PilotsUnited.comPilotsUnited.com FAQ |
|
This page is (and always will be) under construction.
Who run PilotsUnited.com and what's their deal? PilotsUnited are Sean Brown and Joel Vergun. Sean basically built and runs the site, and most of the errors and ommissions are his fault. Occasionally, especially when there's late breaking news and Sean is out of town, Joel will post a blurb on the front page. Joel has a computer consulting business and hosts the PilotsUnited.com on his computers. Their deal is basically to provide a free (and pop-up free) site for pilots, with a focus on United pilots. The idea was born by Sean wanting to have a personalized home page with all the links he used regularly, and once he made it, decided that others might benefit from it. Now it has become this thing. Cool!
How can I advertise on PilotsUnited.com? Contact Joel Vergun for advertising. Advertising is kept to a blurb on the front page and a link on either the right or left side of the main page. If you need a full page of your own to describe your service, one can be provided. Links in the menu system are free, so send your links to Sean Brown.
What is that rotating blue thing with an "i" in it? (You mean this thing
It's an info marker. Any time you see it, click on it, and it will take you to a page that will give you more information about a topic. This works in the menu system as well. For instance, if you go to the first menu, ALPA and Labor Issues, you'll see the first item, UAL ALPA Forum, has an info marker next to it. If you click on the words "UAL ALPA Forum" it will take you to the forum, but if you point your cursor at the info marker and click, you'll get a page that tells you how to register at the UAL Forum. Kinda neat, eh?
Why don't you link to the sites referenced on the front page? All of the headlines (titles to the paragraphs) are links, as are all the bold font words. When in doubt, move your cursor over a word, and if it changes to bright blue, you found a link.
How do I make PilotsUnited.com my home page? To make www.pilotsunited.com your home page click here. To make www.pilotsunited.com/lite your home page click here. If there were blanks or it didn't work when you clicked, you're not using Internet Explorer and will have to do it the old fashioned way. Look at the Location (Address) bar. To the left of the url, there is a bookmark Icon. Drag the bookmark over to your home page icon, and it will do the trick.
Are there really several different versions of PilotsUnited.com? Yes, there are different versions for different users: The main home page. All the graphics, no Ticker. (Default) All the bells and whistles, including the Ticker. (Recommended) Minimal graphics, one bell, no whistles, but the full menu system. Lame link list for gerbil-powered 9600 baud Hayes modems.
With the link to the Unimatic Terminal, can I cancel AOL/CS? Do I need AOL/CS on the computer to use this link? You should really check our page on Unimatic and AOL, but in a nutshell, you must have an AOL/CS account for the link to work. You do not need to run AOL/CS software on the machine you link from. If you don't run their software and go to Keyword: UAL CREW at least once, the link will force you to enter your screen name and password each time. After you run their software and go to UAL CREW, it will set a cookie (or use Virtual Key in the case of CS), and you won't have to enter your screen name each time, even if you never run the AOL/CS software again (unless, of course, you delete your cookies.)
One nice thing about this link is if you are at the layover hotel and you click on it, it will prompt you for your AOL/CS screenname. When you enter it you get Unimatic access, so basically you now have access to Unimatic from any internet connected machine even if it doesn't have AOL or CS! (Link submitted by Vinny De Giovanni, explanation by Cullen Bankole.)
I tried to log onto AOL, but it won't let me use Unimatic? Any ideas on what I should do? Amazingly, if you tried to log onto AOL but mistyped your screenname/password, it will save the cookie with the wrong info, and the ONLY way to reset it and get on is to DELETE YOUR COOKIES. To do this, from your browser window, go to the Tools menu -> Internet Options... and then click on the Delete Cookies button. Sign back on using your correct screenname/password and you're in. What is a .pdf file and how do I view them, like the Pilot Domicile Roster? A .pdf file is a file created by Adobe Acrobat. What this does is allow authors to create files using any program they want. If they just posted these files in their original format, you would have to have that specific program to view them. By converting them into Acrobat's .pdf format, anyone who has the free (yes, free) Adobe Acrobat plug-in can view the file. Most browsers already have the Acrobat plug-in installed.
To view them, all you have to do is click on the link. If the plug-in is installed, it will automatically open up inside a browser window. If you don't have the plug-in, it should automatically come up and offer you to download and install the plug-in for free. Some browsers may not do this automatically, so just go to Adobe's site and follow the very easy download/install instructions. Mac users go here.
The Weather Menus disappeared when I went away from the site. How do I get them back? Click on the "Weather" link in the Navigation Bar (the top menu), and they'll reload. The reason this happens is because the Weather Menus are very unique in that they pop-up into a frame other than the frame from where it originates. This requires some tricky coding, and when you leave our site completely, some sites "hijack" the browser window and terminate the pop-up script. To get them back, you have to reload the script, and that's what the Weather link does in the Nav Bar. How do I get my FREE UPGRADE to PilotsUnited ULTRA? You have entered the domain of the inner sanctum and discovered the Easter Egg of the Century! Normally, you'd have to pay three times as much as you are currently paying for the boring Vanilla version of PilotsUnited.com. But act now, and in three easy payments of $0.00, you can upgrade to PilotsUnited.com Ultra! You might ask yourself: "What IS PilotsUnited.com Ultra?" Well, if you're sitting alone, you probably won't hear an answer, so fortunately we've provided one here. PilotsUnited.com Ultra is the full flavored, Guinness Stout version of our Budweiser American Pilsner version you just came from. You'll find all the bells and whistles (and even some buzzers) such as the Microsoft Investor Stock and News Ticker (see question below). There are also other tidbits in the works, and they will ONLY be found on the ULTRA site.
You may ask, "Why would you need an ULTRA version of the site?" And this time I'm sure you didn't ask yourself out loud, because most pilots are quick learners (and good liars, and I just lied there. Or did I just lie THERE?) Believe it or not, there are still some really rich and famous airline pilots that are too dang CHEAP (No!) to upgrade to high speed internet access and continue to rely on their gerbil powered 9600 baud Hayes modem to connect to the internet. Ultra is the Hans und Franz version, here to pump you up, and no girly-man 28.8K connection is going to handle the immense power and sheer thrill of ULTRA! So, for guys like Dan Eikleberry, who relishes his manually tuned RCA 12" TV, Betamax VCR, ATARI game console, Commodore 64 (he upgrade his Vic 20 last year at a local garage sale), 8 Track collection of BTO, CCR, and CNSY, and his Gilligan-on-the-cocoanut-stationary-bike-powered modem, we offer the Vanilla (or Bannana Cream in Gilligan's case) version of PilotsUnited. Oh, and for the really, REALLY Cro-Magnon of the lot, there's PilotsUnited Lite (which is actually the version I think Dan uses) and PilotsUnited Free. I forget how crummy these lame versions are because I refuse to go to them, but for the truly dull and slovenly, they are there for the pickin. What is this Stock Ticker I keep hearing about? If you go to PilotsUnited.com Ultra you'll be prompted to download the Microsoft Investor Stock and News Ticker. It's a very tiny applet that allows you to customize the stocks and news that are scrolled across the top of the page.
If you go to PilotsUnited.com Ultra and still don't get the ticker you more than likely need to switch to Internet Explorer (IE), which can be downloaded for free. In the days when version 4 of Netscape (NS) and IE were the most current, Netscape was clearly the best browser, and it dominated the market. With version 5 and 5.5, IE surpassed NS as the primo browser. Not because of Bill Gates monopolistic methodization of integrating IE into the Windows environment, although that certainly helped. What IE 5 and 5.5 did was enable many DHTML (or Dynamic HTML) features that NS 4.79 just can't do. So NS came out with 6.0. NS 6.0 comes close to IE 5.5 with regard to DHTML capability, but it is SO SLOW, especially when loading and opening new windows. Most NS diehards have stuck with 4.79, which has seriously hampered the growth in use of NS 6.0. Meanwhile, IE has come out with IE 6.0. Frankly, there's not much difference in 5.5 and 6.0, but it's definitely much better than either version of Netscape. That said, I am trying to keep the site 100% operational for NS 6.0, and I'm developing an alternate front page that is NS 4.79 friendly. Oh, NS 7.0 is coming out soon, and I don't like Opera (but I do like the ballet.)
I don't like the default Stocks on the Ticker, I want my own stock up there. How do I do it? Um, see the little box in the ticker titled "Custom"? Take it from there. You can add any stock you want to the ticker. As a matter of fact, you can change what news content is displayed. You can also set the frequency with which it automatically updates the quotes (default is 30 minutes.) And if you haven't noticed, the arrow buttons on the ticker allow you not only to change the direction, but you can zip to a story or quote. The Headlines are actually links to the story. The Stocks are supposed to be links to a page about that company, but it doesn't seem MS has them working. So sad. By the way, major airline symbols are UAL, AMR, DAL, U, NWAC (Northwest), CAL, LUV (Southwest), AWA (America West), FRNT (Frontier), and ALK (Alaska). Or go to our Stocks page and get more symbols.
How do I add a link? There is a new feature called Add-A-Link that allows you to immediately post a link to the site. We will keep an eye on that board, and some of the more relavant and interesting sites will be added to the menu system. Others will be left on the board for others to see. There isn't a way to add your links directly to the menu system. I'll tell you, it is not a GUI process to add a menu item, it's a lot of manual hand coding, and it's a pain in the BUTT. I would love to animate it, but it just doesn't work that way.
Why is this FAQ such a mess? Cut me some slack! As the headline indicates, this page is under construction. I just need to start getting SOMETHING started. Just pretend you're a beta tester, okay?
Why is your hair such a mess? Because I sit at the computer for days, and I refuse to bathe until OBL is brought to justice. BTW, it's not yellow anymore.
What is this site all about? What's the catch? Actually, there isn't a catch. See our page "About PilotsUnited.com" to see why we're doing this.
This site is so cool, can we donate lots of money to you? No, but we will accept seniority numbers that are higher than ours.
So, you're not going to charge anything and I'm not going to be subjected pop-up hell? Nope and nope. Eventually we might get some sponsors, but only for pilot related things like Sporty's or AOPA or something, and they won't be pop-ups or adware or anything. Just a small banner here and there. Oh, right, there are some pay-per-click sponsors, places that pay us when people click to go from our site to theirs. But we're not going to SEND you there. You'll have to proactively click on one of them to take you to their site.
What's a henweigh? About 3 or 4 pounds. By the "weigh, " a grecianurn: about $8/hour; a garagekey: to open the garage door with.
Suggest our site for one of the 500 Best Aviation Websites!
|
