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AN ON-LINE OLYMPUSNET NEWSLETTER

October, 1998

WELCOME TO THE OLYMPUSNET OCTOBER 1998 NEWSLETTER! Topics included this issue are:

CHANGES AT OLYMPUSNET
Many changes are underway at OlympusNet. We are streamlining our operations so that we can carry out your requests quickly and reliably. We're building on-line community tools to serve as information resources about the Peninsula, its businesses and institutions.

One of our goals is to hand the control of your OlympusNet connection to you. Instead of sending mail or phoning your requests to add a mailbox, set up your web site, or put your account on hold while you're away, you'll be able to do it on the web and receive an email acknowledgment of your request and an email confirming that your request has been completed. You'll be able to get information about your account such as when you last paid, how much you paid, when you'll next owe and how much you'll owe. When you contact us about a problem, we'll be able to track the progress toward a solution.

We're also making OlympusNet more useful to the community by building event calendars as well as databases for personal, business and organizational use. All of our web tools are built using WebKeystone, our application builder can make highly interactive web sites. You'll be seeing the first round of these tools later this month.

OLYMPICPENINSULA.COM
After five years of having a combined Olympic Peninsula/OlympusNet web site, we're splitting the two apart into OlympicPeninsula.com and OlympusNet. The purpose is to separate the geographically oriented Olympic Peninsula from the Internet oriented OlympusNet. Existing business, community and personal sites will be minimally affected. What will change is the content for the Peninsula towns. We will be adding WebKeystone databases to OlympicPeninsula.com for finding a variety of Peninsula resources. OlympicPeninsula.com will be going on-line this month. Prior to bringing OlympicPeninsula.com on-line, we'll notify you and ask that you update your bookmarks for sites under http://www.olympus.net/placesOfInterest and ask you to let us know if you find broken links.

THREE NEW WAYS OF CONNECTING TO THE INTERNET
The first of our three new dialup accounts is Office Network ISDN which is used to connect an office network to the Internet. The beauty of ISDN is that it connects very quickly and offers 64k and 128k speeds. The second new dialup account is Office MultiLink which lets you double your connect speed by using two phone lines. The third account is Office Mail which lets you run your own mail server on your office LAN. For more information see http://www.olympus.net/olympusnet/charges/dialup.html

For those offices that need to be connected full time to the Internet, don't forget our 56k Frame Relay account. To give you an idea of what a 56k Frame connection can handle, the Port Townsend City Library has eleven computers on their network and they are delighted with its performance. 56 Frame Relay is a high-quality, bi-directional US West service that is good for running a low-volume web server.

Next year at least one of the cable companies will be offering Internet access. For those who prefer to connect to the Internet through the cable company, but who want their mail and web hosting via OlympusNet, we will be offering 'network' connections. Those connections will be less expensive than our dialup accounts since we won't have to pay either for phone lines or terminal servers/modems. (People who connect to the net through other providers have always been able to host their web site on OlympusWWW without having a dialup account on OlympusNet).

WEBKEYSTONE
This is the web tool we've been developing for the past year and a half. It is elegant, sophisticated and versatile software that gives web site owners the means to build sites that match their business needs. The most simple application for WebKeystone is sending a handsomely formatted email message to customers who visit a web site and fill out a form. WebKeystone works well with most HTML editors. Our shopping cart, written entirely in the WebKeystone language is in beta test. We'll be sending a newsflash when we release the shopping cart and several other WebKeystone tools later this month. Along with showing the benefits of WebKeystone, we are offering hands-on, free WebKeystone classes at WSU's Port Hadlock campus. A good knowledge of HTML is a prerequisite for the class. See http://www.webkeystone.com for more information.

Our first WebKeystone class is filled. If you'd like to get on the list or re-confirm your place for our next class, please send mail to xxx@olympus.net. See http://www.webkeystone.com for more information.

CALLING ALL PHOTOGRAPERS!
Submit your photo to be featured on our home page!

Whether you are an amateur or professional photographer, if you have a scanned photo that would be appropriate for our top page, which as you know changes frequently, let us know. We will showcase photos unique to Clallam and Jefferson County for: Special Events (which we will use around the time of the event) such as county fairs, boat shows, tree festivals, etc., and Local Scenes such as seasonal pictures of mountains, woods, shorelines, rivers, indigenous animals, interesting buildings, and close-up details. We will also link to sites containing descriptions of the events or to your OlympusNet Web Page where appropriate.

Please follow these guidelines:

  1. You must own the copyright to all submitted photos.
  2. Not all pictures translate well to the computer screen, look for clear photos, with good light and fairly obvious detail.
  3. The picture needs to be recognizable when it is shown as a thumbnail i.e.. 200 by 150 pixels at 72dpi.
  4. It is best to submit your photo as a jpeg file.
  5. Submit your photo (or a link to it), along with full credit and caption information to: xxx@olympus.net

VACATION HOLDS AND E-MAIL FORWARDING
Don't forget to let us know if you are going to be gone for a month or more and we will put your account on HOLD; see: http://www.olympus.net/olympusnet/charges/serviceHolds.html This way we won't harangue you with invoices, wonder why you haven't paid, or inadvertently block your account.

If you get your email at another internet site, please let us know so that we can forward your invoices, newsletters and announcements.

TECHNICAL SUPPORT
The Technical Support team is a busy portion of the OlympusNet crew! We respond to over 1000 calls per month and work hard to stay up-to-date on new operating systems and software. We have recently upgraded our telephone support system so that we can connect customers with support staff quickly and conveniently.

Our team members specialize in both MAC and Windows, and our Tech Support service hours are designed to accommodate our customer needs. Our goal is to be available when YOU need help, so we include early evening and Saturday hours. Tech Support hours are: 

      Monday through Friday   8:30 AM to 7:00 PM
      Saturday               10:00 AM to 2:00 PM
Call 385-0464 or 1-800-896-1751 during those hours. You will reach Elizabeth, or voice mail if she is on another line. Be prepared to leave your name, username, phone number, whether you are using a MAC or Windows PC, a very brief description of what your system is (or isn't!) doing, and a good time to reach you. A Tech Support staff person will return your call shortly; if we are unable to reach you, we will make at least two more attempts to contact you during the shift.

You may also send email requests for help. Windows requests go to xxx@olympus.net and MAC requests go to xxx@olympus.net. Please include all of the information mentioned in the telephone discussion above.

We enjoy providing this quality service to you. We are always happy to hear from our customers!

Note from Ned: We are fortunate to have a motivated, talented and proficient staff. That goes for all eleven members from technical support, system administration, bookkeeping, documentation and software development.

THANKS FOR YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS!
When new customers call to sign up, we ask them why they chose OlympusNet. The majority say that we were recommended to them by friends, relations, neighbors, and consultants or that they use our service at work or at the PT library. Some have come to us because of an article in the local papers, the yellow pages, attendance at a class or presentation, or from a competitor. Other reasons include: they were studying mythology and liked our name, heard we had the best and most patient tech support, we were recommended by a patient, we've been around longer than the others, we were the only ones who answered the phone, heard about us in a Dog Obedience class, shopped around and we sounded the nicest, just good luck I guess, found us on the Web, were told that we were 'a peach of a service!'

So to each and every one of you who has passed on a good word about OlympusNet, a hearty thank you from us all!

Ned Schumann and the OlympusNet Staff
xxx@olympus.net