Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2007 17:24:11 -0400 (AST) From: Chebucto Community Net <office at chebucto.ns.ca> Subject: Important news from Chebucto Community Net! *** Important news on the new Chebucto mail system below. *** Dear Chebucto Member, Well, Spring is here again and with it the Chebucto Annual General Meeting which will be held at the same location as last year in Room 1020 in the Ken Rowe Building, 6100 University Ave at 7:00pm on Thursday, April 12th. This is an advance invitation and the official notice will follow. The Board is particularly interested in a good turn-out for this meeting as we are at a critical stage in our development. As you are aware a year ago we announced our intention to introduce a Wireless Service. While this is still our goal, our plan has been temporarily slowed down due to the serious onslaught of spam that all Internet Services have experienced. Ed Dyer, our Technical Chair and our one technical staff person, Johnathan Thibodeau, have had to concentrate their efforts on this problem. To give you a sense of the effect of this - a year ago Chebucto had one server devoted to spam filtering - we now have four. On the positive side we are now ready to launch our expanded mail box service which many of you have been requesting and in spite of our difficulties work is proceeding on the Wireless Service. We will have more to say about this at the AGM. We are especially hoping to have a good turn-out on April 12th as we intend to seek your input on the methods we can use to retain existing members and attract new ones. We are hoping for more individual users as well as organizations. I am looking forward to seeing you at the AGM, Bernie Hart Chair Chebucto Community Net ----------------------------------------------------------------- Information on the new Chebucto mail system Chebucto mail will be unavailable late Saturday night March 24th starting near midnight for several hours to allow us to set up the new expanded mail system. All other Chebucto services including Chebucto Plus dialup access will be running normally. There will be a number of differences between the new mail system and the old mail system. Mailbox sizes will be increasing: Category: Present size: New Size: Chebucto Plus 4 MB 1 GB (1,024 MB) Neighbourhood Account 4 MB 1 GB (1,024 MB) Supporting 2 MB 512 MB Full 1.5 MB 150 MB Free/Assisted 0.5 MB 50 MB The new larger mail quotas will now include all mail folders. Previously mail quota measured the inbox only. Access to mail folders in your Chebucto account on the Chebucto server will now only be available through our Webmail service, PINE on Chebucto's text service and through IMAP. It will no longer be possible to access mail folders through FTP or using the g)o files shortcut on Chebucto's text service. After the new mail system is in place Sunday it will be possible to log in and check Chebucto mail through different methods at the same time without the risk of corrupting the mailbox. Users of PINE on Chebucto's text service will see an introduction page to the new updated version of PINE the first time they login after the change. Since we are increasing the size of mailboxes it will now be possible to receive much larger emails than before. Chebucto's mail system will allow incoming email messages up to 50 MB in size. Users who download their mail from Chebucto using POP3 should be advised that they can check their mail through the Webmail service to see if there are any especially large messages before downloading them. Spam filtering preferences options have now changed to Spam Filtering ON and Spam Filtering OFF. With Spam Filtering OFF, all incoming mail goes to the account inbox. With Spam Filtering ON, all mail tagged as spam will go to a JUNKMAIL folder where it will be automatically deleted after 30 days. Mail in the Trash folder will also be automatically deleted after 30 days. While we anticipate no problems with the changeover to the new mail system, users who do run into any issues with the new mail system should contact the Chebucto Community Net office at office@chebucto.ns.ca or by phone (902) 494-2449 1 PM to 5 PM Monday through Friday. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Nominations for Chebucto Community Net Board of Directors We are looking for nominations for Directors of the Chebucto Community Net Board. Nominees must be members in good standing of the Chebucto Community Net. Directors serve a two year term and are required to attend Board meetings (currently held once a month). Technical knowledge is NOT required. The Board of Directors are volunteers charged with overseeing the operations of the Chebucto Community Net. Interested parties should bring a short biography with them to the Annual General Meeting. ------------------------------------------------------------------