) ( ) Good Morning Family! .-.,--^--. ( Come on in. . . \\|`----'| - The coffee pot's on. . . \| |// ...and we even have decaf, | |/ tea, and hot chocolate! \ / ------ Today's topics include: 1. Welcome to new cousins 2. FamilyDiscovery.com (they're back) - PLEASE BE SURE TO READ THIS! 3. Virus warning 4. The Continuum 5. Swapping links with the Homestead ** A message for our newbies and novices ~ this will come out in a separate message following the Coffee. It is a repeat message from a previous Coffee but still holds true today. I am separating it from the Coffee today because of its length. If you've been with the family for at least three weeks, you'll probably want to skip the following paragraph… TO OUR NEWEST COUSINS ~~ On behalf of the entire family, I'd like to extend a most hearty welcome to those cousins who came into the family fold this past week. We are very glad to have you with us and hope you'll stay and remain a part of our online family. As soon as you're comfortable with us and the list, please send in your Bower[s]/Bauer or Baur lines so we can all see how we're related to you. We do not have a fancy format for sending in records or queries to the list. Post as many as you wish! If the data has anything to do with Bower[s]/Bauer or Baur ancestors or any of the 81+ variant spellings we research that might help someone, please feel free to post it. Every scrap of information is appreciated. If you haven't visited the homesite of this list yet, you are encouraged to do so. Our home is Bower Community, located at <http://bowercommunity.com>. There, we currently have two sites: The Bower Family Homestead [a.k.a., the Homestead] is our primary homesite and the gathering place for much of our information. It waits to join us all in welcoming you into the family at <http://bowercommunity.com/homestead>. Smaller and just opened this year, our sister site, the Bower Cottage, houses most of our projects including an online GEDCOM fed by quite a few cousins from our lists. The Cottage is still small as far as material goes, however give us time and we'll have it filled really soon. The Cottage is at <http://bowercommunity.com/cottage>. FAMILYDISCOVERY.COM (THEY'RE BACK) It had to happen. We knew they wouldn't be gone for long... To those of you who are new to genealogy computing: FamilyDiscovery.com is a company with a website that you might want to avoid at all costs. They are rip-offs, will take your money and give you nothing in return. Additionally, they are selling FREE material to the tune of $69.00 a year. They link their pages to Rootsweb and US GenWeb-site pages ~ all of which offer free genealogy material. Additionally, they are linking to private Web sites without permission. FamilyDiscovery.com is currently being investigated. UPDATE: I can only presume the word got around too well regarding their first name, Family Discovery, because they now have a new name ~ GenSeeker. I've been to this new site and seen what they're up to. When clicking on their "freesearch link," the unwary customer is taken to the FamilyDiscovery.com site. Gene Olson has started an Anti-FamilyDiscovery.com update list from his website. As you may have guessed, he IS still on their trail and it's thanks to Gene that I have this update to pass on to you. You newbies both to genealogy and computing would be wise to go to his site and read up on this company so you won't be ripped off. Click on the following link and you'll be taken directly to his site: <http://www.compuright.net/familydiscovery>. Gene's new email address is <gene_olson@bigfoot.com>. His toll-free number is 1-877-319-9699. GenSeeker describes itself as "the most comprehensive easy to use collection of online records ever compiled." Of course it is, if they link to every free website they can find! Save your money and do the search yourself! Or better still, avail yourself of the family's Continuum project (more on that further into the Coffee). VIRUS WARNING Newbies ... welcome to the world of computing ... and viruses guaranteed to play havoc with your computer and sometimes, your wallet! A virus is a nasty little bugger that can cause your system to shut down or email itself to everyone in your address book when you have no idea it's happening ~ depending on the type of virus depends on what happens to your computer. There are upwards of 50,000 viruses known to date. The BEST piece of advice I can pass on to you, now that you've entered the world of computing is to get yourself an anti-virus program installed into your computer right away. Don't wait till tomorrow or next week, unless you don't plan to receive any email or go on the Web. Your unknowing daughter may have a virus in her computer and send it to you through an email, so might your loving grandfather ~ you just never know who might pass it on to you. So you need to take precautions to protect that expensive piece of equipment you've invested in. Now that I've frightened you half out of your wits, I should add ~~ viruses are spread through what's called an attachment to an email. You'll know there's an attachment to a message when you see a paper clip next to the message in the index. In Netscape Communicator you'll also see a gray box at the top of the email message. Reading the message is fine; DO NOT open the attachment!!! It's the attachment that spreads the virus. Two sites that everyone should know about are at Symantec (Norton AntiVirus) and McAfee (McAfee AntiVirus). The addresses for their anti-virus centers follow: Symantec: http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/ McAfee: http://dispatch.mcafee.com/default.asp? Now, both Symantec has put out the word to watch out for 8 particularly virulent trojans. They are: ** W32.Prolin.Worm ** W32.Navidad ** W32.HLLW.Bymer ** W95.Hybris.Gen - a worm that spreads by email as an attachment to outgoing emails. The message may have a subject line saying "Snow White and the Seven Dwarves" or have it in the text. The attachment may have one of several different names. ** W95.MTX ** Wscript.KakWorm ** W32.Funlove Symantec has given them all listed a rather high risk assessment; McAfee has rated at least some of them (that I know of) with high ratings. As well, there are a ton of hoaxes on the Web. Before "passing this warning to everyone you know," please go to <http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/hoax.html> to verify whether or not the virus message you've received is a hoax or not. To reiterate: 1. You CAN _NOT_ get a virus from opening an email; only from opening its attachment, if it has one. 2. You CAN _NOT_ get a virus from any message at Rootsweb as they have anti-virus protectors in place on all their lists. 3. You _CAN_ get a virus from a cousin on a Rootsweb list IF the cousin sends you an attachment through private email and that cousin has an infected computer. 4. Just because she's your best friend or your mom, she may not know her computer has a virus. As a rule, people don't send viruses intentionally. Please cousins, be sure to update your anti-virus programs. Newbies, please get yourselves to symantec.com or mcafee.com (Web addresses above) and learn more about anti-virus protection. THE CONTINUUM With so many new sites coming online every day, this vital project was created as an avenue to expedite our Web searches and bring locality- specific Bower[s]/Bauer/Baur, etc. data we might need under one roof or, at least provide links to where the data is located. A close parallel to our project is the GenWeb project. Where GenWeb covers all the names in one state, ours is to cover only OUR names in one state; from there our sites will be "tied" to each other through two common logos (which we all still need to put on our sites) ~ one for the project itself and a second one to the Cottage ~ where it originates. We currently have one country and nine states currently represented ~~ Australia, California, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. We'd like you to join us, build an online Continuum site, and aid in our efforts to get all those [for instance] Iowa Bower[s]/Bauer/Baur family sites that are already online linked from one site rather than having to use a generalized search engine like Netscape, HotBot or InfoSeek to search them out. Sites in this project parallel those of the GenWeb but center on Bower[s]/Bauer/ Baur, etc. material only. Continuum sites can be as simple as state/country information and links to material in that region or, if the host elects, can add raw material to his/her site. Continuum hosts join a private email list set aside specifically for this project to discuss design ideas, project problems, and pass along helps to each other regarding the Continuum. In this way, there is always immediate help. To get an idea of what I'm talking about, listed below are the current Continuum sites ~~ Sharon Johnson's CALIFORNIA Page ~ http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/River/5736 Mark Middleton's ILLINOIS Page ~ http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Grove/8230 Wanda Roberts' INDIANA Page ~ http://www.crosswinds.net/~indbow Barbara Bower's MISSOURI Page ~ http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Cabin/9183 Colleen Pustola's NEW YORK Page ~ http://newyork.50megs.com Rob Bower's OHIO Page ~ http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~rbower Mary Teeter's PENNSYLVANIA Page ~ http://www1.50megs.com/marydrye/index/michigan.html Gina Bower's WISCONSIN Page ~ http://www.crosswinds.net/~bowerwi (Australia is also being hosted, however I don't have a current URL yet.) You'll have to learn at least some HTML [the coding language to put pages online] if you don't already know it. With exception of three things, your creativity is your own. I hope this answers the Continuum questions we had earlier in the week. If not, please let me know. Also, if you think you might be interested in being a host for a Continuum site, please contact me at <ladyaudris@earthlink.net>. SWAPPING LINKS WITH THE HOMESTEAD Do you have a Bower[s]/Bau[e]r Web site? Is it listed at the Homestead? If not, would you like to trade links with our home? If so, just set up a link from your site to the front page of the Homestead <http://bowercommunity.com/homestead>. Once you have your link in place, let me know and I'll set one up at the Homestead back to you. It's that simple! This way, you'll get additional exposure from traffic at the Homestead, and our home will get additional exposure from you ~ a win/win situation here! :) Family... it's what we're all about. I really enjoyed this time with you. It was so nice. Thank you for sharing it with me. I hope your upcoming week is filled with health, fun, productivity, and above all, filled with love. ) ( ) _.-~~-. (@\'--'/. Colleen ('``.__.'`) `..____.'