What's Old on HVCN?

2002

May 5, 2002

We've updated the HVCN Services Page to keep up with our expanding list of services. We've been doing Domain hosting and Virtual Web/Mail hosting for a while, but this page was not kept up to date. We've recently added Database Services, PHP dynamic content, and more. A new content management facility will soon be launched, as well.

May 4, 2002

HVCN congratulates Washtenaw County Government on the deployment of their new web site, at ewashtenaw.org! As a result of the restructuring of the county's web services, many links from HVCN's infocenters needed to be updated to point to their new locations on the ewashtenaw site. This process has now been completed.

April 20, 2002

HVCN Launches the Business Infocenter with links to Trade and Professional organizations plus other information pertaining to doing business in the Washtenaw County area.

March 2, 2002

The Environment Infocenter was reorganized to separate out recycling and reuse links from the other types of links that they were bundled with. A new page describing how to dispose of an old computer was added to the new "Recycling and Reuse" section.

February 25, 2002

In a major sweep, many broken hyperlinks were updated on all pages of the Education Infocenter.

February 23, 2002

Thanks to the Ann Arbor News for publishing a very nice article about HVCN that appeared in today's issue.

January 6, 2002

A major update with lots of links to local agencies and support groups was posted to the substance abuse page of the Human Services Infocenter.

January 2, 2002

HVCN has been experiencing intermittent disk failures, and was running out of disk space for all of its users. We purchased a new server and we completed the upgrade today. No services on HVCN were interrupted except for conferences. Conferences remain unavailable until conference software is installed on the newly deployed server. See the upgrade page for details of the 2002 upgrade.

2001

March 29, 2001

Our network provider has relocated our server to a new network segment. HVCN was down for half an hour today while the server was wheeled across the street. This move completely solves the problems we had been experiencing all this week. Thanks to them for correcting it. Also, thanks and to all that were inconvenienced for their patience while we dealt with this problem.

March 25, 2001

HVCN has been experiencing network problems that are causing significant slowness and inconsistent performance during the day, and nearly total shutdown of network services in the evening. We hope to resolve these problems as soon as possible, and we apologize for the inconvenience.

January 1, 2001

HVCN inaugurates a new service, hosting domains for organizations with a website on our server. For more information, contact webmaster.

2000

September 16, 2000

The Government Infocenter's election information page contains pointers to new online voter information provided by the Michigan Secretary of State.

June 2, 2000

The languishing Legal infocenter has received an infusion of helpful links to legal advice on the net.

May 31, 2000

Recent upgrades to the Community Calendars page are worthy of note. Links have been updated for this summer's various festivals throughout the county.

May 29, 2000

Backtalk was upgraded to version 1.1.0. This version provides support for a new interface, giving HVCN's conferences a whole new look. Registered conference users should check out the new abalone interface.

Over the past five months, regular users of HVCN may have noticed that the upgrade performed in December has provided a substantial improvement in reliability. We are pleased to observe that there has been no more down time to report in this space during this period.

1999

December 27, 1999

HVCN underwent a hardware and software upgrade. The details can be found on the update page

August 17

The Scouting information Page was added to provide links to local troops. packs. posts, councils and to state and national scouting organizations.

1998

December 5

Lots of TV station and network links were upgraded in the Broadcast Television section of the Media Infocenter

November 4

1998 General Election unofficial results from contested local races are posted.

November 2

The Political Information Page of the Government Infocenter has been updated to include the Publius Online Election information System.

August 24

The HVCN server crashed early Saturday morning, and HVCN remained out of service until it could be rebooted. Service was restored Monday 8/24 at 9:05 AM.

July 23

A powerful storm knocked out power to the building in which HVCN is housed, causing the HVCN server to be out of service from 6:05 PM on Tuesday, July 21 until 9:45 AM Thursday, July 23.

April 1

HVCN was rebooted at 10 AM following a failure yesterday around 1 PM.

March 31

The Ann Arbor Track Club as added to the Recreation Infocenter and the AATC's First of America Run (Dexter-Ann Arbor) was added as a special event to the Events Calendar.

March 30

The Community Infocenter dropped the work "Network" from its name, because it now focuses primarily on communities. Brighton and Manchester were added to the list.

March 14

The Entertainment Infocenter was updated to reflect new web sites, and new URLs for old ones that moved.

February 18

The Religion Infocenter is happy to welcome St. Paul's United Church of Christ, Chelsea to the growing family of religious organizations that are maintaining web sites on the HVCN server.

February 16

The Education Infocenter added a link to the Ann Arbor Public Schools Redistricting Information page. The temporary AAPS page in the Education Infocenter was replaced with a pointer to the new official AAPS Home Page.

February 12

HVCN was unreachable for most of the day Wednesday as a result of a failure of the City/County internet connection to Merit. This failure was related to a power failure affecting some Washtenaw County offices. The connection was broken at 9:40 AM, and the server was unreachable until just before 2:00 AM on February 13. No reboot was performed. The server remained up during this period.

January 29

The server crashed at 4:30 PM and was rebooted at 9:30 AM on the 30th. Discounting external events such as power failures, this was the first time the server had failed since it was put in service in April, 1997.

January 25

A new section was added to the Recreation Infocenter for "Fishing", with both statewide and local resources.

1997

November 26, 1997

Updates are posted to the Media infocenter.

November 20

HVCN announces an agreement with Cyberspace Communications, Inc. to provide dial-up access for email and text-based web access via Grex to the community. HVCN provides information on its redesigned access page about how to dial up to Grex and create your own e-mail address. Like HVCN, Cyberspace Communications is a membership-based non-profit organization which is funded by donations.

November 2

HVCN announces a new program to help foster communication within school parent-teacher organizations. HVCN now supports mailing lists, and public and private conferences for such organizations. Two schools in the Ann Arbor system have taken advantage of this program so far. See the Education Infocenter.

October 11-14

After almost six months of uninterrupted service, HVCN went down at approximately 10:52 AM on Saturday, October 11. This unscheduled down-time was probably due to an unintentional power interruption. The server did not return to service on its own, and could not be rebooted until access was gained at 9:42 AM Tuesday. We apologize for the lengthy interruption in service.

September 29

New forums were established for two PTSO organizations in the Ann Arbor School District, and for the Michigan Chapter of CPSR.

August 30

We added a new 1997-1998 School Calendar for the Ann Arbor Public Schools to the Education Infocenter in the AAPS information page.

August 29

More restaurants are added to the Entertainment Infocenter.

August 17

HVCN was disconnected from the internet for nearly 24 hours from 11:10 AM on Saturday 8/16 until 9:30 AM on Sunday 8/17. This network outage also affected the City of Ann Arbor and the County of Washtenaw web sites. We apologize for the inconvenience.

August 12

The Ecology Center of Ann Arbor has installed their brand new web site on the HVCN server. It contains a page for Recycle Ann Arbor, too. These new sites are now pointed to by the Environment Infocenter.

July 5

Many new links were added to schools on the K-12 Schools page of the Education Infocenter/a>.

June 26

The Community Events Calendar now points to the new Ann Arbor Art Fairs website.

June 8

Updates were made to the Government InfoCenter.

June 1

The information about entertainment and the arts was removed from the Recreation Infocenter and combined with information about dining, to make up the new Entertainment Infocenter

June 1

The Media Infocenter was updated, and at least 6 new links appear there, including Media One and CTN.

May 19

A new section called "Missing Children" was added to the Children's page of the Human Services infocenter. The section contains a link to Catherine "Rene" Craft of Manchester, missing since mid-April.

May 19

The Government Infocenter now points to the new website of The City of Ann Arbor.

April 30

HVCN returned to the air after 6 days of down time. We apologize that our transition from a virtual to a real server was not more seamless. We are now running on our own hardware, using donated space. We will need to upgrade again before we can begin to support incoming telephone connections. Funding options continue to be explored.

April 20

The Substance Abuse page of the Human Services infocenter now points to the new web site for the Washtenaw Council on Alcoholism.

April 20

The Media infocenter has added links to the new Ann Arbor News and Ypsilanti Press websites, called "Michigan Live", and also to the new Heritage Newspaper website.

March 19

The Genealogical Society of Washtenaw County has installed their new web site on HVCN. They are pointed to by the Library Infocenter.

March 15

HVCN was off the air from 8:30 AM Friday 3/14 until 2 PM Saturday 3/15 due to power failure resulting from the devastating ice storm which began on the evening of Thursday 3/13.

January 31

The Recreation Infocenter is now open. It contains information about parks, sports, hobbies, entertainment, and the arts, and a lot of links.

January 25

The Environment Infocenter now has a forum. The initial topic is the question of controlling land use in the county.

January 18

The Transportation Infocenter is inaugurated. It contains links to all forms of travel and hotels, as well as a highway road map drawn specially for HVCN.

1996

November 17

The Community Network Infocenter has added sections for guides to places in or near the county, adding pointers to Pinckney and South Lyon. Links to farther places within our region also can be found there now.

November 6

The candidates information has been replaced with a tabulation of local election results, following the tabulation of the votes and absentee ballots.

October 28

The Political Information section of the Government Infocenter now contains a list of many of the candidates for offices contested in the upcoming election, along with pointers to their web sites, if any.

October 10

Pointers were added to arborweb, the Ann Arbor Observer's new web site which contains online versions of their Calendar and City Guide. The HVCN Calendar page was updated and reorganized to include pointers to several new listings of local events.

October 3

The HVCN Library Infocenter is proud to announce that the Dexter District Library has established a web site on the HVCN server, and is the most recent public library in the county to do so.

September 2

The Saline Home Page is now available. It is listed in the Community Network conference under the new category of "Guides to Saline". Other pointers to content about Saline from that site have been added to various other infocenters as well.

July 24

Added a pointer to the Art Farirs' Website from the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

July 11

Added an information page for the Ann Arb or Art Fairs to the HVCN Calendars.

July 4

HVCN now has a new page containing a list of polling places in the county. It is pointed to by the political information page of the Government Infocenter.

July 2

The Ypsilanti District Library has inaugurated its new web site, hosted by HVCN. The Library Infocenter now contains a pointer to it. Also, the annoying wordy banner was removed from this "Whats New?" page.

June 10

The Chabad House has installed its new web site on the HVCN server. A pointer can be found in the Religion Infocenter.

June 6

The HVCN Main Menu has been slightly reorganized to show the Infocenters and Forums more prominently.

May 29

The Education Infocenter initiated its section on continuing education with a link to Continuing Education at E.M.U.

May 27

The Library Infocenter now contains a list of museums in the county. For each museum, there is a pointer to its home page, and for those with no such page, a small information page has been created.

May 26

The Media Infocenter was updated and numerous corrections and additioins were made.

May 24

The Education Forum began the PTO Pilot Project to encourage involvement in school PTO organizations through electronic discussions.

May 16

The K-12 Resources page of the Education Infocenter has been reorganized, and new global K-12 links were added.

May 15

The Human Services Infocenter has been expanded and reorganized into ten separate topics. Links have been added under each of the topics to local agencies, local resources on the net, and global (net) resources on the particular topic.

May 6

Forums have been created for the Education and Library infocenters. In anticipation of an "Elections" infocenter, a forum was created for that. Also the Online infocenter was redesigned and changed to be the Community Network Infocenter, and a forum was created for that. Finally, a new Infocenter, the Human Services Infocenter was created.

Apr 13

The HVCN Interactive Forums opened to the public. A section was added to the Main Menu, so that people can get started.

Apr 11

The Milan Library opened their web site using the HVCN web server, and now appears in the Library InfoCenter.

Apr 10

The Library InfoCenter was consolidated and updated. Also 1995 items from this "What's New" listing were archived.

Mar 31

More links were added, giving the Environment infocenter a whole new look.

Mar 23

In the past week HVCN has added the Jewish Cultural Society's web site to our server, and we have added a new Environment Infocenter featuring the Recycling Page.

Mar 14

The Religion InfoCenter has added links to several more Lutheran Resources. One of them, All Saints Lutheran Church in Highland, has located its pages on the HVCN server.

Feb 14

The Jewish Community Home Page is the latest community religious resource to choose to locate their web site on HVCN. They are a welcome addition to our Religion InfoCenter.

Feb 8

President Clinton signed the Telecommunications Bill, and organizations all over the internet began a 48 hour protest against the censorship provisions by turning their web pages black. HVCN supported this protest and changed its pages to black, as well.

Feb 7

Beth Israel Congregation becomes the newest religious organization to have its web pages hosted by HVCN.

Jan 31

The Southeast Michigan Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America has located its brand new web site on HVCN. There is now a pointer to it in the Religion InfoCenter. Also the Ann Arbor District Library has a new name and has updated its web site on HVCN to reflect that.

Jan 23

The Schools index of the Education Infocenter now points to Tappan Middle School.

Jan 6

The media infocenter now reflects the recent change in WLLZ 98.7 FM to a Jazz format. The Michigan government page was changed to reflect the increased lineup of state web sites. Contact information was added to the page describing the Washtenaw County Board of Commissioners.

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1995

Dec 8

We now point to the WLNS TV-6 web site to the TV listings in the Media InfoCenter, and in the On-Line Infocenter, we now point to the Michigan Comnet and various guides to the State of Michigan.

Dec 4

The Media InfoCenter is added to the growing list of community InfoCenters available on HVCN.

Nov 28

The Government InfoCenter now points to the U-M Document Center's Government resources.

Nov 26

Dan Romanchik reorganized our sprawling About HVCN document, into a more organized format.

Nov 25

In the Library Infocenter, our page of On-line Libraries now also points to the Internet Movie Database, which is an impressive collection of on-line searchable data about Motion Pictures and some TV series.

Nov 23

Graphic enhancements: The HVCN logo was enhanced to show the location of our county, using a map of the state of Michigan in the background. Graphic HVCN identification was added to the top of all HVCN pages.

Nov 15

The HVCN Main Menu has been given a complete facelift, thanks to the efforts of technical committee member, Dan Romanchik. The same information is available, but we really hope that you like our new look. Also please note that we are now posting our Financial Balance Sheets monthly, as soon as they are reported by our treasurer.

Nov 3

The Government Infocenter has been redesigned so that it has one section for official government sites and another for political issues.

Oct 24

The HVCN Restated Articles of Incorporation were posted online in the "About HVCN" page, along with the Bylaws and Contract with Isthmus Corp.

Oct 19

The Washtenaw County MSU Extension Service web site, which was developed at SILS for HVCN, can now be found under the Human Services Department of Washtenaw County in the Government InfoCenter.

Oct 15

Web site maintenace continues. Our web site now has a new graphical title. The unimplemented events calendar was replaced with a list of community events calendars maintained by several local organizations. Two new InfoCenters were created, Online, which is a reorganization of information already present, and Religion, which contains pointers to some local Catholic and Protestant web sites.

Sep 28

The Ann Arbor Public Library web site, complete with touch-sensitive maps, has been moved to HVCN. This site now contains a pointer to the Library's On-line Electronic Catalog.

Aug 27, 1995

A link to the Saline District Library was added to HVCN's Public Library Index

Aug 24

A link to the FARNET's Washington Updates site was added to the Federal Government Page under a new subheading, commentary. Also the HVCN technical committee status report and meeting schedule were added to the HVCN Administration page.

Aug 12

The HVCN Bylaws were placed on-line in the official HVCN documents section of the HVCN information page.

Aug 4

HVCN has a new Law InfoCenter.

July 31

The contract between HVCN and Isthmus is a new addition to the web site. The HVCN Information Page was updated with additional information, including a pointer to official HVCN documents, such as this.

July 28

HVCN has a new internet address. This Web site has been moved to its new permanent home http://www.hvcn.org. hvcn.org is now a functioning internet host. The system will undergo testing and upgrading before it will be ready for public access as a community network, but we are one more step closer to that reality.

July 9

HVCN now has a new Education InfoCenter, and a redesigned Michigan Government page, which points to the MDE's new index to all state government information.

July 5

We have a new "other systems" page which now contain a pointer to the Ann Arbor Area Online, and lots more. Also we now have a form to apply for an HVCN account. It doesn't work yet, but it shows the idea. We also now have a pointer to the home pages of the AA Public library, and the Washtenaw County Library in our Public Library Page in the Library InfoCenter.

June 29

HVCN signed a contract with Isthmus Corporation, an internet provider in Ann Arbor, to have Isthmus provide computing services, local access, and access to the internet using their equipment. This is a major milestone for HVCN, and it marks the beginning of the process of installing, refining, and testing the software and hardware components needed to develop HVCN into a fully functional community network.

June 19

The introduction and " about HVCN" documents were edited and partly rewritten. The remainder of the contents of Jennie Howard's HVCN Web page at EMU were incorporated into "about HVCN", and the pointer to it dropped. The Library Information Center was created and populated with minimal information about public libraries in the county, and pointers to two on-line libraries. The U.S. Business Advisor was added to the Federal Government page, and the Ann Arbor League of Women Voters pages were added to the Government Info Center page.

June 5

A new page is created in the Government Information Centers section. It describes the departments of the Washtenaw County government. One department already has its own web pages.

June 1

The Department of Library and Information Sciences at the University of Michigan has donated some space to hold HVCN's prototype Web pages. Steve Weiss, HVCN Technical Committee chair moved the fledgling pages to their new URL: http://www.sils.umich.edu/~hvcntech/.

March 27

Charter membership special: The first 1,000 members of the Huron Valley Community Network will be entitled to HVCN Charter member coffee mugs and other goodies.

March 27

Huron Valley Community Network and Grex have formed an alliance called the Washtenaw Information Network (WIN) to write a proposal under the Technology Information Infrastructure Application Program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Contact WIN grant committee chair, Linda Vengroff for more information.