It still boggles my mind when I surf to a Russian or Czechoslovakian site. I still feel a thrill when I find pages from People's Republic of China, Hungary and Vietnam. This is because I grew up during Cold War era, and clearly remember speeches where Ronald Reagan referred to Russia as evil empire. Yet now we can surf their web sites at will, and people in Russia can look at ours as often as they like.

Personally, I think this is true purpose of internet, and it's great promise - to help people communicate with one another. By talking (or sending emails or whatever) we can become more in tune with each other's needs, desires, lifestyles, hopes, dreams and other emotions, which in turn allows us all to understand what's going on and why people act way that they do.

Surfing internet I have come to know people in Russia, one of most powerful countries in world, had to stand in line to get potatoes, something that I eat everyday and take for granted. I have come to tears learning about famines in Africa and felt joy learning of a South African woman's new child. These are experiences that I may never have shared had I not been surfing internet.

However, one of frustrations of this vast melding of cultures and communications is language. Many of these pages, emails and postings are written in languages which are not known to me. I am sure that virtually everyone has felt same frustration of seeing a wonderful web page and not being able to understand what author was attempting to communicate.

Why would you want to do this? Perhaps your site is hosted on a free server with a URL such as "http://www.hostingcompany.com/user/silconvalley/ab546/index.htm". This is very difficult for your visitors to remember so you could use a redirection service to make it easier.

Why do these companies provide free redirection services? Because they want to sell advertising, of course. In return for service, your visitors will be shown an ad in one of following ways (depending upon service terms and conditions).

- In a pop up window when page loads

- On a delay page that appears before user is redirected to your page

- You can choose a position on your page that you would like to place banner

- A 88x31 button somewhere on your page

- A banner on top of your page.

There are some good reasons NOT to use this kind of service, however.

- The names are usually considered "tacky" or unprofessional by many people.