You signed up for a teleseminar and ended up missing it. Dang!

But the hosts recorded it. Yah!

They sent you an email message that says "Go here now and listen to the call in its entirety. BUT the web link in the email message points direct to the MP3 file and your browser's protesting. Dang again.

The message you've received looks something like...

"You can download and listen to the call to find out our exact secrets. Go here now:

http://www.some-guru-site.com/teleseminar-recording.htm"

Have you ever attempted to use the "right-click / save as" convention on a link in an email message? It just don't work.

Why do marketers do this? Are they trying to make it difficult to download and pass an MP3 file around? Did they just have a lazy attack?

It doesn't matter why because you can get around this nuisance. It's really easy.

Do this:

(1) Open a new blank web page document using your favorite HTML editor.

(2) Go back to the email message and copy the web link that points to the MP3 file.

(3) Flip back over to your HTML editor, paste the link into the source code of your blank web page document and format it properly as you would any other target URL. Following this procedure, your link will have a formatting something like this (Note - the beginning and ending anchor tags here have an extra "."):

<.a href="http://www.some-guru-site.com/teleseminar-recording.htm">http://www.some-guru-site.com/teleseminar-recording.htm<./a>

(4) Now, still in your HTML editor, go to "Preview" mode. Your link is fully functional and now you can use the conventional "Right-Click / Save As" function to start the file download just as if the teleseminar host had sent you to a download page online.

That's it. That's all there is to our little MP3 file download trick. Save this article in your "sneaky computer tricks" file and next time you find yourself fighting with your web browser to access an MP3 audio file, it works slick as a snail trail.

Copyright 2005 Ron Hutton