[Odb-help] Updated ODB User Manual; some more news...

[odb-help@lists.democracygroups.org]

Dear ODB Users:

1) A new ODB user guide has been posted to the OC web site.  It has grown
by 5 pages:  3 of those are from the piece on using ODB for fundraising.

You can download the new user guide at:

http://organizenow.net/odb/odbguide.pdf

Please note that Word and RTF versions are also available!  If you
want to install this in the location where ODB usually keeps the user
guide, then change "pdf" to "rtf" when you put the URL in your browser,
and save your download in the location where ODB exists, usually:

c:\program files\oc


2) The ODB available for download on our web site has been updated. The
version is still 0.9.4 (which has already been download 95 times since
November 8 when it first came out).  The new version includes a template
for voter turnout activities in addition to the new user guide.  There were
some fixes, but these fixes should not be noticeable to 99.8% of existing
ODB users.  The fixes are fully documented on the ODB web site.


3) Our intern, Ryan, last week completed the initial draft of a help sheet, 
which
     is 3 pages long, explaining how you can set up remote control software,
     based on the software located at www.realvnc.com. We found out last
     week that an ODB user in Kentucky tested this out after hearing about
     it on odb-help, and it worked well.  There are even newer versions of 
VNC out
     (the open source programmers can't contain themselves).  The latest 
variant is
     called UltraVNC for PCs.  There are also 3 versions of the software 
for Macs,
     so you could connect to your PC at work running ODB with your Mac at home.

     Just be aware that if you install any of these packages on
     your computer, it is important to pay attention to security issues, 
and to closely
     guard your VNC password.  Some variants of VNC allow you to restrict
     access to specific IP addresses or ranges of IP address to decrease the
     chance that someone could get into your computer if they
     came across your VNC password.  Anyway, many of these issues are
     explored more fully in Ryan's piece.  Please check for anything that might
     be unclear; Ryan will be back next Tuesday to put the finishing 
touches on it.
     The link:
   http://organizenow.net/odb/odbremote.pdf


4) We are going to transition in 2004 to a new web site that will have
collaboration features like web forums to assist with supporting ODB.
However, as we have a very small staff, most of the work on the web
site will be done by volunteers.  Our main volunteers, Dan and Susanna,
are interested in finding others who may want to help out.

Is anyone interested in volunteering, to better represent the ODB user
community and advise the creation of this web site, or to actually
do some of the work in HTML (and PHP)?

If you would be interested, please send an email to:

odb2003@organizenow.net

Thank you!

-rich cowan
  Organizers' Collaborative