Letter Carriers Popular In Electronic Era

Electronic mail is the most popular Internet service, but most households remain touchy-feely about their correspondence and would rather have it hand delivered -- especially when it's financial documents and information.

Two somewhat self-serving Pitney Bowes studies, one in 1999 and one this year, revealed, not surprisingly, that 93 percent of the households they surveyed prefer traditional mail when the delivery is financial documents.

They simply don't trust e-mail.

In the 1999 survey 80 percent of surveyed households considered regular mail more secure than e-mail. Likewise, 76 percent of those surveyed this year trusted regular mail over e-mail.

Surprisingly, regular mail was considered less time consuming -- 62 of those who responded said getting and opening snail mail was actually faster than retrieving e-mail, up 7 percent from the 1999 survey.

The 2001 Household Mail Preference Study does not say how many of those surveyed used 300 baud modems. And don't even try to get that slot in your front door to announce "You've Got Mail!"

Wired, Wired West

Four of the top five cities with the greatest number of Internet-wired households are out West where Internet access at home is nearing 70 percent.

Nielsen NetRatings says Portland, not Silicon Valley, is the metropolitan area with the most Internet wired households nationwide. Some 69.7 percent of that area's residents are housed with browsing. The nation's technology center didn't even come in second. That honor went to Seattle where 69.6 percent of the households are Net connected.

The San Francisco metropolitan area (which includes San Jose and Silicon Valley) placed a near third -- 69.1 percent of the area's households have Net access, Nielsen says.

Boston at 68.4 percent and San Diego at 66.2 percent, round out the Top 5 most Net connected metros, but the award for greatest growth in household Internet access went to Motown. Some 56.4 percent of Detroit households have Net access, up 38 percent from a year ago.

"Access to the Internet has become a need rather than a luxury for the mainstream population in the U.S.," said Allen Weiner, vice president of analytical services, NetRatings. "Applications such as e-mail and commerce have become part of our daily routine as the Web has touched our personal and professional lives."

Even if we don't trust e-mail and think it's slow as molasses, we gotta have it.

Earthquake Mid-Terms & Finals

Pay attention. There will be a test. Failure could be fatal.

As sure as too much sun will ruin your skin, as sure as the energy crisis won't soon go away and as sure as dot combustion is spontaneous, eventually, the Big One will really shake up things in the Golden State.

That's California living. Sprinkled with truisms.

If you want to play the game, you've got to know the rules.

Rule No. 1? Be prepared.

In California, always be prepared. It's a truism.

"The last major earthquake to strike California was the Northridge quake -- more than seven years ago," said Candysse Miller, executive director of the Insurance Information Network of California. "Earthquakes are out of sight, out of mind for most people. The longer we go without a major trembler, the less prepared we are."

April is Earthquake Preparedness Month and Miller and the network have devised a test to check your quake preparedness.

If you fail, you are rubble.

Pass and you'll be around for the next big one.

Be prepared.

Check your "EQ IQ".

That goes for folks in Seattle, along the Madrid Fault Zone, in the South and in the Northeast, who also think it can't happen to them.

For more articles by Broderick Perkins, please press here.

Published: April 5, 2001

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

A journalist for 35-years, Broderick Perkins parlayed an old-school daily newspaper career into a digital news service offering editorial content and consulting services. Perkins' San Jose, CA-based DeadlineNews Group includes the flagship news site, DeadlineNews.Com, offering real estate, personal finance and consumer journalism, and a backshop, the Deadline Newsroom.