Netsurfer Frequently Asked Questions

• 1.0 Where can this FAQ be found?
• 2.0 What is Netsurfer?
• 3.0 How much does Netsurfer cost?
• 4.0 How come you charge a subscription fee instead of being ad supported?
• 5.0 How do I SUBSCRIBE to Netsurfer ezines?
• 6.0 How are Netsurfer ezines delivered?
• 7.0 In what format are Netsurfer ezines delivered?
• 8.0 How do I read the HTML version of Netsurfer ezines?
• 9.0 How can find out if I'm still on your mailing list?
• 10.0 How do I change my delivery address?
• 11.0 Why do you bother mailing the ezine?
• 12.0 What kind of e-mail can I expect from Netsurfer?
• 13.0 How come I did not get my last issue e-mail?
• 14.0 How can I unsubscribe from Netsurfer?
• 15.0 Who publishes Netsurfer?
• 16.0 Is there a plain text version of your ezines available?
• 17.0 How do I contact Netsurfer?
• 18.0 How do I publicize my Web site to Netsurfer ezines?
• 19.0 How do I get your editorial calendar?
• 20.0 Where can I fax you?
• 21.0 How come I can't log in to your website?
• 22.0 What's your privacy policy?
• 23.0 What's your refund policy?
• 24.0 How can I read your HTML e-mail in AOL?
• 25.0 Why don't you accept PayPal?
• 26.0 What will I get in my mailbox when I subscribe
• 27.0 How do I log in when I receive your email from Hotmail?

1.0 Where can this FAQ be found?

This information is available on the web at:

WWW: http://www.netsurf.com/faq.html

2.0 What is Netsurfer?

Netsurfer has been publishing web based ezines since 1994. Our ezines bring you short, crisp news bites, notices, and reviews designed to provide an informative and entertaining snapshot of the vast wired world. We know that time is your most precious commodity, so our ezines seek to give you a concise and easy to read guide to deeper online resources. Our motto is More Signal, Less Noise.

3.0 How much does Netsurfer cost?

A subscription to our core ezines costs only $20.00 USD per year. For that price (that's only $1.66 per month) you get access to current and past issues of our award winning ezines: Netsurfer Digest, Netsurfer Science, Netsurfer Education, and Netsurfer Books. You also continue to enjoy full free access to Netsurfer Focus and Netsurfer Library.

4.0 How come you charge a subscription fee instead of being ad supported?

For many years Netsurfer ezines were free and entirely ad supported. This changed in 2001 for two main reasons.

First, the bottom fell out of the online ad market. Like many ad supported web sites we could not generate any meaningful revenue through selling advertising. You know the market is dead when you earn only few hundred dollars even when serving over 1 million ads. Meanwhile advertisers are not getting any value because everbody ignores banner ads and click through's hover at below 1.0% of ad exposures. For relatively small websites like ours that's not a business, that's a hobby.

Second, we got really disgusted by the development of new highly intrusive forms of advertising. Pop-up windows, epilepsy inducing blinking banners, interstatials, bandwidth sucking multimedia ads - we found all of them to be really annoying. Advertisers begun to demand that the online industry serve those kind of ads but we think they totally detract from the whole point of our ezines. Our content is meant to save you time and hassle in keeping up with the vast online world and not to detract from your netsurfing experience.

The bottom line is that a reasonable subscription fee generates revenue for us to thrive and keep providing our readers with neat content. At the same time it allows us to bring you a distilled view of the onine world without annoying bandwidth sucking distractions. We think you'll find your time is well worth the money.

5.0 How do I subscribe to Netsurfer ezines?

Use our online subscription form at http://www.netsurf.com/signup.html

6.0 How are Netsurfer ezines delivered?

Netsurfer ezines are published on the web and accessible with your subscription login. Also whenever a new issue is published you get a copy in your mailbox. All back issues of our ezines are also available to subscribers on our web site.

7.0 In what format are Netsurfer ezines delivered?

Netsurfer ezines are published on the web. The e-mail you receive whenever a new issue is published is mailed to you as HTML-formatted text suitable for viewing with any modern web e-mail client. All our ezines have live links to all the sites named in the text so that with a simple click of a mouse you can connect to the site you have just been reading about.

8.0 How do I read the HTML ezine e-mail you send me?

Reading the HTML version of Netsurfer e-mail is pretty simple. It may be even simpler if your mail client has the capability to handle HTML text directly, or if it supports MIME extensions (see below).

If you use the latest e-mail clients from Netscape or Microsoft, or other popular mail clients such as Eudora, Pine or Mutt, then there is nothing special you need to do to read our mail. Just read it like you would any other e-mail.

If your mail client does not support HTML we strongly suggest you upgrade to one that does. In the meantime, all you have to do is to save your e-mail copy into a file with a .html extension (or .htm for Windows systems). Then simply go into any web browser (like Netscape, Explorer, Opera, Mozilla, or whatever is your favorite) and load the file. If you are connected directly to the Internet via DSL or LAN link you can then access our ezines and follow all the enclosed links with the click of a mouse.

You may want to remove the e-mail header from the top of your HTML files to make the results look good in your browser. The header is everything above the first

<HTML>

Some older mail clients have capabilities to take advantage of the MIME header entry which we send out in every HTML version of our ezines. This is the header field which reads: "Content-Type: text/html". If your e-mail program can handle MIME extensions then you may be able to configure it to automatically open your Web browser whenever you want to read an HTML e-mail. Since there are so many e-mail clients out there your best bet is to check the documentation, contact customer support, or as a last resort ask for advice online.

9.0 How can I find out if I'm still on your mailing list?

Subscribers can log in and take a look at their Netsurfer Profile at this URL: http://www.netsurf.com/profile. You'll be prompted to log in, and your user settings will be displayed. The field marked Email is where we send all our communication to you. The field marked Ezines are the ezines you're signed up to received e-mail about.

You can change all of those simply by clicking on the Edit Your Profile link at the top of the page (above your Userid).

10.0 How can I change my delivery address?

You an change your delivery address on your Netsurfer Profile web page: http://www.netsurf.com/profile.

Click Edit Your Profile link at the top of the page (above your Userid) and a form will be displayed where you can change your e-mail address and other settings. That's all there is to it.

11.0 Why do you bother mailing the ezine?

Whenever a new ezine is published we mail out an issue our subscribers. Why do we bother? Why not just dispense with the mailing and let people show up at our website to read the ezines whenever they decide to do so? Well, there are really two good reasons for this.

First, our ezines are published on weekly or monthly schedules. We don't have a set day or date on which they come out since it's much easier on our end to have a flexible publication schedule. Hard deadlines make for sloppy content. Consequently it makes sense just to send our subscribers a reminder that a new issue is out. Over the years we've found that subscribers really like to have an issue in their mailbox since it makes it easy to fit reading our ezines into their routine e-mail reading habits. We do it because it's convenient for our readers.

The second reason we send out the issues has to do with purely business considerations. If we remind our readers on a regular basis that we exist and are generating cool content they are more likely to renew their subscriptions rather then forget they signed up and never visit our website. It also gives us an opportunity to put links to our affiliates such as Amazon in front of our readers on a regular basis and generate a bit of commission revenue. Note that unlike some websites we're entirely up front about our crass capitalist motivation.

You can always turn off e-mail notification in your profile, but do yourself and us a favor and don't. We appreciate it.

12.0 What kind of e-mail can I expect from Netsurfer?

We're very mindful of how cluttered mailboxes are these days so we try very hard to mind our manners and be polite about what we drop off in your e-mail. You can expect the following e-mail items from us:

• Emails containing new issues for any ezines you choose to subscribe to. These are mailed out whenever a new issue is published, for example weekly for Netsurfer Digest. This is the core of our service and basically what you subscribed for in the first place.
• Periodic administrative e-mail. We'll send you mail if we have to tell you something about your account or new developments at Netsurfer. This is fairly rare, but when you do get it please read it.
• Special issues. Every once in a while we come up with a special issue of some sort, either launching a new ezine, or an issue of Netsurfer Focus or some sort of odd catalog. Basically on these mailings we're trying out something new so don't freak out if you get one. Just send us some feedback on what you think about them.

Under no circumstances will we send you any spam (though opinions about our ezines occasionally differ...). We hate spam. If you ever get anything that looks like spam with our Netsurfer name on it let us know and we'll come down like a ton of bricks on whoever did that.

13.0 How come I did not get my last issue e-mail?

We've been doing this long enough to know that there are a number of problems which crop up over and over again due to factors beyond our control (or occasionally due to our computers - it's never our own fault you understand)

On any given mass mailing we get between 5%-10% bounced e-mails. This means our software tried to deliver to your address but could not. Some of the reasons we've seen why this happens:

• Your mail server was down when we tried mailing.
• Your file system was full.
• Your address has changed.
• The link to your site was down somewhere along the delivery chain.
• Our mailing software starts acting up for utterly unknown reasons (well, usually it's because we've been mucking with our machines).
• Your spam filters are filtering us out. Note that we don't spam - all our email is firmly solicited - but some automated systems flag our e-zine emails as spam. Annoying but there's little we can do about it;
• A conspiracy involving aliens, Elvis, and the Trilateral Commission.

If all else fails you can always stop at our web sites to get the latest issue of all our ezines:

http://www.netsurf.com/

14.0 How can I unsubscribe from Netsurfer?

It hurts us to have to tell you how to do that. It really does. If it comes to this it means we have failed you, our gentle readers. If you unsubscribe there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth, and someone will throw themselves on the point of their mouse pad. So don't. Just tell us how to get better.

Trial subscribers can get off the mailing lists at these URLs:

Netsurfer Digest:	http://www.netsurf.com/nsd/trialsub.html
Netsurfer Science:	http://www.netsurf.com/nss/trialsub.html
Netsurfer Education:	http://www.netsurf.com/nse/trialsub.html
Netsurfer Books:	http://www.netsurf.com/nsb/trialsub.html

As for paying subscribers you can always stop receiving any e-mail from us simply by visiting your Netsurfer Profile page at http://www.netsurf.com/profile, clicking on Edit Your Profile, and turning off all the E-Zine subscription boxes. However, note that once you paid your money you'll have access to our web site until the end of your subscription no matter what you do with your e-mail settings (however, see the FAQ for our refund policy). We figure you might change your mind at some point and re-enable all that email. Call us optimists.

If you have any questions or more complicated subscription issues just send us e-mail to subscriptions@netsurf.com and a real live human will deal with it.

15.0 Who publishes Netsurfer ezines?

Netsurfer ezines are published by Netsurfer Communications Inc., a small company of netsurfers interested in creating interesting and innovative products via the online medium. We also provide consulting services for businesses interested in creating an online presence, or distributing products online in an ethical, responsible, and effective manner.

16.0 Is there a plain text version of your ezines available?

Way back in our early days (back in the 20th century) we used to send out a plain text version of our ezines to a small subset of our readers who requested it. We no longer do this for several reasons.

First, simple economics and laziness as a virtue of simplicity. It takes effort and resources to put together and maintain text versions of our ezines. And no, it's not just as simple as trivially converting HTML to text - give us some credit for knowing what we're doing. We'd have to maintain a separate evolving production tree dedicated just to publishing a text version and keeping track of who wants to receive it. There's simply not enough demand for it to justify the effort, particularly in a small outfit like ours.

Second, technology marches on. These days HTML is ubiquitous. Most of us did grow up in the days of plain text e-mail, so we are well aware of the virtues of plain text simplicity. But frankly HTML let's us do a better presentation and there's a lot to be said for a good presentation with embedded hyperlinks for the usefullness of our ezines.

Bottom line, it's the 21st century, HTML is here to stay, it's useful, and easily handled by modern e-mail clients. So get over it already.

17.0 How do I contact Netsurfer?

It depends on why you want to contact us. Our Contact web page has all your options for subscription inquiries, submitting content, providing feedback, and so on:

Contact Web Page: http://www.netsurf.com/contact.html

If you can't get to our contact web page you can start here:

Netsurfer Communications, Inc.
333 Cobalt Way, Suite 107
Sunnyvale, CA 94086
Voice: +1 408 249 6346
General business: netsurfers@netsurf.com

Web Site: http://www.netsurf.com/

18.0 How do I publicize my Web site to Netsurfer ezines?

First choose the correct ezine. For example, an education site would probably be best sent to readers of Netsurfer Education. Once you know the ezine, look up "Submit New Items" pressroom e-mail address in the Content Feedback section of our contact web page: http://www.netsurf.com/contact.html

Sending us press releases and such won't guarantee that we'll cover your site, just that it will go into our editorial process. Sending e-mail to any address other then the pressroom address, or sending us faxes, snail mail, or singing telegrams, will not be effective and may even annoy us.

Make sure to give us enough notice. Sending us PR three days before an event won't do any good. We have a lead time of about 2 weeks. Anything sent with less notice is not likely to show up at all.

The Care and Feeding of the Press: http://www.netpress.org/ipg/careandfeeding.html

Finally, note that we don't review, preview, or publicize any non-existent content. You've either got a site running or event scheduled, or you don't. If you don't, it's pure vapor, and carries about that much weight with us. Get back to us when it's real.

19.0 How can I get your editorial calendar?

You can't. We don't have one. We publish more or less weekly and monthly publications with a rotating sets of sections. Whatever you've got will fit into one of our broad sections. Send us your information whenever it's ready.

20.0 Where can I fax you?

Don't. Save a tree and send e-mail. We've basically turned off our fax machine. We have yet to receive any fax which was worth the phone bill and the cost of the paper. That's since 1994. If you do public relations, get into the the 21st century and start using e-mail.

21.0 How come I can't log in to your web site?

There are several major reasons why you may have trouble logging in.

First, make sure that your browser will accept cookies from Netsurfer (see below for setting up Explorer and Netscape to do this). We use cookie based authentication, which means that when you log in our web server sets a cookie in your browser allowing you to read our subscriber only content. There's nothing sinister about it, we're not tracking where you go on the web or anything silly like that,it's just a standard way of handling authentication.

Also make sure that any firewall or Internet filtering software you might be running (for example Norton Firewall, McAffee Firewall and such) allows cookies from Netsurfer to be set in your browser.

It's always possible that we're having some problem on our end. If things don't clear up within a few hours or so send us e-mail to subscriptions@netsurf.com and we'll look into it.

Allowing cookies from the Netsurfer domain in Internet Explorer 6.x

1. Open up Explorer and select the Tools*Internet Options menu item.
2. In the dialog click on the Privacy tab.
3. Near the bottom of the dialog, in the "Web Sites" section, click "Edit".
4. In the "Address of Web Site" form typ "netsurf.com" and click "Allow".
5. Click OK, and close the dialog.

Allowing cookies from the Netsurfer domain in Netscape 6.x

1. Open up Netscape and select the Edit*Preferences menu item.
2. Open the "Privacy & Security" (click the + sign) and select "Cookies".
3. Select one of "Enable all cookies" or "Enable cookies for the originating web site only".
4. Close the dialog.
5. Click the "More Information" link on the "Cookies" dialog for information on site specific control over cookie settings

Assuming you're running any firewall or cookie scrubbing software you should be able to log in with these settings.

22.0 What's your privacy policy?

Netsurfer does not sell or rent its mailing list. Your e-mail and snail mail addresses stay in house.

Any information which we may collect in our infrequent demographic surveys is only used for aggregate statistical analysis of our readership as a whole. Individual responses are never made public, and in fact we try to make our surveys as anonymous as possible.

Someday Netsurfer may be sold or forced to sell its assets as part of a bankuptcy (shudder!). Obviously our reader database is a major business asset and would go to whoever bought it. At that point you can sue them if you feel they are misusing the meager personal data we collected from you over the years. If this bothers you don't subscribe.

23.0 What's your refund policy?

We're pretty confident that you'll find our content well worth the reasonable subscription fee.

However, if you think our ezines suck we'll happily refund your money in full up to thirty days after the date of your subscriptions. Simply contact us at subscriptions@netsurf.com and let us know you're dissatisfied and want a refund. There will be a great wailing and gnashing of teeth, but we'll do right by you. The last thing we want to do is piss of people who took the time to check us out.

We will not issue refunds after you've been subscribed for 30 days and have had plenty of time to check out our content. See our comments on unsubscribing in FAQ #14.

24.0 How can I read your HTML e-mail in AOL?

America Online (AOL) e-mail is several generations behind the curve of Internet technology. AOL sofware before version 7.0 don't allow users to view HTML e-mail directly in the e-mail program. Fortunately, there is a solution. Follow these instructions and you'll be able to read our mailings on your computer.

1) Save the incoming html Digest as a text file with a suffix of ".htm" or ".html", such as "NSD22.htm" (NOT "NSD22.txt.htm" though; one dot only per file name).

2) Open a text processor (your e-mail program may work, too) and the text file you saved in step 1, and delete the e-mail header (everything before but not including the first line). This is an optional step to make it look nicer. Save the file.

3) Open your Web browser. In the "File" menu there should be a command like "Open File". Use this to find the saved digest on your hard drive and open it.

25.0 Why don't you accept PayPal?

We looked into it and frankly there was too much negative feedback from people who do accept them. There were issues with customer service, some allegations of PayPal spamming users (hard to verify though), all sorts of limits on quantity and amounts of transactions, and they take a fairly high percentage of the transaction. Overall, we decided that this was not a good solution for a serious commercial site, which is what we pretend we are :) Which is not to say that they aren't a good service for individuals who need to accept money and don't want to hassle with real credit card institutions.

26.0 What will I get in my mailbox when I subscribe?

You will basically get an issue of the e-zine you chose when you signed up (those checkboxes you checked next to e-zine names). The issue is an HTML file so it looks reasonably nice when you read it.

Note that some email systems are set up to filter out HTML email thinking that it may be spam. If you're not receiving our emails check your spam filter settings.

27.0 How do I log in when I receive your email from Hotmail?

We've had reports of Hotmail users who can't log in when they click our "more" links from our email in their Hotmail mailbox. The problem is usually that your browser cookie settings need to be changed to allow cookies from the domain "netsurf.com".

You can do this in Internet Explorer 6.x by going to Tools*Internet Options*Privacy and edit the cookie settings near the bottom, adding "netsurf.com" to the always allow list.

In Nextscape 6.x you can go to Edit*Preferences*Privacy & Security*Cookies, and either enable all cookies, or hit the "View Stored Cookies" button, then click the Cookie Sites tab (this is getting tedious isn't it?) and make sure that "netsurf.com" is NOT on the forbidden cookie list. For other browsers refer to the browser documentation on making changes to your cookie settings.