Updated: 23 April
2002
AGM news
Attendance was light at this year's Annual General Meeting of the Chebucto
Community Net Society with about thirty members turning out at the North
Branch Library. Short presentations by Chebucto Board member Andrew Wright
and Gordon Michael from the Halifax Inner City Initiative opened the
meeting.
Five members of the present Chebucto Board of Directors stood for
election: Bernie Hart, Marilyn MacDonald, Mark Rushton and mid-term
replacement Directors Mark Alberstat and Reg Hody. Filling the last Board
vacancy was Gerard MacNeil, one of Chebucto's founders, who was nominated
from the floor. Director Grace Paterson successfully completed her two
year term in office and did not re-offer.
Highlights of the meeting include the announcement that Chebucto will be
moving to 56 K service in the summer of 2002, and that careful financial
management last year has resulted in Chebucto being in a good position to
help fund needed equipment upgrades. Both Policy Committee Chair Andrew
Wright and Technical Committee Chair Ed Dyer's reports focused on the
issues surrounding spam (bulk unsolicited commercial email) and virus
attacks and filtering and the negative impact on Chebucto's resources.
Chebucto Vice Chair and Technical Committee Chair Ed Dyer was recognized
for his outstanding volunteer efforts on Chebucto's behalf and presented
with a small gift by Chebucto Chair Marilyn MacDonald (pictured above).
New Webmail well received,
one
bug so far
User reactions to the new Chebucto Webmail have been positive with most
people commenting favourably on the speed of the new service. Some reports
of problems printing email are being followed up on by the Technical
Committee. It appears that the Netscape 4 browser will print garbage
characters instead of text. Version 6 Internet Explorer and Netscape
Navigator browsers do not appear to have this problem.
Secure encrypted Webmail and the Chebucto home page Webmail form are both
still offline, but are being worked on by Technical Committee volunteers.
Low-Cost Custom Web Addresses Now
Available
Chebucto users, groups and businesses can now have low cost custom website
and email addresses. For $20 a year or less,
full details here,
users can have a custom Chebucto Sub-Domain name.
Non-Profit groups on Chebucto can have the website address name.chebucto.org, where name would be replaced by the
organization or group name. Small businesses on Chebucto can customize the
website address name.chebucto.biz; individuals and
families can customize name.chebucto.net with their family
name; and Chebucto-based
information resources can customize the web address name.chebucto.info.
Email aliases to registered Chebucto sub-domain names are also available
for $10 per year per alias. These email aliases can redirect mail to any
email account.
New Membership Reward Plan!
Chebucto is pleased to announce a new Membership Reward Plan open
to all current Chebucto members. Full
Details here.
For each new Sustaining or Family Sustaining member who tells us
they were referred to us by you, we'll give you a $20 credit good towards
your next Sustaining or Family Sustaining membership. "Word of mouth"
advertising can now get you free internet: five referrals are good for a
free Sustaining membership, including a year of our famous
Chebucto Plus full graphical access.
Chebucto Users tops in *.NS.CA
SETI processing
SETI, the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, has been processing
their radio telescope data with home users' computers for years now. Using
an innovative
screensaver which runs whenever the user computer is not in use, SETI
has had more than 956,000 years of high quality computer processor time
donated to it.
Of all the computer domains ending in the letters NS.CA, denoting Nova
Scotia, chebucto.ns.ca now ranks
number one, beating out both the government of Nova Scotia and the vast
resources of EdNet, the schools network. Current stats here.
Chebucto users have sent in more than 13,000 results, representing more
than 28 years of CPU time that would otherwise have been wasted.
Outlook user email advisory
After the recent wave of viruses specifically targetting users of
Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express email programs, and the constant
stream of user complaints about randomly altered program settings and
difficulty using the program, the Chebucto Community Net Office and the
Chebucto Technical Committee recommend our users do not use either Outlook
or Outlook Express as their email program.
Windows Users can find a selection of email programs available for
download
here and Macintosh
users can find a selection of email programs
here.
Go to the Beacon
Go to the Services
page
|
Attendance was light at this year's Annual General Meeting of the Chebucto
Community Net Society with about thirty members turning out at the North
Branch Library. Short presentations by Chebucto Board member Andrew Wright
and Gordon Michael from the Halifax Inner City Initiative opened the
meeting.
