No. 15 

February 28, 2000

 

Technology:

eGroups

Setting up a mailing list on eGroups is as easy as doing the same in X500: all that's really required is finding a unique name for your group and (if the group is private), entering e-mail addresses of participants. However, the difference in what you will get for your little effort is staggering. It is like putting a quarter into a slot machine and getting two quarters back, vs. putting the same quarter and watching a shower of coins fill the pot. Your X500 mailing list will simply redistribute messages sent to its address to every member of the group; if you want to organize and archive those messages, you'll have to do it yourself, in your individual mailbox. eGroups will not only do threading and archiving for you, but it will also throw in such a mother lode of features that it will feel like Christmas all over again. :-)

eGroups will let you:

  • store up to 20 MB of files from your group in a Vault;
  • schedule meetings and deadlines in a group calendar;
  • chat live via text or voice;
  • collect links to other Web sites;
  • design a Web database from templates or from scratch;
  • create a poll;
  • choose between automatic e-mail delivery of all postings, daily summaries or full test digests, and browser only access;
  • fill in your user profile and make it fully or partially visible to others.
  • set automatic reminders of events in the calendar (sent to all group members via e-mail)
  • sort stored postings by date or by thread
  • subscribe to a mutitude of other topical groups
If you have been cruising the Net long enough, you know that the best things here don't cost anything; eGroups is no exception. All this amazing stuff comes at no cost to the user! Yes, there are the advertising banners and 3-line ads opening or closing every e-mail message, but they are fairly incospicuous and easy to ignore. None of those annoying little windows popping up like candy wrappers in a hedge. Little wonder that eGroups.com is attracting 50,000 new members and 2,400 new groups each day. An excellent resource like this simply cannot go unnoticed for long.

eGroups (click on a thumbnail):
New database table 
Threaded messages

For more information please visit eGroups site or search the ACT database of Groupwork Tools.

Conference:

WET ICE 2000
  • 9th IEEE Internationall Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises
  • Held June 14-16, 2000 in Gaithesburg, MD
  • WET ICE is an annual, international forum for state-of-the-art research in enabling technologies for collaboration
  • Topic areas:
    1. Enterprise Security
    2. Knowledge Media Networking
    3. Web-based Infrastructures and Coordination Architectures for Collaborative Enterprises
    4. Integrating XML and Distributed Object Technologies
    5. Evaluating Collaborative Enterprises

Online reading:

Published by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation in Ferbruary 2000 this report describes nearly 140 Internet sites that facilitate philanthropy, volunteerism, social changemaking, and the development of nonprofit organizations, and explores their significance for the future growth and transformation of the public commitment towards social change and a common good. (In PDF format.)

She said, he said:

"Time and again, we've seen inexperienced people use the wrong products and technologies to solve problems than nobody cared about." -- Michael Vizard


© 2000 Vlad Wielbut and the Alliance for Community Technology