| eZine
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| Q: |
Can I write an article for the Peer 2 Peer section? |
| A: |
We encourage anyone who wishes to write an IT / Computers related "magazine"
style article to do so and submit it to us for review and posting. Dx21
has in place an Articles for Link
Exchange program which, in short, exchanges as many articles from you as you
submit for getting your name out there and creating static links back to you or
your company for six months. Its an excellent way to gain notoriety as
well as drive readers to you. We encourage you to read the program details
and submit your article! |
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| Q: |
Can I write an article for the Product Review section? |
| A: |
Absolutely. Hardware and software reviews fall
under the same general category as articles for the Peer 2 Peer section
(see prior question). We welcome any product review. |
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| Q: |
How can I have my software or hardware product reviewed in the Product Review section? |
| A: |
Our staff is always looking to get their hands on new
computer hardware or software to test and review. Any vendor who
wishes to have their product reviewed is welcome to submit that product
to us. For obvious reasons, if the product is hardware related, we
will need the hardware. For software, we need not only the
software, but a license for the software if unlicensed the software is
feature crippled in any way or the trial version has an automatic
expiration of less than 60 days from time of install. Physical
equipment or media may be mailed to the address shown on the Help |
Contact page, to the attention of "Product Reviews". Software with
a download link can be specified via URL within an email, which should
also include any license information required. We recommend that
interested vendors first contact us via email at the address listed on
the Help | Contact page under "Product
Reviews" to discuss any unique aspects of the product or to obtain
further information. |
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| Q: |
Can I suggest new sections? |
| A: |
Almost all of the eZine sections we have were created at the request of readers. If you have an IT / computer related section you would like to see, feel free to let us know. |
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| Q: |
How can I get my book reviewed and posted? |
| A: |
Dx21 posts book reviews of titles personally selected by our engineers, as
well as those sent to us by authors or publishers for review. We welcome
any author or publisher who wishes to have their technology book reviewed and
posted to send their title to the address shown on our
contacts page. All submitted titles will be reviewed and posted, on
Dx21's Book Review section as well
as other on-line retailers, such as Amazon.com. |
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Q: |
Can I have a book review I wrote added to Book Reviews? |
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A: |
We only allow one review per ISBN number, so if you have a review
for a title that we do not have a review yet posted, you can submit that
review as well. Rules for submitting book reviews are similar to
those defined within our Articles for Link
Exchange program. Once you read that, you may submit an review for
posting, or contact us at the address shown on our
contacts page with additional questions. |
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Q: |
How do I submit a question to the Ask Vance section? |
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A: |
We welcome computer or technology questions from all
our readers. On the Ask Vance page is an email address to the left
of the Q&A section, below the picture of Vance. Just send him and
email with your questions. |
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Q: |
Any other fringe benefits from contributing articles? |
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A: |
Along with the free publicity for you and /or your
company, 4 articles submitted, accepted, and posted within a 6 month
period gets you six months worth of Premium Content added to your user
account with us. |
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General Information and Site History |
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Q: |
How did Dx21 get
Started? |
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A: |
Dx21 started in 1996 as an impromptu intranet page for a small integration company whose sole purpose was to provide internal engineers with a common source for the tools, applications and notes that we were all using on various client sites. To facilitate access from the client site as well, at the beginning of 1997 the intranet site was opened up to exclusive external access via IP address only and remained this way until the company closed later that year. With the closure, the site was taken down. In response to the many now ex-engineers that continued to want the resource, the site was then brought back up early in 1998 on one of those free-hosted, but full of ads, sites where it remained for about a year. As the purpose had originally been to provide our company-specific tools, and the company no longer existed, the focus of the site began to change from a simple 4 pages of links static reference, to a larger depository of notes and utilities provided by the few engineers that still used the site. In Nov. of 1998 the Dx21.com domain was registered and by the new year, Dx21.com was transferred to Verio for hosting. Starting with the 1999 transfer, the site became the sole project of its current webmaster, and began to serve not only as a depository for utilities and notes, but a training/learning ground (up until that time, your webmaster did not know anything about web design other than what FrontPage 98 had to offer). In 2000 the site outgrew its host’s home and its provided services and was transferred to Dell Hosting. Due to very bad services, Dx21 made a move less than 6 months after its switch to Dell to its current home with Interland. In January of 2004, Dx21.com changed from a private web site to a company and became Dx21, LLC. This change allowed us to provide consulting and development services to our customers. Dx21.com is currently on its sixth design incarnation and (not so unlike all web sites) remains in a constant state of change and development. At this time, we are pleased to service about 1,000 users per day. |
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Q: |
Where does the name
Dx21 come from? |
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A: |
Although the name "Dx21" is also shared with a popular synthesizer of the 1980's by Yamaha, that is not directly where we got the name from. The name Dx21 was the name of the computer which first housed the web site when it was an intranet page
(see the question on "How did Dx21 get Started?"), and the internal engineers had always used
http://Dx21 to access the data. As I understand the lore, that computers owner named the computer after a song he had stuck in his head by the Canadian pop singer
Jane Child. It wasn't until after the name was already in use that
he realized that the song was not called "Dx 21", but actually "DS 21"
(named for the Citroen DS 21 Jane Child
drove at the time the record was released). However, since the song sounded like it also utilized a
DX21 Yamaha Synthesizer, it was felt the connection was close enough and the name Dx21 was kept. |
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Q: |
What is up with the
photos on the start page? |
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A: |
The rotating pictures on the start page typically depict different shots of Seattle (where Dx21 is based), but may also depict shots of different cities that our engineers visit and really like. All of the shots are taken by our engineers. We think it brightens up the start page a bit. |
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Q: |
Why is the language
translation so strange? |
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A: |
A good percentage of our users are from outside of English speaking countries. To accommodate this, we have attempted to create quick links between our site and Google’s on-the-fly translation utilities to provide content in as many languages as we can. We know this is not perfect but it is the best we can do at this time. |
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Q: |
How can I change the page width to match my screen resolution? |
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A: |
To ensure that content is displayed
correctly, all pages on our site are formatted to fit standard screen
resolutions. This results in the page being displayed correctly in
your browser when your browser is maximized on the screen. If your
screen resolution is different than the default 1024 pixel width, then
the page will either require the horizontal scroll bar or will include
white space on the right side. You can set our pages to display at
your selected screen resolution by clicking the "Change Resolution" link
at the bottom of every page, and selecting the closest screen resolution
width that fits your environment. |
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User Accounts and Subscriptions |
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Q: |
Do I need to create an
Account? |
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A: |
There are three levels of access for our web site; Anonymous, General Account, and Subscription.
- Anonymous access is granted to everyone without the need for any user account creation. Anonymous usage has limited site content access,
no personal customizations, and does not allow for communication between you
and our site.
- General Account usage is also free, and allows you to add customization for your browsing experience, pre-fill our on-line forms, manage software licenses,
and opt in and out of site update emails. General Account access also has limited site content access.
- Subscription usage is an add-on to General Account for a low monthly fee
of $1.00. This grants access to all web content, including on-line courses
and tutorials, open source projects, utilities, special wizards, user
forums, on-line storage, and more.
For all accounts which do not actively subscribe to Premium content
or have a valid software license, a period of 6 months of inactivity will cause the account to be automatically deleted. |
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Q: |
Can I Pay for Premium Content without using PayPal? |
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A: |
Yes. We offer immediate access via PayPal as
their service is reliable, available for many countries and currencies,
and provided by a reputable service. However, we recognize that
some people either do not wish to work with PayPal, or PayPal is
unavailable for them. For those people, we can accept payment via
check or money order, sent to the address that appears on the
contacts page. Premium Content is enabled
once the funds have cleared our banks. You can also send us a
suggestion for an on-line payment company that you like. We will
check it out, and if they don't gouge payment recipients, we might add
their services. |
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Q: |
I've Paid, but I don't have access to Premium Content.
Now what? |
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A: |
Once you have completed PayPal's payment process, a
link is provided for you from PayPal back to our site. Clicking
this link automates the completion of the subscription and grants
immediate access to your account. If you missed clicking that
link, don't worry, we were notified of your payment and always complete
manually granting access within an hour or so during normal business
hours (we're in the GMT -8 time zone).
Additionally, once complete, you need to log out, then log back in to
refresh your settings and show premium content. Remember that at
this time, we are an Internet Explorer site, and only IE and IE based
browsers work 100%. Although navigation is typically OK in other
browsers, such as FireFox, Premium Content is only available when you
use IE. We're working on resolving this, but do not have a set
date for completion.
You can always email us or use the feedback form to query your
account status. We always get back to you with 24 hours. |
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Q: |
Can I trade instead of pay for Premium Content? |
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A: |
Sure. Make us and offer. |
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Q: |
What do I need to create
a General account? |
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A: |
The only thing you need to create a general account is a valid email address.
Once you create an account, your password is emailed to the specified email
address. You must use that password to log on to the account. Dx21,
LLC maintains a posted privacy statement which, in short, assures you that we
never make our user accounts available to anyone outside of Dx21, and
we never spam our users with any emails they did not sign up for. The link
to the policy is made available at the bottom of every page rendered, and we
encourage you to read it. |
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Communications |
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Q: |
Is EMail or the Feedback link better for general
communications? |
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A: |
For general communications we recommend using the
Feedback link. Your message is stored on our servers and processed
by means other than emails. This method ensures we got the
message, whereas emails can be delayed, lost, or eaten by our
over-aggressive spam filters. When we respond to feedback left
this way, however, the message is sent to you via email. |
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Q: |
What is the Message To You from Webmaster graphic I
sometimes see? |
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A: |
Not ever message we send to you regarding your account
or in response to something you asked us is delivered to you via email.
Depending on the message, we may notify you of a message by displaying a
notification graphic at the top of ever screen. Clicking on this
will display the message to you. This ensures that your message is
not lost in general internet transit. |
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Q: |
Why am I not getting any expected emails from your site or staff? |
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A: |
Aggressive SPAM filters may flag some of
our generated emails as SPAM, and not deliver them to you. If your
SPAM filter has deleted our emails, there is little we can do, and of
course we have no way of knowing you did not receive our communication.
Be sure to check your SPAM folder if you do not receive an expected
email from us. You can also add our domain to your safe sender
list; we never send any unexpected emails or solicitations. |
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Q: |
Do you respond to any of my SPAM filters automated replies? |
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A: |
No. Many of our emails are
auto-generated and sent to multiple users. Those with SPAM filters
that send verification emails back expecting a reply are ignored.
This has more to due with sheer volume and time required by our various
employees than anything else. |
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Reader Contributions |
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Q: |
Who can contribute data to the site? |
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A: |
Dx21 welcomes any user who wishes to contribute legitimate data to our site. This data can range from technical articles, various script examples, tips and tricks, to ideas for new sections, improvement suggestions, etc. Regardless of data contributed, we will first review the material for appropriateness prior to posting. Once approved for posting, we will credit the submitter on the submission where that submission has been posted and provide a link back to the user’s home page or contact e-mail, if the submitter wishes. To avoid legal complications, unless otherwise posted, submission of all material grants Dx21, LLC the rights to post, modify, distribute, etc. the data without prior written consent. We encourage potential submitters to clarify with us any questions or concerns they may have prior to submitting any data. |
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