analogZONE Comes Of Age
by Paul McGoldrick
The first birthday of analogZONE passed quietly by as the site was continuing to build, as were the readers and the respect of the industry. In a very few months the site will have been here for two years and it is interesting to look at where it is today as the holidays approach.
The incredibly loyal readers of the site are an essential part of the community that is being built up in this special niche of engineering. And everything that is done from this point on will be to encourage that community to grow and prosper. The design engineers have spoken about they want, the manufacturers know what they want to say to those designers and analogZONE puts those parties together with content only: No selling of any kind, just information in a timely manner.
Have there been any critical steps to report in the making of the ZONEs? Yes, a number: There was the day the first reader letter hit the in-box, the day Google found the site for the first time, the day the first analyst called looking for information, the day that a vendor attributed a $21 M sale directly to a product review, the day a team from a start-up flew 2500 miles just for lunch, the day that Lee Goldberg joined up to complete areas of expertise where there was no coverage, the day the fax machine cranked out the first sponsorship order, the day that a manufacturer reported a unique surge of activity on its own web site when an article from the company was published in analogZONE.
The web has major advantages over print publications: The length of contributed articles is not determined by the number of editorial pages available in the "editorial-to-advertisement ratio." A piece can be run - that will be always be available in archive - as long as it needs to be. There is no editorial calendar, used by print as an advertising tool. There is no unique publication day, and there is no need to tie all the topics to profitability. analogZONE is particularly proud to have Lee Goldberg's green-techZONE addressing areas that many U.S. manufacturers don't really want to face today, but they will in the future when they also realize that sustainable engineering will increase their profits. Whichever company sponsors that ZONE will do so because it will be the right thing for their corporate philosophy.
i/oZONE also represents a unique engineering area that is not addressed by any other publication on a regular basis. The recent shootout was extremely successful in having vendors address areas of difference in how high-speed interfaces should be engineered. And this is an arena that will grow as higher and higher speeds are demanded in environments that are extremely hostile. Is it a suitable topic for analogZONE? Speeds of 5 Gbit/s and higher are, by definition, absolutely analog; the signals being carried may be digital, but it will be analog engineering that will solve the problems, whether it is with modulation schemes or error correction techniques.
So, as the cruise to the end of 2002 aproaches, analogZONE
wishes all its readers, whether they are designers, marketers, sponsors,
analysts, or others, a happy holiday season. Although we're taking a holiday
break until the new year, analogZONE
will still be at this URL in 2003 bringing all the information you need
for your work - without selling you a thing, without ever setting a cookie,
with fast page loading and easy navigation, without registering you for
anything without your express permission, and with absolutely no sponsorships
on the front page. analogZONE's editors
are engineers giving engineers what they really want. But, in the manner
of adults, analogZONE's birthday will
pass with as little fuss as possible.