TOURBUS: Thursday, August 6, 1996
DRIVER: Patrick Crispin
TODAY'S TOURBUS STOP:
Mercury Mail
Okay ... so this isn't exactly Thursday the 8th (its more like Saturday the
10th). Your fearless bus driver has spent the last four days cramming for
finals, so I am just now getting caught up with all of the other stuff that
I should have done over the past few days. :)
School would be so much more fun were it not for all the tests ...
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I have some good news and some bad news. First the good news: I think I
have found the e-mail equivalent of "My Yahoo!" (which we visited back on
July 11, 1996 ... by the way, you can find all of the previous TOURBUS
posts at WorldVillage.
This e-mail equivalent is called "Mercury Mail" and you can access the
Mercury Mail homepage on the Web at http://www.merc.com/
Mercury Mail is a *free*, advertiser-supported service (sort of like
TOURBUS) that delivers only the news and information that you want, when
you want it (Mercury Mail usually delivers its "stuff" to you on a daily
basis, but that is completely up to you). Best of all, Mercury Mail does
all of this through e-mail ...
... well, I guess it would be more honest to say that Mercury Mail does
*most* of this through e-mail. The bad news that I alluded to a few
paragraphs ago is that you have to have a forms-capable Web browser to be
able to "customize" Mercury Mail to send you what you want, when you want
it. (Actually, I think you can customize Mercury Mail through e-mail too,
but I could not find any directions on their web page ... I'll keep
looking, though.)
Mercury Mail offers 8 services: News; Weather; Snow; Stocks; Sports;
Entertainment; Reminders; and Calendars. All of the services, with the
exception of "Calendars," are absolutely free. Mercury Mail is able to
fund these services by placing small ads in the e-mail letters that they
send you (sort of like what Bob and I do to be able to pay for TOURBUS).
To sign up for Mercury Mail, just pop on over to their Web page and then click on "User Profile." This will take you to the "New User?" page.
Mercury Mail is going to ask you for some information for their database.
In particular, they are going to ask you for your:
- First Name
- Last Name
- Sex
- Age
- Zip Code (Non-US folks can just enter "00000")
- Income
- Home phone
- Operating System
- E-mail program
Now, before you panic, let me assure you that this information is going to
remain completely confidential. Mercury Mail will NEVER release, sell or
give your name or e-mail address to any other party or organization, nor
will Mercury Mail send you any e-mail messages that contain anything other
than
1. The information that you request, and
2. Administrative messages (notices of new Mercury Mail services,
etc.).
Once you are registered with Mercury Mail -- BTW, I promise not to tell
anyone if you lie about your age or income -- you can start "customizing"
Mercury Mail to e-mail you the news and information that you want.
Let's actually "customize" one of Mercury Mail's 8 services. If you click
on "News" icon, you are taken to the "NEWSpot" page. NEWSpot is much like
The Daily Brief (TOURBUS, April 18, 1996) in that it delivers a daily
e-mail summary of news topics, including U.S. news, international news and
special events. Customizing "NEWSpot" and, for that matter, the rest of
Mercury Mail's services is a lot like customizing My Yahoo! You are given
a page full of topics that you can select, like:
General News Business
* U.S. * U.S. Business Headlines
* International * U.S. Financial Markets
* Science & Medicine * Intl Financial Markets
* Technology * Commodities & Foreign Exchange
* U.S. Government Statistics
Politics
* U.S Sports & Entertainment
* International * Sports Headlines
* Entertainment
Special/Timely Topics
* U.S. Elections
Just select the topics that interest you (you'll understand how once you
see the page) and you are set to go. Some of the Mercury Mail services
even allow you to determine the delivery dates and times for the stuff that
Mercury Mail sends you. Say, for example, you don't read your e-mail on
the weekends; you can simply tell Mercury Mail not to send you anything on
the weekends!
Here's some more information on the other free Mercury Mail services:
Weather
-------
"WeatherVane" brings you personalized weather forecasts for just
the cities you want. Pick as many weather regions as you like,
then select the days and times you want the forecasts delivered
to your e-mail box. In addition to plain-text e-mail, WeatherVane
also supports enhanced e-mail formats such as HTML and enriched
text, supported by mail clients such as Netscape and Eudora 3.0.
Snow
----
This is a really useful service in Alabama ... especially in
August! "SnowBytes" gives you current mountain conditions,
updated daily, on how the skiing and snowboarding really is.
Stocks
------
"Closing Bell" send you a daily e-mail message containing closing
prices and news for your personalized portfolio of market
indices, mutual funds and securities from the three major U.S.
exchanges
Sports
------
"Sports Wrap" gives you more sports information than any human
being could ever possibly need. BTW, Sports Wrap also features
information on the one pure sport left on this planet: NCAA
college football!
Entertainment
-------------
"SpotLite" delivers daily horoscopes, lottery numbers, movie
reviews, TV listings, lists of top selling movies, videos and
music, plus much more, customized according to your wants and
needs.
Reminders
---------
"ConsoliDate" sends you a reminder e-mail a week before and the
day before an important date, just to make sure you don't forget.
Cool, huh?
That's it for this week. I hope that you enjoy Mercury Mail, and that you
have a great and safe weekend!
---------------------------------
TODAY'S SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY
---------------------------------
FUSSED - adjective. A premier position.
Usage: "You been here before?" "Nah ... this is my fussed time."
(Special thanks goes to Dan Bragg for today's wurd)
YOU CAN FIND ALL OF THE OLD SOUTHERN WORDS OF THE DAY ON THE SOUTHERN WORD
HOMEPAGE AT http://www.ua.edu/~crispen/word.html
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