Welcome home
01/01/2008
Come on in . . . to the redesigned Small Times! We hope you like our new appearance, but look around and you’ll see that the changes are more than cosmetic. We’ve also refocused the magazine to better serve engineers and scientists. Beginning with this issue and increasing in coming months, we’ll include more information on products, processes, and R&D. Small Times will continue to cover more general issues (such as policy, regulation, legal, and funding) targeted to business leaders, and you’ll find some of that in our new Small Tech Exec (p. 32). But we’ll offer more of that coverage online at www.smalltimes.com and leave the print issue to delve deeper into technical concerns around MEMS, nano, and other small tech.
I’d like to point out a few specifics you will find in this and coming issues:
Our news coverage, formerly combined into a section called “In The News,” is now broken into segments. The new department, Fab+Lab (p. 4), covers new tools (both hardware and software) and services that help researchers explore and manufacturers produce. Designer’s Choice (p. 34) looks similar, but addresses those seeking news on the latest products of small-tech development such as MEMS devices and nanomaterials. R+D Update is a holdover from the previous incarnation of Small Times, but it casts a wider net to include more stories. In all of these departments you’ll notice that each story ends with a URL, which you can follow online if you’d like more details and helpful links.
The Small World department is still here, but it’s moved to the back page. And while it still offers a light take on the industry, it also provides a snapshot of some happenings beyond the scope of the other news sections.
As I write this, we are also in the process of redesigning Small Times’ home-page. We’re working to consolidate the daily news updates, enable video, and implement a blog. I mention this mainly to remind you of the wealth of information available on the site. Because it’s updated continuously, the content is always fresh, and because it takes advantage of video and audio (e.g., with Web-casts on topics such as microscopy advances and MEMS and nano sensors) it provides more resources than what you now hold in your hands.
We hope these changes make Small Times more helpful for you both online and in print. And, I hope you’ll let me know your thoughts on both the content and design.
In the meantime, please enjoy this issue, and have a great start to the new year…sure to be filled with exciting developments in small tech. For some insight on that, see our report from NanoCon on p. 15.
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Barbara G. Goode is editor-in-chief of Small Times. She can be reached at [email protected].