Treasurer Bernard Hart reported that Chebucto is in good financial shape, Internal Committee Chair Mark Alberstat reported on the revitalization of his committee and Policy Committee Chair Andrew Wright reported that spam email using forged headers pointing to innocent third partys' email addresses was the biggest abuse issue Chebucto faced in 2002. Board member Christopher Watt's excellent home-made cookies and squares were well received by the membership.

Technical Committee Chair Edward Dyer reported on the many technical advances made in 2002 and how Chebucto is looking to make even more, demonstrating wireless internet technology at the meeting. Chebucto is actively investigating possible uses for this new high speed technology. In recognition for all the work done by the Technical Committee this year, Chair Marilyn MacDonald presented them with Certificates of Appreciation. She was surprised by receiving a Certificate of Appreciation herself from Board member John McKay.

Six Board members offered for re-election this year: Edward Dyer, Bill Matheson, John McKay, Jeff Warnica, Christopher Watt and Andrew Wright. They were elected by acclamation. The Chebucto Board of Directors has been joined by local community activist and newspaper columnist Joan Jones, who is completing the second year of recently resigned Board member Mark Rushton's two year term.

New Webmail features keep you on track

Chebucto's IMP Webmail service has been upgraded and now includes several very useful new functions. Chebucto users can now not only access their email from any web browser in the world, but keep an easy-to-use online Appointment Calendar as well. For quick reminders to yourself there is a new Memo feature that will record and organize your notes. The new Tasks feature lets you record and organize a tasklist for yourself. You can set deadlines, prioritize tasks and keep a record of when they are completed. Users can reset their mailbox password from the Webmail now and keep their notes secure from other people by logging out. All these features are in the top toolbar of the Webmail, which can be accessed from Chebucto's home page, http://chebucto.ca/ or on the Chebucto Plus home page, http://plus.chebucto.ns.ca/

Chebucto Newspaper Column Give-aways!

Chebucto mousepads may be purchased from the Chebucto Office for $10 each or mailed out for $15 each. Contact office@chebucto.ns.ca to order.

New mailing list management tool MajorCool!

Chebucto now accepts four credit cards

Alert: Fake Windows updates

Chebucto advises all users of the Windows Operating System to keep updated with the latest security updates from Microsoft. There are major security holes in the Microsoft Windows Operating System, Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser and Microsoft's Outlook Express email program which can be fixed with software patches from Microsoft's authentic Windows Update site.

Unpatched versions of these Microsoft products are vulnerable to many viruses, worms, trojan programs and exploits where hostile users can get access to your computer and files. Users are advised to keep current with Service Packs and Critical Updates for Microsoft products.

Chebucto Users still tops in *.NS.CA SETI processing

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 19,400 results, representing more than 40 years of CPU time that would otherwise have been wasted.

SETI is about to enter a new phase, targetting the top 200 candidate signals for direct observation using the full resources of the world's largest radio telescope at Arecibo, Puerto Rico.

Outlook user email advisory

Windows Users can find a selection of email programs available for download here and Macintosh users can find a selection of email programs here.

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