Get online, not in line, for your postal needs

Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Jun 27, 2004 by JIM BAINBRIDGE THE GAZETTE

Virtually everything you can do in a brick and mortar post office can be done online... except for that standing in line part.

The United States Postal Service site has sections where you can buy stamps, send mail, forward money or grow your business. One of the most-used sections is devoted to how much postage is required for any sort of package, to any place in the world.

Wondering how much postage it will take to send a post card to Barcelona? Click on the "Calculate Postage" icon on the home page, then go to the international calculator and get your answer (70 cents) in seconds.

www.usps.com

POLITICS

To better track what figures to be a close presidential election, the Wall Street Journal has put together a Web page with background information and trends in the 16 socalled battleground states. From May 24 to June 7 polling, President Bush has an edge in 5 of the 16 after being even at 8-8 on May 24.

snipurl.com/battleground

states

CELEBRITIES

Ever had one of those arguments about whether some famous person or other is living or dead? You can cut those disputes short by making a quick trip to Dead-OrAliveInfo. com, where there's a list of 6,863 famous (and not-so-famous) folks from politics, entertainment, sports and the law, cross-referenced in a number of ways, including celebrities 85 or older. And, yes, in case you were wondering, Fay Wray, Mitch Miller and Max Schmelling are still with us.

www.deadoraliveinfo.com/dead.nsf

SUNRISE

SunriseSunset.com does just about what you figure it to do -- list the sunrise, sunset, moonrise and moonset anywhere in the world. It also provides definitions of civil, nautical and astronomical twilight, plus answers to frequently asked questions. Alaska now has a "nightfall" that lasts a little more than 41/2 hours. For a look at an Alaska bathed in sunlight at 11:30 p.m. (local time; 1:30 a.m. MDT) you can log on to Alaskan Web cams.

www.sunrisesunset.com

www.akmining.com/webcams.htm

RENAISSANCE

To make sure you get the full experience of a day at the Renaissance Festival, stop first at the University of Pennsylvania site on England of the 17th century. The English Renaissance in Context provides access to major texts of the English Renaissance in their original versions. But better than that, it has multimedia tutorials (which move quickly) to "present viewers with background and contextual material" for plays such as "Romeo and Juliet," "The Merchant of Venice" and "Richard III."

dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/furness/eric

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0126 or bainbird@gazette.com