Two recent upgrades to memberNet, IEEE’s new online community, have made it easier to share information about yourself with other members. Launched in June [“New Online Directory Opens Doors to Networking,” p. 13], memberNet is available to IEEE members at no charge. It’s similar to other online communities like LinkedIn—members who have submitted a profile can search for others who have similar technical interests, for example. More than 2500 IEEE members had joined by August.

EASIER ACCESS When members create their profile, they choose what to include from a list of personal information, such as technical interests, society memberships, the name of their employer, and their phone, address, and e-mail. They do this by checking boxes to “opt in” to each of these categories, known as preferences. Only the information checked may be viewed by others.

One of the upgrades reduces the number of times a member must log in to the page for managing preferences. Previously, users had to log in to memberNet from the myIEEE site using their IEEE Web account. From there, users would click on the “My opt-in preferences” link, which took them to yet another log-in page.

Now that superfluous log-in page has been eliminated and the “Manage my opt-in preferences” link on memberNet takes them straight to the list of personal information.

OPTIMIZED OPT IN In addition, the process of sharing opt-in information once on the personal info page has gotten less tedious. Previously, when members checked or unchecked the box next to each category of information, they would be redirected to a Web page for that specific category. Thus, a user could not opt-in to multiple categories from one page.

Now when members click the new “Edit preferences” icon on the personal info page, they are taken to a single Web page that contains the list of preferences, and they are able to check multiple categories.

For more information and to sign up for memberNet, visit http://www.ieee.org/web/membership/memberNet.html.