Images on this site were compressed using e-Vue MPEG4 technology in 2001, which was groundbreaking at the time for its DRM component and higher compression than JPG, however e-Vue is no more — we are transitioning these images to JPEG for 2004.
It does exhibit some oddities when viewing pages in Netscape on a Macintosh (spaces between words are replaced with an arrow character), but it does make the content more understandable than if it were in a foreign language. The InterTran system places a banner on the bottom of the translated page below your original site content, but is otherwise completely free.
Translation Experts offers a more robust version for a monthly fee, using a dedicated translation server, and also offers PC-based software for manual site content conversion. In most instances, the free version should suit your needs as a first step in "globalization."
Everyone.net provides a number of portal plug-in services, including free e-mail which allows you to customize the look and feel to match your site content.
Other Resources
In addition to the highly popular new plug-in features mentioned above, there are dozens of new solutions coming onto the scene. Two of the original innovators in this area are ListBot and LinkExchange (both now part of Microsoft's bCentral).
ListBot lets you add an E-mail list sign-up form on your site to collect "subscribers" and then send them news or information from the ListBot system.
LinkExchange lets you place rotating banner ads on your site, in exchange for having your own banner run on other complimentary Web sites that you choose.
Another oldie but a goodie is ePublicEye, which addresses customer confidence. If your site sells a product or service, this system allows you to put a seal on your site that links to a third-party reporting and feedback system. Here, your customers can leave positive (or negative) feedback about your services. In addition, ePublicEye provides a historical account of your customer interaction.
The Fine Print
Because of the inter-dependent nature of the Internet, we will likely see more and more of these "plug-in portal" features and services being offered by innovative companies. Thanks to the way the Web works, there is not a major inherent difference to running a search script or E-mailing list manager locally on your server vs. remotely through a service provider. To a site visitor it looks the same either way. This makes the job of solo Web designers increasingly less difficult for the average site project.
Be certain to carefully read the fine print of any "free" service as there are some nasty surprises in some of the offerings out there. I ran across a free auction service for sites that states that they own the customer entirely for any product sold through the auction software, and that the seller is prohibited from attempting to contact the buyers or obtaining their information through other services like E-mail newsletters. Surprisingly, this free auction and E-commerce provider has hundreds of clients. One of my clients almost chose to sign up for this, without reading the fine print and could have ended up in court with the auction service provider over the right to market to the buyer post-sale.
Thankfully, most of the service offerings out there are clever, honest, and seek to offer great value as simply as possible. So, the next time you think you can't add interactivity to your Web site without learning to program complex scripts or learn the Web server back-end, think again.
Christopher Simmons has been hand coding HTML for Web sites since March of 1995, and is president of Neotrope, which offers Web design and brand marketing services. E-mail him at cs@digitalauthor.com. A version of this article appeared in the October 2000 edition of Micro Publishing News.
