NavList:

It's moving day.

First, much of this does not directly affect those of you who follow NavList via the message boards at fer3.com/arc so you may want to skip to the third paragraph to read about some new features available.

We have moved email services for NavList. Forget, lose, delete all references to NavList[at]googlegroups.

From now on, to send a message to NavList, the new email posting address is
NavList@fer3.com.
Distribution of individual messages is being handled by freelists.org. If you have strict email filters in place, you should allow email from fer3.com *and* freelists.org. You can cancel all email delivery at any time (in other words "") by sending an email to NoMail@fer3.com.

The message boards remain at http://fer3.com/arc. The address
http://fer3.com/NavList also redirects there.

There is a test group: NavListTEST. The posting address is NavListTEST@fer3.com. The message boards for the test group are located at fer3.com/arcX. This is a nearly exact copy of the functionality of NavList itself, but the archives of old messages are empty. Also please note that new messages sent to the test group may be deleted at any time. None of you are signed up to receive emails from the test group, though if you wish, you can sign up for emails (for testing purposes).

Some new features:
--Reply-to-author is enabled for established NavList members.
--There is a very simple "Join NavList" function available.
--Also, I've switched to a more modern and, with any luck, less confusing joining policy: "first legitimate post equals membership". That is, posts from non-members which are on-topic and approved automatically make them "members" (with no email, of course, until and unless such new members decide to activate it).
--Members can change settings for email delivery directly at the message boards at fer3.com/arc (some changes may take a few hours to take effect at least for the next couple of weeks).
--You can sign up a secondary email address under the same account and you can also set your "real name" for posts. This function will be phased in over the next couple of weeks.
--You can also "follow NavListNews" on twitter which will send a brief note with "message number, subject, author, message size" within one or two minutes as each new message appears on NavList. If you don't like twitter or it doesn't work for you, you can also enter an SMS email address (the "text messaging" email for your mobile phone) or any other email address, for that matter, and receive these same short messages.
--For the twitter users only, any "established NavList member" can also send a brief message to any other NavListNews followers using the page for this purpose at fer3.com/twit.aspx. This not for "chatting". It's for very brief navigation news annoucements.
--There are a variety of digests and summaries available. You can choose to receive a six-hour or daily summary of NavList messages, essentially a "table of contents" for messages in that period. You can also choose to receive six-hour or daily digests of the full-text of all messages in either text or html format. Note that the six-hour text-format digest is probably a good solution for those few NavList members who who do not like html messages and attachments (somebody tell Paul... ;-)). These digests and summaries distribute directly from fer3.com since the number of people signed up for them is just a few dozen. Please note that the code to generate them can be modified

As I noted in an earlier message, one feature will be missing on individual NavList messages --no message numbers. The numbers are there, but hidden. The message boards at fer3.com are set up to generate message numbers there and also for the summaries and digests. There will be a small gap in the numbering sequence so we will jump to a message number around 11383 (current high number is around 11370).

No doubt, there will be some glitches, anomalies, bugs, and screwups on my part during the next few weeks. Sorry in advance!

FINALLY, this is the last NavList message that will distribute from google groups. You can continue to reply to older googlegroups messages directly by email if you wish. They will be forwarded to the new posting address without any interruption in the message flow, though forwarded messages will be briefly delayed. Fortunately (from the perspective of this transition), NavList has been very quiet for a couple of days, so there should not be too many messages to forward.

Happy New Year!

-FER