[Nome-announce] questions on attachment size

[Jim Dory]

[What follows is nome-announce policy information - please do not
respond back to the list with questions or comments. Please address
those to my email address]

I have received an inquiry asking that he and others desire an
increased file size for attachments to nome-announce messages, so I
thought I should pass along the reasoning about the 40KB limit on
message size which I intend to keep.

40KB is the default for the program, based on much history of email
lists. GCI only allows 5MB as standard on their server and that can
fill up rapidly (if you happen to not be checking your messages
regularly). I'm getting several over quota error messages a day from
people with gci.net addresses since those errors go back to the email
list administrator - me. Limiting size of messages helps prevent over
quota issues.

People don't really like unexpected downloads. Many people don't want
attachments at all so this is already a compromise. As the traffic
increases on nome-announce (you'll notice the last couple of months
have shown a steady increase in email posts) it could become very
cumbersome, especially if attachments' size were increased.

Images can be sized as small as is practical to see what they are.
Doesn't matter how big it starts out. Most image software these days
allows that - try googling for freeware image programs if you want
free. Gimp ( http://gimp.org/windows/ ) is a free one but kinda like
photoshop - a bit tough maybe to learn. Here's another one that might
be easier:
http://www.getpaint.net/
Save images as .gif images will really reduce the size as well.
There's plenty of options out there - maybe even the software that
came with your digital camera if you have one.

Here's a great article and tutorials on how to make images small:

How do I reduce the size of photos for online use?
http://graphicssoft.about.com/cs/digitalimaging/f/howreducesize.htm

For other file types or for people who want larger images I would
encourage people to upload their files to a file sharing website and
then provide a link in their nome-announce message to the file. Then
the file size or image size can be as large as they want, and people
can then choose to view it or not. For images, there are free sites
like http://www.flickr.com as well as many others. (free for limited
use or pay for more unlimited use).
Here's an example:
Anyone want to buy my cadillac? Only $20,000. Here's the image:
http://www.pbase.com/hunky/image/101065152
( just copied the webpage address by highlighting it with the mouse
and then right click on it and choose copy).

 For other file types (doc or pdf, etc) I googled for free file
sharing sites and found many. Here's one (I don't know anything about
them): http://www.keepandshare.com/htm/free_file_sharing.php
There's plenty more. Even google can store and share files if you
create an account with them: http://docs.google.com/

Hope this helps.
cheers, Jim