[Greennet-l] GreenNet Newsletter Autumn / Winter 2000

Tue Nov 7 16:49:30 GMT 2000

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Dear GreenNet users,

You will notice something different about this newsletter; it has a digital
signature. You will notice the top of the signature just above this text and
the remainder just below the end of the newsletter. All of the messages and
announcements sent to you from our GreenNet-l mailing list from
support at gn.apc.org will have a digital signature in future.  If you are
using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) you can verify the digital signature for
authenticity.  If you do not use PGP you still know that all of our messages
should have the digital signature so don't trust any messages to 
GreenNet-l list that do not have one.

We have a new phone number for voice calls to our office and support line;
0845 055 4011.  Calls to that number are charged at local call rates
wherever in the UK you are calling from.  Please make a note of this number
and use it next time you call us.

We have a whole range of new services to offer, one for every day of the
week, which we are sure you will find useful.

Best Wishes

Phil Carr
For the GreenNet Collective

New 0845 Number/
Redesigned Website/
Global Roaming/
E-commerce/
Web Based e-mail/
Attending your AGMs or meetings/
New PGP training course/
Trial our amazing web publishing software/
Rate Changes/
Quarterly Billing Ending/
Prompt Payment/
Training Dates/
BT surftime/
Old computers for project work/
Technician in Scotland/
ICANN results/

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GreenNet is happy to announce a new service for every day of the week.....

#Monday: Our redesigned website.

Our ever popular website has been revamped in an effort to make it both more
attractive and easier to navigate. This should mean that you are able to
find the information you need quickly and easily.

All of the sections are easily reached from the main page and we have
included some new sections, including our 'Actions and Campaigns' page. This
will focus on our own campaigning work, as well as highlighting the
campaigns of our extended user community. If you would like to tell us about
the work you're doing, please write to: actnow at gn.apc.org.

A revamped 'Issues and Themes' section gives you a comprehensive list of
websites and organisations indexed by category.  We have also included a
handy index of all of the websites we host at the bottom of the front page .
We hope that you like it.

Your feedback is important to us; Please e-mail your comments to
support at gn.apc.org

#Tuesday: Global Roaming.
Global roaming gives you local internet dial up numbers in over 100
countries. You can use it to send and receive your Greennet e-mail or surf
the web almost anywhere you go by using some very simple dialling software
and Outlook Express as an e-mail program. Ideal for people who travel and
need to use their own computer.

This facility is available for PC and Mac users who have an e-mail account
with GreenNet. It costs 17.63 (including VAT) per year plus call charges.

For more information including manuals, call costs by country and an online
application form see:
http://www.gn.apc.org/support/globalroaming

#Wednesday:  E-commerce.

Do you have a website with us and need to take credit card details  online?
Do you need  to use your website for selling?  We can offer you a
well-priced secure solution.

Secure ledger allows you to take credit card details and information online
using secure ssl technology costing 105.58 annually.  We also have a
Snap-Sell Shopping Cart system, which creates a whole catalogue of products
which you can customise for your site allowing users to browse through and
make secure on-line orders costing, 175.08. E-mail Liz at
wwwadmin at gn.apc.org for more info.

#Thursday: Web e-mail.

Now you can check your mail via the web, hotmail style, by logging on to:
http://www.gn.apc.org and following the yellow link to Web E-mail. To log
in, your username will normally be the first part of your e-mail address
preceding the @ sign. If your e-mail address was green at gn.apc.org your

username will be green.  The password is your normal e-mail password.  This

facility allows you to read and send your GreenNet e-mail from any computer
with an Internet connection in the UK or worldwide.

#Friday: Attending your AGMs or meetings.

If you have an AGM, meeting or other public event coming up, GreenNet would
like to hear from you.  GreenNet representatives are available to give
talks, presentations and workshops on anything from using the Internet for
online campaigning to the history of GreenNet. Call Joanne on 0845 055 4011.

#Saturday: New training course.

Our new course covers using Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) the very popular
encryption software. You will learn to obtain and install PGP, send and
receive encrypted e-mail , digitally sign documents, save encrypted files on
your hard disk and exchange encrypted attachments. We will also cover
anonymous web browsing and some information about general Internet security.

The course is on Tuesday 21-11-00 at 5pm and we will run an afternoon course
and cost 47 including VAT
bookings contact; support at gn.apc.org .

#Sunday: Trial our amazing web publishing software.
We are looking for a some organisations to trial some revolutionary web
publishing software.  Newslisting is designed to allow you to display news
items on your website and update them using a form in a web browser.  The
information can be embedded in a frame on a web page or you can have all of
your news items on a separate customised page.

We have set up an example page at  http://www.gn.apc.org/toolkit/
which shows what newslisting looks like and how your organisation could use
it.  We have a very limited number of trial packages available on a first
come first served basis to users who contact support at gn.apc.org with the
subject line: Toolkit.

News listing will be generally available to users in the New Year.  Look out
for more information and prices.

#Monday morning:
Call us on our new phone number . We have a new phone number for voice calls
to our office and support line: 0845 055 4011.  Calls to this number are
charged at local rate wherever you are calling from in the UK.  So, if you
need to ask us about any of the exciting services we have announced, call us
now.

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#Rate Changes.

>From the 1st February 2001 we are raising the cost of our organisational
membership from 200.00 + vat to 250.00 + vat. Please do not be alarmed by
this! It still represents amazing value for money.  The cost covers: domain
name registration of any type of domain.  3 e-mail accounts, 20MBs web space
and virtual e-mail forwarding and free technical support.

We have carefully considered this new price by comparing costs with a wide
range of other ISP's and we know that it is still extremely competitive.

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#Quarterly Billing Ending

As of the 1st February we have decided to only invoice monthly or annually,
in order to streamline our billing service. If you wish to set up standing
orders or pay by auto Credit Card to overcome the hurdle of moving from
quarterly to monthly billing  let me know.

#Prompt Payment

People are starting to pay more promptly. THANK YOU.

When invoices are overdue, I will send 1 e-mail stating the amount owed and
that the account will be suspended in 7 days.  I must be notified within
this period otherwise it becomes too time consuming to send more than one
reminder. If users are going abroad then please let me know in advance or
consider setting up a standing order.

Thanks  Hattie

Any comments on the above please e-mail me at billing at gn.apc.org

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#GreenNet Training Dates......

GreenNet's Internet and
e-mail courses are designed for both beginners and intermediate users.  We
cover: how the Internet works, getting connected, navigating the web, search
engines, mailing lists, address books and much more.

Beginners Internet and e-mail.

First Tuesday of every month.

Evening class start 6.30pm at GreenNet's offices.

23.50  GN Users.
35.25 Non GN Users.

Using Pretty Good Privacy. (PGP)

Learn how to use PGP to send and receive encrypted e-mails using this easy
to use software.  We will also cover anonymous web browsing.

November 20th 5pm
47 including Vat.

Our Web design courses are an excellent foundation in designing your own
website.  Starting with the bare HTML you will learn how to design and build
a website and learn everything you need to know to put it all on line.

Introduction to Web
Design weekend workshops:

November 27th & 28th*
December 9th  & 10th
January 27th & 28th

*Monday and Tuesday

176.25 GN Users
352.50 non GN users

for more info and bookings e-mail  support at gn.apc.org

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#BT surftime.

We are receiving a lot of enquiries about whether GreenNet intends to be a
participating ISP in BT's surftime scheme. Here is an explanation of the
scheme and the reason why we cannot join.

Surftime gives you unlimited access to the Internet by paying a fixed
monthly fee to BT.  You have to pay additional money to subscribe to a
participating ISP to connect to the Internet.  The catch is that the
participating ISP then has to subsidise your calls by paying BT for your
access to their network.

GreenNet is a small ISP and the subscription we charge you covers our
running costs and doesn't leave room to subsidise calls on the scale that
surftime would require.  Our mission statement binds us to use any profit we
make to fund worthwhile projects and not line BT's already very rich
pockets.

We continue to look out for schemes that will help you reduce your call
charges and we will keep you informed of any  suitable recommendations.

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#Old computers for project work.

GreenNet is on the lookout for old computer equipment.  We are interested in
any PCs with a P166 processor with 16MB ram or above to use for IT projects
in the UK and worldwide.  If you have any redundant machinery of that
specification that you can donate we would like to hear from you.

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#Technician in Scotland.

Good news for users in Scotland.  We are happy to be able to recommend
Araucaria Computing to any of our users in Scotland.  It is a company run by
Chris Booth, a computer technician and IT trainer who has been associated
with GreenNet and the NGO community in London for a long time.
Phone 0131 554 3467 or e-mail chris at araucaria.org.uk.

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#Advertise your job vacancies with us.

We have a new 'jobs and volunteering' section on our website that you are
encouraged to add your job and volunteer vacancies to. E-mail any job ads to
coord at gn.apc.org

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#APC-ICANN campaign: the results.

APC would like to thank everyone who helped in our efforts to get good civil
society candidates elected to the ICANN Board. Our work was not in vain.
>From our point of view, the final election results were better than we
expected.
Three out of the five candidates elected were pro-civil society and/or
pro-development candidates that APC recommended.

For a breakdown of the results in each region:
http://www.apc.org/english/rights/governance/

Thanks to everyone who collaborated in our campaign. While the ICANN
at-large election process presented challenges, we think the fact that three
of the five elected candidates are good civil society representatives shows
that we were right to take
advantage of the opportunity the elections  presented; to introduce a civil
society perspective in Internet governance.

We now need to pressurize the ICANN Board to make sure that voting takes
place as soon as possible for the remaining four at-large seats that the
Board originally agreed should be elected ones. We will keep you posted on
developments and look forward to working together again to get good
candidates elected to these remaining seats.