http://www.everyone.net

Everyone.net lets you set up your existing domain name for free web-based email for your visitors. This has added benefit of potential customers seeing your domain name every time a user of your free email sends email to anyone they communicate with. It also allows you to insert a line or two of promotion for your free email service and thus promote your own web site to recipients of that email.

Be aware though, that you must set aside your existing email addresses that you already use through your own site for business purposes as you set up that free email. If you forget that important step in setting up those accounts, it could be possible to lose your existing addresses to new free email sign-ups and your clients and contacts will lose ability to contact you!

The sign-up process is fairly straight forward with most of these services and you'll be up and emailing with your new promotional tool quickly.

Now you can promote within your targeted industry with your highly targeted email address. Don't hesitate to obtain a more generic or entertaining email address than one you use for your company or personal email. The email address you set up this way can be a secondary address for you and it's possible to set up several for different purposes. I use MoneyMan@MadeOfMoney.com for posts to Motley Fool bulletin board and some finance related discussion lists but change to Professor@WebSite101.com for posts to small business sites and signature lines at AskMe.com and WZ.com where I discuss small business web techniques and tools for home business.

Swell, now they're responding to email via snail mail! I prefer email Congressman. The present danger is not just to our physical health from Anthrax, but more to health of democracy when policy makers are inaccessible to constituents. My concern now is that they don't seem to value email as an effective way to communicate with voting public. The average person in this country now has four email addresses and can be reached at work, at home and on road via web-based email. This could be said to compare to having multiple writing pads and pens at work, at home and on road.

While famous "Carnivore" email intercepting technology sought by FBI will now easily track and monitor our correspondence with Presidential approval, Congresspersons and Senators seem to want to continue to communicate by snail mail when it makes even less sense now to do so. Nevermind that email doesn't cost nearly as much as regular postal mail. My Congressman continued . . .

"Again, thank you for your e-mail message. I am privileged to serve as your voice in Congress." I want to know who is serving as my EARS in Congress since email seems an unreliable method of communication with representatives and regular mail is "being held by capitol police" as email goes unanswered but for canned responses making excuses for lack of response and then promising to send me expensive postal mail to answer my concerns.

We take email seriously (well except for silly urban myths and endlessly-forwarded-cutesy-pass-it-on-absurdities) in that it is a routine part of nearly everyones life now. Physical access to government office buildings is blocked and communication by snail mail is nearly impossible, while phone access is much more cumbersome. It's time our representatives began to take email just a bit more seriously. It'd be nice if they answered it too.

Contact your own elected representatives:

http://www.house.gov http://www.senate.gov http://www.firstgov.gov