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IN THIS MONTH'S REPORT
1) The Next Big Thing - Free Fax
2) MP3 The Ultimate Try Before You Buy
3) And The Winners Are...
4) InfoSpace Reverse Lookup
5) Remote E-mail
6) The New Explorer 5.0
7) ET Phone Home
8) What's On My Nightstand - Street Lawyer by John Grisham
SITES IN THIS ISSUE
FaxWave
eFax
Sonique MP3 Player
MP3 Now
"Strikingitrich.com: Profiles of 23 Incredibly Successful
Websites You've Probably Never Heard Of"
InfoSpace Reverse Lookup
POP3Now
Microsoft IE 5
SETI@Home
The Street Lawyer
John Grisham's Random House Site
1) THE NEXT BIG THING - FREE FAX<
I guess it's ironic that one of the next big things on the Internet has to do with faxing. In an interesting marriage between e-mail and fax, two companies have announced that they are giving away free fax numbers that forward incoming faxes to e-mail. Here's how it works: sign up with FaxWave or eFax and you'll get your own personal fax number (Fax Wave's number is in Northern California, and eFax in the Mid-West). When someone faxes you at your personal number, the fax is forwarded via e-mail to any e-mail address you specify. Mark my words, this is significant! The demand for these sorts of services could mirror that of the free web mail.Why is it free? Both companies hope that you'll take advantage of their premium services in the near future, most likely e-mail to fax capabilities. If you don't, they'll still be covered with ads which are sent out with each fax you receive.
My free fax numbers are eFax 603-514-1284 and FaxWave 209-396-9523. I have them both deliver incoming faxes to my free Yahoo Mail account (the best of the bunch for free web mail).
2) MP3 THE ULTIMATE TRY BEFORE YOU BUY
There has been a great deal of buzz lately about MP3, a CD
quality digital audio format you can download over the Internet. Many music companies claim that it is at the root of the decline of CD purchases and a direct threat to their bottom line. What the music companies are missing is that MP3 has the potential to be the ultimate "try before you buy" technology. Using an MP3 player (Sonique) and search engine (MP3 Now), this past week I downloaded and tried out a few songs from a Third Eye Blind album. After listening to the songs for a few days, I decided it was well worth the $11 to get the whole CD.MP3's files are often large in size (3-5MB per song), so downloading a whole album at a time is time consuming and often impractical, but for trying out a song or two it really does the trick! Look for MP3 and other "digital delivery" technologies to continue to flourish, especially as more people get connected to the Internet through high bandwidth connections like DSL and cable modems.
3) AND THE WINNERS ARE...
In the last issue of The Kleinman Report we gave you an opportunity to enter to win a copy of Jaclyn Easton's "Strikingitrich.com: Profiles of 23 Incredibly Successful Websites You've Probably Never Heard Of". We're happy to extend congratulations to Caroline MacDowell and Denise Garcia who both won a copy of the book.
Thanks to Jaclyn Easton for providing these books, and to everyone who entered the sweepstakes, and who recommended The Kleinman Report to a friend.
"Strikingitrich.com: Profiles of 23 Incredibly Successful
Websites You've Probably Never Heard Of"
4) INFOSPACE REVERSE LOOKUP
InfoSpace has always been a great tool to use when trying to find someone's contact information. This tool has gotten even better with a new reverse lookup capability. Now you can search for people by phone number, mailing address, or e-mail even if you don't know their name. This is a great tool for finding people when you don't know the exact spelling of their name, but you've got their e-mail address or phone number. This also eliminates having to call someone to get their address when you'd like to send them an announcement or card.
5) REMOTE E-MAIL
Whenever I am traveling, or if I'm at work and need to read an important e-mail sent to my home account, I use POP3Now to get my e-mail. POP3Now is a great tool to securely log in to your regular POP e-mail account, read your mail and even respond or compose messages. When you use POP3Now, the messages you read stay on your mail server, so when you come back home you can download your e-mail to your home system. One great thing about POP3Now is that it uses a secure connection when getting your e-mail; this feature alone makes it stand out from the pack of Web based and free e-mail services.
6) The New Explorer 5.0
My how things change! I remember a few years ago when a new browser release was a big deal. Everyone was trying to figure out who would win the browser war, and what Microsoft and Netscape would come up with next. In case you may have missed it (and it was easy to miss), Microsoft just released version 5.0 of their (now dominating) browser. While I still like using BOTH Netscape and Microsoft, the newest Internet Explorer has become my default browser at work and at home. While 5.0 isn't packed with many new features, it does have one feature I particularly like - it works! Yes, that's right, the real news here is that after 5 versions (or rather really 3, as Microsoft cheated and started at 2.0), Internet Explorer actually runs on my system without constantly crashing.
Now, to give you a little background, I've been using a Web browser since Netscape 0.99b (back in 1995) and this is the first time in all that time that I've had a browser that really, consistently worked. Due to that fact alone, I'm recommending it as a worthwhile download!
7) ET PHONE HOME
On to an explorer of another kind... The SETI project (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) is taking its search for intelligent life to a whole new level - your home PC! In April SETI will be launching the SETI@Home program, which will allow you to join SETI's search by running a program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data (as a screen saver while you're not using your PC). So there's a small chance (1 in 1,549,324,567,675,567,657,567) that you'll be the one to hear ET phone home!
8) WHAT'S ON MY NIGHTSTAND - THE STREET LAWYER
One of the things I really like about John Grisham is that I can pick up one of his books, and in a short period of time read it cover to cover. Now that we have a baby I find it even more difficult to find time to read. The Street Lawyer was the perfect book for me, with a great story that kept moving, good characters, and Grisham's writing style, which is eminently readable. I wouldn't rate The Street Lawyer as Grisham's best book (I still think the best is The Runaway Jury), but it is a really enjoyable read.
The Street Lawyer
John Grisham's Random House Site
Best Regards,
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