Page 10 Diablo Blue August, 2001
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Pre-Meeting Game News by Craig Peterson, DVPC |
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Well, we have all had a month to rest up and get ready for this month's game.
See Peggy, Stan (or whoever is at the table when you enter) and get your puzzle.
Be sure you turn it in before the first speaker (yes, those who come early get more time to work on it) and one member will get a prize. Good luck!
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Here Today, Gone in a Month or Two... |
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In the last few months, sites that I actually used--and some I was about to try--have landed belly up.
Freeworks.com, a truly wonderful site--and one I wrote about in a nationwide magazine--ran out of money in February, '01.
PlanetRx.com, one of about five drug and prescription sites, closed their doors in March. They're urging me to move to drugstore.com, who will likely shift the business to WebRX in a few months.
AcmePet? Petopia.com? Slammed their doggie doors and were scarfed up by PetSmart and PetCo.
eStamps, one of the great innovators of online postage took a licking, canceling their service, and encouraging customers to get in line and switch to Neopost Online's Simply Postage. (No thanks.)
Dow Jones closes Work.com, laying off over 100 staffers.
Paypal, a terrific service that's doing well merged with X.com, the online bank. Within three months, X.com disappeared, with not a mention on Paypal's site.
Driveway.com, Netdrive.com, and Docspace.com, all online storage sites, and all history.
So obviously, if you're thinking of depending on a new web site for anything important, you're going to have to make some informed choices. If you get a look at the company's Form 1040.com (see page 3) you'll have a big edge.
One industry insider said to me, "don't use the online storage sites for permanent storage. Considering how many online storage sites are around, it's no wonder they've lasted this long. My bet is that iDrive will be one of the few to survive."
PC World's curmudgeon, Steve Manes advised that, "Free services may be particularly flaky, and doubtless more will fail." (see www.pcworld.com/features/article/0,aid,41086,00.asp).
I have a few recommendations; things you can do to defend yourself against losing data, money, or credit card numbers you have online.
Diversify.com: Whatever you do, don't depend on any single free file storage service. Take the extra time to store your files in at least two places. Even if the online site is rock solid financially, they may become temporarily unavailable. Better, increase the odds that your precious data is safely stored online -- and easily retrievable--by choosing a service that's fee-based.
Withdraw.com: Never leave more money on an online service than you can afford to lose. For instance, I leave $5 in my Paypal account, transferring funds to my real-world bank whenever the amount reaches $25. Ditto for the many of you selling used books on Amazon.com and Half.com.
Minimum.com: eStamps let users get a full refund but hassled them, asking for the return of the electronic vault, a small electronic gadget. Alternately, they gave users up to two months to use up their postage, fine if you send out lots of mail. My advice? If you try an electronic postage gizmo, buy just enough postage that you'll use in a month, and no more than you're willing to lose.
Disposable.com: One fear many of us have is an online store passes away and passes along your credit card number. The solution? Disposable credit cards. Many companies, such as American Express and MBNA, provide single-use credit cards. The randomly generated credit-card number is used for that one transaction and won't be used again. The purchase is billed to the shopper's account, but the account's actual credit-card number is kept off the Web. So the online merchant doesn't know your real credit card number and the account number never goes out over the Internet.
DigDeep.com: If you've invested lots of time and money in, say, an online e-commerce site, or a stock