As a member of this list, you are also entitled to free tech support. Have a computer-related question or Internet-commerce question? Looking for the best place to buy something, particularly digital cameras? Just email.

I also have another email that goes out about twice a week consisting of inspiring stories and the best humor collected from several other jokelists and sites, including Dave Barry and Scott Adams (Dilbert creator). If you would like to get that email, just let me know. Jokes are screened for "family" acceptability.

Win $10,000! Why don't you tell your friends about my site? Each referral gets you another entry in a contest for $10,000. Just click this link and fill in your friends' email IDs. They will get an email stating that you recommended my site. When they click the link in the email, you will get even more entries into the contest.

$10 off any order

Citibank's C2it is offering $10 back on your first payment. If you have not yet signed up for C2it, do so now and get $10 off your first purchase.

Visit my site www.ygoodman.com to see some cute Javascript effects. If you want to know how they work or a source for more free scripts, just email.

Visit my Lycos auctions for digital cameras, smartmedia cards, cdrw drives and media.

Digital camera bargains This month's digital camera values are still the Kodak DC4800 (3+ megapixel $425), Ricoh RDC5300 (2+ megapixel $375) and Agfa CL cameras (1.3 megapixel camera and webcam at under $150). I have a number of liquidators and surplus merchants that I contact for closeouts. It is difficult to update my web site because these items come and go. I currently have several digital cameras at prices well below any Internet site. I have also tracked down the manufacturer of the hard to find battery and charger for the Fuji MX series, Toshiba PDR series and Kodak DC4800 and have some in stock at $45, which includes shipping. The same manufacturer also makes the recharger and I can now get those as well for $60, shipping included.$10 off if you take both battery and charger.

Universal charger: I am very excited about this new product. Not only does it charge the proprietary Fuji/Kodak/Toshiba batteries, it also charges camcorder, cell phone and laptop batteries in Ni-cad, lead acid and nimh. Because of its deep discharge option, it can even restore old camcorder ("memory") batteries to new life. It has an alarm that warns you if the battery is inserted incorrectly and a temperature guage which shuts the charger down if the battery gets hot. $75.

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

- easter eggs
- Russian hackers caught
- Why do you deserve free everything?
- tune up your PC
- online payment service update
- search engine smarts by Irving Weiss
- useful sites and freeware

Easter Eggs

Nothing to do with the holiday, this is what we call hidden functions in programs. The practice of putting in easter eggs may have begun years ago when certain companies did not give their programmers any credit for what they created. One of the most famous companies to do this was Ashton-Tate, publishers of dbase (one of the first database programs for PCs and one of the most popular). Programmers created hidden functions that popped up their names. As fast as news spread, Ashton-Tate made them remove it. They simply changed the key combinations. I often wonder if one of the reasons dbase lost its market share to competitors (most notably Foxpro) was because of all the effort wasted on robbing the programmers of their sense of satisfaction. After all, what would it have hurt to have a function key that displayed their names? People do their best work when they get some credit.

Now easter eggs have become a popular "add-on" to some programs. Folks have fun looking for them and telling their friends about them. Many Microsoft programs have them. Here's one that works in most versions of Word. You will get a different result depending on which language of Word you are using. Enter "=rand(#,#)" (without the quotes) and press enter. The first number is the number of paragraphs you want and the second is the number of sentences per paragraph.

Here's another that works in word 97. Open a new document. Type a color, like Blue. Highlight the word. Select format-font. Choose font style bold and color blue. Type a space after the word Blue. Go to help-about. Hold down the ctrl and shift key while clicking on the word banner of the help screen. A pinball game should pop up. Use Z for the left flipper and M for the right. Esc to exit. Okay, so it's not a great game but it's free.

Bug? Feature? Easter Egg? You decide. Microsoft report

Why buy videos when you can trade what you have for what you want? Why rent when you can save money buying and/or trading? Visit our video page and trade for free or buy for about the cost of renting.

Russian hackers caught

Russian hackers who might be behind the hack of Western Union's site, the phony Paypai site and other notorious hacks, were lured to the U.S by the promise of a phony job and then arrested. Story details more details even more details

Why do you deserve free everything?

An article from Ziff-Davis refelcts on the problem with setting the high expectations that all Internet services should be free. full story

Tune Up Your PC

Tune Up Your Browser

If you want to check and possibly correct your Internet settings, Fred Langa (author of the Langa Letter) has updated his famous browsertune program. http://www.browsertune.com or http://64.26.36.124 (both should point to the same web page, but some folks have reported problems using the name while the direct address always works.) Again, I highly recommend the Langa letter. You can subscribe from the main page on my site. There is a free edition and a $10 a year bonus edition that includes free utilities and upgrades.

Tune Up Your PC

Visit www.pcpitstop.com for utilities that will test many aspects of your PC configuration and give you a detailed report.

Online Payment service update

Citibank's C2it is now my number one choice for an online payment service, edging out Western Union's Moneyzap due to their ludicrous decision, found in the next paragraph. C2it is revamping in a major way. The introductory 3-month free period continues. They are offering a sign up bonus of $10 when you make your first payment. Because they are backed by a major bank, you should feel more protected against the fraud, unwarranted charge backs and sudden rule changes that Paypal is famous for. They can leverage their existing customer service department to give timely support. Their fees are also the lowest in the industry. For the first three months, transactions are free. After that, there is a 1% fee paid by the purchaser if a Citibank card is used, 2.2% if another card is used. It is 1% to use any checking account, but since Achex is free, you might want to use that if the 1% bothers you.

Western Union's Moneyzap has made a decision that I find mind-boggling. This service, still struggling for user acceptance, has just instituted the highest fees of any online payment service. Starting May 15, they will be charging a whopping 2.8% on funds received via credit card charge and 1.75% on funds received via other methods. I predict the near demise of this service. They originally promised a method by which the fees would be paid by either party. I envisioned that this would even allow the parties to split the fee. But 2.8% is just unreasonable.

Why should a customer choose to use a service that charges them a fee? Whether the customer realizes it or not, it is always the customer that pays the fee. In my opinion, one of the stupidest decisions made is the law (and the ebay and paypal rule) that prevents a seller from charging a credit card fee. Now when you shop in a store, the credit card fee is already added to everything you buy, even if you pay with cash. I believe it would make more sense to offer customers a choice. That is why I do NOT add in credit card fees to my items. If the customer pays with a method that does not cost me extra, the customer doesn't pay extra. How can I do this and still remain within the law?

My sales terms state, "There is a 2.5% handling charge of all items. There is also an equal discount if the customer pays with check, money order, paypal non-credit card, Western Union moneyzap before 5/15, Citibank's C2it, Payingfast or Bidpay." My customers have a choice.

For more details on the protection C2it offers (all that I am allowed to reveal), visit Payment ratings

No article on payment services can be complete without the mention of Paypal. For once, there is some good news. Perhaps in response to the negative articles or perhaps because time has allowed them to improve, things have gotten better. Restricted accounts are now rare. Charge backs due to fraudulent cards have gone way down. The only major complaint is that when there is a problem, it takes weeks and sometimes months to get an answer. Paypal has still not implemented the key improvement that I believe will have a major impact on their poor rating with the Better Business Bureau: a hotline to the department that handles restricted accounts. It is inconceivable that the victim of a restricted account can be told, "sorry, but the department that handles that doesn't have a phone." The longer Paypal drags their feet on this, the stronger the possibility that the government will come in and regulate them. This may not necesarilly be a good thing. Some senator and government agencies are already eyeing them. They are probably hoping that Paypal will act of their own accord. Let's hope that Paypal gets the message.

Right now the only way to get action out of them is to complain to the BBB or post a message on a public forum. This week I started something new. When I see someone complaining about a Paypal action the seems particularly nasty, I contact the person for details. I then feature the story on my site and post invitations on auctionwatch for paypal to respond. When publicly embarassed, Paypal does respond. You can follow the stories at my paypal page.

Because of these improvements, I accept non credit card payments from anyone and credit card payments from previous customers or folks with good ratings.

Search Engine Smarts

Gone are the days search engines just listed your site for free. Welcome to the new world order of money hungry search engines.

Todays search engines, struggling to survive with less advertising, are starting to charge for listings usually by partnering with a PPC (pay per click) search engine. It appears that most search engines now have a PPC partner. GOTO is the most popular PPC partner. In order to guarantee that they and their search engine affiliates stay in business with a profit (look at infoseek, go.com and NBCI who have recently closed up shop), GOTO has increased their minimum bid for a PPC placement. The cost has now risen from .01 to .05 per click at a minimum and a minimum monthly cost of $20. They will probably lose as many accounts as Yahoo did when they started to charge for their auction services. This is sure to knock out the small guy who can not afford recurring monthly expenses. GOTO has some very popular affiliates including AltaVista, Hotbot, Lycos, Mama, Dogpile, DirectHit, AOL, and many others. Most of these sites only list the three top bids for a given keyword. These listings will usually appear on top of the search results. This is definitely a very prominent position on these search engines and if done correctly can dramatically increase a site traffic. One really needs to understand their own business model to calculate the ROI (return on investment).

For example: www.applecomputersales.com sells Apple computers and just opened for business. How will they be found tomorrow? By opening an account with GOTO. They do not want to spend 5+ cents a click for every person who does a search on computers or even computer sales. Many people mindlessly click on the first listings that a search engine displays without realizing that these sites do not interest them. However, it would be wise to bid on the words apple computer sales, apple reseller, and the like. This way they are targeting their client market and hope to make a sale.

More on the smaller PPC engines in the next issue.

Irving Weiss can be reached at searchenginesmarts@hotmail.com and 718-337-6907. He helps businesses achieve top rankings in major search engines.

Useful sites and freeware

the Langa Letter tips and tricks on using your PC, emailed to you absolutely free. I have included some of his tips in my previous letters. The following three links all came from this excellent letter.

Cetus Wordpad a free extension to wordpad that adds spelling and thesaurus capability.

Wassociate a free program that lets you edit file associations. Are you tired of clicking a TXT file and having notepad come up when you want to use something else? Clicking on a bmp and having a graphics editor come up instead of IE? This program will help you decide what files you want associated with what applications.

Make windows ME run better.

arcamax.com - lists of free sites and offers for free software (you pay shipping and handling). I recently ordered a Berenstain Bears CD and a Living Books CD for my 3-year-old for $4 each.

nothingbutsoftware.com and softwareoutlet.com - a nice selection of software but the best thing about these two sites is that they constantly have giveaways where the rebate is 90-100% of the purchase price. I recently bought 1240 Windows games on 4 CDs for $10 with a 9.95 rebate. Okay, some of these games were old and some were silly but my kids have spent days just going through them all. That's a lot of activity for a nickel. Put yourself on the mailing list for their specials.

http://www.bfree.on.ca/HTML/index.htm - detailed, well explained HTML lessons online

www.megapixel.net - in-depth reviews of digital cameras.

www.epinions.com - reviews written by regular folks who have bought and used products.

I hope this letter contained useful information. Please email ccs@ygoodman.com with any comments.