As a continuation of last week's theme covering the e-mail offerings of various tech and news sites. No standard reviews, but I will summarize and provide quick opinions on quality and content of their flagship e-mail publications. This is not to say that I won't review some of these publications in depth later...

The second three this week: CMPnet Update, CNET Digital Dispatch and PC World Daily Digest.

The Newsletters (see #1-3 reviewed last week)

These "tech news" newsletters all tend to provide news capsules with links back to the main site where you can peruse full length articles. This is an excellent way to continuously drive traffic to your Web site without giving away the whole bag-o-beans.

4) CMPNet Update

CMPNet Update is a the update notice for the CMPNet site. This weekly e-mail pub provides news blurbs and opinion from the multitude of on-line technology related publications in the CMP family. Every issue is broken down into sections covering TechWeb, Information Week, Internet, NetGuide and opinion from various columnists.

The strengths in this publication that are missing from some of the other five in this series is that this truly is the flag-ship e-mail publication. CMP publishes other more focused e-mail newsletters, but none of them have the breadth of attraction that this one does. Each issue publishes a full set of all CMP sites and their URLs; a good reminder to visit those sites you may have forgotten about.

Visit: http://www.cmpnet.com/
Subscribe: http://www.cmpnet.com/delivery/home.html

Like I mentioned above, CMPNet also provides more focused e-mail offerings:

• TechWeb News - This daily newsletter lists tech news highlights, software releases and related opinion and loads of related links.
• TechInvestor Direct - Every business day this pub brings the typical business news and obligatory coverage of the "market".
• NetGuide Now - Once upon a time an excellent print publication, NetGuide Now covers the latest and greatest on the Net.
• FileMine's Digs - FileMine, one of the Net's biggest shareware sites, publishes this update about the latest "kinda free" software.

Subscribe: http://www.cmpnet.com/delivery/home.html

5) CNET Digital Dispatch

This weekly news notice is much like the CMPNet publication. It covers news, opinion and updates highlighting the latest from all of it's Web sites. Slanted strongly towards hardware and software and coupled with the linked content of its sites this "dispatch" makes a decent run at covering important items. Content back on the Web is well written and well linked.

Visit: http://www.cnet.com/
Subscribe: http://www.computers.com/newsletter/0,17,0-0,00.html

These guys almost have a corner on single word domain names including news.com, shareware.com, download.com, shopper.com and computers.com. They also have e-mail updates for each of these easy to remember sites:

• computers.com - The update for the computers.com site. Reviews, releases and bits on all the latest hardware.
• news.com - Tech business news and hype.
• download.com - Separate newsletters for PC and Mac covering the latest in software releases, patches and updates.
• builder.com - The latest techniques and tips for creating Web sites and Internet based software.

Subscribe at: http://www.computers.com/newsletter/0,17,0-0,00.html

6) PC World Daily Digest

PC World (along with its related magazine Macworld) is one of the industry's best known computer magazines. They publish the PC World Daily Digest to let you know the latest computer realm news and updates to their Web site. Each issue covers hardware and software updates, links to reviews and tests; all that you'd come to expect from PC World.

Subscribe: http://www.pcworld.com/resources/tipaday/tipsjoin.html

The real strength of PC World in e-mail though is it's unparralled stack of e-mail available newsletters, tutorials and tips. They obviously understand the benefits of e-mail publishing.

At their site there are no less than 80 publications available (Note: not all of them published by PC World, but seemingly related in some way). These include:

• PC World Watch - A weekly dose of PC World news and updates.
• PC World's Game Pick of the Day - Like it says, everyday and new game with tips and links.
• MCSE for Dummies Pop Quiz - For those planning to take the Microsoft Certified System Engineer exams. A set of 6 mail-outs provide sample test questions on a variety of MCSE topics.
• Dummies Daily Computing Tips - Choose from a set of 10+ topics (including MS Word, Windows 95 and Quicken) and receive tips and tricks to hopefully make your tech life more productive.
• MacWEEK Headlines - Headlines and blurbettes from MacWeek, the weekly Mac mag.
• Games.net Cheat Codes News - For game addicts: stay on top of all the hidden ways to finish your games twice as fast.

Subscribe at: http://www.pcworld.com/resources/tipaday/tipsjoin.html

or visit the Dummies Daily site for a list of all the "Dummies" mailers.

INDEX