My net taming feature is now available on the (other) ChemWeb site in The Alchemist magazine. Various chemweb people helped on this - hence the plug

http://www.chemweb.com/alchem/alchem97/catalyst/ct_current_nettamer_full.htm...

I enjoyed reading David's comprehensive survey of net-taming sites. I do wonder however how many of these various experiments will be preserved in any sense at all for posterity (ie 3+ years for now), or whether, like a telephone conversation, it does not matter that they are not (even newspapers are archived). As a component of the ECTOC conferences (now in the final stages of production for ECTOC-3) we have included as an adjunct to the actual proceedings themselves, what we considered to be high quality "experiments" in using Web-based techniques, but "shrink-wrapped" to a CD. This is another form of "net-taming", but one with an ISBN number, and one which eg CAS hopefully has no difficulty in reviewing and perhaps abstracting, and which should have no difficulty in still being around in 20 years time. (PS Look out for the CD attached to an RSC journal in 2 months or so time). Which raises the issue of a forum such as this one. I did think about whether to include the accumulated postings of 2 years worth of this list, but issues such as how much editorial work could/should be done on the postings, whether one should contact each and every poster for their permission etc, arrise. The "legal" difficulties prevented such inclusion. However, unless some mechanism is found, this list, along with lots others, and with "collections" of best sites, will be only a dim and distant memory in 5 years time. Some would say, "just as well"; others might wish to have material with which to review the progress of the Net. Is anyone else doing anything for "posterity" in this sense? I would love to hear from you. Dr Henry Rzepa, Dept. Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY; mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk; Tel (44) 171 594 5774; Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. URL: http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa/ chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (u)nsubscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)