Q: What's an autoresponder?
A: Ever get an email back from the person or business you just emailed? That's an autoresponder. The purpose of an auto-responder should be to convey information to the sender; not just a confirmation of receipt. Why? Because you have not actually viewed the email, yet. A better use for an auto-responder is to provide information relevant to the sender's request. For example: brochuretest@radarhill.com - when this address is emailed to the sender is immediately replied to with your brochure. The sender has received your brochure without any work from you and you now know that Ms. Smith (the pretend sender) has your brochure.

Q: How can I test my auto-responder?
A: Send an email to the account with the autoresponder. For example, to test the autoresponder for brochure@radarhill.com send an email to brochure@radarhill.com, wait a moment and then check your email. You'll have a auto-response back from brochure@radarhill.com

Q: How come every time I send a message to test my autoresponder, I don't get the auto-responder back?
A: We have a fail-safe, the autoresponder only sends out to a particular autoresponder once within a 24 hour period. That is to stop your responder from setting off another responder, which in turn sets off your responder, which sets off the other autoresponder, and by the end of the day you each wind up with 10,000 emails that are only each others autoresponder.

Q: Are there any drawbacks to having an autoresponder?
A: If you receive a spam message, that spam message, like all email messages, triggers your autoresponder. However spammers do one of two things. Either send a ton of emails from an email account which is shut down by the ISP as soon as it is discovered that spam is going out. Or they 'spoof' an email address, which means they fake or steal an email address to send out their spam. In either case, once your autoresponder tries to reach the apparent 'source' of the spam, that email account has already been shut down, is over quote (full of emails), or never existed.

One more thing: no, an autoresponder does not cause spam, and does not get you added to spammers lists. All it may do is increase the 'mail failed' messages you receive in your inbox. But if you consider how on-the-ball you appear, and how quickly a response gets sent back to someone emailing you, the 'mail failed' messages are a minor inconvenience.

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Q: What should a domain name be?
A: Domain names ideally should be short, easy to remember and easy to spell.

Q: What is the best type? .com .ca, or what?
A: It depends on your target market. Generally we recommend a .com name, because .com is much more familiar in people's minds than the others. However, for a geographic specific site, or to rank well in regional search engines, a country domain such as .CA or .UK (United Kingdom) or .de (Germany) is very important.

Q: What kinds of domain names can you register?
A: We can register:    .com    .ca    .net    .org    .info    .biz    .co.uk    .org.uk    .tv

Q: Are domain names case sensitive?
A: No, everything before the .com or .ca is not. But for long domain names it is best to print it in proper case so if it is easier to see and recognize. If your domain name is realestatelawvictoria.com it is best to put it in print as RealEstateLawVictoria.com

Q: Is the Domain Watch Program effective?
A: Generally yes. Out of five domains we Watched and tried to grab as soon as they became available, we successfully grabbed four of them on behalf of our clients. An associate of ours realized a $5000 profit on the re-sale of a domain name he had Watched.

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Q: What is Hosting?
A: It is where your web pages are "put" so people can find it. Consider it like rent. In the non-Internet world, you have a business - a company name (your domain name), and you rent office space (hosting), get a telephone, etc.

Q: Why should I host with you? I can host with another company for much less.
A: In domain hosting, like everything else, you get what you pay for.

• We offer quality hosting with a 99.8% up-time guarantee.
• We can move machines around and across network providers as the need arises. We keep a on-line copy of your web site on another machine on another network at another site.
• Our virtual servers are IP based, not HTTP/1.1 Host: headers.
• We have log analysis tools to help you pinpoint broken links and analyze which search engines are sending which queries to your site.

Q: What is included with hosting?
A: Monthly hosting includes

• Up to 20 POP email addresses with auto responders and unlimited Wildcard email.
• Bi-monthly online web site promotion (approximately 400 search engines).
• Monthly traffic report (see a sample).
• 50 mega-bytes of storage space.
• Up to 2 giga-bytes of traffic (up and down).
• An extensive CGI library including web gadgets such as page access counters, interactive forms scripts, etc.
• Technical support from Radar Hill staff.
• The technology for self-management.
• Daily back-up of your web site files.

Q: What else is available?
A: For additional costs:

• Secure server, perfect for credit card transactions and receiving sensitive information
• Multiple domains pointing at the same server, i.e. your-company.com and www.yourname.com
• Listserves (mailing lists) for group discussions and one-way newsletter
• Password protected FTP directories for exchanging files with your clients.

Q: What are your DNS settings for Hosting?
A: The DNS settings are:

ns.baremetal.com	209.133.48.1
ns2.baremetal.com	204.209.208.15

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Q: Why should I choose Radar Hill over other virtual tour formats?
A: At Radar Hill we use IPIX technology and iLookabout for our panoramic shots, generally accepted as the best in immersive photography. An important distinction to keep in mind when you are deciding between "virtual" technologies (Quicktime VR, Live picture etc) is that our technology has a greater scope of viewing area and several resolution options. IPIX and iLookabout need no plug-ins, seem to have the most universal usability, and has the fewest limitations for the average Internet user.

Q: What kinds of businesses can use virtual photography?
A: We've had great response from Real Estate Agents, Boat Builders, Hotels, and Retail Businesses. Take a look at our page for some examples.

Q: I don't have a web site with you, can I still have virtual shots on my site?
A: Yes, we often work with other web developers to implement our photography into pre-existing sites such as yours.

Q: Does IPIX or iLookabout use video?
A: No, it uses still photos taken with a digital camera.

Q: I am located in Vancouver and would like a virtual photo shoot. Can you do it?
A: Yes, we have a photographer in Vancouver. Contact us to book your appointment.

Q: I am located on northern Vancouver Island, and would like a virtual photo shoot. Can you do it?
A: Yes, for an additional charge of $.39/km for travel. Contact us for specifics.

Q: What kind of custom applications can I get?
A: The IPIX format includes your customized logo within the shot, and optional midi music. Low and High resolution are supplied, as well as thumbnail previews. We can supply the files directly to your web developer or assist you in implementing them into your web site.

Q: I have my own camera, can I take a series of photos and send them to you to convert to a virtual panoramic shot?
A: No, the virtual technology requires a special photographic lens and software.

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Q: How often do you update VREB listings?
A: We update the VREB listings every hour, so that is twenty four times a day.

Q: Where do you get the data?
A: Directly from Ambiance - along with all the pictures.

Q: So if I send in a primary picture and additional pictures will they show-up at my website?
A: Yes.

Q: Can I update my own site: comments, prices, links to tours, even more extra pictures?
A: Yes.  Doing this you will only have to go through the process once - no duplication of work.

Q: Does it cost more?
A: No.

Q: Can you do it for me if I am too busy to get to it?
A: Yes, for a fee; or we could tutor your assistant if you have one.

Q: What kind of listing inventory can I have, searchable at my site?
A: There are two options: your agency's, or only your own. They are all the same price.

Q: Why do other sites with listings from Ambiance all look the same, and reference another web site, not mine?
A: The way those sites are set up is to reference a server which only uses a single format. So, these listings will never look like yours or have the flexibility to customize the format.

Q: Why do your listings come up so quickly?
A: We always try and employ local people; and so, our sites are hosted locally. There is no long delay as the Internet tries to pull down information from some far off place.

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Q: What are Listserves?
A: A listserve is an email discussion group. Members of the group can post requests, relay information or gather advice by using a listserve. It's an easy way to communicate and network with your colleagues since messages are sent to your own email address.

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Q: What is Wildcard Email?
A: Wildcard email is like having an unlimited number of email addresses.

With wildcard email you can make up email addresses as you need them. All email automatically forwards to the main email account, such as info@yourdomainname.com.

Q: What are the uses of Wildcard Email?
A: Great in advertising. For example you take out an ad in an industry trade magazine, and you create an address, for example: nyc@yourdomainname.com. This automatically forwards to info@yourdomainname.com so you can track how many people are emailing from the magazine by the email address they are sending to: nyc@yourdomainname.com

Good security when you don't want to give out your regular email address. For example you need to register at a new website, or a conference, and give your email address. But you are concerned about giving out your permanent email address. You can make up an address on the spot, for example 2003@yourdomainname.com, and because of wildcard email, 2003@yourdomainname.com automatically forwards to your main account of info@yourdomainname.com

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Q: What is Spam?
A: Electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define spam even more generally as any unsolicited email. However, if a long-lost brother finds your email address and sends you a message, this could hardly be called spam, even though it's unsolicited. Real spam is generally email advertising for some product sent to a mailing list or newsgroup.

In addition to wasting people's time with unwanted email, spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Consequently, there are many organizations, as well as individuals, who have taken it upon themselves to fight spam with a variety of techniques. But because the Internet is public, there is really little that can be done to prevent spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail. However, some online services have instituted policies to prevent spammers from spamming their subscribers.

There is some debate about the source of the term, but the generally accepted version is that it comes from the Monty Python song, "Spam spam spam spam, spam spam spam spam, lovely spam, wonderful spam…" Like the song, spam is an endless repetition of worthless text. Another school of thought maintains that it comes from the computer group lab at the University of Southern California who gave it the name because it has many of the same characteristics as the lunchmeat Spam:

• Nobody wants it or ever asks for it.
• No one ever eats it; it is the first item to be pushed to the side when eating the entree.
• Sometimes it is actually tasty, like 1% of junk mail that is really useful to some people.

Q: What can be done about it?
A: Use our spam filters: Go to:
http://yourdomainname.com/cgi-bin/spam
and log in with your username and your password. Full instructions are there. But in brief, there is a whitelist and a blacklist. Any addresses on the whitelist will not be considered as spam, no matter what the content, and will go through to your inbox. Any addresses on the blacklist will be considered as spam, no matter what the content. These messages can either be Marked as spam, or can be Bounced so you don't get them at all.

Q: How come some legitimate emails are marked as spam, and how come some spam still gets through?
A: Sometimes the spam filters will get a 'false positive', resulting in tagged mails which are not actually spam at all. Since spammers don't usually highlight the fact that their mail is unwanted, unsolicited ads, SpamAssassin has to try to work it out - and it's not always easy to do.

Each email message is NOT read by a human who says: 'well, is this spam or isn't it'? It is not even read by an 'intelligent' machine. No, your email is sent through a filter that scans each email. It looks through the text, and the route the message took to get to your computer (called the headers), and the content of the message and the underlying coding in the case of HTML email. It also checks known blacklists.

The spam filters gives points based on what it found. These points are assigned based on the tricks used by known spammers. For example it checks how many HTML tags there are, if it has hidden text, message tracking images, no 'from' address, contains a toll free number. The full list is at: SpamAssassin.org/test.html Feel free to have a look.

Each message is scored based on these rules, and once the score reaches 5 or greater it is considered spam. We can change that threshold of 5 up or down, to in effect allow more spam in or less. Lowest score is 0.0 where all messages are marked as spam. Highest score is 80, but anything past 20 and very few messages are marked as spam.

In the case of any legitimate mailing lists that you are on, they very often meet the criteria to be labelled as spam. For example, being HTML email, toll free numbers, info about how to be removed, and various spam phrases. That is why some legitimate emails look like spam, and are labelled as spam.

To help with you either getting legitimate email, or stopping the spam that makes it through the filters, there is a whitelist and a blacklist. Any addresses on the whitelist will not be considered as spam, no matter what the content, and will go through to your inbox. Any addresses on the blacklist will be considered as spam, no matter what the content.

Q: When we receive email that is spam that isn't marked how do we add it to the black list? Do we copy the address and add it to the list??
A: Yes, copy the email address and add it to the black list. You can copy the exact address (eg: suckerlist@spamheaven.com) or you can wildcard it so all email from that domain gets marked as spam (eg: *@spamheaven.com)

Q: Is email marked ***Spam*** automatically added to the black list?
A: No it is not automatically added. Sometimes legitimate messages are marked as spam, and if the message was automatically added to the blacklist, the anti-spam software would not know to remove it from the list.

Q: We get two exact emails and one is marked ***spam** amd one isn't caught, why would this be?
A: A few possible reasons:
- You already have an existing blacklist. Perhaps one message was from a sender already on the blacklist, and the other was not.
- The message is slightly different, different enough for one to get a lower score from the spam filters than the other. For example, the simple inclusion of a toll free number could be enough to affect the score.

Q: I've done all this, but the spam is still too bad. what can I do?
A: Try a commercial anti-spam software product. A good list is at Tucows and here is a list ranked by rating for Windows. Please note that in no way do we endorse any of these products, nor do we support, or offer any kind of support (telephone, email, onsite or otherwise) for these products, and we are not responsible for any action, consequences, or computer hardware or software issues you may encounter as a result of using one of these products. Not trying to scare you, but if you do use one of these products, we won't be able to help you with it.

Q: Do blacklists always work? Are they an effective way to stop spam?
A: Not always. The problem with a blacklist is that a spammer could use a legitimate email address, maybe a @hotmail.com or a @canada.com email address. If you add *@hotmail.com or *@canada.com to your blacklist, you inadvertently end up blocking email from everyone, spammers and legitimate, who use a @hotmail.com or a @canada.com email address.

The other problem is that a spammer can register a domain name,. for example aaaa.com, and send spam out from there. You get spammed, and you add aaaa.com to your blacklist. No more spam from aaaa.com. But then the spammer registers aaaab.com and you get spammed again, and you put aaaab.com on your blacklist, and the spam stops from aaaab.com. Then, and then the spammer registers aaac.com and the cycle repeats.

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Q: What are the photo specs for MLS.ca and Ambience?
A:

Graphics Type:	.JPG
Maximum Image Width:	640 pixels
Maximum Image Height:	480 pixels
Pixel Density:	150 dpi
Colours:	up to 24 bit (16 million)
Maximum File Size:	900kb
Filename:	NNNNNNX.jpg
where NNNNNN is the six digit MLS® Number X is the photo number 1 through 9 (1 is the primary photo)

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Q: What is webmail?
A: WebMail offers you an easy way to read your email anywhere. Our webmail is called Squirrel Mail. All you need is a computer connected to the Internet, any web browser and a POP3-compliant mailbox. You're no longer limited to your own computer - you can safely use any computer anywhere to read your mail without reconfiguring email software and without downloading your mail to the computer you're using.

Logging in to WebMail is simple, just find out the username of your POP3-compliant mailbox. It can usually be extracted from your email-address: if your address is "me@domain.com", your username is "me".

If you're planning to use the same mailbox with both WebMail and a traditional offline client like Eudora, Netscape Mail or Outlook Express, note that these clients normally delete all your messages from your mailserver leaving WebMail nothing to read. Just go through the options of these programs and tell them to leave (a copy of) the messages to the mailserver.

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Q: How do I save a particular listing for quick reference?
A: First create a sub-directory called 'Watch' in your Favourites on your hand held computer. (It's called 'Watch' because they are listings to watch.)

To create the Watch directory open your Favourites by clicking on the Folder Icon at the bottom of the Internet Explorer window (it has a little 'burst' on the corner of the folder icon).

Then click on the Add/Delete tab.

Click New Folder. Give it a name (Watch) and then click Add. The new folder appears.

Then click OK - located the listing(s) you want to Watch. Once you have the listing you want to Watch on your hand held screen, click the Favourites icon at the bottom of the window.

Selected Add/Delete, select Watch folder, and then click Add.

Now any time you go from anywhere within HomePort you can click on the Favourites icon and select the listing(s) you are watching from the Watch directory and it takes you right there.

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Q: My HomePort is not updated?
A:

1) Refresh the main page of HomePort on your PDA by clicking the 'Refresh' button (it is the button at the bottom of the display with two intertwining green arrows). It is possible to have all the current data but your main page has not been 'refreshed' to reflect the current status (date / time).

If that didn't do it...
2) On your desktop/laptop computer there is an icon called 'HomePort date check'. Open this icon by double clicking. Internet Explorer (or Netscape) will open up and display the main page of HomePort.
2A) If the main page now displayed on your laptop/desktop shows the current date and time: synchronize your PDA.
2Aa) After synchronizing your PDA you should have current data.
2Ab) Your PDA won't synchronize? This is another issue and you probably need to re-boot the laptop/desktop to reinitiate the connection to your PDA.
2Ac) After synchronizing your PDA you should have current data.

If that didn't do it...
3) On your desktop/laptop is an icon called 'HomePort'. Open this icon by double clicking. This opens the synchronization software to synchronize your desktop/laptop with the server (where current data lives).
3a) Enter your password and then click 'Go'. After the synchronization process is complete (it changes the title to 'Complete' when done) synchronize your PDA.
3Aa) After synchronizing your PDA you should have current data.
3Ab) Your PDA won't synchronize? This is another issue and you probably need to re-boot the laptop/desktop to reinitiate the connection to your PDA.
3Ac) After synchronizing your PDA you should have current data.

If that didn't do it...

Please contact our office at your convenience.

Q: When I enter a MLS number using 'Transcriber' (the handwritting recognizer) the page cannot be found?
A: By default 'Transcriber' places a space at the end of your word - in our case MLS number. To stop 'Transcriber' from doing this start your hand held computer and then:
Start - Setting - Input. Find the Input Method section and select Transcriber from the drop down menu. Find the Word Completion tab and select it. On this tab/menu you will find an option to 'Add a space after suggested word' tickbox already ticked. Un-tick it if you wish.
This will now stop adding a space after your MLS number.

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Q: I know it sounds crazy, but my windows XP login password has changed by itself and I can't log into my personal files anymore.
A: This is where the reserve, emergency account called Administrator comes in. (Hopefully the damaged one was their own and not the reserved account Administrator.)

Re-boot the computer, hitting F8 as BIOS info goes to black; take Safe Mode. There will then be an icon for Administrator on the Welcome screen. (If not, hit CTL-ALT-DEL twice and enter the explicit name Administrator and leave the password blank - the password can also be 'password'.)

In that, Start - Run the line control userpasswords2 where you can select any account name and Reset Password.

If you change the one for Administrator itself be *sure* to have a record locked away where you will not forget where it is.

If you've lost your Administration password we can reset it for you. There is a fee.

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Q: I want my personal self pic on MLS.ca to appear. How do I do it?
A: To add your photo to your listings on mls.ca you can send your photo to helpdesk@crea.ca along with the following information:

- Name
- Board Name
- Agent ID
- Photo in .jpg or .gif format

The photo should be 55 pixels W x 72 pixels H.

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Q: What should I use as a password?
A: Because a password tells a computer who you are, it needs to be safeguarded. Anyone who has your password can access your account. Passwords should be carefully chosen and difficult to guess.

Passwords should be at least six characters in length.

Passwords are case sensitive.

Passwords should contain at least one upper case letter, one lower case letter, and one number. Non-text characters can also be allowed, such as ~ ! @ # $ % ^ & * ( )

Ideas for passwords:

The license plate: squeeze a phrase into eight characters, as you would for a vanity license plate:
One fine pony -> 1F9Pony

The phrase: Think of a phrase and then take the first, second or last letter of each word:
Today is the first day of Spring -> Tit1doS

Use two small words, separated by punctuation marks:
flaT_rug~

Put a special character in the middle of a word:
an!mal

Contract a word:
Alphabetical -> lphBtcl*

Unfortunately, as such passwords can be difficult to remember, you may want to write them down. Do not write your password down, as doing so may allow others access to your account.

Bad passwords:
Your name, address, birth date or anything that easily identifies you. Don't use words or common names in any dictionary as password-guessing software uses words from many different dictionaries. Remember: If your password is a real word, it is vulnerable.

Other bad passwords are variations on these, such as adding a letter or number, as in houses7, or capitalizing it: HouseS, or doubled, reversed or mirrored, as in:
Reversed: animal -> lamina
Doubled: cats -> catscats
Mirrored: cats -> catsstac

A word with a zero switched for the letter "o" or the number one switched for the letter "l", but this works if combined with another method above, for example: f0r%eSt!

Q: How do I change my email password?
A:

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