Midcoast Internet Solutions Newsletter for April 2000

0) Busies are being solved. Hurray!
1) Browser based email program
2) Damariscotta Move
3) New Virtual Domain Newsletter
4) Auction Help
5) New Promotions with local vendors
6) Scholarship
7) Keep advised with system announcements.

0) In our last Newsletter in February, we were waiting for Bell Atlantic
to hook up some more phone lines. They have done that. On February 14, 69
new lines were added to one of our Bell Atlantic hunt groups. On February
25, 46 more lines were added to our other hunt group. These lines service
people who call the 338, 593, 236, and 832 MIS numbers.

Northland has installed plenty of lines for us in Washington. The number
is 845-2002 and it has 48 lines of V90 56k modems.

Liberty has also received V90 service on March 15, 2000. The number for
that is 589-3003. This is 24 lines in addition to the present quantity of
33.6 modems.

Wiscasset is in the process right now of being updated to go from 23 lines
to 46 lines. A note will be put on System News and Announcements when this
is complete.

1) Browser Based Email. Some people may have noticed that MailSpinner is
gone. It's replacement, Endymion Mailman, was announced in the last
newsletter. Mailman is not quite as fancy as MailSpinner, but it's MUCH
more reliable. A small minority of people were having trouble with
Mailspinner, and it's our goal to have things work for everybody.
Endymion Mailman does a better job at this than Mailspinner.

2) Damariscotta move. On March 9th, we moved all of our Damariscotta
Internet equipment from its old location to our route-1 office. The move
will permit us to increase the number of lines, and will also permit us to
provide DSL in the Damariscotta area. The move went very smoothly.
However, some customers have seen better speed connects and some customers
have seen poorer connect speeds to the 563-exchange numbers since the
move. We are working with Tidewater to investigate this, and if it affects
you either way, please contact the Damariscotta office at 563-8563.

3) New Virtual Domain Newsletter. Jim Thompson, our Virtual Domains
Coordinator, has decided to add a newsletter specifically for our Virtual
Domain customers. This quarterly report will keep those customers up to
date on technical matters and offer helpful hints and suggestions.
Upcoming topics will include: Getting the most from your Virtual Domain
service, web page statistics and usefulness, and how to have multiple
domain names work in your favor.

4) Auction help.  With the number of people utilizing online auctions, we
have created a new help page specifically designed to help customers
upload images for their Ebay auction pages. (Auctions with images are
likely to be more attractive to bidders who like to see what they are
buying.) This document explains the simple procedure and also has links to
Ebay's help pages regarding their suggestions.

5) New Promotions with local vendors. We have set up some new promotions
of which you may want to take advantage. For the entire month of April,
anyone who purchases a computer from RCC Computers or rents a computer
from Rent-A-Center in Rockland, will receive a gift certificate for one
free month of dialup service from Midcoast Internet Solutions. We have
also started an ongoing promotion with Damariscotta Computer Connection in
Damariscotta and Rockbound Computer in Rockland. Anyone who purchases a
computer from either of these two establishments will receive a free month
of basic dialup service. (In both instances we will waive the setup fee
for new customers.)

6) Scholarship - Midcoast Internet Solutions is pleased to offer a new
scholarship program. Our goal is to offer three or four $1000
scholarships, available to students in our service area (the area between
Belfast and Brunswick). Due to time and logistical constraints we've had
to scale back our goal for the first year. RDHS and Lincoln Academy (the
two towns where our offices are) will each award a $1000 scholarship to a
high school senior who will be continuing their education full time in a
computer related field. Computer science or engineering, electrical
engineering, cad/cam would be appropriate fields. The schools' scholarship
committees will choose the winner based on merit and need. Midcoast
Internet Solutions will then forward payment to the recipient's school for
the second semester. The student must have completed a full-time semester
(12 credit hours) with at least a 2.0 gpa. We are VERY pleased to offer
this scholarship. We believe that this is one of the many benefits of
dealing with a local company that concerns itself with the local
community. We believe that Midcoast Internet Solutions is the first to do
this among other ISPs in Maine.

7) Keep advised of current issues by visiting our System Announcements at
http://www.midcoast.com/news.html