Wednesday, January 21st
Our January meeting will feature the club's annual Photo Contest, and Board Elections.
If you'd like to enter the contest, simply come to the meeting with a photo of a reptile or amphibian that YOU have taken. You can enter as many as you'd like. Winners will receive a year's membership.
Meetings start promptly at 8pm in the Alumni Room of Medaille College.
Amphibian and Reptile Information Forums
Sometimes the best way to get information about something is to ask other people. One of the great advantages of the Internet is to bring a vast number of people from all over the world together. Two great ways to "talk" to people all over the word is either with Forums or E-mail Lists. Forums are usually accessed with either newsreader software or some web sites have their own forums. E-mail lists are almost like a magazine or newspaper subscription that comes directly to your e-mail.
The original forums of the Internet are newsgroups called Usenet. These are usually accessed with a newsgroup reader (like Outlook Express which comes free with Microsoft's Internet Explorer). Your newsgroup reader connects with your ISP's news server and you select which discussion bulletin boards you would like to read. You will need to check with your ISP if you are unsure what your news server is. The other alternative is to use a newsgroup service via the World Wide Web like Goggle Groups (formerly DejaNews) at http://groups.google.com.
There are a lot of newsgroups out there. I mean a LOT! Think of a topic and there is probably a topic about it. Usenet predates the World Wide Web so there is ton information available there. Google, for instance has achieves going back to 1995. To help you out, two good newsgroups to check out are rec.pets.herp and sci.bio.herp.
With the advent of the World Wide Web many web sites are offering their own discussion forums that can be accessed directly from their own web site with out having to worry about using more software. Two excellent resources for herp information are Kingsnake and Yahoo Groups.
Kingsnake is an excellent reptile and amphibian Web Portal that also offers discussion forums on a variety of topics including Herp Events, Herp Law, and Herp Societies. They also offer a variety of forums about particular groups of animals like lizards, turtles, snakes, monitors and many other species specific forums as well.
Yahoo also offers a service called Yahoo Groups that can act as either an on-line forum or an e-mail list depending on what you prefer. Yahoo Groups has many of groups on a variety of different topics. To find groups about reptiles and amphibians specifically check out their Reptiles and Amphibians section. Here you can find discussions on all sots of different topics from general herpetology to species-specific discussions.
Help reptiles in need by donating to our Adoption Fund! Your donations will help feed and house reptiles waiting for adoption.