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HelpNet News No. 4, February 2001 ********NEXT HELPNET MEETING******** WHEN:
12:00 - 1:00, Thursday, February 15 (Bring Your Lunch) ******************************** HelpNet continues to grow. I'd like to welcome Mabel Wadsworth Women's Health Services to the network. As usual, I've spent a lot of time in the past month on helping members with specific problems and needs. Often these simple questions, like "is there a free way for me to get connected to the Internet," lead into much bigger issues of how both access to information and the Internet economy are being organized. ******************************** IN THIS ISSUE:
******************************** Here's a couple of useful items I've run across in the past month that I haven't had time to alert the list about: -Microsoft in Education tutorials (<http://www.microsoft.com/education/tutorial/default.asp>). These free resources are designed for students and educators, but the skills they teach would be useful for anyone. They cover using the standard MS software to do practical tasks - for example, "Analyzing data using Access." There are also step-by-step accessibility guides, showing you how to set up Windows' accessibility features. -Webmonkey (<http://www.webmonkey.com>) - Webmonkey bills itself as a "Web developer's resource." In addition to articles and reference documents, there's an extensive "how-to" library, including Q&A's and tutorials, on both basic and advanced Web authoring subjects. -Fred Langa's "System Setup Secrets - Updated." (<http://www.winmag.com/columns/explorer/2001/03.htm>) This is an update of an earlier column. When you get a new PC, cluttered with all kinds of free software you don't want -- ads popping up all over the place, etc., Langa has a step-by-step approach to turning it into a system that is set up the way *you* want, and that is easier to work with, troubleshoot, and restore. THE END OF THE INTERNET FREE LUNCH - WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR GROUPS LIKE OURS?: I recently sent a message to this list with another item from Fred Langa, who said, in part: "In the past month, NetZero and Kmart's Bluelight.com have placed restrictions on the number of free hours available to users (after which a charge kicks in), and Juno Online Services has placed a series of restrictions on heavy free-service users, including a connection hierarchy that favors its paying customers." In addition to the beginning of the end of free ISP's, we've also been seeing the disappearance of small "mom and pop" Internet Service providers, as they go out of business or fall victim to mergers and acquisitions. Here in Bangor, Agate Internet disappeared suddenly one morning a couple of years ago, in a flurry of unpaid bills. More recently, MINT was acquired by Adelphia Cable, and Acadia.net was taken over by Prexar. Meanwhile AOL just keeps getting bigger, Earthlink and Mindspring merge, etc. As the ISP industry becomes more and more like the rest of the economy, I wonder what the implications are for our small organizations, in a region that is already out of the economic mainstream. Will we be able to get the services we need at prices we can afford? Should we get more involved in state and national regulatory issues? Will it make sense to look at creating our own, non-profit ISP, or do the developing economics of the industry make that impractical? I don't have any answers, but I think the questions are worth considering. We are planning a multi-session set of workshops, aimed at the needs of community-based organizations, covering: -strategy: why do we want a site, what do we think it can do for our organization? -planning: how will the site be organized, what information will it present, who will be responsible, how much Web site can we get for the time and money we have for it? -hands-on production: introduction to creating Web pages We're shooting for beginning in April, after the danger of snowstorms is past. The sessions will build on each other, so it will make sense for an an organization to participate in the whole series. But it shouldn't be necessary to have the same people attending every session: the people dealing with Web page production may not be the same ones who are thinking about the strategic issues in your organization. The "we" who are putting the training together are: Courtney Coles, technology circuit rider for the Gulf of Maine Aquarium in Portland; Cynthia Phinney, organizer and Webmistress for IBEW Local #1837: and me. Mary Kellogg has also offered to help with the hands-on section of the training. If you have any feedback or suggestions for this training series, please let us know. The more ideas the better. That's all for this month, Jon
HelpNet is a project of Pine Tree Folk School, and is co-sponsored by Bairnet (the Bangor Area Information Resources Network) and by the Peace and Justice Center of Eastern Maine.
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