Elsewhere in this issue of the Newsletter, you will find information on the possibility of holding two ICUFR Conferences in 2007. The first would be a one-day affair, to be held in Salt Lake City the day after the Rotary International Convention ends. This would be similar to what we did in Chicago. The other would be a “traditional” three-day event, to be held in North Yorkshire, England. In some years past we have held two Conferences, and doing so again might offer more folks the opportunity to attend one or the other (although I am sure there are some who will attend both).

Please let us know your preference for a one-day or conventional Conference; and also let us have some indication of which one(s) you might attend. We also have several tentative offers for Conferences in the year 2008 and beyond; but without specific dates or venues, yet. Your Board of Directors always welcomes offers, however. If we get too many for one year, we’ll just have to figure out a way to spread them out over several years.

Speaking of the Board of Directors, it is election time. There are four slots open on the Board, and Officers are to be elected, as well. If you haven’t already, you should soon receive a ballot and a separate message containing information on the candidates. In accordance with normal Rotary procedures, we will hold our elections now, prior to the end of the calendar year; but the successful candidates will not take office until the new Rotary year begins on July 1, 2007. Please take the time to look over the information and submit your vote.

In the remaining months of my term as Chairman, your Board hopes to investigate the use of some new technologies to give your membership more value. As always, your ideas and comments are appreciated.

PDG David G. Flinn

At the recently completed ICUFR Conference, it was announced that we have a firm invitation to hold next year's Conference in North Yorkshire, England. There was some discussion about the cost being prohibitive for many overseas members; and a further suggestion was made that we hold a one-day Conference in Salt Lake City the day after the RI Convention, as we did in Chicago. Someone also mentioned that, at times in the past, we have held TWO Conferences, one in the US and one in the UK. After due consideration and some consultation, I am going to make the following proposal and put it out to the membership for a vote:

That ICUFR hold two Conferences in 2007, one after the RI Convention in Salt Lake City, USA and another in October in North Yorkshire, UK.

Please respond in one of three ways:

1. By private message to me Dave@starflinn.com ;
2. by message posted on the rotary@taranto.com list; or
3. by responding to the poll on the ICUFR Forums http://www2.icufr.org/viewforum.php?f=22 .

PDG David G. Flinn

URGENT NEED!

ICUFR is losing our Treasurer, Irwin Taranto, at the end of this year. He has done an almost irreplaceable job for us in many ways and many years, but his local duties now require him to have more time. So It is Imperative that we have someone replace him.

It isn't that hard and You don't need to be a professional. If the new Treasurer goes to the RI Salt Lake City convention, Irwin will be there and can help you get up to speed.

Once we have names we will then do a special election. PLEASE consider this and send your names to Chairman Dave Flinn - Dave@starflinn.com

The Biggest news this month is about our conference in Ithaca, NY. We only had about 20 people attend this time, but we had a wonderful time, exchanging Hugs (Remember we are informally the Hugging Fellowship), touring the area, taking pictures and, oh yeah, we had our usual Saturday computer related learning sessions. The highlight was a live video-conference with Rotarians and University students in Bosnia.

We are going to show you a lot of pictures as soon as we get them processed and loaded on the website properly, so that's all I will say now. Watch for the next email message to come out.

I got very few replies back, from last month's list of subjects, that you might like to have more information about, so check them out again and let me know where your interests are. I have had a request, and one thing I need is someone who will write a short column each month for MAC users. How about it? Doesn't someone using a MAC read MAC magazines that could at least pull a tip or two out of them and send to me?

The Fellowship is struggling right now and is only as good as the input we get from members so................................. ccardey@verizon.net We supply for you the: Taranto Mail Lists; the Forum with Subject and threaded messages; a monthly newsletter; and an excellent Website. We are playing with Skype and iPods and Podcasts. It's Your Fellowship. What else would you like to see us do?

Carl P Cardey,

Carl P Cardey, Director, Editor

A MONTHLY REVIEW OF THE ROTARY MAIL LIST TRAFFIC

A special feature in the RIBI list on the work of Rotary in Afghanistan and Pakistan provoked a surge of messages. Unfortunately they were more concerned with the file size and the number of attachments rather than the content of the message. Most of the spammers use HTML in order to try to hide their message in the graphics and get it passed the Spam filters. List users are reminded that the mail list system limits messages to 64k and that attachments are stripped out as part of the defense against viruses.

Ugur raised the Apple - versus - PC question, a topic that we have not heard for some while. Bob Smithwick assured him that if it takes a week to get comfortable with a PC, you can achieve the same on a Mac in an hour. Marco in Samoa and Graham in Florida both chorused their agreement. Graham went on to offer free advice to those wanting to develop their Mac skills.

A request for a simple timer or stop watch program produced a plethora of advice on Goggle Gadgets and Yahoo Widgets. These mini-programs can be accessed via Google or Yahoo and provide hundred of gadgets and widgets that will automate or assist with a wide range of routine tasks.

Experiments with Skype continued and it is clearly becoming a new medium for immediate international communications. Sitting here in the 'back room' I am aware that Skype is being used for District Committee meetings in Australia, for work in preparation for a Matching Grant Project and extending the fellowship of Rotary between Rotarians across the continents. One message this month advised on how to build a list of Skype contacts similar to an e-mail address book.

Irwin launched a thread about Podcasting - it is to the Internet what DVD recording is to television he advised. He recorded the Skype conference at Ithica and has made it available as a podcast to those who wish to catch up on the proceedings. Folks who have not yet got to grips with the world of the iPod were advised to visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcasting

Mel posted a report on the friends and fun at the Ithaca conference in the ICUFR Forum (www2.icufr.org) and it was re-posted with his permission in the Rotary List. A lot of Fellowship, a fair bit of fun and nothing too serious seems to sum it up. Congratulations to Dave Flinn ICUFR Chairman and his team for putting together a great weekend in Ithaca NY.

Several of the Gordons who populate the list got involved in a technical discussion on the accuracy and flexibility of their GPS and satellite navigation systems. Dave complained that the woman in his sat-nav box doesn't understand when he deviates off-route and doesn't listen to him when he shouts at her.

Aylin Yurtsevin of Turkey invited Clubs and Districts to nominate candidates for scholarships to pursue graduate studies at major Turkish universities. If you missed it, contact Aylin at aylinyurtseven@yahoo.com. Nominations close on 31st January so there is still time.

It was great to receive news of Rotoract activities from Hevin in Africa. The Rotoract Club of Ikeja has a great pro-active program. The topic turned to the question of the level of support that 'parent' Rotary Clubs give to Rotoract. The strength of the international spread of the Fellowship was demonstrated when Monika Naumann who is running an environmental project in Brazil was put in touch with a GSE team in Nova Scotia that is about to visit her country.

When I innocently quoted the percentages of female members of RI, I uncorked a flood of messages on the value of the distaff side of the organisation and a quick reminder of the history of lady members. If you missed it, the worldwide percentage is 13.6% of Rotarians are female. Sally moved the topic on to discuss recruiting and retaining the "Thirty-something" members. Active involvement with hands-on projects was the consensus of opinion. Also on RI issues, PDG Ignace Mouawad raised a question about proxy votes that was promptly answered by the Lists resident MOP gurus.

The month's longest running topic concerns the venue for the 2007 ICUFR Conference. Should it be tagged on to the end of the RI Convention in Salt Lake City? Should it be held in the UK again, after a lapse of several years since the London Conference? Ugur has offered to host it in Turkey and one or two other suggestions are believed to be in the offing. The topic continues so let your views be known. Where should we meet in 2007 and would you be likely to attend?

And finally, under the heading of essential facts you need to know - Rtn Doug Pitt of Missouri is uncle to the 5 month old daughter of Brad Pitt and Angeline Jolie.

Peter Sotheran

1. Release of Microsoft Internet Explorer 7

If you missed Lee Drake's VirusWarn announcement last Thursday, you may not be aware that Microsoft released Internet Explorer 7 to the general public a week ago today. Beginning next month, IE7, as it is often called for short, will appear in the list of critical updates.

I installed IE7 on my primary development machine last Thursday, and began learning my way around its interface, and discovering its quirks, and which features of the Web sites that I maintain it breaks.

Although it has not broken but one feature so far, it's an important one, related to the way that I display Adobe PDF (Acrobat) documents. I expect to have that piece fixed and deployed on all my sites by the end of this month.

Even if you read the VirusWarn announcement, I encourage you to review the material on Lee's Web site, which I just added as the first item in the Security section of my Useful Links page, at http://www.wizardwrx.com/links.html#Security.

David Gray, MBA, Chief Wizard, WizardWrx, formerly P6 Consulting -Established 1985
V: +1 (817) 812-3041
TZ: USA Central, GMT -5
E: mailto:dagray@wizardwrx.com
W: http://www.wizardwrx.com/
Tell me what you need, and I’ll conjure it.

(David is a former member of ICUFR and he and Lee have both given me permission to use their material. Carl - Editor)

2. From my Invisus computer security program:

Microsoft recently released Internet Explorer 7 (IE 7) and will be delivering the new Internet browser as a high priority update to all Windows XP users.

BigFix has received various reports of compatibility issues with IE 7. In some cases, IE 7 can prevent all Fixlet messages from being displayed.

BigFix strongly recommends clicking on the link below to remove a superseded DLL file distributed with the BigFix application. Once the DLL file is removed, installing IE 7 will no longer cause issues with the BigFix application.
You can access the recommended link, but my point is to highlight that there are compatibility issues with IE7 don't be to quick to down load IE7 until you know the DLL issues are resolved by MS.