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Net Gains (Jun 30, 98) |
Originalab, a graphic arts company in Sweden, has created a company
website (http://www.originalab.se/) that's interesting - not because
of what they have to say about the company so much as how they've
used the Internet to their benefit. Chances are that any other
graphic arts company would have used their site to show off their
work to people all around the world. Great - so people all around
the world can see what they do and what they have done so far.
But what use is that site to someone sitting in another country
or another state for that matter ? What would make him come back
to that site on a regular basis. Originalab has implemented the
number one lesson of website building - say a "Thank you"
to the site visitor by offering him something in return. They
have a 3B2-Online program on their site that allows visitors to
design their own visiting cards, greeting cards and calendars
- all for FREE!
To create your own visiting card, you have to fill in the basic
details that you want printed on your card, choose colours and
fonts and submit. In a matter of seconds, the site returns a link
to a downloadable Acrobat PDF file (less than 45 K) that contains
6 visiting cards as per your specifications. Download and save
this file, get hold of a colour printer and some card paper, and
you've got yourself a new set of visiting cards for FREE!.
If you go for the calendar, you can choose the year you want the
calendar for - sadly enough your choice is restricted to years
between 1800 and 9999. After choosing the typeface, colour and
the kind of design ( they have 3 designs available), you get your
calendar, again in PDF format ( less than 20 K).
Greeting cards come in single card (one page) or double card (like
most of our folded greeting cards). Type in your text, choose
the colours and images from those offered for different occasions
(Baby, Birthday, Christmas, Flowers, Valentine, and miscellaneous),
and you've got your personalised designer greeting card - at a
dirt cheap rate to the Create-Your-Card facility offered at card
shops these days!
To exploit Originalab's free offerings you'll need a TCP/IP connection,
Adobe Acrobat reader (free from www.adobe.com), and access to
a printer. Go make full vasool of the site!
We've all heard of the highly successful series of books - Chicken
Soup for the Soul, and chances are you even have your own copy
of the series. Now thanks to the Internet and email, you can get
it home delivered to you daily. Log on to http://SoupServer.com/,
sign up for Chicken Soup for the Soul: Home Delivery and treat
yourself to a daily helping of love, laughter, hope and inspiration.
This is a free inspirational e-mail service from Mark Victor Hansen,
co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series. You can choose
from a daily serving or a weekend helping that will be delivered
to your email box at the frequency chosen. Or you could visit
the site daily for your dose of Chicken Soup for the Soul for
the day. Thanks to Net Gains reader Myfanwy for redirecting me
to this URL.
Those who took the poll about email addresses would have got a
list of links to some great freebies on the Net. Too bad for those
who didn't. The results after 10 days of polls show that 67.75%
opted for a .com domain while 32.25% preferred a .co.in domain.