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July, 2001 Diablo Blue Page 9

Home Office: The E-Mail Rules - Manage the Medium...

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jan horses are the most obvious, but file size is another. I found this out after I accidentally tied up an editor's $2-per-minute dial-up account--for 40 minutes--with a huge attachment. (Not smart.)
Unless you know the person, don't attach anything--images, programs, or Internet movies--to an e-mail. If you must, and if the file's larger than 100KB, be sure you get the recipient's permission first.
You can save yourself grief by setting your e-mail program not to accept attachments over a specific size. And always play it safe--before opening a file, save it to a convenient folder and scan it for viruses. There's no space to do so here, but I'll provide step-by-step details for these filtering and scanning procedures in my May online newsletter at:
http://www.pcworld.com/resource/newsletters/index/0,sub_source,PCW_XD,00.asp.

BinHexed? Thanks, No.

Occasionally I receive e-mail with an attachment that looks like it's been sprinkled with sawdust, but it has probably only been UUencoded, MIME'd, or (cover your ears) BinHexed, rendering it seemingly indecipherable. OnTrack's free PowerDesk Windows Explorer replacement can make those messages intelligible. Find it at our Downloads library.
Don't touch that dial! In June's PC World, I'll tell you all about filters that manage your incoming e-mail and eradicate spam.

Steve Bass is a Contributing Editor with PC World and runs the Pasadena IBM Users Group. Write to him at steve_bass@pcworld.com. Check PCW's current edition at www.pcworld.com/resource/toc/index.asp and sign up for the Steve Bass online newsletter at www.pcworld.com/bass_letter.

Building Your Web Site...

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want them visiting your site. Are you looking for people that have never heard of your business before? If so, you will probably be very disappointed. Do you have any clue as to how many web sites and news groups there are out there? Or how many search engines that need to be updated? Unless you have something very specific to present, you may discover that a search will bring up thousands and thousands of pages and yours will certainly get lost in the morass of millions of web pages out there already. So if it is new customers you are looking for, then be prepared to come up with a strategy of attracting them. From the emails I get, there are probably a thousand people out there that for an X number of dollars will guarantee a top hit on the search engines. Don't believe them, you would only be throwing money

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