Hi Folks,

This first one is a repeat, but worthwile reading if you missed it the first time.

E-mail Etiquette

Sending e-mail that looks good is a reflection of your professionalism. And an e-mail that is properly written not only makes you look good, but it's easier for your recipients to read and that will win you lots of points with them. Finally, if you send an e-mail that looks good, you also look like you know your way around the computer and the Internet.

So, here are some tips on how to write a winning e-mail:

1.) MANY READERS DON'T LIKE ALL CAPS. IT'S HARD TO READ AND SEEMS LIKE YOU'RE SHOUTING! So, please don't use them.

2.) use punctuation its hard to read stuff that doesnt have any commas capital letters periods or apostrophes

3.) Usee yur spall chacker. Its annyang to try to reede constent spalling misstakes.

4.) When forwarding an e-mail to someone, copy and paste what you want to send into a new e-mail and then send it off. This is especially important if you had to dig through tons of "layers" to actually get to the message of the e-mail.

5.) Be courteous enough to use BCC (Blind Carbon Copy) when forwarding an e-mail to everyone in your address book. You don't want the addresses of your friends to get sent around the Web, do you?!

6.) Avoid embedding sounds or using stationery in your messages. I know it's cute and we're guilty of showing you how to do it, but they take longer to download and can be annoying to your recipient. Additionally, when your recipient responds to your e-mail, they may have to reformat their text (especially color), in order for it to be readable.

7.) Remember that attachments over 50K are annoyingly long to download. They could possibly cause your recipient's connection to time out or the e-mail could even be blocked. Try to keep those files manageable!

8.) Re-read your e-mail message before you send it out. I don't know how many times I thought I had everything just right and then found something that was way out of place when I went back over the document.

9.) When replying to a message, don't quote back the entire message if you are just responding to one or two points. Just include what you are responding to.

10.) Finally, don't use short hand. You know, things like "r u going to stp by ltr" can be hard to read. Don't B lzy, typ the whole wrd!

Well, I guess that's about it. I know I occasionally have an e-mail transgression (I think we all do), but maybe these guidelines will help everyone communicate a little better. Remember, these are just suggested guidelines. Most of you do live in free countries, so e-mail any way you want!

~ Steve

Q:
Do you know anything about a Web site called Fast Food Maps? I saw it the other day, but I don't know anything about it. It seems interesting, so if you know anything, please share!

A:
Ha, this is perfect! This question goes along so well with the Q&A tip we had in last Friday's newsletter about planning your summer vacations. In that tip, I talked about all the online sites you can use as sources to book your flights, hotels, rental cars and so on, along with some you could access to get driving directions, etc. Now, if you're not quite sure how that topic and today's question go along with each other, allow me to explain!

As mentioned above, Fast Food Maps is another brand new service to come from Google. It works along with Google Maps to track down all of the fast food restaurants located in the United States. So far, this site only plots out the locations of 10 popular restaurant chains, but it'll be no surprise if it happens to grow in the years to come. Those 10 chains are McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Wendy's, KFC, Jack in the Box, Hardee's, Carl's Jr. and In-N-Out Burger.

Now, I have never even heard of a few of those restaurants (Carl's Jr., for example), let alone knowing they are so popular, but I guess you learn something new everyday! So, as you might have guessed, this site is perfect for the times you're traveling by car (hence the connection to Friday's tip). When you're driving for an extended period of time, it's nice to know where all the quick restaurants are and Fast Food Maps is the perfect solution.

To check it out for yourself, navigate to this Web site. On the right hand side, you'll see all the fast food chains listed with the number of locations in a certain city beside it. For example, in Nashville, Tennessee, there are 15 McDonald's restaurants, seven KFCs and three Hardee's Burgers. Cool, huh?! Each restaurant is color coded (McDonald's is yellow, etc.) and if you don't want the map to point out certain places, you can just uncheck them.

At the very top, there's two pull down menus you can use to select a state and city. So, if you're going to be going through Houston, Texas on the way to your destination, you might want to check out where a Taco Bell is nearby. Once you select the city and state you want to view, a new map will appear on your screen and you can just use your mouse to navigate through it. It will show you where all the restaurants are and you can even use the regular map behind it to see where you're at road wise.

If you want to check out all of the cities and states you'll be traveling through, just choose your next selection and a Fast Food Map will come right up. You can write down all the information you need or even print out each map if you'd like. You can also zoom in and out to certain parts of the map if you need to see a certain spot more up close. It's really quite genius!

Here's an example of Nashville, Tennessee, because that's where I'm going to be traveling this summer:

This is definitely a must see for any traveler. Check it out today!

~ Erin

More Next Friday,
Chuckstr
----My Web Site----

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