The home away from home for Newton users since 1999.

I’d like to thank Newted Community member Tom Zahm for taking it upon himself to send the following message to the rest of the membership earlier this evening.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Newtonites all,
 
When I signed up a year or so ago with the Newted Community, I thought “a *one time* founder’s fee – how can he do that?” Well, in fact, I don’t think he can. Further, a number of us have come to depend on newted.org, with the demise of iTools.
 
In order to:
- pay domain registration costs
- provide for software updates
- provide for the day when the aging Cobalt Qube gives up the ghost
- modestly compensate the Sysadmin for what I’m assuring are growing demands on his time
 
I propose a voluntary annual contribution to the Newton Community.
 
I’ve sent $10, since that’s what an extra email account would have cost with .mac (assuming I could have found someone to “tag along” with).
 
Grant says that checks and money orders can be sent to:
 
The Newted Community
c/o Grant Hutchinson
PO Box 81000
755 Lake Bonavista Drive SE
Calgary AB Canada T2J 0N0
 
PayPal payments can also be made. Direct them to: email hidden; JavaScript is required (call the transaction type “payment for service”).
 
Or use the link on the home page.
 
Yours in Newtondom,
 
Tom Zahm
email hidden; JavaScript is required (formerly email hidden; JavaScript is required)

Having one of the members of the Newted Community instigate this type of call to action without any prompting whatsoever, really validates what I have been trying to do with this server and the services offered as part of the membership. Thank you for your ongoing support Tom, and everyone else who has been a part of the Newted Community up until now. Of course, we’re still accepting new members as well.

Email appears to be normal again. Things should be functioning the way they were prior to my failed attempt at upgrading sendmail. It turns out that the current patched version of sendmail requires other mail-related packages to be installed and running on the server for everything to work. I’m looking into this new twist, mainly because I’d rather have a fully secured machine than not. This morning, I rolled back to the previous version of sendmail and gave the server a swift kick in the boot sequence to jostle everything back into place. Please let me know if you discover any weirdness with your email account and I’ll look into it pronto.

In my attempt to install a patched version of sendmail to fix this vulnerability, I seem to have buggered up access to all POP3 mail accounts. The accounts are still there, you just can’t access them right now. Once I’ve managed to unbugger up everything, I’ll let you know.

Another handful of images have been added to the increasingly popular Newtons Around The World gallery. A jaunty wave of the cap to Ben McCorkle, Alexander Marianski, and the unstoppable Paul Filmer for sending in the latest batch of snaps. Have you taken your Newton on a trip lately? Maybe you toured around the neighborhood and happened to document the outing? Whatever, wherever, whenever… for the love of Pete, just send in something.

Due to a recent influx of queries from new members, some information regarding individual email message sizes and account storage limits has been added to the support section.

The Newted server and some services (such as email) were offline for about half an hour this evening due to randomly scheduled maintenance. If you experienced problems connecting to your email account earlier this evening, please try again. My apologies for the inconvenience, but these things need to be done once in a while.

It’s been a very long time since there’s been any fresh content in the Soupbox section. But awake my friends! Let the drought cease! The first two of hopefully many new articles are now available for your leisurely perusal. These articles were actually submitted to me several months ago, but I have only just now had the time and intestinal fortitude to publish them. Once again, I offer my apologies for the tardiness to the authors of these fine tomes.

• Proxim Wireless Newton Primer Update By Tom Zahm
• My Newton Saga: Considering the Possibilities By Jeb Bolding

In addition to these new(ish) articles, I have been busily re-editing and otherwise tidying up several articles written by Michael Portuesi and Phil Sykes back in 1998. These articles were originally part of the Soupbox when Stacey Tenen was still managing the server. They were removed from circulation during the redesign of the site when I took over the wheel. Needless to say, many of the references and links to old Newton software and developer sites needed to be scrubbed up a bit. (Thank goodness for Google, UNNA, and the Internet Archive… not necessarily in that order.)
Some of these articles are a bit long in the tooth, but I believe that the majority of the information will still be beneficial to someone out there. Presenting the first set of renovated Soupbox articles:

• Hidden Newton Keyboard Commands
• PocketMoney Tips & Tricks
• Solutions to Common NCU Problems
• Home Made Screen Protectors
• The Do It Yourself Stylus
• Review: Karma Cloth Screen Cleaner
• Review: WriteRight Screen Protectors
• Using the MessagePad 100 & MessagePad 110

Got something to say? Think folks want to hear about it? The Newted Community is actively soliciting Newton-related stories, reviews, and opinions from individuals like you. If you are interested in writing a article or review, please email hidden; JavaScript is required.

Earlier this month, it had come to my attention that email notices being sent from the message boards installed here on the Newted site, were arriving with goofed-up date headers. I had never noticed the problem, probably because my primary email client calculated the message date using a different header field. At any rate, these notices were showing up at the bottom of a few people’s inboxes, causing a fair bit of confusion in the process. Ever on the prowl to fix silly little things like this, I ended up tracking the behavior back to a Y2K bug that exists in cranky old versions of Ultimate Bulletin Board. Cranky old versions like the one that came with this server when Stacey Tenen sold it to me a couple of years ago. The patch for the problem was free at the time it was first discovered, but the license information for this copy of UBB is long gone and there’s no way of downloading an update from the Infopop site without a valid license number. So I took the plunge and bought a new license for the current version of UBB.Classic. Stay tuned for some enhanced forum action in the very near future.
By the way, if you’d like to help offset the cost of this software upgrade – which will end up being $199US coming out of my own pocket – feel free to send anything you think would be reasonable to the Newted Community Donation Fund using PayPal. Any contribution will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks.

It’s been more than a couple of months since the Newtons Around The World gallery was updated, but I finally got my furry butt in gear to do it. The gallery is now sporting over 60 assorted images of – you guessed it – Newtons around the world. Please give up a repetitive smack of the clappers to John Charlton, Paul Filmer, Victor Rehorst, Peter Fraser, and yours truly (blush) for submitting pictures this time around. For you folks lacking in patience, the new images start on page four.
Don’t forget to send in your own submissions. The images don’t have to be new ones. Go through your archives and dig out those shots from last summer’s visit to Uncle Ned’s pig farm. Remember how those swine couldn’t hold a stylus to save their bacon? Or how about some more pictures from those beer-drenched user group meetings we keep hearing about, hmm? Come on, you know you want to.

A belated thank you to everyone who came out and voted for the Newted Community in the Newtie Awards. Although we didn’t win our category, being nominated and recognized as a top Newton resource is still very much appreciated. I have added a section to the about page to display our previous Newtie Awards buttons and to thank everyone again, including Rich Lindsay of This Old Newt fame. On a related note, my personal NPDS server did end up walking away with the prize in its category. Go figure.