Your first visit? Some mechanics to get you going

The World Carshare Consortium is an informal shared public interest knowledge building network created in 1996 under The Commons and our New Mobility Agenda to serve carshare operators worldwide, potential start-ups, policy makers, local government partners, researchers, public interest groups, cooperating transporters, concerned citizens, and others interested both to learn more about carsharing and how it works, as well as latest developments in the field internationally.

Our understanding of and work on carsharing is part of a broader vision of the future of transport in cites - the New Mobility Agenda. Before you dig in to the specifics of this site, we suggestion that you first have at least a quick look at the New Mobility site, which you can do if you click here. Vital context! You can click each of the following for further details.

• About us
  Who we are? Why we are here? And what we aim to achieve

• 2008 World Overview
  The section of WorldCarShare.com is intended to provide the visitor with an accurate and reasonably complete picture of the state of carsharing developments world-wide in 2008. (A major update effort is underway to provide a definitive international inventory to open up 2009 - the biggest years ever for carsharing development worldwide.)

• Quick Tour
  Prepared in an attempt to put you in the picture about carsharing in general, World CarShare in particular, and to make your visit to and use of this large site and its many extensions an efficient one.

• Side Menu Bar ("Table of Contents")
  Your first guide in getting around here, the main Menu Bar just to your left is your constant companion and source of orientation as you move around the site. Your ever-present 'Table of Contents', which expands to provide links to additional programs and items. If this is your first visit we suggest you to take a moment to click your way down it quickly to get a feel for how the site is organized.

• Top Quick Bar ("Bookmarks")
  Intended to provide a Quick Guide for those who access and use the site on a regular basis and wish to stay up to date on latest developments around the world.

Putting World Carshare to work on a daily basis

Here is how we recommend you gear up your daily work routine if you wish to be kept fully and easily up to date on carshare developments world wide:

1. For starters we recommend you switch to Mozilla Firefox as your browser if you have not already done so, and that you have it loaded automatically each day as you start up. Why Firefox" Well simply not only because it is faster and more secure (brrrhhh) than IE, but also because it offers "tabbed browsing" (a terrific research aid) and permits you to start up each day with your preferred selection of sites on line for quick reference. We for example call up all of the sites under The Commons and the New Mobility Agenda, as well as World Carshare, to check with a couple of quick clicks the latest news and developments in each case.

2. Within World Carshare we then tab quickly across the top menu to:
   • News Alerts - carefully tailored to ensure relevant references;
   • Talk Carsharing - to get the latest from our expert forum (the "Idea Factory").
   • Latest Developments - for a very through run-down on international developments with extended coverage.

3. Then if you have time for more on current activities in other language areas and from other international sources, we recommend you click the
   • World Carshare News -- for one click overviews of latest news items in English, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Swedish and Italian; and
   • Carshare Discussions -- reaching out for information from related groups and blogs in a dozen countries.
   • Video Library -- A quick visit here from time to time may serve its uses. If you tire of the introduction, you can simply look at the internal menu just to the left of the current image, marked "World Carshare Video Library". From that you can select the video of interest.

4. We also make a habit of accessing the Forum discussions via the main World Carshare page and menus. Why? Well because we find it a great help in presenting the various bits and pieces of the communications in an easier to understand broader frame and perspective. Click here to the Messages page, for example. Here are a few hints that you may find helpful:
   • We click the "Date" column heading to the top right to make sure we have the latest entries up top for a first scan - using the "Summary" view (top left)
   • We then click the Thread view option (also upper left) which, when we have managed to respect the continuity of the topic headings, gives us a nice cluster of all the communications addressing that topic.
   • Finally there is the very good Search tool for the messages database. Try it for example for "insurance", "Toronto", or "Bradshaw" to get a feeling for how useful this can be for your research or updating.
   • Note: When it is time to post to the group, there is a short Welcoming Note that we kindly ask you to read before sending your first message. We all thank you for that courtesy.

5. Need some help with your project or program? Click here.

6. And to get in touch: Click here.

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   No copyright © 1994-2008 The Commons Last updated on 22 October 2008