[Greennet-l] GreenNet Newsletter: Summer 2003

Thu Aug 28 16:47:53 BST 2003

GreenNet Newsletter: Summer 2003

Contents:

GREENNET WEB SERVICES...
NEWLY DESIGNED SITES/
SUPPORT NEWS/
PROJECT NEWS...
WWM/
WSIS/
TRAINING RESOURCES FROM APC/
GREENNET TRAINING/
STAFF CHANGES/

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GreenNet Newsletter: A quarterly e-bulletin for our user community on 
strategic uses of the Internet to promote social justice and equality. From 
GreenNet, an online community for peace, the environment, civil rights and 
social justice since 1986.

GreenNet Newsletter - Summer 2003 online at:
http://www.gn.apc.org/news/newsletter/n_sum03.html

Past issues of GreenNet Newsletter:
http://www.gn.apc.org/news/newsletter/

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GREENNET WEBSERVICES...

NEWLY DESIGNED SITES

WLUML
Designed in collaboration with GreenNet, the site is content-rich, 
including news, calls to action and publications, all thematically and 
regionally categorised and searchable. Items are available in english, 
arabic and french. The site uses ActionApps, an open source content 
management system developed by the APC and is hosted by GreenNet.

For more information about ActionApps, and other sites using ActionApps: 
http://www.gn.apc.org/services/webdesign.html#actionapps

OTHER SITES DESIGNED IN COLLABORATION WITH GREENNET

Holistic Partnerships
--> www.holisticpartnerships.com/

e-Parliament Climate and Energy Action Network (an additional element to 
the e-Parliament website)
--> www.e-parl.net/energy/index.htm

And the Discussion Forum pages of the EURONET website:
--> www.europeanchildrensnetwork.org/Interaction/Interaction.htm

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SUPPORT NEWS

In the Spring edition of the GreenNet Newsletter, we highlighted the 
GreenNet Support Forums:
--> www.gn.apc.org/news/newsletter/n_spr03.html#support

SPAM

Lately, there has been a number of postings in the GreenNet Forums around 
spam mail, much of which has recently been caused by the spreading of the 
sobig virus. As a GreenNet user you are protected through the Anti Virus 
scanner running on the GreenNet mail server. Alongside this you will more 
than likely have an Anti Virus programme installed on your computer. The 
way the virus works is that a person may have activated it on their 
computer which leads to a chain reaction of emails spreading across 
computer systems.

Below is an excerpt from the Email Forum about what steps GreenNet are 
taking to mimimise Spam mail to users:

We are aware of the growing problem of unwanted commercial email (UCE). At 
the same time the percentage of UCE has reached a point which is almost 
higher than that of non-UCE email. For a stats graph have a look at this 
web site. Therefore, we have taken quite a few measures to reduce the 
amount of UCE that our members receive:

1) We blacklist sender address on an hourly basis - based on the spam 
assassin results. Certainly quantity doesn't imply quality, but this table 
currently lists some 1235 entries of sender addresses which we don't accept.

2) We also blacklist sender servers which are being abused by spammers. 
This table currently contains 1209 entries and gets updated on a per case 
basis.

3) We cooperate with other ISPs to minimise UCE - this includes forwarding 
UCE to abuse addresses and SpamCop.

4) We are also participating in the blackhole abuse system.

5) We set up spamassassin which should allow our users to easily seperate 
UCE from their 'normal' email - instructions on how to do this can be found 
here.

6) We encourage our users to help reducing spam. Forwarding email to 
SpamCop at the moment seems to be a good thing to do.

You can go directly to the Forums here:
http://phorum.greennet.org.uk/index.php?f=2

or via the GreenNet support page:
http://www.gn.apc.org/support/index.html

If you receive an email that says your account is about to expire (see
below), from admin or billing @gn.apc.org with an attachment, please
delete it and do not open it.  This is a virus coming from another source
that we are unable to track or prevent.

"Hello there,

I would like to inform you about important information regarding your
email address. This email address will be expiring.
Please read attachment for details.

---
Best regards, Administrator
wfgwssis"

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PROJECT NEWS

In the last newsletter, we mentioned that GreenNet was organising an event 
' Women with Megabyte', alongside WomenConnect.

The aim of the event was to raise awareness around ICT policy issues for UK 
women's groups, combining presentations with practical work around the issues.
The 2-day event was ambitious, and the areas covered included:

 > blogging - using the tool for community building, awareness raising, 
contributing to resources and storytelling. We used the blogs for 
storytelling to give organisations the opportunity to tell of their own 
experiences of using ICT's. Our first blogging efforts can be seen here:
--> www.greenneteducationaltrust.org.uk/blog/

If you are interested in setting one up yourself, find out more about blogs 
here:
--> http://new.blogger.com/home.pyra

 > practical exercise on building information resources around Voilence 
Against Women. This exercise was funded by UNESCO and created by the APC 
WNSP (Women's Networking Support Programme).

If you are interested, you can download the complete kit here:
--> www.apcwomen.org/training/training.htm (2.3 mb, zip)

 > showcase of GEM - Gender Evaluation Methodology. GEM provides a means of 
determining whether ICTs are really improving gender relations. The tool 
provides users with an overview of the evaluation process and outlines 
suggested strategies and methodologies for incorporating a gender analysis 
throughout the life of a project.

The tool can be downloaded (free of charge) here:
--> www.apcwomen.org/gem/

These were just a few of the areas that we covered in the 2 days, and, as 
ever, we could have done with alot more time! The event was a great 
success, we had a number of GreenNet users participate, in total women from 
around 40 different organisations participated. We are intending to follow 
up on some of the outputs of the event, including working with specific 
groups using GEM.

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WORLD SUMMIT ON INFORMATION SOCIETY (WSIS)
Representatives from the APC, including Karen Banks of GreenNet, attended 
the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) intersessional meeting, 
part of the preparatory process for the WSIS. The meeting took place at 
UNESCO's Paris headquarters on 15-18 July 2003.

Through consultation with members, APC staff and programme staff involved 
in the WSIS process, APC has outlined the following as critical issues for 
WSIS:

- Maintaining a focus on fundamental social and economic equality
- Communication rights and human rights
- Security and privacy
- Environmental concerns/impacts
- Gender equality and Women's empowerment
- Free Software & industrial control of information (Intellectual Property 
Rights and the public domain)
- Access and Infrastructure development and affordability
- Internet governance
- Capacity building
- A just environment for trade
- Content and cultural, linguistic and other diversities

The APC Women's programme has further identified several critical issues in 
the context of WSIS:

- Gender Equity principle
- Gender Perspective in all ICT initiatives
- Infrastructure deployment that link women and girls
- Build on local initiatives that empower women
- Content for women
- Promote gender-aware training and content development
- Science and technology education for women
- Women as ICT entrepreneurs
- Safe and secure online spaces for women and girls
- Promote women's and girl's communication rights
- Promote the global knowledge commons as part of a poverty reduction strategy
- Women in ICT decision-making

If you would like further information about WSIS, please email 
karenb at gn.apc.org

Useful links:

Official World Summit Site:
--> http://www.itu.int/wsis/

--> www.genderit.org/wsis

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TRAINING RESOURCES FROM APC

The APC and CTO have produced a very useful training resource entitled 
'Capacity building: ICT POLICY FOR CIVIL SOCIETY'. The goal of this course 
is to build and strengthen civil society organisations' awareness of, and 
confidence to engage in, internet policy processes. The pack includes a 
curriculum and training modules and materials that can be used for either a 
five-day course or as stand-alone sessions combined to meet specific 
training needs.

Find out more:
--> www.apc.org/english/news/index.shtml?x=13474

You can download the selected module or the whole kit from the apc site. ( 
but the kit is HUGE!.. over 7 megabytes!)

Curriculum (module by module):
--> www.apc.org/english/capacity/policy/curriculum.shtml

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GREENNET TRAINING

Upcoming dates for web design using Dreamweaver course:

 > 4th & 5th October (Saturday and Sunday), 11.00-18.00
 > 8th & 9th December (Saturday and Sunday), 11.00-18.00
 > 6th & 7th December (Saturday and Sunday), 11.00-18.00

To book a place or for details of future courses, please email 
joanne at gn.apc.org

*About Web design using dreamweaver*
The course is intended for those with some computer experience & includes 
practical hands-on project work. By the end of the course you will; 
understand the principles of the World Wide Web; have a practical 
understanding of how to build, update and publish a web site using 
Dreamweaver; understand the key principles of web design & site promotion.

We can only run the courses if there are enough booked on, please let us 
know if you are interested and we can try to arrange a date that would suit 
all parties.

*Advanced Web Design*
There are a couple of people interested in advanced web design training but 
not enough yet to run it. The proposed training is also a 2-day training 
covering: templates, layout tables, flash buttons, layers, java script 
behaviours and electronic forms. We need a minimum of 4 people to run the 
course. Again, email joanne at gn.apc.org for more information.

The GreenNet training page has been updated to include links to online 
resources that have been developed by the APC and others.

Have a look here:
--> www.gn.apc.org/training/index.html

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STAFF CHANGES

GreenNet says goodbye and good luck to our wonderful web administrator, Liz 
whose second baby is due in mid September. Liz wishes all our users well 
and hopes to return to GN sometime in the future when things return to 
relative normality! All our best wishes go to Liz too.

At the same time, GreenNet welcomes a new member of staff, Cedric Knight. 
Cedric has been a GreenNet user himself for many years and has extensive 
experience in technical support, programming and network administration. 
Cedric also has a personal interest in peace and environmental issues, with 
experience of working alongside political groups and charities.

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The GreenNet Newsletter is edited by Joanne Doyle on behalf of the GreenNet 
Collective. For more information, contact joanne at gn.apc.org.

Past issues of GreenNet Newsletter:
http://www.gn.apc.org/news/newsletter/

Please add your events to the GreenNet calendar:
http://www.gn.apc.org/calendar/calindex.shtml

If you have any questions about any of the news in the edition of our 
newsletter, please get in contact with us. We are happy to go through
any of the services outlined or any queries you may have.

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