Maybe I'm just ready for a vacation, but I'm weary of bad behavior that is so commonplace on Net.

I'm tired of deleting 150-200 spam emails daily.

I'm tired of students contacting me to ask how much I would charge to write their term paper. Here's a tip, kids. If you want a helping hand, you'll find one at end of your wrist.

I'm tired of people sending me scathing emails because they're confused by somebody else's pop-under ads that they think originated at my site. Come to think of it, I'm even more tired of all those pop-under windows in first place.

I'm tired of web sites that hold me captive and won't allow me to use Back Button on my browser to return to where I started. Why do designers do this? Do they believe that taking hostages will improve their chances of making sales?

Those are my minor complaints. These are my major ones.

I'm irritated that I had to spend most of a morning adding coding on my web pages to protect myself against Microsoft's Smart Tags. For those who don't know, Smart Tag technology causes little icons to appear beside certain key words on your web site. When visitors click on icons, they will be taken to another site -- possibly your competitors. Microsoft has already included technology in Office XP, but has bowed to pressure and promised (?) not to add technology to Internet Explorer 6. To protect your pages from MS Smart Tags, add this line to your Meta Tags:

by Craig Lock

Thought I'd share a bit about using press releases as an internet marketing tool, based on our recent experiences.

We at Eagle Productions (NZ) have done quite a bit of research on press release services recently and we use them here frequently to "spread word" about our various sites and activities from here in far-off New Zealand to our biggest market (by far), Americans. From this we find doing press releases to be quite effective.

While it's hard to quantify precise results of press releases, one thing just seems to lead to another (and usually leads to valuable "contacts and exposure" - "exciting, naughty and nice!")...and I do find submitting them to be a most effective form of advertising in "on and off-line world". Together with submitting my articles to announcement lists, like Article Announce, Free Content and Publish in Yours. That is our MAIN internet marketing strategy.

A quick word of advice in writing press releases... It is vital that press release about your business is newsworthy and try to capture attention with a good "catchy" headline. Make it "spicy and add 'zing' (like KFC) to make it sizzle!"

Also you can send your news release by "snail mail" or by e-mail. I do all my submissions to these services via e-mail.

Recently we've had a number of releases about our activities here on other side of world published by PR Web, which is a free service ("cheapskate"!)... and traffic to our sites mentioned has increased substantially already. Their web address is: http://www.prweb.com.

PR Web recommend adding a link back to them to add credibility to your web site - good idea, I think!

(Incidentally, we a press releases up there at: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2001/8/prweb27548.php in case you want to have a look at our format)