Cruzio/The Internet Store Newsletter - Number 29, November 23, 1999 1. Cruzio and Cruzio customers donate to Second Harvest Food Bank 2. DSL coming! Sooner every day! 3. Brown bags are a big success -- keep suggestions coming 4. Holiday hours & holiday class dates 5. Cruzio classes for December 6. Do you have an older browser? Many have Y2K problems. 7. Internet Office enhancements 8. How to get your own domain name (myname.com) 9. Web project for Santa Cruz's First Night celebration 10. How can we serve you better? Let us know. 11. About This Newsletter 12. How to Reach Cruzio (dial-in or tech support) 1. Cruzio and Cruzio customers donate to Second Harvest Food Bank Every year, Cruzio donates a substantial sum to the Second Harvest Food Bank of Santa Cruz and San Benito Counties. This money goes to families and individuals who are hungry. In the past, we've put a donation container in our lobby where customers can leave food for the Food Bank. But people don't often bring cans of food when signing up for an Internet account (I guess this is not surprising). This year, Cruzio decided to make it easier for our community to make a sizable donation to the Food Bank with us. For every new account that's opened with us between November 25 and December 25, 1999, Cruzio will donate $10 to the Second Harvest Food Bank. We hope to raise enough money to feed hundreds of people much-needed holiday meals. It's a great way for business to work with the community to make a difference, hope you agree. 2. DSL coming! Sooner every day! The days are zipping by and Cruzio is hard at work preparing our shiny new DSL services for customers. The writers are writing, the engineers are engineering. It's a bit like Santa's workshop. We have DSL on several test machines and we really like it. On December 1, 1999, DSL service will be available to our customers. DSL is a relatively low-cost, high-speed way of accessing the Internet. For more information on DSL, see our web site. You can jump from www.cruzio.com, or to be more precise, go to: http://www.cruzio.com/support/dsl.html 3. Brown bags are a big success -- keep suggestions coming Cruzio had a great Brown Bag lunch in early November, "Investing On-line". Lots of people asked interesting questions. Both attendees and presenters wanted to do it again, and we probably will do another investing Brown Bag next spring. Also, please e-mail events@cruzio.com if you'd like to lead a Brown Bag or with any topics you'd like to see presented. Our next two Brown Bags will be on DSL: what it is, who can use it, and why. Cruzio CEO and beloved founder Chris Neklason will be the host. Please bring your questions! The first "Intro to DSL" Brown Bag is on Monday evening, December 6, from 6 to 7:30 pm. No sandwiches, but light refreshments provided. The second "Intro to DSL" Brown Bag is on Thursday, December 16, at lunchtime. The cost is $5 per person, $6 more (total $11) if you'd like a delicious sandwich lunch for the afternoon Brown Bag. If you'd like to attend a Brown Bag, please go to http://www.cruzio.com/support/business/brownbags.html You can pre-register right there. Please pre-register if possible, especially if you'd like a sandwich. 4. Holiday hours & holiday classes Cruzio will be providing Internet service, as always, 24 hours a day throughout the holidays and our technical staff will be monitoring our systems throughout. But Cruzio's offices will be closed on several days. That means no technical support except for system-wide problems, and our storefront will be closed as well. Plus, there are a few changes to our normal class schedule. Here are the details: Wed 11/24/99: Cruzio's offices closed for staff DSL training but Wednesday's Netscape Composer class WILL be held Thu 11/25/99: Cruzio's offices closed for Thanksgiving Fri 11/26/99: Cruzio's offices OPEN Sat 11/27/99: Cruzio's offices OPEN Fri 12/24/99: Closed for holidays Sat 12/25/99: Closed for holidays Fri 12/31/99: Closed for holidays Sat 1/1/2000: Closed for holidays (But note: our engineering staff will be at work both these days, including midnight 12/31/99, to watch for any Y2K problems). 5. Cruzio Classes for December In December we'll be offering our E-commerce classes again, along with two other series. As always, the class series are fairly short (4 weeks), reasonably priced ($100 to $250 for the series), and arranged for the convenience of busy people (evening hours and downtown location). In all classes, we present extremely practical information that you can put right to work. In December Cruzio will be offering: - Using the Internet -- Tues evenings, 6:30-9pm This series offers tips, tricks, and helpful information on e-mail, web browsing, web searching and more. Taught by the knowledgeable, patient Sam and Amy. - Publishing on the Internet, beginning -- Weds evenings, 6:30-9pm Putting web pages on the 'Net is easy. Let your creativity shine with an introduction to the craft, offered by Mark, John and Kathy. - E-commerce -- Thurs evenings, 6:30-9pm Once you've got your web pages up, add transaction functionality so that you can sell things on the Web. Taught by Kathy, John and Mark. 6. Do you have an older browser? Many have Y2K problems. If you've got a browser that's earlier than 4.0 for Netscape or Internet Explorer for Macintosh, you'll see some problems after January 1, 2000. The bug has to do with secure Web sites, which the older browsers won't see as secure. They will issue warning messages (something like, "This is not a secure site") when none is appropriate. The bug is called "minor" and is more of an inconvenience than anything else. Older browsers are much smaller than new ones, and so they are very handy for older computers. Cruzio has given out many of these browsers, especially to people with older computers and/or limited memory on their systems. If you got such a browser from Cruzio, bring in the old disk and we will give you a CD with the new browser, free of charge. Or, if you don't have a CD drive, you might download a browser from the Internet. To get Netscape, go to http://www.netscape.com To get a new Internet Explorer for Macintosh, go to http://www.microsoft.com The slower your connection to the Internet, the longer the download will take. Plus, newer versions of browsers need more RAM in your computer. If your RAM is just adequate, they still may run very slowly and be worse than the secure-site bug we are trying to solve. So it's up to you; new software = slower, but older software = inconvenient at secure sites. The choice is yours. 7. IO enhancements Whoa, intrepid Cruzio engineer Jay has been out there building new features again! These are only for the "Internet Office" accounts, available when you get a domain name at Cruzio. The latest enhancements, available from the Internet Office admin pages, are: - Optional weekly web reports delivered every Sunday night at midnight - More password-protected mailboxes available on December 1st, 1999 8. How to get your own domain name (myname.com) Many customers ask Cruzio about one of our popular services, custom domain names. The process for getting a domain name is easy, and it's not expensive (remarkably egalitarian!) Step one is picking a name. If your name or your business name is Smith, the name that immediately pops to mind (smith.com) is already taken. A little imagination is necessary. To discover whether a name is taken or not, please go to Cruzio's web site: http://www.cruzio.com/support/utilities/whois.html Enter a domain name (note: DON'T start it with www., and do end it with the three-letter suffix, such as .com). Keep entering possible names until you find one that says "No Match". That one's available. Name found. Step two, contact Cruzio and ask us to set your name up as an Internet Office account. That's a very full-featured account which allows you to get e-mail sent to any address at your domain (mommy@myname.com, info@myname.com) as well as many other useful features. The Internet Office account, as its name suggests, is designed to help you maintain a business or other organization (such as a family with people in many locations) on the Internet. And that's all it takes! A custom domain name works well with a Web site. A Web site sets you on the path to E-commerce. Once you have the domain name, there's much more you can do. 9. Web project for Santa Cruz's First Night celebration Cruzio is helping to support a unique project with First Night Santa Cruz, Museum of Art and History (MAH), and the Santa Cruz Technology Alliance (SCTA), called "Webwall 2000: Message For The Millennium." It's a community project encouraging collaborative expression and celebration via the Web. Everyone is encouraged to express their hopes and fears for the new millennium by contributing a Webwall Postcard, Quote, or Splash Page. This collective Webwall 2000 content will be presented on a giant screen at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History and other locations during the Santa Cruz First Night celebration on December 31, 1999. Cruzio will be offering access to our rental computers during store hours from December 20th through the 31st to enter your Webwall postcard. Or to contribute from home, visit http://www.scta.org/webwall2000. 10. How can we serve you better? Let us know. Okay, we keep asking this. But really, if you had a dream ISP, what services would it provide that Cruzio doesn't? What would you like us to do? We've got a "suggestion box" where you can drop a note: http://www.cruzio.com/support/#suggest and thanks, we appreciate the help. 11. 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. 12. 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) Carly, age two, saw a fluffy black poodle walking by the road. "Look, Mama," she cried out "It's Baa Baa Black Sheep!"