Copyright held by The John Cooke Fraud Report. Reprint rights are granted with attribution to The John Cooke Fraud Report with a link to this website.
By Dorothy Montague
Do you travel a lot? Or perhaps you are planning to open a small business and don’t want to spend a lot of money on equipment. NetOffice Solutions of Atlanta, Georgia (770-451-6675; fax, 404-249-6801, http://www.faxweb.net/), has created two innovative products called FaxWeb and VoiceWeb. With FaxWeb and VoiceWeb you can read your faxes and listen to your phone messages directly from the Internet from anywhere in the world where you can log on to the Internet. For a $25 setup fee and $15 a month, you get a dedicated fax number with an Atlanta area code (404 and 707). (NetOffice Solutions is offering a reseller option to Internet service providers throughout the United States, so there will be more area codes shortly.) A toll-free 800 number is available for $0.30 a minute extra. FaxWeb also offers a voice mailbox (VoiceWeb) for an additional $5 a month. Have your faxes and phone messages sent to your FaxWeb number instead of to your office. (If you wish you can get separate numbers for fax and phone.) Both faxes and phone messages are retrievable at the FaxWeb Internet site.
To view faxes or listen to your phone messages, you must use a password; this helps to make them secure. The FaxWeb viewer allows you to save and print the fax messages. When retrieving phone messages you no longer have to pay long distance dialing fees; simply access the Internet and retrieve voicemail messages then play back the messages in real time using a RealAudio or a WAV player. If you prefer, your phone messages may also be retrieved over your phone in the traditional voice mail manner. Other FaxWeb features include e-mail and alpha pager notification of fax and voicemail receipt. When retrieving faxes, your browser will display a list of faxes along with the time they were received. Additional information is included if the sending fax machine is equipped with fax ID notification. You then click on the faxes you wish to view. The equipment has an extensive roll-over system which allows your personal FaxWeb telephone number to answer numerous calls simultaneously.
With FaxWeb you can retrieve faxes and phone messages 24 hours a day from home, the office, an airplane, a hotel room or anywhere imaginable. FaxWeb makes fax and phone message management as simple as reading electronic mail.
Have you been thinking about getting your own domain name? This is the “domain-name” part of http://www.domain-name.extention. Having a personalized domain will identify your company or organization and give it an individual and professional image (see Naming Your Domain at http://www.eeicom.com/eye/ utw/96nov.html). A more individual or personal domain name is easier to remember and can benefit your business. It can increase your web site traffic and help you gain an Internet identity.
If you have been resisting the temptation to get a personalized domain name because you thought it was too expensive (the personalized- addressed host sites usually cost more and many Internet service providers include free web site hosting that uses their domain name) then a web address forwarding service could be a solution. Net Names USA (1-888-netnames, http://www.netnamesusa.com) has a domain name forwarding service for a one time fee of $75. You still must pay the InterNic (http://rs.internic.net) registration fees to register your domain name; the initial InterNic fee is $100 for 2 years, then $50 a year thereafter. Web surfers access your domain name on the Net Names server, which then redirects them to your non-personalized address. You can change your designated address at any time; this makes it easy to change web site hosts whenever and as often as you wish. The process is invisible to the web user.
If you want your own domain name, now may be the best time to obtain one. New generic top level domain names (those extensions after the dot such as com, net, gov, edu, org, mil) are to be available by the first quarter of next year. The proposed new domains and their intended fields of use are: (see http://www.austria.eu.net/iic/ domains.htm, chapter 3 for detailed information). .WEB – web related .FIRM – business .ARTS – art and culture related .INFO – information services .REC – recreation and entertainment related .STORE – a business offering goods for sale .NOM – of personal or individual nature
These new extensions will make many popular domain names available under the new extensions, but are expected to be snapped up quickly. Currently, there are over 80,000 domain names being registered per month. Numerous domain name registration services are now accepting applications for these names. Here are some that I found: Net Names USA at http://www.netnamesusa.com/newdomorder.html. There is no charge from NetNames unless and until the name(s) you request are registered. Whitewater Marketing Services at http://www.wmsweb.com/prereg.htm. A $20 deposit is required, and another $20 if successfully registered. Your deposit is refunded if your name is not successfully registered. WorldWideDomains.com/Site Leader, Inc.’s at http://www.worldwidedomains.com/newtlds.html. There is a non refundable $15 charge per domain name to enroll your application in their pre-registration system, an additional registration charge of $34 will become due only after they have successfully registered your domain name. Global Domain Name Registration Services at http://www.easy-registry.com/netventu/ will soon have a 24-hour registration service available.
Another strategy to obtain a sought-after domain name is to obtain one from a foreign country (sometimes the cost is less also). Norfolk Island, an Australian territory, has the two-letter code nf. An entrepreneur living on the island has begun selling domain names within the nf hierarchy, which he calls the “new frontier” (http://www.names.nf). Similarly, Tuvalu, a South Pacific island group with a population of 10,000, could sell domains to television-related companies because its top level domain is tv. (See http://www.alldomains.com/nfindex. html.) The country of Niue registers a .nu domain name (http://www. alldomains.com/nu/). Net Names USA (http://www.netnamesusa. com) provides a service to register your name in any of over 160 foreign countries.
Another solution to the domain name problem has been provided by AlterNIC (http://www.alternic.net/). AlterNIC is an organization that would like to compete with the official domain name registrar for the United States — InterNIC (which it considers an unfair monopoly). AlterNIC is promoting dozens of alternative top level domains, including biz, inc, and ltd (competition for com); fam(families); med (medical); usa (competition for us); and sex and xxx (pornographic). You can pay the AlterNIC to register domains in these hierarchies, but buyers beware — because they have no official status the names don’t work from 99 percent of the computers on the web. One can download a cache file to their computer which will recognize alternative DNS entries, but this requires some operating system knowledge (see http://www.alternic.net/domains/howto/). (See http://www .eeicom.com/eye/utw/96nov.html for an editorial review.)
NUM is another alternative new top level domain created by NUMNet (http://www.alldomains.com/nics/num/numdnsfrm.html). NUMNet gives web site developers the option of using their telephone numbers as domain names. The extension NUM tells users that the number is an assigned, in-service telephone number. NUM provides the added benefit of not having to compete for domain names. (Your telephone number cannot be taken by someone else.) NUMNet says that using your phone number creates an immediate recognition for customers and friends. With NUM, you have the option of using numerals, or letters that represent the numerals of your phone number on a standard telephone keypad. This option is particularly advantageous to those organizations known or recognized by their advertised telephone numbers. Additionally, using an in-service, assigned telephone number as a domain name will greatly reduce the threat of trademark infringement conflict. The cost is a one time fee of $39.95 plus an application fee of $50.00.
To use the NUM extension the following must apply: 1. The second level domain must be the registering party’s telephone number assigned to them by their servicing telephone company. 2. The telephone number must be in working order at the time of registration and must remain in working order while registered to the holding individual or organization. 3. The second level domains in the US must contain the area code and seven-digit telephone number.
If for some reason you want your web address to have a Christian identity you can change your web page to “www.Jesus.net/YourName.” Lord of Hosts (http://www.LordofHosts.com/lohcontents.shtml) offers this web page forwarding service for $15 per year. A Canadian entrepreneur has even come up with the idea of renting web names. His company, Freeview Listings Ltd. (http://www.mailbank.com/), has registered 6,500 domain names with InterNIC, which they then rent for $99.95 per year and a $49.95 setup fee. (For a news editorial see http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/news/0624/28enic. html.) You can select from thousands of domains based on family names, expressions, professions, hobbies, and pets. Domain categories are Animals, Expressions, Music, Birds, Names, People, Boating, Flowers, Places, Business, Golden, Politics, Cats, Golf, Professions, Countries, Hobbies, Religious, Cyber, Horses, Rude, Dancing, Mail, Sports, Dinosaurs, Medical, Dogs, and Miscellaneous. Two of my favorites from the business category are SoSueMe.com and Jobless.com.
This is really a web forwarding service similar to Net Names USA but a bit more pricey. Unlike the Net Names Service where you own the domain name, here MailBank owns the domain name, which you rent by the year. You host your web site on any computer other than MailBank’s. If your host has a dedicated IP address to your web site then MailBank enters this IP address into its name servers so that all of your visitors go directly to your web site. Customers who have their web sites hosted at Internet Service Providers who have not provided an IP address (this is the case if a page reference has to be included after the domain name to visit the site; an example URL of this type of web site would be something like http://yourISP/homepages/~yourpages), must pay an additional $60 per year. This is because MailBank supplies the needed IP address and then provides a linking page that automatically transfers your visitors to your site.
With the coming of all the new domain name extensions you should be able to find a good name without resorting to renting one. The value of this site and the reason I included it is that it is a good place to start brainstorming. Browse through all the clever names that MailBank has available. These names all have the top level domain name (i.e. the extension) “.com.” There is no reason you can not use one of these clever names with another extension such as “.web” or “.firm” or if you are a risk taker, one of the alternative domain extensions listed by AlterNIC. Have fun but BE CAREFUL, “a rose by any other name, in my opinion, would not smell as sweet!”
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