Site Seeing

By JULES ALLEN
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 30, 2002

Feel free to browse

Simple, effective

www.MeetUp.com/

Yahoo used to do it, Google still does it, and so does Meet Up, the new kid on my block. I'm talking about practicing simplicity, of course, or at least the illusion of simplicity for us knuckle draggers on the receiving end of the browser. The idea behind this gem of a site is that you and your like-minded friends use it to agree on a spot to meet such as a coffeehouse or bookstore. When there, you can talk about whatever makes you like-minded and have a whale of a time. Mac addicts, Xena warriors and ex-Jehovah's Witness are among the most popular topics. Others include vegans, politicos and those who watch Oprah. They're all good reasons to get out of the house.

Smile when you send that

Research.Microsoft.com/mbj/Smiley/Smiley.html

www.newbie.net/SmileyFAQ/Fahlman.html

Love them or hate them, emoticons seem to be here to stay. They are those combinations of semicolons, colons and parentheses that make up sideways smiley faces that pepper instant message chats, badly written e-mail and SMS text messages from agile-thumbed kids. If you want somebody to blame for the smiley, point the finger at Scott E. Fahlman. Back in the dark ages of the early 1980s, he suggested using the famed smiley and, unlike parachute pants and big hair, this idea was more than a passing fad.

Honest, decent, legal

www.DomainsByProxy.com/

You're a pretty decent person, right? You try to keep to the speed limit when driving, give a good tip at lunch when they keep your iced tea topped off and chew with your mouth shut lest other diners are put off by the sight of your molars. So if you registered an Internet domain of your very own, you probably would use some personal information when signing up, such as your home address and phone number. You're probably unware that this information is available to anyone who asks, so it's not usually a good thing to do. So, you've got two choices: Make up an address and give a false phone number or use a service such as Domains by Proxy. The idea is that it registers the domain for you and passes along any mail inquiries after filtering for spam. It's $6 a year after you pay the $8.95 to register your domain with GoDaddy, this company's sister.

Fount of fonts

Typophile.com/gallery/

Here's this week's visual treat: a ramble through up-and-coming font designers' wares. While the arty (for the sake of being arty) interface is a bit hard to navigate, it's worth clicking on those little white squares in the top left corner. Behind each is a usually well-crafted rendering of the designer's type vision. Current favorite styles are Apparent, Turgescent and Frazzled. Check out the rest of Typophile, too. If you're a font nerd, it's manna from heaven.

Keep in touch

FreshlySqueezedSoftware.com/products/maildrop/

I don't normally plug payware. It's even rarer that I'm enthusiastic about a product that's more than $30 or so. But here's the exception to the now-broken rule. If your company, organization or even you need to send out the occasional mailing and don't want to pay some gearhead a bunch of money to set up mailing list software, you'd find it hard to go wrong with this Mac OS X program. Simply import a list of e-mail addresses, type in your message, and send it. Each e-mail can be customized to include salutations, names and so forth. It really is foolproof, as you can see from the demo program. It's $59 and a small download.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright