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| Newsletter, September 2002 Dear Customer,
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ E-MAIL STATIONERY Gone are the days of boring old e-mails with no colour or pictures. Over the past few years Internet browser developers such as Microsoft and Netscape have been working on new and exciting ways for their Internet software suites to integrate together more effectively. One example is being able to send an Internet link to your friend who can click on the link in his or her e-mail program and automatically launch the page in an Internet browser. E-mail software is now using the technologies that Internet browsers use so for example an e-mail can contain web page formatting. The main use for this at the moment is e-mail stationery that can be used every time you send an e-mail, much like a letterhead. Ardnet Design can design e-mail stationery in keeping with the general design of your web site, giving your online communications a much more professional appearance. We can also supply instructions of how to install the stationery into your copy of Outlook Express (other mail packages may be used to send HTML formatted e-mails but this may involve a visit to your premises to work out exactly what system you are using). When you click "create mail" to send a new message the e-mail is automatically formatted to display your stationery. If you send a mail to a user who doesn't have e-mail software compatible with stationery the e-mail text will be displayed in the usual way without the graphical background (AOL doesn't display HTML formatted e-mail at present although most modern e-mail software does). This e-mail has been formatted to display a graphic background. E-Stationery costs a one-off payment of £60+VAT including Outlook express instructions. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ A useful feature on any web site is the facility to collect e-mail addresses of your users. These addresses can then be stored and used for marketing purposes, for example, and newsletter or special offers list. Ardnet Design can now provide a number of different mailing list options. These range from a simple application that collects your users' addresses when they enter them into a text box on the screen (or entered by you on an admin screen). Our more complex options are database driven application that can collect addresses of e-commerce customers automatically, allow them to log-in to choose the mailing lists they require and even allow you to set stages of priority and allow certain customers to get a different newsletter. The more complex options even allow you to automatically send HTML formatted documents using a web control panel. Subscribers have an option to unsubscribe from your mailing list at any time if they do not wish to receive it any more. These mailing list options start from £60 + VAT - please e-mail programming@ardnet.co.uk for more details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ WEB SITE OF THE MONTH Open Directory Project - http://www.dmoz.org Search engines all catalogue sites in different ways, with different degrees of accuracy. Some sites use the text of the site to produce descriptions of the content of the site, some use the "meta" description and keyword tags that are set by the sites designer. I find the more accurate search engines use human editors to review the content of sites submitted for inclusion in the engine. Yahoo is probably the most famous version of this - they have human editors reviewing submitted sites all the time. The only drawback is that it takes a long time for their employees to trawl through all the submitted sites, and they might not know very much about the subject that they are reviewing. Open Directory Project works in a very similar way to Yahoo only with one big difference. Instead of the human editors being employed by the company they are volunteers who have an interest in the subject. A Californian computer employee mightn't know much about fishing in Norfolk, England, however, someone with a big interest in the subject may apply to review that section of the site. The idea is that people with local knowledge will be able to build a much better listing than an editor who doesn't know the subject. This isn't just my opinion however, many of the large service providers like Netscape and AOL Time Warner now use DMOZ.org as a source for search content on their sites. If you have an interest in a certain subject why not look for it on DMOZ, if that category doesn't yet have an editor you can apply to edit it.
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