A lot of activity is occurring in the area of Electronic Communications for the IEEE member and volunteer. Various groups such as the IT Strategy Committee, the Regional ECC group, the IEEE EWH Committee and the Region 3 Communications Committee have all been active improving electronic communications services for IEEE. Of course, the content provided by some of the services is the result of additional groups working to provide benefit to IEEE and its members.
The following is a list of enhancements that have occurred on the Entity Web Hosting (EWH) server (https://ewh.ieee.org) this year.
• The EWH service has been migrated to a new and upgraded high availability server.
• IEEE Web Accounts have been implemented. The same accounts that one uses to manage one's membership can also be used to as a security credential for private parts of web spaces on EWH.
• Improved Web Site statistics…New tool to monitorthe activity and availability of the server and alert staff when there is an issue.
• Anti Virus software…Anti Virus software has been installed on ewh, and runs periodically everyday to scan and remove files infected with viruses.
IEEE E-Mail Services
• IEEE Alias service IEEE continues to offer an e-mail alias serves that allows one to have an @ieee.org address that is forwarded to a member's real mail box. This service provides one an identity separate from the one provided by the Internet Service Provider and eliminates the need to change mail addresses with contacts when changing providers. See https://eleccomm.ieee.org/personal-aliases.shtml for more details.
• Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) /Spam Filtering Service The IEEE has made enhancements to the IEEE UCE/Spam Filtering Service for members with an IEEE email alias. New features include:
o An option that combines the tagging and blocking of UCE (spam); messages with a low spam score will be tagged, messages with a high “spamscore” will be blocked, thereby reducing the amount of spam received over time.
o The ability to add email addresses to be blocked to a ”blacklist”, and those that never want blocked to a “whitelist”. A member's lists are independent of other members.
o Improved identification technology that will more accurately target possible UCE/spam messages. To sign up for the IEEE UCE/Spam Filtering Service visit https://uce.ieee.org/. The same web page will allow members to revise their settings.
The home page of Region 3 is https://ewh.ieee.org/reg/3/ . From this page one can access a variety of services and information. See, for example, https://ewh.ieee.org/reg/3/ea/ a subsite on Employment Assistance and https://www.ewh.ieee.org/reg/3/excom/sp2005.pdf where the Region 3 Strategic Plan will reside.
E-conferencing Region 3 has been working on technologies for electronic collaboration using a variety of technologies: e-mail lists, newsgroups, TWiki, Plone, IRC, Virtual Communities, Internet Meeting Service, etc. The group can serve as a resource to help other IEEE groups collaborate on projects over the Internet.
Communications is a part of all of our jobs and is a two-way proposition. Without the feedback the sender has no way of knowing if the message is being received and understood. If this summary has stimulated an interest please feel free to contact us for further discussion.