SCIWAY News, No. 12 – May 1998

In This Issue

• LifeWell: A New South Carolina Health Information Resource
• New and Notable South Carolina Web Sites
• If You Missed Our April Issue ...
• Chambers of Commerce to Moderate Charleston, Myrtle Beach Forums
• PRT Unveils New Tourism Web Site
• Fairfield County Library's Web Site and Catalog Now Online
• Upcoming Festivals, Shows, Events
• Apology of the Month
• Question of the Month

Lifewell: A New South Carolina Health Information Resource

During the past three years South Carolinians have developed thousands of websites. Most of these provide useful information about some part of the Palmetto State: a place, an organization, an event, etc.

But a Columbia company named USHealthNET has developed an impressive new Web site that has a more global goal: it seeks to provide a broad range of quality health information to people throughout the world.

The name of this new site is LifeWell (http://www.lifewell.com - site no longer exists). LifeWell is divided into 20 information areas called "InfoSprings." These InfoSprings focus on a variety of topics ranging from cancer to medical insurance to women's health. Each InfoSpring includes useful educational information, carefully selected links to related sites, and its own forum. While you do need to register to participate in these discussion groups, there is no charge for using them or any of LifeWell's other resources.

My favorite part of LifeWell is "Ask a Doctor." Here you can ask any health-related question, and it will be answered by one of LifeWell's participating doctors. This is a new service so only a few questions have been asked so far, but I'm impressed with the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of the replies that have been posted.

As part of its initial marketing program, LifeWell will sponsor SCIWAY's "Health, medical" section (https://www.sciway.net/med) for the next year. We appreciate their support and hope the world beats a path to their home page (http://www.lifewell.com - site no longer exists).

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New and Notable South Carolina Web Sites

Beaufort Gazette

http://www.islandpacket.com/beaufortgazette/

Central Carolina Economic Development Alliance

http://www.centralsc.org/

Dillon School District 3

http://www.dillon3.k12.sc.us

Greenwood County

http://www.co.greenwood.sc.us

Lee County Chamber of Commerce

http://www.bishopville.com - site no longer exists

South Carolina Department of Social Services

https://dss.sc.gov/

South Carolina Junior Chamber of Commerce - Jaycees

http://scjaycees.org

Spartanburg County School District 2

https://www.spart2.org/

Upstate Info - Appalachian Council of Governments

http://www.scacog.org/SCUI/

York School District 1

http://www.york.k12.sc.us

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If You Missed Our April Issue ...

As most of you know or at least suspect, the mailing of last month's issue of SCIWAY News did not go smoothly. Thousands of you received multiple copies, and thousands did not get a copy at all.

If you received more than one copy of our April newsletter, please read the apology at the end of this issue, and if April's edition did not make it to your mail box, you can can find complete copies of all back issues of SCIWAY News at https://www.sciway.net/sn/.

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Chambers of Commerce to Moderate Charleston, Myrtle Beach Forums

Last month's SCIWAY News announced a new online resource called Ask SCIway. This service enables people throughout the world to ask questions about South Carolina, and it enables South Carolinians to answer these questions and share information with each other. Our first four forums focus on South Carolina history and genealogy.

This month I'm happy to announce two new Ask SCIWAY forums: one for Charleston and one for Myrtle Beach. The Charleston Forum will be moderated by the Charleston Metro Chamber of Commerce (https://www.charlestonchamber.org/), while the Myrtle Beach Forum will be moderated by the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce (http://www.myrtlebeachareachamber.com/).

Both of these Chambers have experienced a significant increase in the number of requests for information they receive through the Internet via e-mail and electronic forms. For example, the Myrtle Beach Live! site (http://www.myrtlebeachlive.com), which is co-sponsored by the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber and three other organizations, now has more than 2,500 visitors a day, and during the past year the Chamber alone has received more than 19,000 electronic requests for its printed vacation planning guide.

If you have a question or need information about Charleston or Myrtle Beach, please visit Ask SCIway. If you would like to moderate an Ask SCIWAY forum for your city, town, or county, please write me at rod.welch@sciway.net.

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PRT Unveils New Tourism Web Site

Earlier this month South Carolina state government's Department of Parks, Recreation and Tourism unveiled the new version of its "Smiling Faces, Beautiful Places" Web site (http://www.discoversouthcarolina.com/). This attractive site provides extensive information about South Carolina tourist destinations, activities, and accommodations.

Another source of South Carolina tourism info is SCIWAY's "Recreation, travel, and tourism" section (https://www.sciway.net/tourism/). It includes links to more than 50 local online visitor's guides as well as to hundreds of attractions, festivals, nature and outdoor activities, hotels, motels, bed and breakfast inns, vacation rentals, campgrounds, restaurants, and travel agencies.

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Fairfield County Library's Web Site and Catalog Now Online

The Fairfield County Library's Web site and Web catalog are now online (see http://www.fairfield.lib.sc.us). Fairfield County is located directly north of Columbia. Its library is one of 70+ South Carolina libraries that can now be accessed through the Internet, and you can find them all in SCIWAY's "Libraries, archives, and museums" section (https://www.sciway.net/lib/).

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Upcoming Festivals, Shows, Events

For the latest information on upcoming South Carolina events, please see https://www.sciway.net/calendar.html.

Sun Fun Festival - Myrtle Beach, June 5-8

Clemson Area Youth Theatre Summer Drama Workshops, June 8 - July 3

War at Flood Tide (Civil War Reenactment) - Charleston, June 12-14

South Carolina Festival of Flowers - Greenwood, June 18-21

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Apology Of The Month

Many of you received multiple copies of the April issue of SCIWAY News–from two to more than I want to think about. :( The number depended on several factors, especially how the server (computer) that hosts your e-mail account handles duplicate messages.

When I mailed the April issue, I followed the same procedure I had with the previous 10. But this time the mail server of one SCIWAY News subscriber was set up in a way that caused it to bounce messages back to our server in a way that caused our server to remail it to everyone on our mailing list–including the address on the misconfigured server. As many of you know, this "loop" repeated itself many times.

To make matters much worse, I left James Island for Columbia early the morning after I mailed the April issue, and I didn't learn about the problem until early afternoon–and I didn't understand that the loop was still going strong until after 4:00 p.m. Murphy was indeed an optimist.

Despite the fact that I had an assist in creating this mail loop and all the network traffic it caused, the fault is completely mine for two reasons. First, I failed to take a simple precaution that could have prevented this loop from occurring. Second, I neglected to check my e-mail before I left for Columbia Friday morning. If I had, I would have seen what was happening and could have stopped it relatively early.

I apologize for making these mistakes and for wasting so many people's time. Time is precious to me, and I still feel badly about having wasted yours.

As you would expect, I received LOTS of return e-mail messages–more than 2,000 in fact. Many of these were irate and painful to read. and more people unsubscribed in one day than had unsubscribed in the 14 months since I began publishing SCIWAY News.

But I also received hundreds of messages from people who just wanted to know what was happening or who wanted to warn me about the problem. and I even got some funny messages from people who knew what was happening. My favorite was, "Just read my first copy of issue 11 and loved it. Can't wait to read the next six!"

I would like to thank those of you who are still out there for your patience, understanding, and good humor. I can't guarantee that we won't have any problems with future SCIWAY News mailings. But I can promise you that we will monitor our mailings much more closely so that we can fix problems before they get out of hand.

It will be hard to click that send button tonight, but I will.

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Question Of The Month

Several SCIWAY News readers have recently suggested that I shorten this newsletter–and distribute it twice a month. Their logic: people are more likely to read two shorter issues than one longer one.

If you have an opinion about this idea, I would appreciate your sending it to news@sciway.net. I'll report what I learn in the next issue of SCIWAY News.

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