JimWorld Gazette Issue #80 08/07/1999

JimWorld Gazette - Issue #80 - August 7, 1999

CONTENTS

• New Thrills In The Forums
  
• Sometimes The Best Tool To Drive A Nail Is A Hammer
  
• A Story Of Income
  
• We're Finally Getting Our Money's Worth From Our Politicians
  
• Welcome To JimTools.com
  
• How To Win The Grammar Game
  
• Get Yourself Some Rest - You'll Need It.
  
• Y2K Starts Next Month
  
• Get Linked
  
• Snippets

Link to this issue of the Gazette as http://gazetteworld.com/go/to.cgi?l=g80

NEW THRILLS IN THE FORUMS

The past two weeks have seen some dramatic changes in both the Search Engine Forums and the Get High (Traffic) Forums. Traffic has continued to soar in both forum communities. Thousands of individuals visit each day to follow the action, many of whom never post a message. They read and learn and don't contribute until they have a need not previously addressed in the Forums. Once they de -cloak and make that first post, they find themselves having too much fun to go back to lurking. That is the natural order of things.

The handful of long term moderators in the Forums have been joined by lots of new moderators. With the exception of 3 forums, each has its own full time moderator. That has energized the Forums to whole new levels of discussion.

There are still 3 forums that show Jim as the moderator. Jim is not a very good moderator and I'd really like to get him replaced with more reliable help. Take a look. If you see one of Jim's Forums that you would be willing to watch over and nurture, please tell me so in the Where Does This Community Go From Here thread in the Search Engine Forums http://searchengineforums.com

Don't feel too badly for Jim. I'm not insulting him. He knows he's a lousy moderator. He's too busy. He's me.

You may notice that there is a Forum that you can't get into. That's because it is a private forum just for the staff. Don't worry, they're not in there making fun of you. Well, not all of you. They are in there learning better ways to make the forums exciting and rewarding for all of the members. And it is working. For the past 2 weeks, it has been the busiest forum around.

All of these moderators are volunteers. They were willing to step forward and offer their time and expertise to make the forums a place where everyone could learn and teach. An orderly community free of spammers, fools and other lower life forms. They guide the discussions only when needed, they delete the infrequent ads that crop up and remove incorrect or misleading information. On rare occasions they put on their badges, grab their night sticks and arrest spammers, flamers and others that just don't get it.

Because Jim is also not a very good forum manager, he has been replaced by two (yes, it took two people to replace me) Forum administrators known as Mother and Stepmother. They hold the keys to the problem solving toolkit and they solve whatever problems the moderators might have, like needing a substitute moderator when they have to be away.

You can reach the administrators at mailto:mother@jimworld.com and mailto:stepmother@jimworld.com and you can still find me at mailto:jim@jimworld.com

There are many new features in the recently installed release of the software driving the Forums. The software is called the Ultimate Bulletin Board and it has taken the Web by storm. Calling it a bulletin board is a terrible diservice. It is not the ultimate of the old bulletin boards. It is the first of a whole new concept. Far beyond the once popular BB systems, the UltimateBB system is a complete discussion, research and community building tool.

If you are one of the people reluctant to endure the unfriendly design of the last generation of bulletin board software, come to the Forums and see what the future holds in store.

To see the list of new features, I have posted a preliminary page just showing the new features at http://searchengineforums.com/forumchanges.html and we are working on a complete overview to help everyone get the most value from the Forums with the least amount of time.

If you have not yet become a Forum addict, you are missing one of the most powerful tools in this community. The discussion threads go back months because the vast majority of the problems you face have already been explored and resolved in the forums. Just read and learn. I guarantee you won't find solutions that work this well anywhere on the Web. Notice things like the many posts saying "Thank you! I've been trying to get listed on Yahoo! for 2 years. After visiting the Forums I got listed in 4 days." and "Finally! I'm listed #1 on (insert any search engine name here) and I owe it all to everyone who helped me in this Forum."

Wondering why your pages were dropped from a search engine last night? Check the Forum. Odds are it was discussed before anyone else even knew there was a problem.

These are not exaggerations. They are understatements. And the Forums are free, of course. As it should be.

http://gethighforums.com/
http://searchengineforums.com/

SOMETIMES THE BEST TOOL TO DRIVE A NAIL IS A SCREWDRIVER

It doesn't take a lot of imagination to look at the literature for a piece of software and understand how it might help your web community with a little graphics work and a little promotion. We all do that every day. It is how we move forward adding features to our sites. We rely on the publisher of the software to let us know what he has created for us.

The truly creative way to move forward is best found by focusing on the need first. What does your community need? What would serve its members well? Don't worry about the solution. Worry about the need. Understand the need. Become the need. Oops. Starting to sound like an 80's est seminar ad, isn't it?


THE NEED

JimWorld and all of its affiliated sites; the Gazette, the Forums, the sponsors that make it all possible, on and on and on... is possible only through the combined efforts of 30 Forum moderators, at least a dozen regularly appearing writers, about 40 software developers and a dozen or so sponsors. All in all, about 100 people. All volunteers. All doing their part without asking anything in return.

Did you know that's what it took? Did you think I was doing all of that work? For the first year, I guess I did. Then came the Gazette, and the need for software that didn't even exist yet, and... so I started begging. And the begging paid off. People stepped up to help.

They weren't asking for money or anything else but the chance to contribute. To help others. To share what they knew.

In return I've always tried to give them as much visibility as possible since volunteers need to feed their families too. And you, the community they serve, have always responded by sending them as much business as possible. That's the way it should work.

The problem is, with so many volunteers, how do I make sure that everyone gets their share of the visibility? How do I keep up with the rapid growth of the volunteer ranks? How do I satisfy the steady flow of requests for information about this or that volunteer? How do I do it so it doesn't add to my workload because history has taught me that high maintenance areas of my sites turn into run-down, out of date, slum neighborhoods almost from the day they are created.

Do I beg for someone to take on that responsibility? Is that the best use of a volunteer's limited time?

Only as a last resort. Volunteers don't grow on trees you know.

There had to be a solution. Somewhere.


THE QUEST

So off I went in search of a solution. I searched through About.com to see how they did it. We have volunteers that also have their own communities at About.com. Looked at the Open Directory Project. We have lots of volunteers that also contribute there as editors and even managers. Looked for other large communities like ours regardless of the category they served. None were doing it the way I thought I wanted. Some were not doing it at all, many about the same as us, and a few doing it well but in ways that wouldn't work for us.


THE SOLUTION

You have no idea how painful it is to admit where I found the inspiration for our solution.

A piece of spam in my email box. Yuck!

Yet another in a long series of offers to let me get rich by giving away free home pages (web sites) on my server. Conditioned response had my fingers sending it to the trash can in microseconds.

There it stayed for about an hour until a little light bulb went off somewhere deep in the unexplored regions of my mind. I can hear all of you young web warriors saying "Bummer Jim. Takes an hour, huh? Pretty slow processor." Just wait a few years. You'll be like me, glad every day that it still works at all.

I knew I didn't want to give away free web sites. It takes all of the bandwidth and server speed I can beg from Verio just to keep the community running. Why would I want to give some of that away?

I wouldn't, not to everybody. But wasn't that exactly what I wanted for my volunteer staff? Yes. It was.

Create an area where each of them could set up as much or as little micro-site as they felt was called for, and take off the community wide law against commercialization. Let them show the people in their part of the community exactly who they are, and what they do for a living.

I could have let them all log onto the server and FTP their stuff, but that is a bit risky. Not from sabotage but from mistakes. Plus, that doesn't encourage them to build and maintain their micro-site which the community members want available.

I searched all of the script directories until I found a system that would do everything I wanted. Something that didn't over do and make more work. Something simple and functional.

I found a nice system called WebHome at http://www.cyberscript.net

WebHome was selling for $80 online and the price includes first time installation, life time support via email, phone and web plus free upgrades. I asked for a copy to play with and review and it arrived within minutes. Cool.

I chose to install it myself since I'd never ventured into this area myself. The installation went more smoothly than I had expected for $80. A few minor things here and there, but it only recently was released and is still being worked on.

After getting everything ready to go, I announced to the Forum moderators that it was ready and asked them to create their micro-sites. They are still creating, but the area is already functional and well worth your time to visit now. Revisit as they redevelop in competition with each other. Very competitive group.

The other areas of supporters will be invited this week to come build their sites.

Now we have a low overhead way for the volunteers to communicate with the community. Volunteer time is not wasted maintaining the service. The staff is enjoying themselves.

Next time you have a need, don't go looking for a ready made solution. Go looking for an answer, where ever you might find it.

http://jimworld.com/TheTeam/

Since I want to review lots of other software in this category, maybe I should throw a server up and give away some web sites. Might be fun.

A STORY OF INCOME

Most, if not all, of us are stuck in the same tough spot. How do you keep a reliable stream of money coming in to allow you the time and freedom to work on your content and site? Sometimes the income doesn't even pay the server bills.

As a web publisher I feel exploited every time I investigate turning my ad space over to an agency. They won't guarantee any level of performance and they won't even guarantee how much I will earn per banner impression. And the stories I hear of less than $1.00 per thousand impressions tell me that it is not just my concern. Everyone is being squeezed out while the agencies and advertisers have a field day. Cheap, and often free, advertising. The advertisers make money. The agencies make money. Where is ours? Without us they can't exist. It's the web publishers that create the traffic that they use for their advertising.

Something has got to change, and this could easily be the beginning of a new publisher's power to be compensated for effort and results.

No. I'm not anti-agency. Before I found the Web, I spent 12 years running an ad agency placing national TV, radio and print media. I know how that industry works. I also know that nowhere else can advertisers expect to get a free ride.

There is another side to the issue. While publishers want to get the money they need each month, they also want to put as few ads on their site as possible. A site's community members are not at the site to see page after page of banner ads. They are there for content. Their responsiveness to the advertising is a carefully crafted agreement between the community member and the publisher.

The publisher says "I need cash flow to operate this community. I'd rather not charge my members, so I must run advertising to cover my needs."

The community member agrees: "Thank you for not asking me for money. Yes, I know you need cash flow. I'm not an idiot. I understand. But... please don't take advantage of me. Run quality advertising about things I might be interested in buying. That I will support you on. Just don't run ads so thick on every page that I can barely find the content. Sell my attention for enough to keep this relationship professional and I will help you by patronizing your advertisers."

What is the squeezed web publisher to do? She can sign up for a hundred affiliate programs hoping to find the two or three that will actually generate money. But will the one out of ten generate enough to offset the nine that generate diddily?

Or sign up for one of the high-flying web agencies that only offer pennies while collecting dollars from the advertisers? And even then, they want to only pay based on click-throughs.

As a long time advertiser and agency hack, I can tell you that if I were again advertising a national brand on the web I would "buy" all of the click-through media I could get my hands on. Then I would create a banner with the product name in huge letters and nothing else. Guaranteed to generate almost no click -throughs. Cost? Zip. Zero. For millions of branding impressions on web sites everywhere.

Sounds pretty far-fetched doesn't it? Take a look at many of the national brand banner campaigns and try to explain their design by any other means. Do you think that half-million dollar a year ad "suits" can't figure this out?

I think it is about time someone stepped forward and gave us a square deal for our efforts. Anyone that is willing to invest heavy money to make that shift happen has my support. They also have my available banner impressions. I hope I get to write about a steady stream of agencies that have decided to treat the web publishers fairly and include us in the cash stream. But I'm not holding my breath.

WE'RE FINALLY GETTING OUR MONEY'S WORTH FROM OUR POLITICIANS

<rant>

Are you having as much fun watching our elected officials in Washington rush out to the TV cameras after every vote they cast to tell us how they really didn't just pass a new law regulating the Internet because it wasn't really a law, it was just a little thing hung onto a real law about something having nothing to do with the Internet and besides they really felt our pain and really needed to give us some help in protecting our kids from using their credit cards to order vintage $50 bottles of wine over the Internet to get drunk with their other 13 year old friends and that the reports that that wasn't really happening didn't matter since it could have happened and what really matters is that they sincerely meant it when they promised to leave the Internet alone but what could they do because they really, really felt our pain....."

This level of entertainment is what makes me want to get out of bed each day. It must hurt something fierce to get their mouths working so effectively on both of their faces at the same time. Not since Johnny Carson brought us the beach guy that could juggle a raw egg, a bowling ball and a chain saw all at the same time have I gotten so much for my entertainment dollar.

The only elected ride that I was taken on this week that exceeded the thrills of the "We didn't lie to you about the Internet.... the truth just changed" ride was when they all tried to get out of the congressional door at the same time to rush to the talk shows to hail their revolutionary law granting women the right finally to nurse their babies on Federal land.

Excuse me, but I must have been sick the day they passed the law taking that "right" away from women. When was that?

Thank God they are giving us back even a small portion of the rights they have been stripping from us for the past 50 years. Since they've taken away most of them, how would they ever find enough things to take away next year if they don't give some back now.

I would love to see someone run for the Senate in California on the platform "I promise, if elected, to not even bother going to Washington. I'm just going to stay here in sunny California and see how many parties I can get invited to and play free golf until I'm ready to drop. Besides, California is where the action is. Why would I want to be in Washington when the California Governor finally slips a disc in his back trying to unpromise so many campaign pledges in so few months."

You know. I'd actually vote for that person.

The only thing that bums me out is that I had 37 in the office pool for the number of non-laws passed this year not really restricting the Internet. Whoda thought that 37 wouldn't even make it till the end of summer?

As always, I try to end these little rants on an up note involving no run-on sentences. We can all sleep better knowing that the only government agency to assure us that they will have absolutely no Y2K problems of any kind is the IRS. Figures.

</rant>

WELCOME TO JIMTOOLS.COM

<babble>

Foolish me. I thought I could quietly open the new JimTools site and let a trickle of traffic help find any bugs (unlikely as it is that my programs have bugs) that might have snuck in.

The day I tried that naive maneuver several thousand of you found your way to JimTools and you haven't gone away yet. Good thing the programs were pretty stable.

</babble>

So, guess we should talk about JimTools. I think the rest of you will find it a regular stop in your workday.

After several years of webmastering I finally got tired of going all over the world to different sites to use online tools to make my job easier. And even more tiring was sticking my credit card into the slots on those sites.

I figured if I was tired of making the rounds, then you probably were too. So, I set out to do something about it.

Thus was born, JimTools. http://jimtools.com/

Originally, I developed the search engine submitter and FFA submitter to be launched at JimTools. I just got a little too excited and launched them by themselves while finishing JimTools. Now they have been moved to their permanent home.

Here is a rundown of the tools currently available for you to use for free at
JimTools:

1. Search Engine Submitter - submit your site to 35 spidered search engines and see the results of each submission.
   
   
2. Free For All Submitter - submit your site to 160 popular free for all pages in just a couple of minutes.
   
   
3. Directory Submitter - submit your site to over 400 popular directories.
   
   
4. Search Engine Position Analyzer - No more whimpy 5 or 6 search engines to check. JimTools will check your site under any number of keywords, in each of 22 major search engines.
   
   
5. A complete list of all HTML special characters.
   
   
6. Generate HTML code for simple of very complex tables.
   
   
7. Generate standard Meta tags to add to your pages.
   
   
8. Generate ALL of the available Meta tags for your pages.
   
   
9. Generate cross browser OnMouseOver text links with status bar prompts.
   
   
10. Generate cross browser OnMouseOver image changer code. (image roll overs)
    
    
11. View your pages in windows representing all of the different screen sizes and monitor resolutions. No more pages that almost fit, but not exactly.
    
    
12. Generate code for your pages to open a new window at any size you specify,with only the tool bars and features you specify. Painless.
    
    
13. Convert HTML code to the right format to be included in a Javascript.
    
    
14. Link Checker - check for broken links and graphics on any page, on any site.
    
    
15. Convert your decimal numbers to hex numbers - makes it easy to convert your Photoshop RGB colors to HTML color codes for a perfect match.
    
    
16. Simple Color Picker - Select your colors while watching the real-time page preview, then generate HTML code for BODY tags or Style Sheets.
    
    
17. Color Chart - 8 tables with all 512 "standard" HTML colors and their corresponding "#RRGGBB" values.
    
    
18. Color Names - Samples of all HTML color names with hex code (HTML) equivalents.
    
    
19. Research Keywords - Find new keywords for your site. Great tool for Meta tag ideas and for building lists of keywords to bid on at GoTo.com. This one is both unique on the Web and amazing to use.
    
    
20. Analyze Keywords - Analyze keyword density on any web page. Great tool for any promoter. Now you'll know exactly how many times each word is used on your page. Please don't use this on other people's pages because it will give you an unfair advantage in attracting traffic to your site.
    
    
21. Whois: Allows you to retrieve information about the registered owner of .com .net and .org domain names. Great way to find a site owner's phone number when you really want to talk to them.
    
    
22. Finger: Allows you to find out more information about the owner of some email addresses.

I know what you are thinking. How in the world did Jim find the time to write all of these best available anywhere tools?

The short answer is: I didn't. Many I wrote and many were "adopted" by other companies and developed specifically to be made available on JimTools. Much begging and crawling was involved, but the result is worth it. Next issue I'll tell you all about the amazing people that have donated their time and skills to make this happen.

Interestingly enough, before I even got a chance to tell you about JimTools a steady stream of new visitors started arriving as the result of an article in PC World in which the writer calls JimTools his favorite toolkit.

To a mere mortal, 22 tools that are each so powerful would be a satisfying achievement, but not around here.

Not at JimTools. Already in development are:

1. A spell checker that will check spelling on any URL you enter.
   
   
2. An HTML lint-picker that will analyze a page for good coding all the way through HTML 4.0 standards. Invaluable tool to find coding bugs and make sure that your pages will work with all browsers.
   
   
3. Site Announcer to submit your site to all of the existing new site announcement lists.
   
   
4. An improved directory submitter with extensive feedback of submission results and a database for each user to store site information to allow you to return and automatically submit the sites to any new directories added to the submitter.
   
   
5. A Free For All Submitter that only submits to FFA pages that do not send you any email when you post your link. Awesome tool!
   
   
6. A powerful interactive form generator. Create professional, complex forms for your site in only minutes. Answer the questions and leave the coding to the JimTool.
   
   
7. A doorway page generator for each of the major search engines. Not for the beginner, but a powerful tool for the older hands. Each time the search engines change their ranking formulas the generator will change to put you back on top.
   
   
8. HTML Image Cleaner - run any page through this tool and out will pop new HTML code with height and width specified for every image on the page. Even corrects mistakes you may have made.
   
   
9. Complete Cascading Style Sheet Wizard. Click the options you want and paste the code into your page.
   
   
10. A very cool HTML editing system that creates code for complex pages in just a few minutes.

That's what is in development or design currently. If you want to adopt one of these tools and make it happen and keep it happening, drop me a line.

Planned but not started: GIF and JPG file size smasher. Online banner and button maker. Online graphics program to give you the power of Photoshop and its plug -in effects. Point and click Javascript maker. A browser remote tool bar to let you directly access the tools from anywhere you happen to be. And a whole bunch more.

Come use the JimTools. They are free and have been designed to do things the way I thought they should be done. I think you'll agree, they save a lot of time and effort.

JimTools almost winds up the long list of upgrades I promised you when I told you that the Gazette was going to become less frequent for a while. That diverted time has resulted in JimTools, The500 directory of places to submit your site, the new Webmaster Tools and Resources Directory, JimWorld Open Directory Search, JimWorld Meta Search Engine, the new software reviews site, 5 new tutorials, communitybuilding.com, three new games to relax with, the keyword Keyhole, and the current major expansion to the Search Engine Forums and the Get High Forums.

Did I spend my time well or what?

http://jimtools.com/

HOW TO WIN THE GRAMMAR GAME

Are you one of the many bright people who speak well but have trouble with the mechanics of writing: following those confusing rules concerning spelling, punctuating, capitalizing, etc.? Is a relative, co-worker or editor constantly whipping out a dictionary, style guide, or grammar handbook to point out mistakes in your writing, making you want to slam their fingers in Chapter 6?


If so, have you spent precious time striving to learn who's right? Or is that whose wright?

Does it matter? If you're speaking, perhaps not. If you're writing, it may matter.

The reasons for not writing well are varied, but that doesn't stop people from being good communicators... from creating fantastic stories and plots... from giving life and light and meaning to words.

You are bright. Never forget that....

Now it's time to move forward and have fun writing right!

Yes, I said fun!

Join me in finding ways to avoid common mistakes in

• spelling
  
• pronunciation
  
• capitalization
  
• punctuation
  
• usage

And much more!


COMMON MISTAKES

A and An:

"an historical book" is not idiomatic in American English. Before a pronounced (breathy) h, the indefinite article should be a. A hotel; a historical. Precede a word beginning with a "breathy" h with an a. (6.60CMS14)


Due to or Because of?

Due to modifies nouns and is generally used after some form of the verb to be (is, are, was, were, etc.). Jim Wilson's success is due to talent and spunk (due to modifies success, not talent).

Because of should modify verbs. Ted resigned because of poor health (because of modifies resigned). (1101GRM7)


Its or It's?

This is one of the most common problem areas of our language, probably because possessives almost always use apostrophes. Its is an exception. Its: The possessive form of the pronoun it is never written with an apostrophe, e.g., . . . read the book. "Its title is . . ." or, "What is its value?"

It's: contractions of it is and it has. It's time to go. It's been great. (AHD3)


Nauseous or Nauseated

Often used incorrectly, but don't get nauseating about its usage. Nauseous means sickening to observe: disgusting. Nauseated means sick to one's stomach.

Pregnant women often experience nausea. When they describe the way they feel, they should say, "I feel nauseated," but if a pregnant woman says, "I feel nauseous," don't correct her grammar: give her a hug and some ginger ale! Timing is everything.


Their, They're, or There?

Their: possessive form of the word they, e.g., Their Web site is full of typos.

They're: Contraction of the words "they" and "are," e.g., They're doing a great
job on their Web site.

There: at or in that place, e.g., "Now there is a stunning Web site. (AHD3)


Your or you're?

This is probably the second most common problem area in our language.
You're: Contraction of the words "you are," e.g., "You're up for an award.
Someone said you're leaving."

Your is a possessive form of a personal pronoun, e.g., "I like your Web site.
Tom, thanks for giving your time to this effort."
Both: "Your knowledge of HTML shows that you're a dedicated designer." (AHD3)


Let's tackle just a few of the most confusing word pairs and groups:

• Accept: receive.....
  Except: exclude
  
  
• Adverse: opposed.....
  Averse: not interested
  
  
• Affect: change, influence.....
  Effect: (v) to bring about (n) result, impression
  
  
• Appraise: value.....
  Apprise: inform, notify
  
  
• Lay: to set down, to place or put an item down.....
  Lie: to recline
  
  
• Principal: first in authority; main participant; amount of a debt less interest.....
  Principle: basic truth or assumption
  
  
• Ensure: to make sure or certain; guarantee; to protect.....
  Insure: to take out or issue insurance; to pay or be paid money in the case of loss.....
  Assure: convince, make sure of something, to give confidence; to declare or promise confidently
  
  
• Their: belonging to; possessive of "they" (another case where a possessive does not have an apostrophe).....
  There: at, or in that place.....
  they're: combination of "they are"
  
  
• To: in the direction of; toward.....
  Too: in addition; as well, also.....
  Two: more than one; less than three

GRAMMAR BASICS

Adjectives are modifiers. They describe nouns & specify size, color, number, etc., e.g., The small "x" in the upper corner of the window is used to exit your file.

Adverbs describe verbs, adjectives & other adverbs, e.g., The exhausted secretary screamed loudly as her monitor flickered slowly, then died.

Alliteration can give a pleasing sound to a sentence, as long as it's not overdone, e.g., World Wide Web . . . smelly, slimy SCSI . . . resonant ringing.

Clauses are groups of words with a subject and predicate. A main clause stands alone as a sentence; a subordinate clause is incomplete and is used with a main clause to express an idea.

--Main:I will play Tetris,
--Subordinate: when I have time.

Compound nouns usually form the plural by pluralizing the fundamental part of the word, e.g., attorneys general; spelling matches; vice presidents.

Conjunctions join words, phrases or clauses. Coordinating conjunctions: and, but, for, or, nor, either, neither, yet, so, so that. (Yet & so are also used as adverbs.) Subordinating conjunctions join two clauses (main and dependent/subordinate): although, because, since, until, while, etc.

Metaphors suggest comparison between two different things, e.g., Bill Gates has a heart of gold...His mind is a sharp razor.

Mondegreens: Misheard lyrics. Example: "Donuts Make my Brown Eyes Blue" rather than "Don't it Make my Brown Eyes Blue" or "Are you Going to Starve an Old Friend?" instead of "Are you Going to Scarborough Fair?" or "Ham on Rye" rather than Kenny Loggins "I'm alright."

Noun: The name of a person, place, thing, quality or action. Nerd, Bellingham, desk, truth, discovery, frustration.

Phrases are closely related words with no subject or predicate, and may be used as nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs, e.g., Waiting for Technical Support has kept me at my desk all afternoon (noun). The typing could have been done earlier (verb). The person with the bleary eyes is a computer nerd (adjective). Buy memory chips now, since the price will go up soon (adverb).

Predicates are one of two main components of a sentence. They are verbs and the words used to explain the action or condition. They always agree with the Subject, e.g., Choosing the right ISP can be a difficult process.

Prepositions show how nouns or pronouns relate to other words in a sentence, e.g., Little Susie rolled the $800 CD ROM into the bathroom; her mother hid behind the shower curtain, praying for self-control.

Pronouns are substitutes for nouns, e.g., Judy sat at her computer and opened WordPerfect. Suddenly, her mind went blank, so she contacted Luz Vergara, the WordPerfect Wiz.

Proper nouns form their plurals by adding s to the singular or es if the word ends in s, z, ch, sh, or zh, e.g., the Carolinas, Robinsons, Piersons, Judys, Joneses, Savages, Morrises.

Similes show a similarity between two things, using "like." Bill Prowell has a mind like a razor...After six hours at the computer, her eyelids felt like lead weights.

Subjects, one of two main components of a sentence, are nouns, pronouns, or phrases used as nouns, e.g., Choosing the right ISP can be a difficult process.

Verbs make things happen, show action or state of being & also indicate time of action or being, e.g., Jeff's son waved goodbye to the computer repairman (past). I need to shut down Windows (present). You will enjoy learning HTML (future).

Voice. Active is preferable to passive to create action and interest. Connie typed the letter (active). The letter was typed by Connie (passive). Sometimes, in certain types of scholarly and scientific documents, passive voice is preferred.

You can win the grammar game! If you need any kind of help with word stuff, contact Webgrammar. Who knows, your question may be the subject of a future article! (With your permission, of course!)

Note: codes refer to The Chicago Manual of Style, 14th Edition; The Gregg Reference Manual, Seventh Edition; and The American Heritage Dictionary, Third Edition.
----------

Judy Vorfeld mailto:webgrammar@ossweb.com of Peoria, Arizona is a an Internet old-timer who mounted her first web site in 1996. Her Office Support Services began as a secretarial and copy editing service. Today, through her site http://www.ossweb.com she also offers Web site analysis and renovation, as well as site design, maintenance, and coaching for small site owners. She cleans up grammar and typos for foreign Webmasters who use software for their translations into American English.

Judy has agreed to undertake the often thankless job of helping Gazeteers learn to write more better. Or something like that. Look for the next installment from Judy soon.

GET YOURSELF SOME REST

You'll need it.

As far as I can tell, all of the major search engine have gone back to the folk tale that size matters. When a recent survey was released and immediately beat to death by the media, the search engines were boxed into a corner and must respond if they are to keep their stocks flying high.

The study said that added all together, all of the search engines combined had only indexed something less than 45 percent of the 800 million web pages in existence. Actually, if you combined all of the indices together and eliminated duplicates the number would probably be much smaller. Fortunately the media stars are not interviewed to determine their math skills, so that thought didn't seem to occur to them.

The race is now on to see how many search engines can index ALL of the web... each, not combined.

Visit Excite and search through 800 million pages, each a critical contribution to the total of man's knowledge.

Visit HotBot and discover that it has found 100 million new University server logs to index that it had never stumbled upon before.

Now instead of seeing "Displaying documents 1-10 of 4,915,903" we will instead be offered "Displaying documents 1-10 of 38,451,901"

Oh, Joy!

So why should you get rested up? Because soon you will be forced to fight tooth and nail for position on several search engines at once with eight to ten times as many pages as you currently battle. Every one a gem of human knowledge. And every one fighting for your keywords.

I just hate it when Internet surveys are released to the press on days when nobody infamous has died or gotten caught doing some foul deed that is easy to spell.

Maybe we can get Congress to pass some laws that prohibit mass media personalities from reporting anything involving the Internet.

Y2K STARTS NEXT MONTH

Next month is the official launch of worldwide Y2K Bugs.

History may even remember September 9, 1999, as the day on which old mainframe programmers and analysts became outcasts of society.

During my several decades long life as a software developer, I left many time bombs due to go off next month.

Back in the olden days of computer hardware a disk drive didn't exactly look like they do today. A 7.5 megabyte drive was the size of a washing machine, louder than a washing machine, at a cost of about $50,000.00. Needless to say, one didn't waste space on something like that.

The most frequently heard complaint my system design staff (someday I'll tell you all about System Analysts, the great lost art form) heard from me was "Can't you do something to get more customer records on that disk?" Sometimes one character in record length could save a whole sector of disk per customer record, which equated to twice as many customers on a drive.

One of our favorite places to squeeze was the many date fields that seem to multiply like rabbits in any complex data system. Last payment date, next due date, date of last claim, birth date, expiration date...

Now consider the customer that has not yet done some action that has a related date field. Date Of Last Payment being a good example. Until the customer makes a payment, there is no Date Of Last Payment. Therefore we need another field that contains a "Y" if the customer has made a payment and a "N" if no payments have been made. That's one byte just for a Flag.

Enter Jim whining about having to put more disk drives in the budget. The System Analyst responds with "OK. Forget the flag field. We'll just set the date to 9/9/99 to indicate that no payment has ever been made. Once a payment is finally made, we'll put a real date in there. Are you happy now, Jim?"

Sure. I'm thrilled. September 9, 1999 was forever in the future. To most of us, it wasn't September 9, 1999. It was the No Date Yet Flag value. Care to take a guess what's going to happen to millions of lines of code based on "If DATELASTPAYMENT=NOPAYMENTMADE go to TURNOFFELECTRICITY"?

So, why not just look through the code and find these little problems, make a simple fix and recompile the programs, putting an end to the problem?

The "Why?" is that life is never that easy. The 9/9/99 technique is just the tip of the iceberg.

You may have noticed that 9/9/99 is different than 09/09/99 which is different than today's highly desirable 09/09/1999. Why is that?

Because we didn't even use the decimal numbering system to track dates. 090999 is six bytes long. 9999 is only four bytes, which is better. It's shorter. So what did we do about October? 10/01/99 became A199. A=10, B=11, C=12. Use the same technique for the day of the month and you have dates like AC99 instead of October 12, 1999.

Care to take a stab at explaining what a program will do when presented with 9/1/00 as the next payment date? That translates into September 1, 1900, not September 1, 2000.

Need to squeeze even more? No sweat. We could do that. Let's drop down to binary. Take 2 bytes of the record (2 characters in today's lingo). Use the bits (zeros and ones) to construct a string of bits that will hold the date and you can even use one of the bits to represent the Payment Flag. 0=no payment yet. 1 =payment has been made. Bury all of this very technical program code in an external subroutine written in unreadable-by-humans machine language and the ultimate time bomb has been created. You can run but you can't hide.

Need to squeeze a little more? OK. We took three bytes of 0's and 1's and figured out a way to put two complete dates in three bytes. I'd love to see one of the "Guaranteed To Fix Your Y2K Bugs For $99.95" programs try to find that particular trick.

These are only a few of the thousands of ways that dates can lie in wait for Old Man Time as he struggles toward the next millennium. I think of them as Time Mines, far more lethal than military land mines.

Are you confused? Good. So are all of the programmers trying to find where we buried our Time Mines.

I know where some of them are. At least the ones that I created. If I lived in Colorado and got my electricity from one of the Rural Electric companies, I'd stock up on candles. Fortunately the programs I wrote that are used by the nuclear power plants only pay the bills. By my calculations, the Time Mines have already started a series of small explosion in real estate Multiple Listing Services throughout the land.

I am however a bit concerned about my small contribution to the air traffic control system.

I chuckle when I see some of the scare-you-to-death ads running on TV. Planes falling from the sky at the stroke of midnight. Nuclear power plants melting down. But if they told the truth, how could they sell you a garage full of food that looks and tastes like it's main ingredients started life as a cow pie collected from the pasture. And get you to pay more than the cost of a big steak dinner at a fine restaurant.

If you've already bought a year's supply of that survival "food" I suggest you eat one meal's worth of it now. See if your will to live is strong enough to make you swallow the first mouthful.

To the hundreds of people that have emailed me with a plea for an explanation of the Y2K problem written so they can understand it, this is as close as I can come. Sorry. If you were expecting some simple solutions, sorry again.

The Y2K Bug is real. But think of it as a flu bug and get your shots before flu season starts. And realize that flu shots don't work on everyone.

Do not listen when the Queens of Sound Bytes appear on television and try to terrorize the world with their description that the bug is the Ebola virus. It just ain't so. Life will go on. Video games will still work. Bills will get paid. Food will still grow in the fields and trucks will still bring it to market. Water won't turn to sewage overnight.

Try tuning to a channel where the reporters spend as much time on their stories as they do on their makeup.

SNIPPETS

Freeware+
http://jimworld.com/freeware/

If you are a user of one of the JimWorld Freeware+ programs, we have just posted new releases of each program.

• Visibility Analyzer - This powerful search engine placement research program now supports users accessing the Web through a proxy server.
  
  
• GIF Runner - The most popular GIF search tool has been upgraded to support users accessing the Web through a proxy server.
  
  
• Word Market - This complete solution to keyword research has been upgraded to install all of its required Microsoft DAO database components.

If the server is a bit busy be patient. We expect at least 100,000 upgrade downloads the first week.

If you have not yet become a user of these absolutely free Windows programs, you are missing a big benefit of belonging to this community. Everywhere else you go Web sites offer programs less powerful than the Freeware+ programs for sale. We think that free is a better price. Save a couple of hundred dollars or more. Download Freeware+ today.

----------

CyberTip4theDay.com
http://www.CyberTip4theDay.com

The best way to increase traffic and keep visitors is by offering top-notch free content. CyberTip4theDay can help you, with its new offering of free Tip Windows for your site. The CyberTip Windows deliver concise, valuable tips in more than 20 different categories. Simply select the category most appropriate for your page or site.

Experienced webmasters can customize the Window's look and feel for their sites, by adjusting the PARAM attributes. The Tip Window graphic is hyperlinked to the CyberTip4theDay Website in such a way that a new blank window is opened in the user's browser. This encourages the user to return to the hosting site. After visitors finish up at CyberTip4theDay.com, they simply close that window and are automatically returned to the hosting site.

Applet: http://www.CyberTip4theDay.com/applet/

----------

This week I seem to be writing entire paragraphs made up of nothing but
headlines. Somebody stop me! Help me find where I misplaced my body copy.