Vol. 2, No. 13 -- Week of April 2, 2000

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Welcome to Learn the Net News.

While e-mail has certainly cut into post office revenues, there are still times when you have to lick stamps--or do you? Thanks to the Internet, you can now download digital postage and print a stamp right on the envelope. Is it for you? This week we examine the pros and cons of e-postage.

Train travel is making a big comeback, especially in Europe, where you can zip along at speeds approaching 200 mph. With the soaring price of gas, why not leave your car parked in the garage and take a virtual train ride with our Web Tour--All Aboard!

How many people will be online in five years? Would you believe 1 billion? This month's Factoids.Net looks at the surprising numbers behind the Internet--who's online and what they're doing.

We have a new tutorial this month--The World Wide Web at a Glance. Our 20 minute Web brush-up is guaranteed to improve your surfing, so give it a click and let me know if you would like to see more of these mini-courses.

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"Top Ten Things You Can Do on the Net This Week" includes:

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The DSL Diary -- Week Three

Last Tuesday, two technicians showed up and spent five hours trying to correct the problem of my dropped connection. The good news is that the problem was with PacBell' service and not my computer, as had been alleged. Still, when darkness fell and the clock struck 8:00 PM, still no DSL.

Then a miraculous thing happened. Wednesday afternoon, I got a call from a technician who had just replaced some hardware at the central office. He suggested that I try logging on, which I did. Sure enough I connected. But the question remained, would it last more than ten minutes? Sure enough, it did. I've been connected ever since.

Was it worth it? I'll give you a full report next week. I can tell you that I've been listening to a lot of great music and downloading all kinds of software.

Let me know your DSL story, so I can pass it along to other readers.

Finally, April 1 marks the fourth anniversary of Learn the Net. Although it's a lifetime in Internet years, the time has gone very quickly. For everyone involved, it's been a fascinating and rewarding experience publishing the site. We've made many friends around the world, and hopefully contributed modestly to the evolution of this extraordinary medium. Now at the beginning of our fifth year, we have great plans to add customized tutorials and to expand into other languages. Of course you'll be the first to know!

One of the best aspects of this medium is that it allows easy two-way communication. As we make future plans, let us know what you want to see. Just click the link below and drop us a line.

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Thanks for subscribing. By the way, if you like Learn the Net News, please forward it to your friends and ask them to subscribe.

Michael Lerner

Publisher

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