extra, password-protected mailboxes
under her domain, such as "sales@bzzzzzz.com" and "info@bzzzzzz.com".
Each of those mailboxes can be accessed from a different location,
for example an employee working from home could get e-mail there
rather than at the office. These mailboxes don't have web space
attached.
Try out the new stuff! Kudos to our dashing engineer, Jay for all the
hard work.
3) Brown bag event coming up: "Putting your Business Online"
12:30-2pm Thursday, January 20th, 2000 Brown Bag
"Putting your Business Online"--Many of your customers shop on the
Internet. Learn what you need to start to get your business online well
ahead of the Christmas 2000 sales season. Led by Cruzio Senior Staff John
Govsky and Kathy Bisbee.
Registration is $5, and $6 extra if you'd like a lunch.
Please register online at
http://gate.cruzio.com/support/business/brownbags.html
4) Downtime in January? Cruzio classes
In January, many of us suffer from "post-holiday letdown". We've eaten
too much, partied too much, stayed up late and who knows what. Okay,
enough of that. Now it's time to get active, learn the skills
you need to make the new year a productive one, perhaps by taking a
class to improve your Internet skills. The classes are held in downtown
Santa Cruz, at Cruzio headquarters. They're scheduled for convenient
early evening hours.
The classes start on January 4th, 5th, and 6th, respectively.
In January, Cruzio is offering:
Tuesdays, 6:30-9pm: "Using the Internet", packed with tips and
tricks for wiser Internet usage. Taught by the futuristic
Sam and Amy.
Wednesdays, 6:30-9pm: "Publishing on the Internet" I, Terrific
instructors John, Kathy, and Mark guide students through
the process of creating Web sites for their family, hobbies
or businesses. Our most popular series.
Thursdays, 6:30-9pm: "Publishing on the Internet II", A
continuation of the first "Publishing" series, where
Mark and John present more sophisticated and effective
methods of creating web pages.
Coming up in February:
Tuesdays and Wednesdays, same as January.
Thursdays, 6:30-9pm: E-Commerce. The how-to's of creating an
Web site which can make commercial transactions
on the Internet. Issues of security, simple programming
tricks, and an overview of the whole process are covered.
Taught by the talented Websters Kathy, Mark, and John.
5) DSL status: Doing well
I just looked over at the monitor and there are 27 people using Cruzio
DSL right at this moment. There have been some hitches here and there;
DSL does involve a visit from Pacific Bell and some changes to your
computer and modem setup. But once it's on, DSL stays on and the speeds
are fantastic. To look into it, go to the Cruzio DSL web site:
http://www.cruzio.com/support/dsl.html
6) What Cruzio is doing on New Year's Eve
On New Year's Eve 1999, Cruzio's top technical staff will be at our
office to monitor all our systems and respond to any Y2K issues. They
will have a bottle of champagne with them, and if all goes well they'll
relax and enjoy a glass. If there are any troubles, Cruzio is equipped
with 2 generators, full backups for servers, and we are ready to
respond to foreseeable emergencies. Our aim is always to keep Cruzio
up and running for our customers; even more so when there are
community-wide problems (communication channels are essential, as we
found after the 1989 earthquake!)
7) What Cruzio suggests you do on New Year's Eve
Computer-related problems are not unlikely after New's Years Eve.
When Cruzio checked its systems for Y2K problems, most (being Unix)
passed without a hitch. But there were some auxilliary systems which
did need updating in our support and accounting departments. If you're
a procrastinator, and haven't looked into Y2K yet, don't be surprised
if a bug or two turns up. The most essential preparation is backups.
Make sure you have copies of the files you use in your business or
which are important to you at home. Keep backups on floppies, CD's,
or whatever storage medium you have available. Watch carefully for
the first few weeks: are the dates on things looking normal? And try
not to get flummoxed by computer problems. They stem from humans, after
all.
8) Getting to your Admin page
Your Admin page lets you make full use of the features Cruzio
includes in your account. We are always adding things, so it's good
to spend some time checking the Admin page every now and then.
To get to your Admin page, go to
http://www.cruzio.com/support
and enter your login in the field at the top of the page where it
says "Check Your Account". Or, if you aren't having luck with this
approach, go to
http://www.cruzio.com/support/locate/uniloc.cgi
which gives a fuller explanation of the process and a table full
of alternate links to try. If you have questions, please let us
know by emailing support@cruzio.com.
9) About This Newsletter
Cruzio doesn't like to waste bandwidth with extra email, but we sometimes
have events and announcements that users need to know about. This seems
like the most efficient way to let people know what's happening. Hope
it's helpful. Please email support@cruzio.com with any comments or questions.
By the way, we would love to have a regular, predictable schedule
for this newsletter...but we simply do not send it unless there is real
news enclosed. Thus the haphazard datelines.
10) How to Reach Cruzio (dial-in or tech support)
To reach the Cruzio Information Center, for online technical and
sales information:
http://www.cruzio.com/support
To dial in to Cruzio, set your software to dial one of the numbers
below (note: we've expanded and joined modem pools, so you may be
using another number. If so, don't worry, it still works just fine).
56k: 459-9408
33.6 kbps and under: 459-6230
To call Cruzio:
459-6301............Use this number to check Cruzio's system status,
pay your Cruzio bill, find out more about our hours and location,
or to reach someone in customer service and technical support.
To send email to Cruzio, use one of these addresses:
support@cruzio.com.......for technical support
office@cruzio.com........for billing and ordering information
webmaster@cruzio.com.....for questions about Cruzio's World Wide
Web service
Thanks very much from Cruzio:
Chris, Peggy, John, Julianne, Patton, Kathy, Mark, Martin,
Georgette, Jay, Tapati, Hilary, Jessica, Amy, Temoc, Sam,
Brittany, Will, Alec, Rachael, and Barbara (the grownups);
Jake, Annika and Carly (the kids)
The Theory of Evolution According to Annika, age 4 and a half:
"First came the sea creatures. Then, dinosaurs. Then, mermaids.
Then, people."
