The Tampa Tribune from Tampa, Florida • 33

technology re General Online employees restricted from unfettered surfing http:www.usmerchant.comala This was developed by USMerchant.com for the American Lung Association of Gulfcoast Florida's wheelchair benefit. The event was held to raise money for children who can't otherwise afford electronic wheelchairs. USMerchant.com is a locally based electronic commerce Web services company, which developed and provided the American Lung site free of charges. People can continue to make donations through the Web site. http:WWW.time.comdigital Time Digital magazine launched its online site Oct.

7. It provides readers with events facing the digital world. You'll find some timely technology news stories, features, and coverage of trade shows, as well as Reuters' Tech News Feed. http:www.nowonder.com You'll find both free and -fee-based technical support at the No Wonder site. Works pretty well.

If you have a Windows computer, click on the Windows category under the free support section. Type your question and you get back a response by e-mail. ft every night. The idea for WebSense came from the company's founder and chief executive, Phil on Who was it who said: "Without censorship things can get terribly confused in the public's I can't recall. But a company in San Diego is doing something akin to book burning on the World Wide Web.

NetPartners Internet Solutions ii uucj. lie waa ou 1 years old in 1993 http:www.websitegarage.com The front page of Web Site Garage is kind of cute. A mechanic waves his hand beckoning you to "C'mon in. Let us look under the hood." The site bills itself as a one-stop shop for servicing Web sites. Today's special is a free tune-up.

You enter one page of your Web site and give them your e-mail address, and you get back a report on how the page stands up to testing. http:www.reallybig.com If you are building a business or personal Web site, you might find more than a handful of good things to pick from Reallybig.com. It boasts more than 3,000 resources for Web builders, including free clip art, "cgi" scripts, counters, buttons, photographs, banners, and many ready-made items that can be used in your pages. Just check the categories on the left side of the front page, click on an item and away you go to find icons, Java scripts and plenty more. http:www.sandiegozoo.org when Internet surfers land on the home of the San Diego Zoo these days, they'll find a friendlier and more updated Web site.

Animals At Large is a colorful photo album of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, each accompanied by descriptions of the animals. You can send postcards to friends from here using photos of favorite animals. http:www.liszt.com The spelling may seem goofy, but Liszt.com is the place to go to look up mailing lists. Since the 1970s, people have been joining mailing lists to talk about their favorite topics via e-mail. This site will help you find a particular list for a particular topic.

It also has an area to find newsgroups and chat places. Online Shopping http:www.greatfood.com The Seattle site GreatFood.com has arranged more than 650 specialty food gift ideas by price, category, food review and seasonal suggestions, in preparation for the holiday season. Customers can order hickory-smoked ham and turkey or rich chocolates, everything delivered to someone's door. Frank Ruiz when, alter getting a glimpse of the Mosaic Internet browser, Trubey decided to quit his job as a systems Frank Ruiz SH3 San Diego Zoo siteleatures a photo album of birds, mammals, reptiles and amphibians. 8 VtfecJt CI? School for only $145 mmiimm Are you getting the highest rates Life Trust Group 1-800-877-4223; www.guaranteedgolf.com Hair Replacement Undetectable Non-Surgical integrator and build a program to block questionable sites from company computers.

"There were a few primitive home-based filtering products on the market when I came up with the concept," Trubey said. "But no one had yet introduced a solution that would monitor employees' Internet use." Trubey borrowed $8,000 on his credit cards and jumped in with both feet In 1994, he became a reseller of a "firewall" product made by a Toronto company that had no U.S. presence. Working out of a spare bedroom, he drew on his technical expertise to install and support the firewall, which helps keep corporate computers safe from hacking. He sold $900,000 worth of products in 1995 for a personal profit of $230,000.

That was enough seed money to develop the guts of WebSense. The rest is history. A group of professional software developers has formed the Tampa Bay Professional Developers Association. The group meets to discuss intermediate and advanced programming concepts and new developments. This is not for the novice.

For now, there are three special-interest groups: Internet Development, Visual Basic and Visual C. The group usually meets about every two months. Interested? Call Herbert A. Lyon at (813) 839-3898. IBM has extended its ThinkPad brand of notebook computers with a line priced just for consumers.

Prices for the ThinkPad i Series introduced last week begin at $1,499. ferrets out sites that parents or employers might deem inappropriate for viewing and stuffs them into a database. It has found more than 275,000 "questionable" sites. The database is then used by its software application, WebSense, to help schools and companies literally turn off the sites. This isn't a program you'll find at the local software store.

WebSense is sold by the number of users on a particular computer network. Prices range from $500 to upward of $5,000, depending on how many computers are in a network. WebSense is a serious filtering program to help keep kids away from more than 30 categories of sites while using school computers. It's also designed to keep companies out of trouble when employees go surfing on company machines. The Internet is ever changing, so the database of sites is constantly updated.

Each site in the database is reviewed by researchers, hired by WebSense. The researchers don't just arbitrarily quash a site because the word "breast" is used. Sites dedicated to breast cancer or chicken breasts are not labeled under the pornography category. Sites, newsgroups, and chat rooms identified by WebSense as potentially undesirable or inappropriate are divided into categories such as adult entertainment, drugs, games, gambling, hackers, job search, personals, politics, sex, sports, shopping, and so on. All of the categories can be turned off at the discretion of the customer.

If a company doesn't want its workers hunting jobs on the Internet on company time, it turns off job search. WebSense works by automatically downloading the latest version of the database 1425 West Busch Blvd. Tampa 813-932-5327 MoN-Fm: 10-6pm Sw 10-5pm regularly use the Internet, according to a Time Inc. survey. The magazine publisher wanted to learn more about who is using online financial services and to what extent The survey shows that more than 17.1 million adults have conducted financial activities online.

More than 14.8 million adults use online investing services. About 9.3 million adults only gather information on their stock portfolio, investment choices or insurance. About 7.8 million adults bank, pay bills or trade investments online. Frank Ruiz writes a weekly computer column for The Tampa Tribune. Call him at (813) 259-7668 or write him at The Tampa Tribune, P.O.

Box 191, Tampa FL 33601. He can be reached by fax at (813) 258-8504 or via e-mail at packel.net AIDMAN, PISER CO. (CPA) Never Underestimate the Value "The success of our clients says it all." SUNTRUST FINANCIAL CENTRE 81 3-222-8555 Member of DFK International with Affiliated offices worldwide TAMPA BAY'S 1 VW DEALER IN CUSTOMER SERVICE I a Hi i ffli ii'fll am Driven by a higher standard. 7. 11333 N.

Florida Avenue 933-281 1 ext 226 Mon-Fri Sat 9-6 Sun More than 41.5 million adults MONDAY, OCTOBER 19, 1998 THE TAMPA TRIBUNE BUSINESS FINANCE 3.