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Newsletter No. 49


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                             Free Pint
         "Helping 26,000 people use the Web for their work"
                    http://www.freepint.co.uk/

ISSN 1460-7239                                4th November 1999 No.49
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                           IN THIS ISSUE

                             EDITORIAL

                        TIPS AND TECHNIQUES
    "Key UK Library and Information Science Information Resources"
                           By Richard Eskins

                             BOOKSHELF
         "Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions"
                     Reviewed by William Hann

                          FEATURE ARTICLE
                 "Affiliate and Associate Programs"
                         By Mark Southgate       

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                      >>>  ABOUT FREE PINT  <<<

Free Pint is a free newsletter with help on using the Web for your 
work. It is published by email every two weeks and free copies can be
reserved at http://www.freepint.co.uk/. The site also houses a full 
archive of articles, reviews and discussions. The newsletter may be 
freely distributed in its entirety, so please do pass it on, and is
best viewed using a non-proportional font like Courier.

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                             EDITORIAL

                      Happy birthday to you,
                      Happy birthday to you,
                      Happy birthday dear ...

Birthdays are always a time to reflect, and the birth seems like only
yesterday.  I was there of course, getting my hands dirty. In fact it 
could be said that I was instrumental in forming this new creation. 
It was admittedly a bit messy, and some things were in the wrong 
place. However, even though we're just entering the toddling years, 
Free Pint still seems so much older than most two year olds!

                      ... Free Pint,
                      Happy birthday to you!

The launch issue of Free Pint had 3500 words, whilst the average 
edition now has more like 6000. We have 26,000 subscribers, as 
opposed to 500 for the first issue and 13,000 on the first birthday. 
We now have the book reviews and Bar, and exciting times are ahead 
for Free Pint. For instance, you may notice that Free Pint has now 
become Free Pint Limited, and I will be concentrating on our 
community full time (instead of effectively running three companies 
for the past two years). I'm putting together a team to help raise
some finance and develop new services, and I'll tell you more 
about all of this in a subsequent issue. Therefore, we're committing
a lot of resources to ensure that Free Pint makes the most of its
formative years.

Back to the second birthday celebrations, and I can safely say we've
got something for everyone in this issue. We start with some great 
pointers to key information resources. This is followed by a book 
review and article which will help all budding Webmasters. I've then
collated the latest postings at the Bar (and there have been over 120
since the last issue) and the subjects have been suitably diverse as 
usual. So as I say something for everyone.

All the best,
William

PS: If you'd like to read an article by the BBC featuring Free Pint 
as a virtual community,  then please visit
http://www.bbc.co.uk/education/webwise/communities/virtualcomms7.shtml.
There is also a write up of my recent evening talk (with some 
insights into the workings and background to Free Pint, as well as 
tips on site promotion) on the AUKML's Web site.  Search the page at
http://www.aukml.org.uk/dead.htm for the word "Clerkenwell".


William Hann BSc MIInfSc
Founder and Managing Editor, Free Pint
e: william@freepint.co.uk
w: http://www.freepint.co.uk/
t: +44 (0)1784 455435
f: +44 (0)1784 455436

           Free Pint is a trademark of Free Pint Limited
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           >>>  DOES ADVERTISING IN FREE PINT WORK?  <<<
   Do you think we'd have so many repeat advertisers if it didn't?
              http://www.freepint.co.uk/advert.htm

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                        TIPS AND TECHNIQUES

    "Key UK Library and Information Science Information Resources"
                           By Richard Eskins
                           
This one is tougher than I first thought. This article is based on a
Web page that I maintain at
http://www.mmu.ac.uk/h-ss/dic/resource/lislinks.htm. The idea being
that I take you the reader on a journey of the sites to which this
page links. However, once I started thinking about the article I
realised that I have become more of a guardian than a user. There are
greater and more comprehensive sites/lists that cover this area.
However, like a lot of the links we provide on our pages we need to
strike a balance. Our key users are staff and students, and as a by
product people like yourselves may find our pages useful. The balance
is not to re-invent the wheel but to offer our users direct links to
the major resources whilst also pointing them to other sites on this
subject which are more comprehensive. We could just provide one link
to say, Ian Tilsed's pages at
http://www.ex.ac.uk/library/wwwlibs.html, but hopefully by providing
some key links ourselves we are highlighting these sites to our new
students and providing the more experienced shortcuts to their
favourites. Hand on heart I can say I'm fairly convinced that this
works as many ex-students seem to carry on using our pages as a
starting point once they get into the work place. Likewise we find a
growing number of our peers around the planet find the site in general
of use for the same reason. My sad confession is that we are in dire
need of some updating and a vast number of additions sit in my
bookmark file at present waiting for the call.

So on with the show, which incidentally relies on my opinion only and
has nothing to do with the Department of Information and
Communications. The site reviews have to be slim to fit the article,
so please give them a visit to get acquainted or even reacquainted.

ASLIB : The Association for Information Management
http://www.aslib.co.uk/

Well Aslib tell us who they are, and have contact details (how many
sites still don't do this!) which is a good start. They detail courses
and conferences which are up to date, which is always a good sign.
Publications (including those wonderful Know How Guides) are detailed
with abstracts. Don't expect any full text. Journals fare a bit better
with publication of the 'highlights' of Managing Information,
including archive. Full text access to Aslib's other journals is
through subscription.

BAILER : British Association for Information and Library Education and
Research http://www.staff.livjm.ac.uk/busjofar/bailer/

An "association which includes all teaching and research staff in the
eighteen Information and Library Schools in the United Kingdom and
Ireland." The site has fairly recently changed home and been revamped.
It provides what is needed and is up to date. The institution's
background is presented, along with a directory of members. The
details of the Bailer Heads of Departments is a handy reference tool,
but other pages are minimal.

BRITISH LIBRARY : British Library Online Information 
http://www.bl.uk/

Ok, so you've all visited this site. They doggedly stuck with those
terrible frames and slow drop down lists, but the content has
continued to grow. I'm not even going to try to go though all the
content, suffice it to say OPAC97 is a star player along with the paid
for databases such as Blaiseline. The 'site index' helps with
navigation and thankfully there is a search tool for the site. Contact
details are obvious on the opening page, but would perhaps be better
placed in the framed menu. Articles Direct service opens up the power
of the Web, by "providing copies of journal articles and conference
papers for the occasional user."

BUBL : A national information service for higher education.
http://bubl.ac.uk/

BUBL, what can I say, a British gem. A 'Catalogue of 11,000 selected
Internet resources', you're searching the Web on a subject you are not
familiar with, trust BUBL to point you to prime meta sites and other
key resources, all hand picked. There's more, journals; abstracts,
full text, over 200 titles, a search facility and an excellent
Directory of UK organisations and institutions.

CTI : CTI Centre for Library and Information Studies (CTILIS)
http://info.lut.ac.uk/departments/dils/cti/

The CTILIS "supports the use of computers in teaching both by teachers
in information and library studies departments and by academic
librarians." Despite the awful Java buttons the main strength is the
INFOCUS journal which has what seems to be 'selected parts' available
online. This includes some excellent articles in the aforementioned
area of 'computers in teaching.' The Resource Guide lists materials in
this field along with evaluations.

CURL : Consortium of University Research Libraries
http://www.curl.ac.uk/

Home of the CURL project whose mission is "to promote, maintain and
improve library resources for research in universities." The site
gives you clear information about the project, and provides clear
links to partners and other developments. A key strength is of course
the consortium's database with a link to COPAC at 
http://copac.ac.uk/

EARL : Electronic Access to Resources in Libraries
http://www.earl.org.uk/

This one's simple. UK / Public Libraries / Networking. This is the
site. The font of all projects and high quality links, selected al la
BUBL. Not the easiest site to navigate, but well worth the effort.

elib : The Electronic Libraries Programme
http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/services/elib/

Another research programme that seems to appear everywhere. Digital
Libraries is too narrow a term to define the projects involved, click
and dive in.

Gabriel : GAteway and BRIdge to Europe's national Libraries.
http://portico.bl.uk/gabriel/en/welcome.html

A search service which allows the combined searching of the WWW
services of a group of European National Libraries represented in the
Conference of European National Librarians.

The Institute of Information Scientists : The UK professional
association for people involved in creating, retrieving, organising or
disseminating information. http://www.iis.org.uk/

Who they are, what they do and a taster of their
Inform newsletter. You can't ask for, or expect much more!

JANET : UK's academic and research network. http://www.ja.net/

The string that binds us all together in the UK higher education 
community.

JISC : Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the HEFCs (Higher
Education Funding Councils). http://www.jisc.ac.uk/

Services and programmes aimed to exploit the aforementioned string.
The HE equivalent of Earl. Miss it, miss out.

The Library Association of Great Britain. http://www.la-hq.org.uk/

What can I say, they're trying. Very (sorry, old joke). Should such a
regal body have Hot News?

The Library and Information Commission http://www.lic.gov.uk/

From the UK's Department for Culture, Media and Sport. Key interests
are the online publications and reports, along with details of the
Commission's research activities.

LISSPS : Library and Information Studies Students and Prospective
Students. http://hosted.ukoln.ac.uk/lissps/

Minimal site to promote the electronic mailing list of the same name.
Joining instructions included.

Mailbase http://www.mailbase.ac.uk/

They say it all, "provides electronic discussion lists for the UK
higher education community. We currently have 2,571 discussion lists,
and 178,589 members worldwide." Something for everyone, and a great
place to track down someone in the LIS or HE community.

NISS : National Information Services and Systems - information for
education http://www.niss.ac.uk/

Education, education and more education. Start here and here only for
Further and Higher education. Text version is recommended at
http://www.niss.ac.uk/index-text.html.

UKOLN : The UK Office for Library and Information Networking
http://ukoln.bath.ac.uk/

Not to be missed, sharing an "expertise in network information
management." Gems include the journals such as Ariadne
http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/. The hosted project "Stories from the Web"
and research into areas such as Metadata.

UKOLUG : UK Online User Group. http://www.ukolug.org.uk/.

Careful here, my boss is in this gang. A nice clear site providing
information on the group, including publications and links to select
resources including UKOLUG's electronic discussion list.

UK Public Libraries.
http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/town/square/ac940/ukpublib.html

Excellent, comprehensive personal pages by Sheila and Robert Harden
that detail public libraries in the UK on the Internet. They also
provide a variety of quality links to key sites relating to issues
that matter to Information professionals. Also available: Public
Libraries of Europe.

Well that's it. My page does go further, but the word count for this
article doesn't. Please take a look and tell me what I've missed at
the Free Pint Bar. Cheers.

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Richard Eskins is the Information Officer for the Department of 

Information and Communications at Manchester Metropolitan 
University. The Department's Web site is at 
http://www.mmu.ac.uk/h-ss/dic/, with Richard's pride and joy, his
Search Tools page at 
http://www.mmu.ac.uk/h-ss/dic/main/search.htm. 

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Related Free Pint links:

* Chat to the author now at the Bar
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/bar
* Read this article online, with activated hyperlinks
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/issues/041199.htm#tips
* Previous Free Pint articles for the information profession
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/guide/html/sgp30.html

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   FREE SEMINARS AT ONLINE INFORMATION 99 The Online Information 99
exhibition offers a specially designed programme of free seminars that
will give valuable insight into new skills, new techniques and new
approaches that information professionals and end-users can put
straight into practice. Seminars include Working the Web by Free Pint,
Technical Tutorials by Intranet Focus and MarketingBase and
Destination Internet Economy by Intel. For FREE tickets and further
information visit www.online-information.co.uk

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         >>>  THE FUTURE OF FREE PINT DEPENDS ON YOU  <<<
             We rely on you to help us spread the word

            Why not forward this issue to someone else,
              or let us send them a courteous note at
               http://www.freepint.co.uk/reco.htm

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                        FREE PINT BOOKSHELF
               http://www.freepint.co.uk/bookshelf

         "Poor Richard's Internet Marketing and Promotions"
                     Reviewed by William Hann

If you were to ask me to tell you about Internet promotion then I'd 
probably politely invite you to do your own homework. The skills of 
creating and marketing a successful Web site are always self-taught, 
and they involve reading loads of magazines, email newsletters and 
scanning hundreds of discussion postings. If you put in the work and 
commitment, then over time you will find yourself with a Web site 
which is very popular and achieves your objectives ... although you 
can't quite remember all the methods and tricks you used to get there.

Well, I have discovered a book (and not before time) which I believe 
is the most comprehensive and readable companion in the tricky
field of online promotion. How I wish I'd had it two years ago at the
birth of Free Pint, with sections on everything, including site 
creation, selling, search engines, how to locate your audience, 
advertising, affiliate programs, tracking results, using email, 
reaching journalists, real-world promotions ... in fact the table 
of contents runs to 12 pages (I kid ye not). 

Now, you may have gathered that I quite like this book.  Maybe I'm 
biased because the author seems to have taken a similar path to me in 
finding out what works and what doesn't. Sometimes whilst reading I 
would question a suggestion, however the author somehow manages to 
read your mind and puts it at ease in the next paragraph. 

So, what do other people think?  Well, these Americans are much 
better than we British at blowing our own trumpets, and as soon as 
you open the book there are five pages of compliments for Peter 
Kent's earlier books (and justifiably so it appears). OK, so what 
are customers saying at Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com ... they all 
love it.


Therefore, I have no hesitation in saying that if you have are trying 
to promote  "Yourself, Your Business and Your Ideas Online" (as the 
strapline says) then you could do little better than to read all 400 
pages of this super guide to Internet marketing.

    Find out more about this book on the Free Pint Bookshelf at
          http://www.freepint.co.uk/bookshelf/richard.htm

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Related Free Pint links:

* Internet marketing and advertising books on the Free Pint Bookshelf
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/bookshelf/marketing.htm
* Links to previous articles on Web marketing in the Free Pint Guide
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/guide/html/sgp15.html
* Read customer comments about this book at Amazon.co.uk
  http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0966103270/freepint0c
  and Amazon.com
  http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0966103270/freepint00

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            Global Gold Hosting and Domain Registration
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pounds for .uk and 69.99 pounds for .com, .net and .org. Hosting 
packages start at just 6.00 pounds a month for our basic accounts. 
Check your domain or find out more at http://www.globalgold.co.uk/

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             >>>  WANT TO ACCESS ALL PAST ISSUES?  <<<

                 Use the Guide for subject access
                http://www.freepint.co.uk/guide
                     or do a keyword search
                http://www.freepint.co.uk/search

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                          FEATURE ARTICLE

                 "Affiliate and Associate Programs"
                         By Mark Southgate       
                                         
Affiliate programs (also known as associate or reseller programs) are
a business arrangement where anybody with a web site can apply to
promote the product or service of a company in exchange for a
commission on any sales that result from people who follow the
affiliates links to the site of the merchant.  The Internet research
company Jupiter Communications http://www.jup.com estimates that in
1998 sales from affiliates accounted for 11 percent of the 5.7 billion
dollars in online consumer commerce (excluding business-to-business
and car sales). By 2002, this is expected to grow to 24 percent of
37.5 billion dollars.  

Affiliate programs were first introduced by large companies like CD
Now http://www.cdnow.com and Amazon http://www.amazon.com and have
proved enormously popular, with Amazon having signed up over 320,000
affiliates.  The rapid growth of affiliate programs means that almost
any product or service that is sold online now has an affiliate
program.  This article will look at the advantages and disadvantages
of affiliate programs from the perspective of merchants with affiliate
programs and of affiliates who use (or would like to use) affiliate 
programs to earn money from their web sites.  The main emphasis will
be on what prospective affiliates will need to consider when selecting
an affiliate program for their web site.

The advantages and disadvantages for merchants:
-----------------------------------------------

For companies selling products or services on the Internet, affiliate 
programs offer a low cost method of increasing brand awareness as well
as a more effective alternative to banner advertising.  Effectively,
merchants can recruit a commission only sales force at low cost.  The
risk for merchants is that their reputation may be damaged by the use
of unscrupulous methods of promotion used by affiliates, particularly
the use of spam.  

The disadvantages however would appear to be outweighed by the
opportunity to increase sales and expand customer databases by having
thousands of affiliates working on selling the product or service.  In
addition, only a small percentage of affiliates earn any significant
income for merchants, meaning that a large number will need to be
recruited.  Increasing competition between merchants means that it
will probably become more difficult to attract successful affiliates
in large numbers.


The advantages and disadvantages for affiliates:
------------------------------------------------

Affiliate programs offer the opportunity for affiliates to earn money
or increase current income from their web sites.  Those whose web
sites already have a large amount of traffic will have a captive
audience to which a relevant product or service can be introduced.  By
using a well known brand, affiliate programs provide the ability for
anybody to earn an income by promoting the merchant's products without
having to pay the high costs of brand-building or of dealing with the
problems of shipping products and billing customers.  

All that affiliates need to do is send sufficient numbers of people to
the merchant's site and the merchant takes care of everything from
customer queries, secure online ordering, shipping etc.  Affiliates
can either select one or two affiliate programs appropriate for an
existing site or create a new site based around an affiliate program
they choose to promote. 

What to look for in an affiliate program:
-----------------------------------------

The most important attribute to consider when looking at affiliate
programs is that the product or service closely matches the content of
your web site.  While this may seem to be stating the obvious, a
surprising number of affiliates join programs which offer a product or
service with little or no relevance to the content of their sites.
Other key factors to consider include accurate tracking of the
visitors you send to their site, which is vital for ensuring
that you are fairly paid for all sales you generate.  Also consider
the merchant's site from a customer perspective - do they have an
attractive and well designed web site? Is it easy to navigate the site
for more information and to order the product or service?  Are queries
from affiliates and customers answered promptly?  How long has the
company been trading, are their contact details easy to find and do
they have an established online reputation? 

If you join an affiliate program, you are likely to spend quite a bit
of time and effort promoting it.  With reputations on the Internet (as
in any business) hard won and easily lost, it is crucial that you feel
confident in recommending a product or service and that the company
will still be around in the years ahead.  Effectively, your reputation
is at stake as you will be recommending the affiliate merchant to your
visitors.  You should only be willing to promote a product or service
which you would willingly purchase and use yourself and so ideally you
would become a customer before becoming an affiliate.

Prospective affiliates also need to read the agreement carefully prior
to signing up. Things to consider include the amount of commission
paid and with what frequency you will receive payments. Minimum
earnings before cheques are issued can vary from as little as one
dollar to a hundred dollars or more, while payments can be as frequent
as weekly or fortnightly or could be made only quarterly, meaning that
you may have to wait a while before seeing the financial rewards of
your efforts.   The amount of commission earned is also important - 4
or 5 percent of sales will require you to sell the product or service 
in large quantities to earn decent money and may not provide adequate
reward for your efforts.  The majority of affiliate programs also only
pay commissions on the first sale and sometimes only if the customer
makes an immediate purchase.  Effectively this means that you are
being paid a bounty for introducing new customers and will need to
ensure that your web site will send a constant stream of new visitors
to the merchant.

Alternatively, you could consider affiliate programs that offer either
ongoing commissions or commissions on all future purchases made by
customers that you introduce. Although this is less common, a couple
of good examples of these types of affiliate program are Virtualis
http://www.virtualis.com/vr2/msouthga/vrp.html who offer a service
(web hosting) which is ideally suited to providing ongoing commissions
on a monthly basis and the Make Your Site Sell affiliate program 
http://www.sitesell.com/netguide.html which offers commission on all
future purchases (of products aimed at helping entrepreneurs and small
businesses sell on the Web) made by customers who you introduce.

How to promote affiliate programs:
----------------------------------

The key to earning decent revenues from affiliate programs is for your
web site to receive a large amount of targeted traffic.  This is
predominantly achieved through good rankings in the main search
engines and a high number of links from other sites to yours.  A large
amount of information on search engines and web site promotion is
available free on the Internet but two sites in particular stand out
for the quality of the information they offer - Search Engine Watch
http://www.searchenginewatch.com and Virtual Promote
http://www.virtualpromote.com.  Successfully selling a product or 
service from an affiliate merchant also requires that you go beyond
posting banner ads from the merchant on your pages.  By integrating
text links and testimonials into the content of your web pages, you
will achieve a far higher success rate.  If you have actually bought
the product or service or know people who have, genuine and honest
testimonials can be particularly effective.  If you have an opt-in
mailing list or newsletter, recommendations in these are another good
method of promotion.  

Further information:
--------------------

There are a growing number of web directories offering information on
affiliate programs with one of the best of these being ClickQuick
http://www.clickquick.com who award each affiliate program in their
directory a rating for quality.  
The e-commerce research room at Wilson Web
http://www.wilsonweb.com/research/associate.htm 
also provides a useful list of links to online articles on various
aspects of affiliate programs.

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Mark Southgate is a student at the University of Nottingham who has
been researching affiliate programs over the past year and also makes
use of the income from promoting affiliate programs to support his
University education.  He is the author of an online guide to
affiliate programs 
http://www.hotelsandflights.com/opportunity.html and a directory of
useful resources for webmasters
http://www.hotelsandflights.com/webmaster-resources.html.  
Mark can be contacted by e-mail at: lqyrms@nottingham.ac.uk

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Related Free Pint links:

* Chat to the author now at the Bar
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/bar
* Read this article online, with activated hyperlinks
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/issues/041199.htm#feature
* Links to other Webmaster resources in the Free Pint Guide
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/guide/html/gp6.html

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           >>>  DO YOU HAVE AN IDEA FOR AN ARTICLE?  <<<
         Contact our Editor, Rex Cooke rex@freepint.co.uk
          or visit http://www.freepint.co.uk/author.htm

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                           FREE PINT BAR
                   http://www.freepint.co.uk/bar

We have had 50% more postings in the last two weeks than for the
previous two weeks and so readers are obviously enjoying the 
free-flowing chat at the Bar. I've compiled and summarised the major 
topics here as usual, and please do follow the links to read the 
latest postings if a topic interests you. William.


Unblocking the Web [ADSL] (Free Pint No.48)
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=872
  Discussion of security issues, pricing and transatlantic differences

Web site business proposal template
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=880

Google launches and changes (correction to article in Free Pint No.47)
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=887
  Changes to the way Google lists sites linking *to* a URL

Senior Citizens and the Internet
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=891
  Discussion, help and resources for research on the above

Sites for Primary Schools
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=897
  Please suggest sites suitable for kids, as well as teacher resources

Email - Internet policy - Security
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=899
  Can an ISP tell what computer has collected email? Is it an offence
  to collect someone else's emails if they disclose their password?

Setting up email service - how?
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=919
  How do you set up an email service, like Hotmail, on Linux?

Lifestyle Survey's ... any good?
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=921
  How to find these research firms, and implications for charities

Pharmaceutical newsletter listings
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=923

Current awareness services sought, with delivery by email
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=925

Any questionnaire surveys about the Internet and university libraries?
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=928

New AltaVista
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=933
  Seems to have lost a lot of sites (beware), and is now clustering

Indoor air quality in office buildings in the EU  
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=943
  Anyone know of sites with information, especially Germany & Sweden

Poverty in the UK - sources of information for early teens needed
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=946

Domain names - questions/answers about registration cost and geography
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=958

Francophone search engine for children
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=963
  Starting points requested and suggested

Structuring a marketing fee based on eCommerce traffic generated
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=970
  Any thoughts or sources? Can order placement be monitored?

Webshops & Workflow-Systems
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=973
  Sites please with prices, technologies, etc.

Electronic information research - volunteers needed
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=974
  Commercial librarians/libraries mind being used for research into
  the 'changing paradigm in the provision of electronic information'?

Are there HM Customs implications for global eCommerce downloads?
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=980

Presumably one has to send VAT invoices to e-commerce customers?
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=981

Source suggestion for traditional music sites (re: Free Pint No.48)
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=985

European IPOs
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=986
  How can one find details of companies filing an IPO in Germany? 

MP3 - Issue No.48
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=991

ISDN - Issue No.48
  http://www.freepint.co.uk/cgi-bin/webbbs/config.pl?read=992

      Why not post your own question or comment today at ...
                   http://www.freepint.co.uk/bar

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                   FREE PINT FORTHCOMING ARTICLES

* Researching for TV * Help and Welfare Services * Internet surveys *
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I hope you've enjoyed this issue of Free Pint, and do please visit 
the Web site and discover the many resources there also.

                       See you in two weeks!

                           Kind regards,
                   William Hann, Managing Editor
                      william@freepint.co.uk
                    http://www.freepint.co.uk/

(c) Free Pint Limited 1999
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                        CONTACT INFORMATION

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Free Pint (ISSN 1460-7239) is a free newsletter written by information 
professionals who share how they find quality and reliable information
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