Home >  Business >  Interact

Thursday, June 14, 2001

By David Radin

Talking to celebrities is fun -- and enlightening -- because celebrities often have a totally different perspective of reality than the rest of us. I've spoken to a number of celebs who have taken credit for Web sites that they didn't really put together. They simply lend their names to the ventures.

Others are really involved. Some, such as Hal Sparks of Showtime's "Queer as Folk," actually write code and answer their own e-mail.

Suzanne Somers doesn't do the daily upkeep related to her Web site. But she has been thoroughly involved in the creation of its concept and participates in chats every couple of weeks. Having met and spoken with Suzanne several times, I find it easy to see how she would be instrumental in the direction of the Web site, the same way she manages her other businesses.

Not everybody is as candid as Jason Alexander when it comes to being Web savvy. Jason told me last year, "Dave, I'm a computer cave man." When he said it, I thought he meant he didn't understand computers at all. Yet as we spoke, it was obvious that he had a terrific understanding of the implications of computing on our society. For instance he has concerns about revisionist history based on computer-based graphical editing tools. In his scenario, he challenges the validity of data when almost anybody can revise photographs and audio using inexpensive software to restate the truth. Imagine obliterating the Holocaust by revising photographs. Every week Jason Cox sticks an image of my head on various photos on our Web site. JC does it for humor. But the sinister objectives about which Jason Alexander speaks cannot be denied.

		Ask Your Questions Have a question for David Radin? Contact him at his Web site

Eartha Kitt, formerly Catwoman and currently the fairy godmother in "Cinderella," has her own Web site too. It is operated by her daughter -- and she's proud of it. Yet Eartha admittedly doesn't spend too much time with her Web site. She doesn't even like using the telephone because it's too impersonal.

Eartha is a very unusual case. Although she looks much younger, she's actually in her 70s. And when she was young, she lived in a rural part of the South in which technology was behind the rest of the country. Recently, before one of her "Cinderella" performances at Heinz Hall, she told me that she was still amazed by two technologies -- the light bulb and the flush toilet. And she's been using both for quite some time. You can hear the interview at www.InsiderRadio.com.

Insider tip

You're working on a MS-Word document and decide that you want to send a copy to somebody via e-mail. Instead of opening up your e-mail software, sending the document and closing your e-mail software again, you can send the document directly from Word.

First, click on the E-Mail icon on your toolbar. It looks like an envelope with a rectangle obscuring the bottom left corner. (If you don't see the icon, choose [File], then [Send To>], then select [Mail Recipient].) This will add an area above your document right within Word that acts like the header of your e-mail -- complete with places to type in recipients and subject as well as buttons that you normally see in an e-mail compose window. You can even access your address book directly. When you've filled in this information, click on [Send a Copy]. A copy of your document will be sent as the body of your message. To get rid of the e-mail area, click the E-mail icon again. Now you're ready to resume work on your document.

This tip works in all MS-Office 2000 applications (Excel, Word, PowerPoint) as well as the new Office XP.