January 2000

Cyber News and Reviews is a monthly column published for parents, teachers & business owners featuring kids educational software reviews, business software reviews (small business & home business), games and entertainment articles, a free resource since 1995.

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JumpStart Toddlers 2000, Bear in the Big Blue House: Bear's Sense of Adventure, Teletubbies 2: Favorite Games from Knowledge Adventure.  Web Affiliate Business Programs: Simple Replicator and Simple Affiliate and more Web Submission Tools.

JumpStart Toddlers 2000 from Knowledge Adventure

Knowledge Adventure has a new version of their popular JumpStart Toddlers educational CD, for kids ages 18 months to 3 years.  JumpStart Toddlers 2000 offers some fun activities, with great graphics, music and sound effects, so your child can have an early interactive educational experience.  You'll find 7 activity areas to explore with DeeDee the duck.  Visit the Lilly Pond and help DeeDee count her friends, play with the Butterfly in Grandma's Flower Garden, make colorful shapes and toys in Chippy's Treehouse, have fun with stickers and pictures in Grandma's kitchen, find the animals in Peek-a-Boo Woods, play some music at the Waterfall and learn about letters with the ABC mice.  And kids won't need to learn the mouse to play the activities.

Although this CD is recommended for kids as young as 18 months, it does depend on your child.  Some kids may not have the attention span to sit more than a few minutes at the computer while others may master the mouse at a young age and spend lots of time exploring.  If you feel that your child is ready to explore the computer and this CD, you can't go wrong with JumpStart Toddler 2000.  And if you're not satisfied, or your child just won't pay attention and ignores the game, or even throws the mouse at the screen (it happens), then you can return the CD for an exchange or refund.

JumpStart Toddlers 2000 sells for a street price of  $24.99 and will run on any multimedia PC, Pentium 90  or faster, with 16 MB RAM running Windows 98/95 and a Power Macintosh.  Both computers require a quad-speed (4x) CD-ROM drive. 

Bear in the Big Blue House: Bear's Sense of Adventure from Knowledge Adventure

Kids ages 3 to 6 (and adults) who love that lovable brown bear, Bear, from Disney's Bear in the Big Blue House (and Jim Henson's muppets), will love this CD from Knowledge Adventure.  With outstanding graphics, music and sites and sounds of the Disney Channel show, kids will love interacting with their favorite characters.  Meet Bear, of course, Tutter, Ojo, Treelo, Pip and Pop (kids know who they are) for one great interactive experience.

Bear in the Big Blue House: Bear's Sense of Adventure sells for $19.99 and will run on any multimedia PC, Pentium 90  or faster, with 16 MB RAM running Windows 98/95 and a quad-speed (4x) CD-ROM drive.

Both Sarah (who's 8) and Becky (she's 5) loved this CD.  In fact, I enjoyed it too.  The graphics are mesmerizing and really captured my attention.  It's a Disney show right on the computer, where kids can visit their favorite characters anytime (as long as you have more than one computer in the house).

Teletubbies 2: Favorite Games from Knowledge Adventure

Okay kids ages 1 to 4 (and parents), are you ready for the Teletubbies (Tinky Winky, Dipsy, Laa Laa and Po) direct from the United Kingdom, now on CD?  Well, Knowledge and the BBC (British Broadcasting Company) got it together to make this show into one cute educational CD featuring five Teletubby activities.  Meet those lovable (and sometimes strange), television characters you've seen on public TV for some fun and educational games and activities direct from the show.  Make tubby custard with the custard machine, play hide and seek, have a Teletubby roll down the hill, watch them exercise and see videos on their TV tummies.

Becky, who is now 5, enjoyed playing with the Teletubbies, but Sarah wasn't interested.  She's 8 and even now dislikes even Barney that very lovable dinosaur.

Teletubbies 2: Favorite Games sells for $19.99 and will run on any multimedia PC, Pentium 90  or faster, with 16 MB RAM running Windows 98/95 and a quad-speed (4x) CD-ROM drive. 

Web Affiliate Business Programs

Now that you've established your Web business on the Internet, and are starting to sell your products or services, the next step in the process is to consider offering an affiliate program to attract sponsors who will place your banner on their page to attract customers to your site.  This has become a very popular marketing strategy on the Internet.  Companies like Amazon.com and eToys.com offer their affiliate members a cut of the profits from any sales from your referred visitors.  The referral is tracked from your Web site, through a banner that has your ID on it.  When your visitors click on the eToy.com affiliate banner, they're taken away to the eToy.com Web site where they may make a purchase.  If they buy something,, eToy.com knows who referred them and credits the commission to the affiliate member's account.  Sounds like a great idea, doesn't it?  So, what does it cost and what do I have to do to start such a program.  First of all, you'll need CGI access on your Web server.  Then you'll need to you spend several hundred dollars or even thousands to have an Internet Web programming service develop your affiliate program software and install the software on your Web space.  Or, you could spend just $29.95 or $49.95 and do it yourself. 

Simple Replicator  from Hasbrouck Enterprises

Yes, I found a simple affiliate program from Hasbrouck Enterprises (replicator2000.com/sr.cgi) called the Simple Replicator that sells for $49.95 by David Hasbrouck.  It can help you start your own profitable affiliate program as long as you're willing to learn a little CGI programming and set it up yourself as I did for my KDF® Water Filter site.  This CGI script has everything you need from signing up your affiliate members, tracking their visitors to your site, calculating commissions and sales amounts and even sending e-mails reporting the sales to your new customer,  your affiliate member and to you so you can process the order.

Simple Affiliate from Internet Enterprises (simpleaffiliate.com)

The Simple Affiliate from Internet Enterprises is only $29.95 for the program script, and is a bit simpler than the Simple Replicator mentioned above, but is similar in the way it works.  It also has everything you need for signing up your affiliate members and tracking their visitors to your site.   Not a bad price at $29.95.

If you want to try setting up a simple affiliate program for your Web  shop, then you should try using one of these affiliate scripts.  In fact, they're so inexpensive, you can buy both and then use the one you like.

Web Submission Tools

In the past few months I reviewed two Web submission tools: Addweb 3 from Cyberspace HQ and SubmitWolf 4.0 Web Submission Software from Trellian Australia Pty. Ltd.  Now you'll hear about two more Web site submission tools: Traffic Builder, from WebGrip, Inc. and Web Site Traffic Builder from Intelliquis International, Inc.  Actually, Traffic Builder was developed by PBD Software and is distributed under various companies and names.  It's available for download from shareware software sites or directly from distributor Web sites.  Web Site Traffic Builder can be found locally, in a retail box, at some of the discount computer and office supply chains or  is downloadable from Intelliquis.com.

Since these products are Web promotion utilities, they have similar features and functions.  Of course, what they do (and do very well), is they submit your Web site to hundreds of search engines and other sites (like Free-For-All- Pages) at one time and fast.  The average submission time is 15 to 30 minutes.  This depends on the speed of your Internet connection, the speed of the Internet itself and the number of search engines you've selected for your submission.  You can't go wrong with any of above mentioned utilities.  If you're not sure which product to purchase, visit their Web sites and download and try demo before you buy.

Traffic Builder from WebGrip, Inc. webgrip.com/
and PBD Technologies, Inc. pbdtech.com/tbmain.htm

 Traffic Builder Standard Version will submit your Web page address to more than 900 search engines and link directories.  Features include free search engine list updates and the ability to submit to up to 50 engine sites at one time.  It also includes detailed submission reporting so you can track when and where you submitted your site.  The Standard Version sells for $49.95.

If you're a Webmaster, you might be interested in their Professional Version, which sells for $99.95, or you can upgrade from the Standard Version for $49.95.  The Professional Version adds a Batch Submission feature allowing you to submit multiple URLs during one submission session.  It also includes a Deep Submission feature that finds the links to all your other pages (from your main page) and submits those as well.

Web Site Traffic Builder from Intelliquis (intelliquis.com)

Web Site Traffic Builder will submit your Web page address to more than 700 search engines with their Standard Edition, including Yahoo! and Snap.  Features include free search engine list updates, a visibility search to verify your site's submission on eight of the popular search engine, detailed reporting and a utility that generates a submission description from your key works, used to help register your site in the appropriate search engine categories.  The Standard Edition sells for $49.95.

You can also upgrade from the Standard Edition to either The Professional Edition for $50 or the Web Master Edition for $100.  The Professional Edition adds a Batch Submission feature allowing you to submit multiple URLs during one submission session.   The Web Master Edition includes the batch utility, a meta tag utility (modifies your meta tags for best search engine results) and a search engine position ranking utility (somewhat different than the utility in the Standard Edition).

Howard Berenbon

Software/Hardware Companies Mentioned

Cyberspace Headquarters, LLC
22048 Sherman Way, Suite 106
Canoga Park, CA. 91303
Phone: 818-593-4900

Hasbrouck Enterprises
Simple Replicator  by David Hasbrouck
E-mail: davidh@replicator2000.com
URL replicator2000.com/sr.cgi

Intelliquis International, Inc.
352 West 12300 South
Draper, UT 84020
Phone: 801-990-2600
URL intelliquis.com

Internet Enterprises
Simple Affiliate by Dan Ramsay
URL simpleaffiliate.com

Knowledge Adventure, Inc.
19840 Pioneer Avenue
Torrance, CA 90503
Phone: 1-800-545-7677

WebGrip, Inc.
PMB 137 16420 SE McGillivray
Suite 103
Vancouver, WA 98637
Phone: 360-833-2906
URL webgrip.com

PBD Technologies, Inc.
13006 East Philadelphia Street
5th Floor, Suite 508
Whittier, CA  90601
URL pbdtech.com/tbmain.htm

Trellian Australia Pty. Ltd.
71 Cromer Road
Beaumaris, Victoria 3193
Australia
URL trellian.com/
Fax: +613-9583-2562