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Parkinson's & E-Mail
Searching The Internet ![[ Mad Hacker ]](madhack.gif)
Topic 14: parkinson's & e-mail / internet links
This site contains education and research URL's bookmarked by a Parkinson's patient. Nothing you read in these pages should be considered an endorsement or medical advice. Harness E-Mail: How It Works http://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/20how.htm E-Mail Tips http://everythingemail.net/email_help_tips.html Be sure to surf this site and all the links backwards & forwards, up & down. It's a delight. Don't miss the TOURBUS! E-mail is sent from one computer to another by SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol. This means simply that everything you send on an e-mail will be sent in a SIMPLE text format. If you send anything other than plain text it will be translated to a text format, transmitted, and must be interpreted by the receiver. If we don't all run the same software package with the same interpretation capability then errors will occur. What we are doing on the PARKINSN LIST, is using text only (no graphics - GIF's - JPG's etc.) to maintain the intelligence of universality. We serve 1900+ members in 37 countries and, while the mainstream may use IBM clones running Win95 or better, the beauty of the List is that no one HAS to. Almost every software package that is pre 1995 or made by someone other than Microsoft is unable to interpret the newer standards of formatting that MS Outlook Express (in particular) applies by default. That is why, from time to time, members are gently chided re: GIF's, JPG's, rich text formatting, HTML encoding, attachments etc. because it can be unintelligible to some members. The members on digest format and on AOL find it particularly annoying because they get bundled messages and it is awkward to delete individual posts. In the worst cases it blocks e-mail at their server and they are required to dial up the help line to straighten it all out. When everyone sets their defaults to plain text only and avoids multi-part formatting this List runs very smoothly. I used a 386 clone with 16Megs of RAM and a 200M hard drive with Win 3.1 and Pegasus email client and Opera 3.60 as the browser until just recently. I did this on purpose so that I could support the similarly configured computers that were given to some of our support group. Some of our members are on severely limited incomes and simply do not have the ability to upgrade. I deliberately avoid MS Outlook Express because of its buggy nature, susceptibility to viruses, tendency to default to Rich Text formatting, etc. Pegasus e-mail client also has filters, works extremely efficiently, is dependable etc. (and it is downloadable freeware) Software selection / upgrading is up to the individual and the comfort level of all members is best served by plain text, no pressure to upgrade etc. Running the latest powerful software on the latest powerful hardware IS most efficient when browsing the Internet. That said, I think it absolutely essential to maintain the universality of the List by applying the simple protocols of plain text only for our e-mail. How E-Mail Works http://www.learnthenet.com/english/html/20how.htm "Netiquette" is network etiquette, the do's and don'ts of online communication http://www.albion.com/netiquette/index.html The Core Rules of Netiquette are excerpted from the book Netiquette by Virginia Shea. Click on each rule for elaboration. http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html Outlook Express Notes http://stu.uophx.edu/tutorial/indexpage.htm Bob Brand's E-Mail Pet Peeves - A MUST READ! http://www.thebee.com/bweb/iinfo43.htm Bob Brand's E-mail Info http://www.thebee.com/bweb/index4.htm Bob Brand's Internet for Real People - Index to All Articles http://www.thebee.com/bweb/index2.htm Netiquette Guidelines http://www.dtcc.edu/cs/rfc1855.html Emily Post's e-Mail Etiquette (satire) http://www.templetons.com/brad/emily.html Internet Mailing Lists Guides and Resources http://www.ifla.org/I/training/listserv/lists.htm On the Net, you are what you e-mail. Before you send that file, go down our checklist and think about how you can avoid any risk of giving offense. Don't attach an image or document to an e-mail message if the recipient isn't expecting it. If you're sending text (say, a press release or a resume), don't convert it into Adobe Acrobat format -- such files are too big. Don't send attachments to a mailing list discussion group (unless it's encouraged in the group or participants ask for them). Before sending a file, ask recipients how they want it to arrive -- inserted inside the message as encoded text or broken down into several small attachments. When you reply to a message with an attachment, make sure the attachment doesn't accompany your reply. Many mail programs retain the attachment unless you configure them not to. It's generally wise to attach only one file to an e-mail message because many online services -- America On Line among them -- can't handle more than one. To send multiple files, attach each to a separate message. Before sending a big file, find out if the recipient has a compression utility such as WinZip or PKZip. If so, compress the file. I hope this helps... Next... How to search the Internet.... (Much easier than E-Mail) Beginners Guide to the Internet http://www.northernwebs.com/bc/ Welcome to Internet 101! http://www.internet101.org/ Internet Searching: Bare Bones 101 A Very BASIC Web Search Tutorial! You can zip through these lessons in no time, any time. They are very short and succinct; each can be read in a few minutes. Feel free to jump in wherever you like, skip what you don't want to read, and come back whenever you need to. The information contained in the following lessons is truly "bare bones," designed to get you started in the right direction with a minimum of time and effort. For more comprehensive and detailed help on searching the Web, consult our recommended list of sites in Lesson 18 at the end of this tutorial. http://www.sc.edu/beaufort/library/bones.html Microsoft - The Complete Internet Guide & Web Tutorial http://www.microsoft.com/insider/guide/intro.asp Internet Beginner's Guides & Tutorials http://www.refdesk.com/factbeg.html http://livinginternet.com/ Your Grandchild Will Show You How! Welcome to Berit's Best Sites for Children http://www.beritsbest.com/ "The Internet can be a great resource--if you know how to use it effectively. There is so much information on the Internet, but finding the specific facts you need can be like looking for the needle in the proverbial haystack. You need to know where and how to look for different types of information." (from "Berit's Best" - see URL above...) Now start searching for anything at all but use all of these 3 search engines one at a time and only look at the top 5 hits ... you will soon discover a pattern to searching ... it's that simple ... I use these 3 all the time, the very best all 'round Search Engines goin' ... http://www.google.com FastSearch http://www.alltheweb.com Pandia http://www.pandia.com (Try their MetaSearch and/or PowerSearch) You can try other search engines too but the above 3 get the best results most of the time ... The next thing to do is "team searching" where you select an "item" to search on and team up with someone. You seach independently for a day or so (or an hour) and then compare results. Or, you offer each other "challenges" such as "What are zitter mutant rats?" This was an actual question posed here on the List after the rats were mentioned in a scientific review ... "You have to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there." - Yogi Berra University of Albany Internet Tutorials http://library.albany.edu/internet/ Sample - Boolean Searching on the Internet http://library.albany.edu/internet/boolean.html Power Reporting - Resources for Journalists Home Page http://powerreporting.com/ Search Engines http://powerreporting.com/category/... Search Tools http://powerreporting.com/category/Search_tools Non Profit Research http://powerreporting.com/category/... Search Engine Watch http://searchenginewatch.com/ Search Engine Guide http://www.searchengineguide.com/ Search Directory: A quick reference guide to the best search engines and specialized search engines Resources to help you find anything quickly.... http://www.startingpage.com/html/search.html WebFerret - A Simply Marvellous Search Tool... http://www.ferretsoft.com/netferret/index.html New Search Engine http://www.mamma.com The Chocolate Lovers' Page The chocolate search engine. No kidding. http://chocolate.scream.org/ My personal favorite search engine... http://www.google.com You Can Also Simply Use A "Directory" or "Hub Site" Try HotSheet.com - the easy way to the best of the web! http://www.hotsheet.com/ CyberJournalist SuperSearch http://www.cyberjournalist.net/supersearch/ Try this Best Free Reference Web Sites website http://www.ala.org/rusa/mars/best2001.html And... the creme de la creme! Some Interesting and Useful Web Links Contains annotated web links for free, informative, and regularly accessible sites. http://www.geocities.com/interestingweblinks/index.htm Now... Wanna Build Your Own Web Site? HTML: An Interactive Tutorial for Beginners Scroll Down to Interactive Tutorials... http://www.davesite.com/webstation/html/ The Master List - All the Goodies! A Complete Set of Tools & Tutorials To Build A Web Site! http://www.htmlgoodies.com/tutors/master.html WWW Development Resources - The HTML Writers Guild http://www.hwg.org/resources/ Glossary of Internet Terms http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html |