Important Newsletter from Midcoast Internet Solutions Oct 28, 2003 0. Accelerated Internet 1. Worms and Virii 2. Dialup plans 3. Busies in some areas 4. Server upgrades 5. Referral Winners 6. Lobster Cam Back! 0. Accelerated Internet Some experienced internet searches may have noticed third-party services promising to accelerate your internet connection by a great amount for typical prices or $8-10/month. A few national ISPs also offer a similar service for similarly higher prices. Midcoast Internet Solutions has been researching how those services work. We now have our own service that provides greatly accelerated internet browsing. After much testing, we are pleased with it and are able to offer it for less than the national companies. For an additional $5/month, this service can provide substantially faster internet. This works over dialup, DSL, LAN, and wireless. It is most beneficial when using dialup. If you aren't able to spend the money for a broadband connection or live where broadband services are not available, this is a significant improvement over normal dialup. The accelerated internet service works by installing a piece of Windows software on your computer. This talks with a special server on our end that provides several speed improving features. One feature is adjustable image quality. Many websites have larger or more detailed than necessary photos and advertisements that slow your internet browsing. Cranking down the image quality makes for good speed. It also caches frequently accessed material for better speed. It also employs some fancy low-level networking methods and compression technologies for quicker surfing. All these features provide 2x to 6x faster surfing, depending on the content and speed capabilties of the website you are surfing. Visit this URL on our system to learn more about it and to try it out with no obligation. http://www.midcoast.com/mis/accelerator/ 1. Worms and Virii. Recently it has seemed there has been a flurry of computer virus and worm activity. Since they most commonly afflict Windows computers, here is some advice for Windows users. Use the "Windows Update" in Internet Explorer to install all critical updates. These take a while to download and install, so schedule it for sometime you aren't going to be needing the computer immediately. Also install antivirus software and make sure it is kept up to date and is not disabled. We currently like Norton Antivirus 2003. Viruses spread by email, network, and disks. The internet is the most common network they spreads on, but they spread on company networks quite well too. Frequent "Windows Updates" and antivirus software will protect from this threat. Antivirus software is the only protection for viruses spread by disk. Keep this in mind as students share disks and data. MIS has just added a feature called "Attachment Killer" that trashes incoming email with program attachments. There is no charge for this option. It does not delete image attachments, documents or zip files. It does delete attachments with extensions commonly used by virii and worms. It does not tag them like SpamAssassin, it just deletes the messages with suspect attachments before they get to your mailbox. This is an option you can ask for with @midcoast.com addresses. Other midcoast addresses like @lincoln.midcoast.com @kona.midcoast.com, and @free.midcoast.com have this enabled automatically. We'll be upgrading the midcoast.com server again soon, and this feature will be automatic. The Attachment Killer was created by us because of the inconvenience to customers brought on by the spreading SoBig virus. This virus sends a large quantity of copies of the virus as it spreads, causing some people to have large numbers of email with attachments containing the virus. The recipients might have software protecting them from the virus, but it was still filling up their email inboxes. The Attachment Killer is intended to prevent this inconvenince, but still allow common valid attachments to come through. It's not a substitute for antivirus software and proper system security, but it's a handy tool on our server available to MIS customers. If you need to transfer executable files by email, you should zip them first. To have this free service added to your account, just write to help@midcoast.com or call. 2. In the past we have offered two dialup plans. These were the $20 plan and the $30 plan. The second plan came with more email addresses than the first, and more hours. We have converted away from the $30 plan to the $20 plan. There will be no $30 plan. The $20 plan will include 300 hours of use instead of 200. That is 10 hours per day, seven days per week, or about 15 hours per workday. Most families use far less than 70 hours. I'm a pretty practical guy, and 300 hours per month is practically unlimited. This is enough time so that 99% of people don't have to worry about how much they use. We don't advertise "unlimited" because we do not wish to have a few people stay connected 24 hours a day, 7 days a week tying up large amounts of resources that other customers should have available for their own use. For those on the $30 plan going to the $20 plan, we suggest that you might consider adding the $5 accelerated internet option. You'll have faster internet, the same quantity of hours, and less cost! 3. Some customers who live in towns serviced by Tidewater Telecom and Lincolnville Telephone have had busy signals when calling our 500 numbers. This was the result of insufficient capacity between Verizon and Tidewater. The phone companies went to work increasing capacity on those links to fix the problem. We've had plenty of lines available the whole time. Customers in those areas calling our local exchange non-500 numbers were not affected by this. People calling other 500 number ISPs were also affected. (In fact, some 500 number ISPs have never worked from some independent areas due to the fact that they rent modems from Verizon and don't use their own modems.) MIS keeps an advantage over other ISPs by having local numbers in many of the local independent areas, as well as having 500 numbers that work throughout the state, and through any phone company in the state. 4. Server upgrades On August 10, we had the opportunity to upgrade the hardware and software for the www.midcoast.com server. A newer Linux operating system and some newer hardware have provided a good boost in mail processing speed for midcoast.com addresses. The new mail software on the server slightly reduces the quantity of junkmail coming in by reducing the rate and duration of "dictionary" spamming (the spammer sends email to consecutive alphabetical guesses at email addresses). It also has slightly newer rules for tagging spam. All this processing and analysis of email uses a great deal of computing power. In a few weeks we will upgrade again so that we are well ahead of the required amount of computing power needed to process email quickly. These processing tasks currently include identifying, marking, and for some people deleting spam, as well as identifying and deleting email with virus attachments. To many businesses and families, email is extremely important, so we take this work seriously. The upcoming upgrade should go smoother, and when done will provide greater reliability as well. The lincoln.midcoast.com and kona.midcoast.com servers have also received upgrades. This makes them more reliable, well equipt to process email, and they have the attachment killer as standard equipment. 5. Referral Winners for August/September/October We're several months into our expanded customer referral program. When you refer a new customer to MIS, not only do you get a $20 credit on your bill, but you also are entered into a drawing for a cool prize. In August, Royce Cokins of Reliable Computers and Consulting donated a copy of Norton Anti Virus 2003, and free attendance to a Beginner's Internet or Email course. Congratulations to Barbara Rehmeyer of Liberty! She's won what MIS considers the best anti-virus software out there--very handy in this time of the blaster worm and So Big virus. In September, the folks of Second Read Books and Coffee donated a $20 gift certificate. And if there's one thing MIS knows (other than computers) it's coffee! This gift certificate can be used for fantastic Rock City Coffee (http://www.rockcitycoffee.com), but also towards teas, pastries, and used books. (We at MIS like Rock City's Morning Call, Kilamanjaro, and Dark Star blends.) Congratulations to Swift Storage, the winner of this gift certificate. For October, the prize is a $50 gift certificate from Rockbound Computers. Gift Certificates are great, because you can pick your own cool prize! And Rockbound's got lots of cool goodies. Who knows, it could be put towards a 19" LCD flat panel monitor, or 100 used floppy disks :-). Congratulations to Rex Bickford of Chapel Glass, who one the October prize. We've got a really great prize for our next referral contest winner. It's so nice in fact, we're going to stretch this one prize out to two months. Why is it so special? Because it's a signed and framed photograph from local photographer Steve Waterman! (See the photo here: http://press.midcoast.com/archives/IMG_7218.JPG) This prize has a retail value of $135! Wow! It will look great in your home, or make a great Christmas gift. Steve also has other prints for sale on his website(http://www.justasailor.com/sellphotos/sellphotos.html). So remember, refer a friend, and a great photo may become yours! 6. Lobster Cam Back! Midcoast Internet Solutions is proud to announce the famous "Lobster Cam" is back online, this time with its own domain name, www.thelobstercam.com. The original lobster cam was featured by NBC's "Today" show, and was considered for the Discovery Channel's list of "Animal Planet" web cams. The latest incarnation of the web cam has been featured on comedy writer Dave Barry's website. "The Lobster Cam has taken on a life of its own" said MIS company spokesperson Bill Batty, Jr. "The original idea came from the Lobster Institute, to study the daily life and workings of a lobster trap. When the original cam went offline, we had many emails asking when we were going to bring it back. The new lobster cam features an updated camera and uploading system, as well as highly potent chemoceptor charged bait. The result is a very lively trap. You'll almost always see something alive and moving around in there." Since its inception, the Lobster Cam website has taken over 1 1/2 million hits.