Most of you would probably not be surprised to learn, that as a scientist and developer of a large scientific software project, utilized by many laboratories around the world, John receives a fairly large number of emails every day requesting support, suggesting development ideas, or to discuss EPMA in general. Whilst it has always been his desire to provide everyone with the support and discussion they need to accomplish the varied and complex tasks that their work/research requires, a personal response to every email has become somewhat untenable. So, if he has ever responded to an email from anyone, with a brief: "good question: please post to the forum here", please try to empathize and understand his motives as outlined below. For starters, here are our latest user forum statistics (you'll need to log in to see these):
http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?action=statsAn Internet forum, specifically the Probe Software user forum, can have many uses and benefits. Broadly it is a place for the community to exchange and share scientific and technical ideas of general interest to the field of EPMA. Resources and information can be shared. Questions and their answers can be available for all to benefit from. It is a place for open, casual and thoughtful scientific and technical discussions about EPMA.
The forum is a great place for planning the development of new compositional standards (note that the RbTiOPO4 standard is now available for general distribution), helping each other with hardware problems (both JEOL and Cameca), sharing interesting anecdotes, remarkable results or confounding problems and soliciting suggestions. It’s a place where students and new users can learn from their more experienced peers. EPMA events, job openings, resumes and other announcements can also be posted. For example, here are recent job listings:
http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=3.msg2827#msg2827and here are new standards available for distribution:
http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=301.msg2872#msg2872Additionally, the Probe Software user forum is a place where questions regarding our Probe for EPMA, Probe Image and CalcImage software (including our free EPMA utilities CalcZAF and Standard), can be asked and answered, so that all benefit from the questions and answers. Because the forum keeps a complete thread of the topics with pictures, attachments and links for future reference, the more questions and answers that are posted on the user forum, the more that information will be available to the forum’s search capabilities. This helps our technical support specialists and myself improve our responses, provide more examples and further explain things, instead of just repeating ourselves, and this method delivers the information more readily available to our other users. Time spent on the forum then becomes a part of not only Probe Software's technical support and but also in building scientific understanding and community.
Other Probe Software user forum uses include bug reports and bug fix notifications, new feature announcements, new feature requests, sharing features and ideas that folks are finding helpful and the posting of software tutorials. These step by step tutorials are created, by Dr. Karsten Goemann and available only on the user forum, to highlight particular functions and features in the software, in somewhat more depth, for new and experienced users alike. The forum is also a place where those interested in what Probe Software has to offer, can easily find out for themselves. See the PFE "wish list" topic here:
http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php?topic=71.0Please let us know how you feel about the Probe Software user forum. We most certainly welcome any suggestions on how we can make the Probe Software user forum even better. Take care and thank-you all for your time and support!
Regards,
The Probe Software Users Forum Team.
http://probesoftware.com/smf/index.php
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