ICE Cool changes! Thanks Jim!

We recently reported several changes in publishing circles in Europe and America, Gary Mintchell's withdrawal fro Automation World, Walt Boyes returning to Spitzer & Boyes and subsequent arrangement with Nick Denbow for the production of Europe's Industrial Automation Insider. Now we learn of changes in ICEnews, the useful newsletter being published for years down-under by Jim Russell.

The last ICE?

The ICEnews February Edition arrived in our mailbox this afternoon. Take a look at it here. Readers are encouraged to "scroll down to your favourites and click on the many free links and really useful information." Focus this quarter is on Design Engineering for Instrumentation, Control, Electrical, Fire & Gas and Safety Instrumented Systems, Flow, Fire and Gas, Instrument Standards, Level, our ever popular Safety Instrumented Systems and much more!

But there is also news on his plans for the future from Jim:

An Important Message from ICEnews
Not many of you will be aware that ICEweb and ICEnews are produced as a free engineering resource for our Wonderful Automation Discipline by myself as a “one man band” on a Semi-Retired Basis. Unfortunately the volume of work has been growing owing to the demands caused by Search Engine Optimisation, Maintaining 250 odd pages, adding new ones and a longer term project of changing the format from FrontPage to an alternative. The small mount of revenue that comes in from page sponsorship just about pays for the costs associated with running the site, however this does not particularly concern me as the site was always about “giving back”. Thus I am afraid something “has to give” and hence I have decided that ICEnews will no longer be issued quarterly. The only way that it can continue is by unpaid volunteer effort, so if you are a retired Instrument Engineer looking for a challenge and like me interested in "giving back" please contact me. I must thank all the Sponsors over the years and of course YOU... The Readers for your support. Notwithstanding this I am considering replacing ICEnews with a blog and will keep you posted with any developments in that regard. ICEweb will continue as normal.

All of us in the Automation discipline owe a debt of gratitude to people like Jim and the others who embraced the "new" technological possibilities provided by the internet.

May ICEweb and his blog prosper in the future.