Looks good, works better
Welcome to Electronic Products Vol. 47, No. 8. What keeps a publication that has been serving engineers for over 40 years vibrant is a willingness to keep pursuing excellence, even if that means asking its readers to part with a familiar arrangement of words and pictures and accept a new�and we believe better�design.
This issue represents the first significant design change for Electronic Products in quite some time. We had our last big overhaul in 1988. This time we've skipped the freshening and moved directly into a full-blown introduction of new typefaces and a dramatic rethinking of the use of graphical elements.
Even in a subjective area such as design we, too, are engineers and have an inherent belief in our ability to quantify the needs and wants of our audience. To provide the necessary data points we conducted a reader study to determine what you find most useful. The results convinced us we can satisfy your current and future part knowledge requirements only by making some changes in how we present the information you need to know.
We've improved the look and feel of Electronic Products to create a more satisfying and convenient reader experience. The contents page is more open and better organized.
We've added visual cues to each section of the magazine so you can find individual features and departments more easily. Fonts, photos, and other graphics have been revised to be more readable. We also trimmed a couple of less-well-read sections to give our content sensei Rich Pell and his staff the flexibility of adding more material to our core new product departments, which for the first time carry the names of the responsible editor or editors.
For all of this, allow me a moment to offer a tip of the cap to Don Wilber, Bill Hennessey, and EP's entire art department staff. Judging by the number of new variations they created for our editors to look at, our art team must not require any sleep.
While we have stylistically massaged our presentation, you have our pledge that there will be no change in our longstanding quest to provide the relevant and timely product information you need to make informed buying decisions. As always, each item or article provides copious retrieval information to allow you to contact the manufacturer about a specific product of interest.
While we were planning this new look and architecture we've also kept our eye on the past by once again welcoming in the New Year with our Product of the Year (POY) awards, reported in this issue.
Although it has been increasingly imitated and shamelessly copied, within the EOEM space EP's Product of the Year is the original. If you can remember when we started POY you may still carry a torch for Disco and perhaps you even have a white suit stored up in the attic. To put it bluntly, and using the jargon of TV networks, if you were an EE when we originated POY you've slipped into the pharmaceutical demographic. (It's OK; so has your friendly Editorial Director).
Now in its 29th year, our Product of the Year awards once again recognize outstanding electronic components introduced during the preceding year that offer any or all of the following qualities:
* A significant advancement in a technology or its application
* Innovative design
* A substantial achievement in price/performance
Remember, too, that we are not comparing the contenders against each other. You could not realistically compare and contrast a microcontroller or a power amp with a spectrum analyzer. We are looking at how well each product measures up in technical significance and value.
As usual, picking winners was a difficult task and this year it took several weeks to complete the POY evaluation. Armed with datasheet specs and critical observations, the editors of Electronic Products pored through the many impressive products introduced in 2004.
When it comes to supporting the products they nominate, EP editors are famously crabby, bickering over even minute elements of design and performance. In doing so, they select winners without consideration of pedigree or brand name. It's the electronic component, IC, or system's level of sophistication and its closeness to the cutting edge of design technology alone that counts.
And the winners are …
Murray Slovick, Editorial Director
mslovick@hearst.com
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