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Net Gains (Aug 20, 97)
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I remember a hobby I had over 15 years ago - collecting matchboxes.
If I remember rightly, I grew up by the time I had over 600 different
matchboxes - from different states and different countries. Times
have changed so much ! I got an email from a teenager who apparently
collects email addresses - he's got 18 of them. Email is new here
and all that jazz, but 18 email addresses ? On looking closely,
I found out that most of them were just forwarding addresses,
but there were 3 accounts at HoTMaiL. It may be nice to collect
email addresses, but each extra, unnecessary one added just prevents
that next person from getting his/her email address - specially
since the service is free. Which brings me to what I was going
to tell you guys about …
HoTMaiL fuelled the email craze when it started offering free
web-based email addresses over a year ago. Everyone, his brother
and pet dog registered and got a free email address. But when
I recently tried using HoTMaiL to send email from a shell account,
I realised a limitation - I could not ! They had an image map
that catered to sending mail, and since image maps don't work
with shell accounts, sending email was just not possible. You
could only reply to emails that you received. And that is a limitation.
With respect to my body (I often abuse it by spending the wee
hours of morning surfing the Net), I came across a new site that
thrilled me so much that I spent the next hour exploring it so
that I could write about it. The site is called Mailexcite (www.mailexcite.com)
- and don't you dare get any wrong ideas from that name. Mailexcite
is a free web based email service that's just hit the Web recently.
As a brand extension of the "Excite" search engine,
the service is aptly named to carry the brand equity the Excite
enjoys. Excuse the management jargon but need to flaunt the fact
that I've just got a first class in my second sem MMS.
Getting down to the heart of the matter though, the advantage
Mailexcite has over HoTMaiL is that it has a better interface for non
- graphical accounts, which includes all shell account holders.
It also has an autoresponder function for those times when you
cut yourself off from the rest of the world for a well deserved
break. Go for it …
IndiaWorld was the first commercial web site out of India, and
being the first, and most known Internet company in the Indian
market place, Ravi Database Consultants has the advantage of a
portfolio of over 70 web sites designed for corporate clients.
While their portfolio keeps growing, RDC is not neglecting the
home front. The IndiaWorld family is also growing, with a new
web site added every now and then. Right now the IndiaWorld family
consists of khel.com - a site on Indian sports, khoj.com - an
Indian directory, manpasand.com - just what the name suggests,
and samachar.com - a comprehensive news service that can be personalised.
The latest addition is dhan.com - a web site dedicated to matters
of money and finance related to India. News, views and interviews
along with cartoons, bank rates and financial calculators make
this site a learning experience for any web surfer. While the
mention of any financial subject gets an involuntary yawn, this
site had interesting contributions from the renowned CA, Mr. Kanu
Doshi about investing. The articles cater to even someone with
a zero financial IQ, and make interesting reading besides being
loaded with useful tips. Two words - must read !
Next week, we'll surf through two very interesting but contrasting
sites - one dead serious, the other hilariously funny. Until next
week then, chal …