[Greennet-l] GreenNet Newsletter: Winter 2002/03

Fri Jan 24 17:07:42 GMT 2003

GreenNet Website
If you haven’t had a look at the GreenNet website in a while, it
might be time to revisit it. The site is constantly updated with
resources to benefit and hopefully inform you. And there are also
sections that would benefit from your contributions.

Some of the areas that we would like to highlight include:

GreenNet webmail
This has been around for a while but we often get phone calls from
users who have never heard mention of it. It is a web-based email
interface that allows you to view your mail from any computer with an
Internet connection. If you are having problems downloading emails
using your usual email programme, it is sometimes useful to view your
messages with webmail, where you can delete any large emails that may
be causing problems for your email programme, or any other unwanted
emails.

You can access webmail by going to the GreenNet home page:
http://www.gn.apc.org and click on the web email button (top tool
bar), or you can access the page through our web services page:

  http://www.gn.apc.org/support/web/

This page  http://www.gn.apc.org/support/web/, has other useful
information for those of you whose website is hosted with GreenNet,
including: ftp access information, interfaces for managing ActionApps
and mySQL databases and mailing lists.

Other GreenNet webservices

Using input forms on your website
We have introduced Formmail, new Linux-based software for creating
input
forms on your website. It is a superior product to the existing Mail
Form
software, and is also better supported and more secure.
We recommend that new website designers use Formmail, and also that
existing users of Mail Form who are updating their forms should
change
over to Formmail. Again, we have full instructions on our website in
our Web
Support area:
http://www.gn.apc.org/support/web/

The instructions are easy to follow, and those of you who are
changing
from Mail Form to Formmail should find the transition quite
straightforward. Any questions, please email wwwadmin at gn.apc.org.

Other useful tips in the GreenNet support webpages:
http://www.gn.apc.org/support/index.html

Here you will find links to configuring your computer to GreenNet;
how to filter spam; downloading software and virus protection
information.

The services page lists most of the services we currently offer,
check here first if you need any new or additional services. This is
newly revamped, and hopefully easier to navigate. If you can’t find
what you’re looking for, please email GreenNet support:
support at gn.apc.org

Other useful resources

Action & Campaigns page:
http://www.gn.apc.org/action/index.html
This page is divided into campaigns of our user community and wider
civil society and GreenNet and APC campaigns. We would like to see
more contributions from our users. Please email joanne at gn.apc.org
with your campaign news and alerts. If appropriate, this news can
also be included in Alternet, our fortnightly e-zine and the
frontpage headlines, where we try to highlight news that doesn’t get
too much mainstream coverage. We try to cover stories that could be
useful to you including any APC news, ICT regulations, user campaigns
and other topical environmental or civil justice stories. View the
archives:
http://www.gn.apc.org/news/index.html

New GreenNet Calendar

We would like to encourage you to add any events to our new calendar.
This is a database driven calendar, powered by ActionApps:
http://www.gn.apc.org/calendar/calindex.shtml

You can input your events here:
http://www.gn.apc.org/calendar/add.shtml

For more information about ActionApps, look at:
http://www.gn.apc.org/services/webdesign.html#actionapps

If you want to check out other sites using ActionApps, please visit
the GreenNet Autumn newsletter where these were mentioned:
http://www.gn.apc.org/news/newsletter/n_aut02.html#web

If you are interested in seeing how a simple ActionApps page can fit
into your website, call us and we can set up a trial page for you to
try out (with no obligation to buy), or email design at gn.apc.org.

If there is anything else that you would like to see on the GreenNet
website, please email joanne at gn.apc.org stating what you want us to
include, under what section and why this would be useful.

Support News

For those of you with above-average phone-bills....
GreenNet started offering a Fixed Rate Internet Access Connection
(FRIACO) in September 02. This is an optional add-on service to your
current membership and only works with BT. The user to port ratio
(contention ratio) is 6:1 with 100 hours access per month  rather
than providing a cheaper service, our aim is to provide you (as
always) with a high quality service and support. We are not currently
reselling broadband or ADSL, although it is something we are keeping
close tabs on and will let you know if this changes.

In the meantime, we have had a few users asking whether it would be
possible to use Broadband/ADSL and still keep their GreenNet email or
website. This is possible  think of broadband/ADSL just as a pipe,
the means through which you connect to the Internet, so  you can keep
your E-mail and/or web site with GN.

If you are wondering if you need broadband/ADSL, well here are some
advantages over a normal dial up: it's an always-on connection which
means that you can still use your telephone line while surfing the
Internet; it is a much faster connection - a normal dial up
connection over a 56k modem allows downloads at about 5k
bytes/second. On an ADSL connection typical download speeds are
between 20 and 30k bytes/second.

but no need to rush out and get it now
do you even need it? We
suggest if your quarterly phone bill for dialup is between 50 - 100
pounds you would benefit from a Fixed rate Internet access. For those
whose bill for dial-up exceeds 100 per quarter, we suggest you
consider ADSL / broadband, and those under 50 pounds, normal dial-up
is the most cost effective.

If you have any questions, please contact GreenNet Support, email
support at gn.apc.org or call 0845 055 4011.

Project News

At GreenNet...

GET IT centre
http://www.gn.apc.org/get/it
We are coming into the closing few months of the GET IT centre, an
Email and Internet training project for women of the local area. If
you know of any organisations, or individuals that may be interested
in upcoming training sessions, please pass on their contact details
to us, email: joanne at gn.apc.org

APC Women's Networking Support programme GEM initiative
(Gender and ICT Evaluation Methodologies)
http://www.apcwomen.org/gem

Workshops have already been held in Cuernavaca, Mexico and Manila,
Philippines and Zanzibar, Africa. The Central and Eastern Europe
(CEE)
workshop is planned for the 8th to 15th of February with GreenNet
participating, alongside 7 other initiatives who are coming to the
workshop
for GEM testing. We hope the workshop will be useful in helping us to
develop a UK GEM implementation, based on these regional models
already
developed.

Internet Rights
http://www.internetrights.org.uk/
We are in the final phase of the Internet Rights project. Plans are
to develop FAQs informed by the ongoing consultations around the
Regulation of Investigatory Powers act and the Anti-terrorism and
Crime Security Act 'Code of Practice'. Detailed briefings around
Internet legislation can be found online.

APC activities...
http://www.apc.org

Karen Banks, Director of GreenNet reports on APC (Association for
Progressive Communications) activities which she will be attending in
the coming months, including: participation in the World Social
Forum; the Asian, Latin American and International Preparatory
meeting of the World Summit on the Information Society and the
Commission on the Status of Women meetings.

APC at the WSF (January 22-28, Porto Alegre, Brazil)

The third World Social Forum started on the 23rd of January in Porto
Alegre. The forum is organised around 5 axis: Democratic Sustainable
Development; Principles and values, human rights, diversity and
equality;
Media, culture and counter-hegemony; Political power, civil society
and
democracy and Democratic world order, fight against militarism and
promoting peace. The APC will be one of almost 5,000 organisations
from 121
countries present and will be represented in the third area "Media,
culture
and counter-hegemony". The panel discussions for 'New technologies
and
strategies for digital inclusion and social change are taking place
on
Saturday 25th January.

World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS)
http://www.itu.int/wsis

APC's Internet Rights and Women' Networking Support programme staff,
along
with APC Council members, are working with many other NGOs in
preparation for the second Preparatory Committee (PrepComII) meeting
of the
WSIS process, Geneva, Feb 17-28.

The PrepCom aims to develop a Draft Declaration and Action Plan which
will
map out priority policies and activities for UN agencies,
Governments, the
Private Sector and NGOs for 'the Information Society'

Commission on the Status of women (CSW)
http://www.un.org/womenwatch/daw/csw/47sess.htm

The APC Women's Networking Support Programme will be participating in
the
47th session of the CSW, March 3-14. The theme of this years session
is:
"Women's human rights and elimination of all forms of violence
against
women and girls as defined in the Beijing Platform for Action and the
outcome document of the twenty-third special session of the General
Assembly".

APC WNSP will be involved in a range of activities from running an
on-site
women's cybercafe, providing training in content management system
software, a beginners guide to ICT policy and using ICTs
strategically in
the fight again Violence Against Women. We will also be involved in
panel
discussions: "Participation and access of women to the media, and
information and communication technologies and their impact on and
use as
an instrument for the advancement and empowerment of women" - one of
the
two major CSW panels.

GreenNet Training

We have scheduled the next few web design trainings over weekends in
response to demand. They will run from 11.00-18.00 Saturday and
Sunday as follows:
February 22nd & 23rd
March 15th & 16th
April 26th and 27th

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.

For further information, please contact Joanne on 0845 0554011, email
joanne at gn.apc.org.

GreenNet Billing
There is currently a number of outstanding payments owing. We would
really appreciate if you could pay invoices promptly as this means so
much less work and worry for us! We would like to encourage any
monthly subscribers to pay by standing order. The GreenNet bank
details are as follows:

Bank: 			The Cooperative Bank
Account Name:		GreenNet Limited
Account No:		70730834
Bank Sort Code:	08 90 33
Bank Address:	The Cooperative Bank, 1 Islington High Street, London,
N1 9TR

Please inform billing at gn.apc.org if you have set up a standing order.

If you have any queries regarding your invoice, please get in touch
with us to sort it out  the worst thing is chasing payment when you
don’t owe us anything!

Happy New Year 2003 to all GreenNet users. We wish you all a
successful year ahead. Thanks for your continued support.

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

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