Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

24 Sep 2003, 11:05 a.m.

Web Sites Don't Usually have At-Signs

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Today's phone conversation that caused my cubicle neighbor to compliment me on my patience: I explain to a Salon Premium gift subscription recipient what the Internet is, how the Web is different from e-mail, how you can tell an email address from a Web address, that Hotmail is a special case, and what (in the barest essentials) Salon does.

Fortunately, the subscriber has someone in the family who can help with immediate "what button do I click" problems. We are not all so lucky.