Thursday, June 09, 2005

E-Club To Be or Not To Be

My Rotary club is called an E-Club. We are a prototype, the future model of clubs in the Rotary world. The main attraction is the cyber meeting we conduct as compared to physical meetings the ordinary clubs are having weekly.

Our members are supposed to be cyber-literate. It means that we don't have phobia handling computer and the internet. It means that we understand the difference between forum and chat, between email and website.

Ideally, we should be very familiar or at least comfortable with the cyber things. However, far from ideal, the reality is many members still have phobia touching computer, not to mention on using the internet.

Theoretically, many things can be done through cyber meeting. The fact is people are still more comfortable having face-to-face meeting, sending fax instead of email. This is quite an irony.

Perhaps, we should add in a test for new members before we admit them in. Ask them to go online, register the user id and post an introduction on the forum. Only after satisfying these will we them induct them to the club.

At least with this barrier taken out, cyber attendance will not be a problem anymore.

Legalities of Having a Blog

These few weeks there were few articles in the newspaper regarding the legalities of web logs. Most of the time, the bloggers are not aware of this. They just write whatever they feel like publishing online. Only until someone notifies them that they realize that they are brushing with the law.

It is not so simple to do this within the legal framework. Most of the time, the bloggers just put down whatever comes to mind. These may include something the legal thinks inappropriate.

Frankly, I lost a bit of enthusiasm when I read the news. Not that I intend to write something unlawful, but rather I don't want to worry unnecessarily on these things.

After stopping for sometime, I have decided to do a comeback. I think I will just pen down my ideas and not worry too much. Besides, I an not any celebrity and I doubt that this page will receive more than a handful of visitors.