Cruzio/The Internet Store Newsletter - Number 55, April 18, 2002
1. DSL special: FREE modem
2. Cruzio voted best for 8th straight year
3. Cruzio birthday and Digital Arts event
4. Earth Day emphasis: recycling computers
5. New: Cruzio Tote bags
6. Buddy Bucks
7. New: improved anti-junk mail filters!
8. Survey results and winner of $100 credit
9. Internet-Coffee Talk
10. Online bill payment
11. Don't send credit card #'s in e-mail
12. Hug the tiger
13. About This Newsletter
14. How to Reach Cruzio (includes correct mail address!)
1. DSL special: FREE modem
If you've wanted a high-speed Internet connection, but were
concerned about the price of a DSL modem, take advantage of
Cruzio's current FREE MODEM offer for the month of April!
The advantage of this special offer is that you can get Cruzio's
high quality, friendly service with prices lower than any of the
national providers'.
Until April 30th, 2002, DSL modems are FREE OF CHARGE if you sign
up for a new DSL account with new Domain and Web space for a
one-year term. If you do not need Domain and Web, the modem is
only $49.95, more than $100 off regular price, matching or beating
prices from companies who claim to have free modems (read their
fine print.)
To read more and sign up for DSL, go to
http://www.cruzio.com/dsl
or straight to the signup form:
https://www4.cruzio.com/w4a002/dsl/csiorder.html
or call us at 831 459-6301, press #2 for sales, or come into our
downtown Santa Cruz office at 903 Pacific Avenue, Suite 101. It
only takes a couple of weeks -- often faster -- for most people
to get a reliable high-speed Cruzio DSL connection.
2. Cruzio voted best for 8th straight year
Thanks to all of our Cruzio members and friends: Cruzio won
the people's choice awards for "Best Internet Service Provider"
and "Best Local Web Site" (www.cruzio.com) in both local weekly
newspaper polls, Good Times and Metro, for the 8th straight year.
We are grateful for the support and feel lucky to be a part of
this community. So, we are giving a party (see next item.)
3. Cruzio birthday and Digital Arts event
Cruzio turns thirteen this month and we're celebrating with
an event that's part of the Digital Arts Festival. Our party is
this Friday, April 19th, from 7 to 9:30 pm, at the Wired Wash
Cafe next to Kinko's on Laurel Street.
Artists, musicians and game designers who use their computer
skills creatively will be speaking at the event, and we will
see some of their work. Plus, there will be a cake, and who
knows what else -- Kathy, Cruzio's Marketing Director, seems to
have some surprises up her sleeve which she won't reveal to this
correspondent. You'll just have to be there.
For more information about the Festival, visit
http://www.santacruzdigitalarts.org
4. Earth Day emphasis: recycling computers
For Earth Day 2002, Cruzio is focusing on old computer equipment.
Computers are quickly obsolete, contain toxic substances that
should never go into the landfill, and often sit, unused,
cluttering up offices or houses for years. We worry about these
things. Our excellent interns, Heather, Brian and Jenner, have
researched places where, sometimes for a small fee, computers can
be donated or recycled as much as possible. For the list, check:
http://www.cruzio.com/support/business/recyclinglinks.html
or come to Cruzio's booth at this year's Earth Day festival.
5. New: Cruzio Tote bags
How many apples can you load into a Cruzio Tote Bag? That
is what I am asking myself, after stuffing quite a few
vegetables into the bag at the Farmer's Market last week.
My family eats a lot of apples and many a plastic bag has
proved less than adequate to the task.
Let's save the Earth from some of those nasty plastic bags: a
tote bag comes free with every new account, or drop by our store
(903 Pacific Avenue, downtown Santa Cruz) and buy them for just
$5 each, until the end of April.
6. Buddy Bucks
When you tell your friends and family about Cruzio, and they
come in to get their own accounts, you can get a $10 credit
per referral on your Cruzio account. It's as simple as that.
Remember to tell folks to mention your name (even better would
be your e-mail address or account number), and you'll see the
credit on your next bill.
7. New: improved anti-junk mail filters!
A wonderful thing has happened for haters of spam. In a direct
response to member requests, Cruzio has strengthened our junk
e-mail filters.
If you already have junk mail filtering turned on, please
go to your Cruzio Control Panel and push the "Junk Mail Filtering"
button. At the bottom of the next screen, click "Enable Filters"
in the Advanced Features box to activate hyperdrive. The
new features won't go on automatically unless you select this;
we did not want to change the filtering you've already set up.
If you don't have filters on, we highly recommend them. The filters
are an effective way to limit the amount of -- unwanted e-mail is
a nice term for it -- in your mailbox. Just go to your Cruzio
Control Panel and push the "Junk Mail Filtering" button. On the
next screen, click on "Enable Filtering." The strongest possible
filtering, including Advanced Filters, will all be turned on at
once.
Please take some time, especially in the first weeks, to look at
junk mail the filter has caught (it's discarded once a week,
so you have a week or more to look at it.) If you see e-mail
in the trash heap that you'd rather receive, you can adjust the
filter to allow it. You control the rules.
Another benefit of the junk mail filter is the trapped spam is
never downloaded to your machine, so your good e-mail will get
to you more quickly. Oh, it is a fine thing! Do try it.
8. Survey results and winner of $100 credit
And the winner of $100 free Cruzio service is ...... (drum roll
please) ...... Mr. David Ambrosini! In thanks for his participation
in Cruzio's Home Site Survey, our winner Mr. Ambrosini will be
receiving $100 of the highest quality Internet Service available
anywhere: Cruzio's. (We say this in the humblest possible way.)
Congratulations, and thanks also to the many other folks who
participated.
Now, if you are interested, what did we learn from the survey?:
132 people responded to our question "What do you like or dislike
about the Cruzio home page?"
Out of a possible 31 items, the average respondent picked 15.6 items.
In other words, people who like our home page like a lot of things
about it. For people who have taken Statistics 101, the mean was
14 items.
The most popular item, by far, was weather. "Your weather is more
accurate than the newspaper's," several people commented. Webmaster
Chris informs us this may be so, because Cruzio's weather
information comes from the National Weather Service and is updated
hourly, so the information is generally more up-to-date than a
printed newspaper's.
Next, people chose Cruzio Support as their favorite feature.
We are glad that our online help and support resources come in handy
for so many people.
The third most popular item was movie listings, with surf, tide,
quakes, and events close behind. In fact, everything on the home
page was fairly popular; there were no items with fewer than
22 votes.
We asked, "What do you look at every day?" and again, people listed
many items. Weather was first by a long shot: 55 people out of 132
said they check the weather daily. 19 look at online news. 14 check
the surf or the tide, and many surfers check the Web cams, too.
Many people use the online e-mail every day.
We asked, "What is missing from the page?" and this was much more
scattershot. No one item got more than 7 entries. People talked about
their individual interests: pets, children, movies, books; people
wanted bigger graphics on the page. We will see what we can do,
given limits on the space and download speed.
Our goal is to better organize the page so that popular items
are easier to find and the page has a more professional, but
still friendly and local, appearance. We are just starting the
work now and expect to have a spiffy new look ready before
fall of this year.
9. Internet-Coffee Talk
Cruzio interns will be available at the Ugly Mug Cafe on Monday, May
6th, from 4-6pm to chat Internet with our Soquel neighbors. If you're
in the area do stop by. Occasionally we play Internet trivia
while making these visits, which is a good way for us to share
interesting facts, give away Cruzio swag, and make new friends.
Cruzio's Marketing Assistant, Alice, will also be available to chat
Internet at the all new, Boulder Creek Coffeetopia on Tuesday, May
4th, 9:30-11:30am. For all of you Hwy 9 commuters who have Internet
questions, stop by and chat with Alice about all that Cruzio has to
offer you.
10. Online bill payment
Once again, you can pay your Cruzio bills online. Just go to
your Cruzio Control Panel and push the "Payment Center" button.
At the Payment Center, you can pay what is due on your account,
and you can relieve future bill-paying anxiety by signing up
for automatic credit card payment.
11. Don't send credit card #'s in e-mail
Just a reminder: normal email isn't secure, but the Cruzio
Payment Center is. If you'd like to pay a Cruzio bill by
credit card, please use the payment center. It is not a
good habit to send credit card numbers through plain
e-mail!
12. Hug the tiger
Sometimes parents stop by Cruzio to sign up for a new service
or ask a question, and they have a child with them. The child is
often ... let's face facts ... bored by the conversation.
That's why Cruzio sent an envoy all the way to New York City
(okay, she was there anyway) to pick up a gigantic stuffed tiger
for the kids to enjoy. Adults might like it too. It's about 7 feet
long, striped like the Cruzio kitty, soft, and fuzzy. You are
welcome to hug the tiger.
13. About This Newsletter
Cruzio doesn't like to waste bandwidth with extra e-mail, 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 e-mail office@cruzio.com with
any comments. 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.
14. 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, Julianne, Kathy, Mark, Martin, Georgette,
Tapati, Pedro, Brittany, Alec, Barbara, Stephen, Paul,
Gershom, Phil, Laura, Jessi, Alice, Edgar, Alex, Michael,
another Kathy, Erik, and Bhag, as well as our groovy
interns Heather, Brian and Jenner (the grownups);
Jake, Annika, and Carly (the kids)
Carly, age 4, has strong and original views on the arts. I was
reading a magazine article about an exhibit of English oil paintings,
with many examples. Here are Carly's critiques:
"Girl with Bare Shoulders," by Gwen John, 1909-11
Carly: "She got sick and her head popped off."
"Portrait of a Man," by Hans Holbein the Younger, 1538
Carly: "He died and was EATEN."
"Juncture," by Jenny Saville, 1994
Carly: "You can see her bottom!"
