Welcome to the April 7, 2002 issue of Hewie's Favorites Views & Reviews. Be sure to visit Hewie's Favorites at http://www.hewie.net/ . Hewie's Quick Thoughts appear almost daily at http://www.hewie.net/weblog/ .

Make it a daily routine to see what is added. It is a log of items as I find them. There are archive pages, so you can catch up on older items. Feel free to let your friends know about this page and the entire site.

+++ Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet
+++ Yahoo! wants to SPAM you
+++ AOL testing changes to its browser
+++ A little fun
+++ The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business
+++ Hewie's Favorites has been updated

April 7, 2002

+++ Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet

Kids have really taken to the Internet and it's an important part of their life. Even though many of the broadband providers are having financial problems, broadband access, especially DSL and Cable, has become almost a necessity in many homes. I know I would be lost without my RoadRunner.

"A Nation Online: How Americans Are Expanding Their Use of the Internet" was assembled by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce, and the Economics and Statistics Administration.

That study finds:

In September of last year about 54 percent of the population used the Internet.

Ninety percent of children between ages 5 and 17, or 48 million, use computers. Seventy-five percent of 14- to 17-year-olds and 65 percent of 10- to 13-year-olds use the Net.

Use of the Internet among those who live in rural areas is now at 53 percent, almost at the national average of 54 percent.

The highest rate of growth, at 29 percent, is among households of single mothers with children.

Of those surveyed in September 2001, 20 percent of the individuals using the Internet at home said they accessed it via broadband service, compared with 5 percent in August of the previous year.

Read the entire article at
http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,92984,tk,dn040402X,00.asp
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+++ Yahoo! wants to SPAM you

Yahoo reset everyone's preferences to take all email advertising (spam sent by Yahoo! and their advertisers), without consent. Those of you who have Yahoo! ID's can go into your account and reset your preferences. If you don't know how to do this, take a look at my tutorials for using Yahoo! at http://www.hewie.net/tutorials . There are many articles about this problem. Take a look at the CNET article at http://news.com.com/2100-1023-871730.html .

The following paragraph was in an email from Yahoo!, but they don't make it clear that they set the default preferences to accept marketing messages (SPAM) and you have to turn them off or "opt-out."

These are The Yahoo! Team's words. "In order to keep you up to date about our many new products and services and how they might be of use to you, we have created a new Marketing Preferences page (http://subscribe.yahoo.com/showaccount) within the Account Information area. It is designed to make it easier for you to manage the marketing communications you receive from Yahoo! and ensure you get the latest relevant information to meet your needs. We have reset your marketing preferences and, unless you decide to change these preferences, you may begin receiving marketing messages from Yahoo! about ways to enhance your Yahoo! experience, including special offers and new features. Your new marketing preferences will not take effect until 60 days after the date of this mailing, so you have plenty of time to decide what you want to receive and what you don't. To change your preferences, go to the Marketing Preferences page (http://subscribe.yahoo.com/showaccount)."

+++ AOL testing changes to its browser

Even if you don't use AOL, you may be asking, "How would this affect me?" I think it will, in a big way. You may not know or care, but AOL Time-Warner owns Netscape (aka Mozilla) , but uses Microsoft's Internet Explorer as its browser. Actually, it uses a licensed version of IE. The agreement between AOL and Microsoft is soon to expire, and AOL is considering using it's own browser.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser and most websites are more IE friendly than Netscape. The latest versions of Netscape (6.0+) use Gecko as a core, as does Mozilla. If you want more technical explanations, you need to go to Netscape's site and see what you can find.

As a web designer, being able to have Netscape and IE browsers see a site the same can be tricky at the least. Many websites, especially those that are developed with Microsoft's FrontPage or individual pages saved with the HTML choice of Microsoft Word are poorly seen, if at all, by Netscape.

When AOL tests and rolls out its own browser, some 30+ million users may find several of their favorite sites either not readable or badly formatted, with some features not available. It will be interesting.

http://www.infoworld.com/articles/hn/xml/02/03/18/020318hnaolbrowser.xml?0319tuam
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+++ A little fun

I tried to share this with you in the last newsletter, but the site was down. It was working this morning. To enjoy this, make sure that your browser is not full screen. Here's a little man that pushes your browser around. http://www.lebonze.co.uk/stuff/move.htm

+++ The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business

Take the time to read the article "The 101 Dumbest Moments in Business" from Business 2.0 Magazine. It shows how even the big companies can make very stupid decisions. http://www.business2.com/articles/mag/0,1640,38604,00.html

+++ Hewie's Favorites has been updated twice since the last newsletter.