Conferencing On the Web is available from http://calypso.rs.itd.umich.edu/COW/.
Eric Klavins is currently a grad student here at the University of Michigan. He isn't working on COW right now, but it's good to know we have him here just in case. Most of the work here is being done by the cow.administrators@umich.edu group.
The version of COW that we're running here is fairly heavily modified.
Source for that is not yet available publicly, but,
the original source code for COW is available via anonymous ftp at:
ftp://thecity.sfsu.edu/pub/COW
Yes, COW should work fine with Internet Explorer. If you have any problems using COW with Internet Explorer, please send a message to the COW Administrators.
The COW administrators follow the Conferencing_On_the_Web conference, if you have a suggestion of general interest. If you would rather contact them via email, the email address is: cow.administrators@umich.edu
This is especially important on computers in the Campus Computing Sites. Unless you "Logout", you may be impersonated by others who use the same machine. Quitting your browser (e.g. exiting NetScape) also "logs you out". For more information see Security Guidelines
To change your full name, go to the Profile page by clicking on the Change Profile button at the bottom of any COW page. Then, click on the Change your Real Name button. In the resultant COW Real Name Editor window, enter what you want your name to be listed as in the Real Name box and click the Change Real Name button. COW will change your full name.
To use graphics in your responses, you should include this at the beginning: /cow-bin/image?, so the URL of your graphic will look like this:
<IMG SRC="/cow-bin/image?http://www-personal.umich.edu/~dwinkel/misc/porch-view.jpg">
The reason for this is that COW is considered a secure environment by your WWW navigator, in that it encrypts all data about the web page, so it won't directly include an "insecure" image in the web page unless the secure server tells it the graphic is OK. The /cow-bin/image script does just that.
Disclaimer: You should be careful that you are not breaking any copyright violations with the material you place on COW. For more information about copyrights, you may visit the following site: www.copyright.com
No, unfortunately it is not possible to change responses in COW. You can, however, hide responses that you have made, and make new responses.
You can use COW from lynx on both the login.itd.umich.edu servers, and from most engineering unix machines. You can use COW with the command:
lynx http://calypso.rs.itd.umich.edu/COW/
You should accept the cookies, when they are set, and you'll have to tell lynx to proceed after you log into COW. Otherwise, it works much like COW on the web, but without any graphics.
This was a bug that existed in earlier versions of COW. We are fairly sure that we have taken care of this particular bug, but it may still exist. If you run into this problem, please inform the cow.administrators@umich.edu group via email, or report the problem in the Conferencing_On_the_Web conference.
Anonymous responses are not currently possible, but creating support for them is planned for later this year.
If you are a Unversity of Michigan affiliated user of COW, there isn't a way to change your password from within COW. The way you change your password is in ITD QuickNote R1162, Choosing and Changing a Safe and Secure Uniqname Password.
For external users without University uniqnames, to change your password, go to the Profile page by clicking on the Change Profile button at the bottom of any COW page. Then, click on the Change Your Password button. In the resultant COW Password Editor window, enter what you want your new password to be in the New Password box and click the Change Password button. COW will check to make sure you didn't enter a bad password (like your login name, for example.) If it's an okay password, the next time you load a COW page, you will be prompted for your user name and your new password.
The width of the responses is set based on a "standard" width of a browser window. (It's actually 77 characters.)
If you've got a fairly large font chosen in your browser, then it won't show up very well, and will extend past the right side of the screen, making it somewhat hard to read. If you are using Netscape 3.x, you can fix that by going to the "Options" menu, selecting "General Preferences", and clicking on the "Font" tab on top. Then, for your "Fixed Font", select something like "Courier" with a size of "12" or smaller, which should be small enough to display well on most monitors. If that's what you have chosen already, or if that's still too big, try a slightly smaller font.
The COW administrators follow the Conferencing_On_the_Web conference, if you have a question of general interest. If you have a question about something specifically related to being a Fair Witness, you should check the WorkShop conference, and post the question in an appropriate topic there.
There is currently no cost to participate in any COW conference, and there are no plans to charge for participation.
Non-University affiliates can follow SOME COW conferences. They need to go to the main entrance to COW, http://calypso.rs.itd.umich.edu/COW/, and click on the Register button. From there, they should fill out that form, making sure to get their email address correct. The COW system will create an account for them, and email them a password to use to get into COW.
Policies for COW adhere to the policies already in place for using the University of Michigan Technology Environment. These are available from the Information Technology Policies web page.
At this time, COW does not have a real-time chat feature. We are looking for one that we can integrate into the COW environment, though, so if you find one that you like, please pass information about it on to the cow.administrators@umich.edu group. Thank you!
If you would like to "have a COW" fill-out the COW Conference Request Form at:
http://calypso.rs.itd.umich.edu/COW/request.html
If you use the COW Conference Request Form, you'll get your new conference within 24 hrs.
Conferences that you have created are not automatically added to your hotlist. You can, however, add them to your hotlist yourself, by clicking on the Change Hotlist button at the bottom of most COW screens, checking the conference you would like to be added, and clicking on the Write Hotlist button.
Follow the Conference Manager link available to you (as the conference Fair Witness). After a new browser window opens up with the Conference Manager loaded:
No, there is no reason. David Winkel is permitted to your conference to help you with setting the conference up, should you need help from the COW administrators. He is also permitted to your conference as an example of how to have multiple Fair Witnesses in a conference. There is no reason to leave him permitted to your conference, specifically.
To depermit him, go into the Conference Manager with the link at the top of your conference page. Then, click on the Change Conference Config button, and remove David's uniqname (dwinkel) from the list of Fair Witnesses. Click on the Change Config. button to save the configuration, and click on the User Access List button. Enter David's uniqname (dwinkel) in the Remove A Single User box, and click on the Remove User button. David is now no longer permitted to participate in your conference.
The Fair Witness(es) for a conference should create 2 or 3 initial topics for the conference participants. The topics depend on the purpose of the conference, of course, but could be organized by subgroups of participants (e.g. discussion sections of a course), assignments (e.g. the current week's assigned reading), or any other theme that makes sense for your group. It's also not a bad idea to create a topic where the participants can make suggestions on additional topic areas or other improvements to the conference. Topics often evolve as the conference progresses.
COW allows you to configure individual topics to be private separately from your conference. Your conference may be public, but certain topics could be private. Or your conference could be private and certain topics even more so.
A realistic reason for making a topic private is, for example, if you wanted an arena where only the Professor, TA's, and graders could post and read messages.
All new topics are created initially public (in both public and private conferences). A public topic is seen by every participant of the conference (in which it is created). However, the private topic in the private conference will be seen only by some subset of that conference participants. So, private topics can be used to further restrict access to particular subtexts within a conference. Please note that anyone who is not allowed to see a conference is also not allowed to see any topics in that conference, even though that person may be explicitly permitted to one (or more) of the topics.
Leaving the conference public is one way to manage a class conference. If a class conference is left public, that means that people from outside the class can comment on the class, and on the conference for the class. This is often not a desirable state. If the conference, on the other hand, is private, then the Fair Witness(es) of the conference have to maintain a user list for the conference. If the class is not large, this shouldn't be a problem, maintaining the user list is done with uniqnames in the Conference Manager, however, if the class is large, this can be a challenge. The choice of which way to permit a conference is completely up to the discretion of the Fair Witnesses of the conference.
There is a tutorial available. Contact the cow.administrators@umich.edu group for details.
There are several alternatives to COW. ConferU, a text-based conferencing system is one, Usenet News is another, and soon there will be a Lotus Notes-based conferencing system available as well. The Lotus Notes system is in development at this time.
If you would like to give fair witness privileges to additional people, just add their login names after yours. Make sure to separate all login names by commas, and do not put any spaces between the names and the commas.
If the conference is already public to the University community, then you should ask the cow.administrators@umich.edu group to make your conference available to outside members. Then, any outside COW participant who follows the directions in section 1.3.3. should have no problem seeing your conference.
If your conference is private, then you will also have to add that user's id to your conference's userlist. The external person will have to register for COW, following the directions in section 1.3.3., and then you will have to add the login id that that person registered with to your conference's userlist, using the Conference Manager.
Note that, to make this easier, you can "pre-register" your participants by entering their information for them. You can follow the directions in section 1.3.3., giving their email address as the "from". It will send a message like the following:
From: cow.administrators@umich.edu
Subject: Conference Participation Request
David Winkel,
Your request for an account has been processed:
username : David
password : 98Yhhme5Eo2TY
PLEASE SAVE THIS EMAIL SOMEWHERE SAFE SO YOU CAN REFER BACK
TO IT WHEN YOU ARE READY TO USE YOUR LOGIN WITH COW.
To enter the COW conferencing system, go to
http://calypso.rs.itd.umich.edu/COW/
and click on the "Enter" button. The system will ask you
for the username and password above. Please add the above URL
to your bookmark file for easy reference.
If you are looking for a specific conference, please change
your Hotlist within COW (by clicking on the "Change Hotlist"
button and including that conference.
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Any of the above options (except your login) can be changed using
the "Change Profile" button at the bottom of most Conferencing
On the Web screens.
NOTE:
HTTP request from stick.us.itd.umich.edu.
Referring page http://calypso.rs.itd.umich.edu/COW/register.html.
If you have received this message in error, please forward it back
to the sender. Thank you.
We recommend that you send them a message before pre-registering them for a conference so that they know what to expect.
No. There is no easy way to do this with the Conferencing On the Web system.
There is currently no way to do this, other than to hide each of the responses in the conference. This should be fixed some time in the near future, so that the Fair Witnesses of a conference can hide entire conversations.
The security of a conference is based on uniqname and password, so it is as secure as the passwords of the participants of the conference. If the conference is available to members outside of the University community, then it's significantly less secure. A good rule of thumb is not to say anything in a conference that you wouldn't say via email.
There is currently no way to do this. The COW administrators group is working on a fix, but it will most likely not be available until Winter '98. If you have a specific problem, send a message to the cow.administrators@umich.edu group.
The cost for organizing a COW conference in 98-99 is $16.00 per term.