Date: Fri 04-Sep-1998

Publication: Bee

Author: CURT

Quick Words:

Internet-Info-Brand-Xoom

Full Text:

INTERNET INFO FOR REAL PEOPLE: A Home Page at Xoom

By Bob Brand

The explosive growth of personal websites is fueled, in part, by the ease with

which these sites can be created. In addition, more and more free webhosting

is now available. One of the fastest growing communities is called Xoom.

Some of the elementary steps involved in the creation of a website have been

discussed in earlier columns. The most popular free location is GeoCities

(GC). In fact, the company recently had an IPO (initial public offering). Like

so many Internet related stocks, the price skyrocketed. However, I have a few

concerns about GeoCities. In August 1998, Wired News reported that Jodie

Bernstein, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection stated,

"GeoCities has misled its customers, both children and adults, by not telling

the truth about how it was using their personal information."

GeoCites lost my trust. In addition, when a web surfer stops at a GC website,

he is greeted with an annoying pop-up ad promoting GC. There are other hosts

who do not have nuisance side effects. My favorite is called Xoom. This free

host provides a generous 11 megabyte disk space for your home page. Here are

steps I followed in opening an account.

Registration at Xoom

The first requirement is to register an account (they call it membership)

name. I used the name: internet_inf (Note: there is a restriction on 12

characters with no spaces.) The password is entered next. (Tip: keep all

Internet related information such as User ID and passwords in a bound notebook

to protect your sanity). The new member is notified by e-mail that the account

is ready for activation by log-in onto the website http://xoom.com/validate.

Xoom membership allows participation in chatrooms, message boards, free e-mail

and, of course, its primary mission of creating a website. It should be noted

that the minimum age for membership is 13 years old. The thoughtful Xoom

creators take much of the pain out of building a website. For example, they

make available animated gifs, classic photos, JPEG photos, six shareware HTML

editors, plus many more web building tools and utilities. They sell a six-pack

of CD ROMs that includes a broader offering of the free content available on

the website. The price is $29.95 for new members. (Freight and sales tax may

apply).

Very Special

The area that sets Xoom apart from other webhosting sites is the Home Page

Help Center. The "Learn HTML!" breaks down learning the website language into

easily digestible pieces. Each topic is condensed to approximately one page.

They have been able to provide information appealing to newcomers and experts

alike. After the page is created, it must be uploaded to the Xoom server using

a FTP (File Transfer Protocol) utility.

For a novice, this could be a daunting task. However, the Xoom folks have gone

through the trouble of showing new members how to use eight of the most

popular FTP utilities (WS-FTP, Netscape Composer, Netscape Gold, CuteFTP, and

more). The tutorial is crystal clear and includes screen shots of what appears

on the computer monitor during each step of the process. Extremely well done!

I use CuteFTP and find the tutorial to be extraordinary.

Your ISP

Many ISP (Internet Service Providers) provide 5 megabytes of free disk space

for their subscribers to develop a personal website. However, rarely will you

find a "community atmosphere" like the one Xoom has created for its 2.9

million members. The tutorial information alone is worth the visit. Once their

offering has been sampled, you may want to grab a piece of the real estate and

build a site. Xoom has made it easy!

URLs (Uniform Resource Locators) of interest:

http://www.xoom/com http://www.geocities.com

http://members.xoom.com/internet_inf/

http://www.wired.com/news/news/politics/story/14412.html

(This is the 119th of a series of elementary articles designed for surfing the

Internet. Next, $$ for Info is the subject on tap. Stay tuned. Until next

week, happy travels through cyberspace.

Previous issues of Internet Info for Real People (including links to sites

mentioned in this article) can be found: http://www.thebee.com. Please e-mail

comments and suggestions to: rbrand@JUNO.com or editor@thebee.com.)