Cyberspace Snow and Avalanche Center Update

1) Official 501c3 (tax-deductable) status is here!

2) We are now on a new server.

3) Welcome our newest Sponsor: Transworld Publications Snowboarding Magazine

4) Recent additions/improvements to the Web Site


1) As of sometime in May we are officially a 501c3 tax-exempt 
organization. This means that all contributions from people or 
organizations in the US are tax-deductable. (We're not sure what, if 
anything, it means outside the US.) This also means that your employer 
may match your contribution. It also makes us eligible to receive grants. 
And contributions of equipment from corporations.

Our letter of determination is posted on our Organizational Page.

2) At the end of May we moved servers. For the past year we have had 
internet services free from PEAK, which was a part of the Computer 
Science Outreach Services at Oregon State University. PEAK is no longer 
part of OSU, but has become a private company offering internet services. 
So we are now paying for a virtual server from PEAK Inc.

The transition was mostly smooth, and hopefully you didn't notice much 
difference. Fortunately by the end of May traffic had slowed down 
substantially anyway. Our page counters were broken for a while, and a 
few other odds and ends required attention. Everything should be normal 
again now. (Except for access to the Professional Section. But we will be 
rebuilding this anyway, quite possibly with less restriction.)

3) We are pleased to announce our third sponsor, Transworld Publications 
Snowboarding Magazine. We are still waiting for their graphic to put on 
our home and Bulletins page but they are sponsoring us, along with 
Lifelink and Marmot. Watch for their web site by the end of summer.

These sponsorships along with contributions from individuals make the 
project possible. Please visit their web sites and/or send them a note of 
appreciation!

4) We recently reworked all the graphics on our pages, and the graphics 
html tags. This should speed the loading of our pages substantially. It 
should also be possible to navigate the page before the graphics 
finish loading. The effect of these improvements will depend on which 
features your browser supports, but most should reflect a great 
improvement. It sounds like Netscape, AOL, and ATT browsing software all 
load the page faster. Let us know if it's better for you!

We have added many things, and continue to expand the content. Only a few 
will be mentioned here, so check out the site once in a while!

The Organizational page has our articles of incorporation and our 501c3 
letter from the IRS.

We have a page of logo graphics for links. It is not yet linked into the 
site, but you can find it at http://www.avalanche-center.org/Organization/logos.html
(Thanks to Aidos from Kazakstan for our newest logo graphic.) If you link 
to our site feel free to use one of these graphics.

The 95/96 Annual Report of the SW Montana avalanche Center is online. You 
can get to it from either our "Other Info" page or the Bulletins page. 
Karl and Ron were among the first to get their Bulletin on the net (two 
years ago), and now have the distinction of being the first to get their 
annual report online. We hope to have others available, depending on the 
wishes of the various centers.

We started maintaining a traffic stats page, so you can see how many 
'hits' we are getting, where they are from, and what items people 
are looking at. We try to update the key .gifs monthly. We have been 
reached from over 50 countries now.


We will be continuing to work on developing the site and the organization 
throughout the summer. We are working on getting more sponsors, setting 
up some cgi scripts that will make the site interactive, additional 
content, and incorporating volunteers. We are also setting up our office 
and working on obtaining computer and office equipment. 

Hopefully we will have an update soon which focusses on volunteer efforts 
over the past year and discusses current volunteer possibilities. 

Thanks for subscribing to this list - we appreciate your interest in our 
project.

Jim

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      Cyberspace Snow and Avalanche Center (CSAC)
          297 Hawthorne Ave, Eugene OR 97404
                    1-800-289-4403         

       http://www.csac.org        snow@csac.org

              Jim Frankenfield; Director
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