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A quick note about today's headline:  WebSkulker was once talking with a friend who joined the Air Force, and had taken parachute jumping lessons.  The instructor told the students that if the main and reserve chutes failed to open, there wasn't much they could do except to try to slow their fall by air friction.  "Spread out your arms and legs and be all that you can be."

http://www.inetnow.com

All blind jr. skulkers should read this item carefully, and everyone else should find it interesting too.  The InetNow web site is strictly the place to get information about and sign up for their service, and has no other content.  What they offer is live operators who answer their toll-free phone number, and will look up any information you want on the Internet and read it to you.  This is, of course, totally free, or WebSkulker probably wouldn't mention it.  They will start charging eventually, but they won't say how much and it should be free for at least three months, so take advantage of it while you can.

They think of their service as something to use when you are away from your computer, but need to get information from the Internet.  You would call them from a cell phone, etc., and give the operator a specific web site and they will read it to you, fill in a form, whatever needs to be done from that site.  They are also supposed to be experts at skulking the web for information, so you can ask them general questions about anything and they will try to find the answers.  They will even read your email from a web-based email system and they should be able to read your email from any POP3 system by using a web site such as http://www.mailstart.com. 

WebSkulker knows that blind jr. skulkers can handle many web pages themselves through your Braille or speech screen reader programs, but that some web sites can be very difficult for you to navigate, especially if you have to fill out a form.  Just call the InetNow operators and they will do this all for you on the phone.  Remember, it's free!  WebSkulker talked to a couple of their operators and specifically asked them if they would be willing to read information and fill out forms for blind people.  They said of course, that would be no different from what they do for everyone who calls in on the phone.

WebSkulker learned about this site from the Lockergnome newsletter.

http://www.telepost.com

https://confdemo.telepost.net/scripts/InitConfDemo.exe

WebSkulker was talking to Jr. Skulker Randy Solton the other day who complained that we publish too many free voicemail systems.  Well Randy, too bad, here's another one because this site has other features also.  Sign up for their Message Center Lite for a free voicemail/fax number in your choice of area codes.  It isn't that good a service because you can't customize the outgoing greeting, and you must sign on to their web site to receive the messages and faxes; they don't forward them by email.

But they also have a web-controllable conference call system similar to http://www.spiderphone.com that we discussed in yesterday's issue.  Spiderphone is a lot better because they allow far more parties on the conference and their web interface gives a lot more control and information.  But Telepost can be much cheaper if you use the system often.  You can make a free five-minute conference call to test the system from the second link above.  Give Telepost your phone number and the number of the first person you want to talk to.  It will dial both numbers and connect you, then you can add other people on to the conference.

They only want you to do this free demo call once.  After skulking around a while, it seems like they control this partly by remembering your phone number, and partly by a couple of cookies that they place on your machine with the name "confdemo.telepost.net".  If you erase these cookies using Cookie Pal, for example (http://www.kburra.com/cpal.html), and give a different starting phone number, you could get another demo.  WebSkulker sometimes got it to work with the same phone after erasing the cookies, but sometimes not, and couldn't figure out the pattern.

http://www.on2.com

Jr. Skulker Stuart Shostak suggested this site which is strictly for people with high-bandwidth connections to the Internet through a DSL line, cable modem, or corporate LAN.  They deliver streaming videos that need 300 Kbps bandwidth.  If your line can handle this, you will get large, high-quality, 30 frame-per-second video from a library of material. 

http://www.greaterthings.com/Word-Number/AreaCodes

Jr. Skulker Uncle Brucie submitted this site.  He wasn't sure whether they were serious or tongue-in-cheek.  WebSkulker studied this page and the ones below it, backed up and looked at other pages starting from the beginning of the domain, and finally decided that these people are serious, but totally crazy.  What do you think?

Submitted by Jr. Skulker Ms. 1133

An extraordinarily handsome man decided he had the God-given responsibility to marry the perfect woman so they could produce children beyond comparison.  With that as his mission he began searching for the perfect woman. After a diligent, but fruitless, search up and down the east coast, he started to head west. Shortly thereafter he met a farmer who had three stunning, gorgeous daughters that positively took his breath away.

So he explained his mission to the farmer, asking for permission to marry one of them. The farmer simply replied, "They're all lookin' to get married, so you came to the right place. Look them over and select the one you want."

The man dated the first daughter. The next day the farmer asked for the man's opinion. "Well" said the man, " She's just a weeeeee bit, not that you can hardly tell, pigeon-toed."

The farmer nodded and suggested the man date one of the other girls; so the man went out with the second daughter. The next day, the farmer again asked how things went. "Well," the man replied, "She's just a weeeeee bit, not that you can hardly tell, cross-eyed."

The farmer nodded and suggested he date the third girl to see if things might be better. So he did. The next morning the man rushed in exclaiming, "She's perfect, just perfect! She's the one I want to marry!" So they were wed right away.

Months later the baby was born. When the man visited the nursery he was horrified: the baby didn't look anything like him; it was the ugliest, most pathetic human you can imagine. He rushed to his father-in-law asking how such a thing could happen considering the parents.

"Well," explained the farmer, "She was just a weeeeee bit, not that you could hardly tell, pregnant when you met her."

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