I was pleased to get the PingER update from the University of Trieste - it was the first time I had heard from PingER since 2002, when it was presented at the eJDS Open Round Table on "Developing Country Access to On-Line Scientific Publishing: Sustainable Alternatives". I was there talking about (and hoping to breathe life into) the www4mail tool, and am pleased my www4mail presentation (PPT) is still up on their website! www4mail was developed at the University of Trieste and for a time there were a few really good servers running including ours at Kabissa and another at Bellanet in Canada. These servers played a critical role for a time, enabling people with limited access to the web to request web pages to be sent to them by email.

Imagine your email routine. You log into your email and sit back to tackle your correspondence. You notice with some pleasure that there is a lot less spam than usual, and note that there generally is a light load to address. But then suddenly the mail you were about to read is gone. A few minutes later a few messages appear again and you start reading them. Then, boom - they are gone too. Panic takes hold.

This is the sort of thing that we all imagine can't happen to us - but is possible, and it did happen to a Kabissa member this week.