As part of a session on "Research Collaboratories, Virtual laboratories and Grid Computing" at the forthcoming ACS meeting (http://oasys2.confex.com/acs/227nm/techprogram/ ) we are presenting on "Semantic Grid computing - the WorldWideMolecularMatrix" Part of this will focus on the theme of RSS which I posted about last year. We have now developed a chemical component to this, now christened CMLRSS, and it is the purpose of this email to invite people if they wish, to join in to this "virtual laboratory", and hence "participate" in the ACS session. The procedure is as follows a) For an introduction to the concept, see eg http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/cmlrss_distrib/ or http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/moin/CmlRss b)We have prepared a distribution kit available either from http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/cmlrss_distrib/ or from http://wwmm.ch.cam.ac.uk/moin/RssClient We emphasize that whilst we believe this to function correctly, it has not yet been comprehensively tested on all platforms, and some components are still at the "late alpha", or "early beta" stage. Needless to say, we welcome comments and reports of bugs! c) You can view the existing CMLRSS grid by installing either Jmol (a 3D molecule viewer) or JChempaint (a 2D editor) as provided, along with the CMLRSS plugin in the kit (these are Java programs so you will have to have Java installed). By running this, you will open around 8 existing RSS "Channels" and hence subscribe to chemical feeds from these sites. You can if you wish aggregate these feeds into one, then filter them down by (e.g. element). You will notice several themes in the existing channels, including an aggregation of the long running "Molecules of the Month" sites, several database sites (NMR, X-Ray, ChemStock) and the World-Wide Molecular Matrix. d) You are also welcome to follow the instructions in the above distribution to create your own CMLRSS channel (I might add that several of the sites mentioned above were our beta testers for this kit; it took only one or two days to get up and running). If you do so, please let us know so that we can add you to the list (one of the many "todo" items is to organise the addition of further channels in a better way). I should end with the observation that as far as we know, this is the furthest that the RSS concept has been pushed into a science field, and another step towards the "semantic web" espoused by Sir Tim Berners-Lee. We would of course love to hear about your experiences with this system. -- Henry Rzepa. +44 (020) 7594 5774 (Voice); +44 (0870) 132 3747 (eFax) http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College London, SW7 2AZ, UK. (Voracious anti-spam filter in operation for received email. If expected reply not received, please phone/fax).