Cruzio/The Internet Store Newsletter - Number 51, November 12, 2001
1. Cruzio's holiday plan: help feed the hungry
2. Tomorrow (Tues, Nov 13th) Brown Bag: Getting your business online
3. $50 off ShopSite, Cruzio's e-commerce tool
4. .biz and .info domain names both available
5. Local stores in Cruzio's online mall
6. Filter out junk e-mail
7. Digital cameras: a review
8. About this newsletter
9. How to reach Cruzio (dial-in or tech support)
1. Cruzio's holiday plan: help feed the hungry
Last year, Cruzio won the "Emerald Can" award from Second Harvest
Food Bank, contributing over 2,500 cans of food to the needy in our
area -- enough to feed over 100 families for a month. We ranked above
many much larger companies, and are proud of our effort. This year
needs have risen and donations slacked because of the slow economy,
and Cruzio is challenging our staff, our customers, and ourselves to
increase the contributions to *5,000* cans. We definitely need your
help to do this.
Here is the plan:
- Cruzio will match contributions up to $500 from our employees.
- From Nov 22nd (Thanksgiving) to Dec 25th (Christmas), Cruzio
will contribute $1 from the sale of every new service to
feed the hungry. We are not just talking about new accounts,
although they are included. Any existing Cruzio account that
adds a service will be part of the total. Each service added
(for example, a domain and a Web space) will be counted separately.
So please come in to our office or visit our Web sales site at
http://www.cruzio.com/app
and a portion of your spending will be sent to the Food Bank.
- Cruzio has a food barrel in our lobby, so please bring in some
canned and dry food for the needy! (It might be time to clear
out that Y2K stockpile, eh?)
- If you miss your due date on a Cruzio bill, and incur a late fee,
Cruzio will waive the $3 fee if you bring in three cans of food for
our food barrel.
2. Tomorrow (Tues, Nov 13th) Brown Bag: Getting your business online
Okay, we put a Santa in an ad before Thanksgiving. That's a little
early, we admit. But our Santa isn't aimed at consumers -- it's for
businesses who need to put their sales online.
We happened to notice, in the past few months, that Web hits and
Web sales to stores on Cruzio's servers have increased substantially.
Our own online sales have risen, too. This season looks like a big
season for online purchases. It's something local stores might well
want to jump into; it's great to make a sale in the middle of the night,
or to someone in a faraway location.
We are holding a brown bag workshop on ShopSite, Cruzio's e-commerce tool:
Tuesday, November 13th 12:30-2pm
Business Brown Bag on "Getting Your Products Online"
To register: http://www.cruzio.com/support/business/brownbags.html
We are very pleased that Kathy Bisbee, our Director of Marketing,
will be leading the workshop and demonstrating some of ShopSite's features.
She has set up several ShopSite stores herself and is very knowledgeable.
If you've been wondering about e-commerce, please attend.
3. $50 off ShopSite, Cruzio's e-commerce tool
As stated above, this season looks good for online sales. Cruzio
will help your business give its Web sales a jump start with a
discount on our e-commerce tool, ShopSite. If you purchase ShopSite
Manager or Pro before December 31st, 2001, you will get $50 off the
initial license fee.
ShopSite is an easy-to-use, affordable program which helps you set
up a store on the Web. You upload your pictures and information;
ShopSite helps arrange it into a shopping cart format which adds
up purchases, tacks on shipping and sales tax, etc. Arrange
with your bank to have realtime credit card sales online!
To learn more about ShopSite, come to our Brown Bag workshop tomorrow
(Tuesday, Nov 13th -- see above) or have a look at our Web pages on
the subject at:
http://www.cruzio.com/shopsite
4. .biz and .info domain names both available
After much wrangling, both the ".biz" and ".info" top level domains
are now available. If you've been wanting to register, say,
"popularname.com", but it's taken, now is your chance to try for
"popularname.biz" or "popularname.info". The charge is only $15.99
per year (two year minimum) to register. For more information,
check out Cruzio's Web page at
http://www.cruzio.com/support/tld/
or go directly to register the name of your choice:
http://www.cruzio.com/app
5. Local stores in Cruzio's online mall
Not only national stores, but local stores from Santa Cruz County
use the World Wide Web to sell their products. This holiday
season, why not look at some local stores online? Try Cruzio's
Web mall at
http://www.cruzio.com/#mall
Over 60 stores are listed, all local, selling everything from
rare blues recordings to baked goods. If you'd like to list your
own online store, please follow the instructions just above the mall
listings.
6. Filter out junk e-mail
Sometimes I look at the spam in my unfiltered mailbox and I get
really mad. What if my kids were reading over my shoulder? (And
yes, they do that.) I am not ready to discuss the topics I see
listed, thank you. Sometimes the subject lines alone are enough
to make even an adult cringe.
But since we use Cruzio, we have a choice. We can throw spam
away before it gets to our regular mailbox. Cruzio estimates that
turning on your Spam Filter gets rid of over 95% of spam. It's
one of our most popular features, available to everyone who has an
email address ending in "@cruzio.com".
To find your spam filter and activate it, go to your Cruzio
Control Panel. You'll see the link for "Junk Mail Filtering" right
in the list.
7. Digital cameras: a review
For years, our family had a digital camera. It was handy because
we could upload pictures directly to our computer. It wasn't
very good quality, however. The clarity of the pictures (also known
as resolution) was terrible, the camera was bulky, the software
was complicated to use.
But this year, we got a new digital camera, and I would like to
report our great satisfaction. The pictures are of publishable
quality and normal everyday computer software is able to view them
and handle them pretty well. Even better: nowadays many people have
large enough hard disks and the kind of software to store and view
photos, so you can easily share your pictures with loved ones.
Here's an example. When I visited New York last month I brought the
camera, sat at my mother's not-so-remarkably-equipped computer, and
read in my pictures. They came out well, so I used her
not-so-sophisticated email program to send the photos to my own
Cruzio account. The whole procedure worked beautifully, even though
her computer is Windows and mine is a Mac. I messed around with the
pictures in Photoshop a bit, and now I can put them on the Web.
Anyway, that's just a review for those of you considering
digital cameras. It's taken me many years, but I'm happy at last
with the technology.
8. 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.
9. 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
Cruzio's location:
903 Pacific Avenue, Suite 101, Santa Cruz, CA 95060
Cruzio's hours:
Sales hours: 10am-6pm, Monday through Friday; 10 am - 2 pm Saturday
Technical support: 10-6 pm, Monday through Friday, 10am - 2pm Saturday
System monitoring, including customer-alerted emergencies, 24 hours
per day, 365 days per year (leap years, 366 days)
Thanks very much from Cruzio:
Chris, Peggy, John, Julianne, Patton, Kathy, Mark, Martin,
Georgette, Tapati, Pedro, Brittany, Alec, Rachael, Barbara,
Stephen, Paul, Gershom, Phil, Allyson, Laura, Jessi, Ben,
Alice, Edgar, Alex, Michael, and another Kathy (the grownups);
Jake, Annika, and Carly (the kids)
I was participating in a TV panel discussion, and I told Carly, age 4,
where I was going:
Mommy: "I'm going to be on TV."
Carly, very worried, looking at our small dark television: "Can you
get out?"
