Since The Grapevine was launched in September 2007, we now have almost 100 registered users! This is fantastic and is a great start... but we know that there are more people out there that would benefit from and enjoy using The Grapevine. Have you considered showing The Grapevine to your family or friends? Perhaps you are a member of a community group that might be interested? Anyone can use The Grapevine; older people, people with disabilities, carers or their family or friends. If you know someone who might be interested, let them know! The more the merrier!

To try and reach some of these people, The Grapevine has appeared in the Leicester Mercury, it is also available as a link from the homepage of the Age Concern Leicestershire and Rutland website. There has also been a BBC Radio Leicester interview with the project manager Ian Retson and a Grapevine user.

There are lots of plans for future publicity, like an article that is due in Leicestershire Matters, so keep an eye out!

We have added a new conversation to the list "Community Information and Safety". This conversation is for home safety, community safety and local events and initiatives. Some of the messages currently in this conversation include information about distraction burglaries, known scams and cons and warnings issued for the public by Councils, the police, Trading Standards or similar organisations.

If you hear about or are affected by anytthing like this, feel free to post a message for other Grapevine users. If you receive a suspect email, letter, telephone call or caller to your front door, then let others know by posting a new message in this conversation. Also, if you are a member of a Neighbourhood Watch Scheme or community group and think you know of something that would interest others, then please leave a message.

The more people that know about these dangers, the easier it will become to avoid them.

We have added a new feature to the message boxes, called a Character Counter.

We noticed that when people were putting in large amounts of text, sometimes the last few sentences were cut off as we have a limit of 2000 characters per message. This Character Counter will add up the amount of characters you use, while you are typing. Once you get to the 2000 limit, it will stop you from entering any more text. If you paste in text from somewhere else, it will only paste up to 2000 characters, anything over 2000 will be cut off.

If you have a very long message that you want to post in The Grapevine, try removing some of the line breaking or unnecessary text so it will fit within the 2000 character limit.
Note: A character is anything that you type, e.g. a letter, a number, punctuation, a space, a line break etc. are all examples of characters.

Do you have a suggestion for The Grapevine? Perhaps there is something missing that you would like to chat about? Or perhaps you would like to suggest a publicity opportunity in your community? Do you find The Grapevine difficult to use? What would improve your experience of using The Grapevine?

Remember, The Grapevine is all yours. If there is something we can do to make it better, then we want to know about it and we will try our best to make it happen!
Please contact us with any suggestions or feedback, we want to know what you think.

Phone: 0116 305 7538 Fax: 0116 305 8179
Email: grapevine@leics.gov.uk
Website: www.leicscareonline.org.uk/grapevine
Address: CareOnLine, Room 317, County Hall, Leicester, LE3 8RL.

The aims of CareOnLine and the Grapevine are to reduce isolation and improve the quality of life among Older People, Disabled People and their Carers. The service provides help with access to computers and the Internet, training, technical support and a purpose-built website.