Back Home Free service on the Internet Kilen Mathews Special to the Middle East Times. The second of a two­article series on free services on the Internet . FREE WEB PAGES! There are two types of people who should be interested in this and want a web page: Those who can write HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language - the language of web pages); Everyone else. Check with your ISP first you may already have up to a megabyte reserved for your own personal web page. About half of the ISPs in Cairo offer this to their subscribers. The good news is both can get a free web page account almost immediately and even novices who can fill out a form can have a home page and a URL to add to their business card in just a couple of minutes. All of these free web pages can be used by "everyone else." If you know HTML, you can use it and customize your free web pages further but it isn't required. . US Robotics: Townesquare 2000 http://townesquare.usr.com Free to anyone but if you ever bought a US Robotics modem you get more space. WWW.ANGELFIRE.COM Angelfire is an advertiser­supported free web page host. Anyone with an e­mail address is welcome to 200 KB for a web page. While you can't run a business on that, you can do business with that much. Angelfire is completely menu­driven. When you first sign up you simply pick out your colors and can add text lists and links to other web sites all without knowing a word of HTML. And since they keep the form for you, it's fairly easy to upload a graphic and put in on your web page. If you do know HTML you can do just about anything you want on this site. You do not have to use the forms you can write your HTML code and upload the files and make them immediately available. Images are screened for good taste. You can get away with anything for about 24 hours, but if you upload and activate any 'adult' or offensive materials they will be deleted from your account by the Angelfire reviewers. . www.fortunecity.com I love this site. It's a fun, non­commercial site with loads of features. Set in a community metaphor where you apply for 'residence' in the community, you move into a 'house' and 'furnish' it with your web page. This is a very powerful, easy to use and exciting Internet application. Don't join unless you plan to participate. You can expect to see web 'communities' like FortuneCity start to become really popular. They are perfectly integrated with the original individualistic and sharing culture of the Internet. (Cairo's efforts on such applications are just beginning; I'll keep you posted). . www.freepage.cban.com: Nice Canadian business site but small (125K) free web site. www.focus-asia.com: Includes facility to send free faxes (via email) within Singapore. Conclusion: Remember nothing is truly "free". When you use a free service, if you see an advertising banner that peaks your interest click! That gets them a credit and ensures that they stay in business and you get free services. Go get 'em. . EGYPTIAN INTERNET NOTES I can't help yelling at the telephone company. Arento has changed their name to TeleComm Egypt but they can't hide. Now there are fewer than 60,000 Internet users in Egypt. And all predictions said there would be up to 10 times this many by now. And Egypt is nearing the million mark in imported PCs. Something isn't right here. Yessir, it's the telephone company. It remains too hard, too expensive and then too low­quality to get and use the dedicated phone lines that Egypt's ISPs need to bring Egypt to cyberspace. This is almost as big a problem as the software pirating that is going on. We'll keep an eye on the software piracy lawsuit under way in Cairo. So far, it is looking like it is a token "hand slap." Or will we see Egypt get tough on the illegal software companies? . Internet questions? Need help finding someone or something on the net? I'll help. email: kilenm@bigfoot.com . Back Home