> Cody Miller wrote:
> > We just launched our new flagship electrical engineering community
> > today.
>
> Who is "we"?
>
> > It is called "EEWeb". The focus of the community is to create
> > a place for hardware engineers to call home.
>
> Isn't that what element14 is supposed to be? At least they don't hide who
> they are, which is Farnell. I have no problem with a company trying to do
> this, but a big problem if they somehow hope for or rely on your ignorance.
>
> > Here is a link to the site:
http://www.eeweb.com/
>
> I see a DigiKey logo by the search bar, and then later after scolling to
> the
> bottom of the page I see "DigiKey Corporation". So are you guys trying to
> do a element14 knockoff? It kinda looks like that.
>
> I think element14 is a great idea, but so far have been dissappointed by
> the
> execution. If you guys can do better, I'm all for it, but I would like it
> stated up front who you are and what you're trying to get out of it.
>
> > We would love some feedback we have spent over two years developing
> > this site.
>
> OK, I'm writing these comments as I'm signing up and exploring the site.
>
> I think your intellectual property rights license is unreasonable:
>
> "Content that is covered by Intellectual Property rights like
> photos, schematics, files, and videos, you agree to specifically
> give us the following permission: you grant us a non-exclusive,
> transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free, worldwide license to
> use any IP content that you post on or in connection with EEWeb
> ("IP License"). This IP license ends when you delete your IP
> content or account."
>
> If you want people to post meaningful stuff, you have to let them retain
> ownership. You might say that anything posted is automatically granted a
> free unlimited right to be copied, but otherwise giving specifically you
> unlimited IP rights is ridiculous. If it's to simplify letting people use
> the information on the site, then there is no need to grant only you the
> rights. This means you're trying to get away with something hoping most
> people won't notice or forget. For example, if I mention a technique I've
> patented, does that mean you end up with rights to use my patent for free?
> Clearly that's unreasonable. Even worse, you apparently then have the
> right
> to license it to others.
>
> I can understand posting on your site constitutes "public disclosure", but
> unless the whole point is for you to grab IP from unsuspecting
> contributors,
> you need to fix your policy.
>
> I see on the profile page after creating a account that there is a way to
> add a "quote", apparently to things you will post later. Do we really need
> to let people inflict this content free drivel on others. This would be a
> nice opportunity to make a clean break from such crap.
>
> I thought I'd upload a profile picture, but nothing is telling me the
> aspect
> ratio of the maximum space to display it. Even better would be to know the
> exact pixel dimensions you will use so I can format a picture to look best
> on your system. The grayed out head and shoulders look square, so I'll
> upload a square picture and make it large enough so that when you shrink it
> you hopefully won't add too many artifacts.
>
> I uploaded a 1024x1024 square picture and you seem to have shrunk it well
> enough, but it's **GRAY**!! You never heard of color pixels? Do you back
> up your stuff on paper tape too!?
>
> Now that I've uploaded a picture, I was going to poke around and possibly
> set other parameters in my profile. But now any way to get there seems to
> be suddenly gone. Oh, I see it now, there's a "edit your profile" link
> right below the picture. That used to be "edit your picture", which is
> probably why I didn't notice it right away. Now that I know it's there, I
> guess this is OK, although it was confusing at first.
>
> I had previously selected the "professional" radio button before deciding
> to
> upload a picture, but now that selection is gone. Argh, doing it again. I
> see things I can set like title, summary, interests, and the like, but I'm
> reluctant to do any of that without having a better understanding of where
> and how these things will be displayed. Just as a test, I created a link
> called "Resume" to my online resume. I'm not doing more until I see how
> this is presented.
>
> Enough with my setup, now it's time to see what's here. One thing such a
> site can offer is a good set of web forums properly organized in a
> comprehensible and findable tree structure. This is where element14 fails
> miserably. There is just disorganized stuff all over the place and you
> never have a feel you know what all is there or where you currently are
> within whatever structure there might be.
>
> Accross the top there are a bunch of links like Home, Design news,
> Discussions, etc.
>
> Home seems to be a very busy looking (that's not a compliment) bunch of
> fluff you're trying to push on us rather than anything I care about.
> However, I'm not sure what I expected there anyway. I guess a introduction
> and overview of the site to help make sense of the chaos instead of adding
> to it would have been nice. Oh well.
>
> I'm most interested in a nicely organized set of forums, so let's see
> what's
> here and how hard it is to find and make sense of. Trying the
> "discussions"
> link, since that seems the most likely to lead me there of the presented
> choices. Hmm, I see exactly 4 "catagories". Maybe because the site is
> new,
> but I would have expected you to create the empty hierarchy of topics and
> let users fill them in. Am I looking at only the topics people have
> posted?
> If so, where's the topic hierarchy? What else is here? Why are you
> telling
> me the number of "replies" a catagory has? That makes no sense. Posts
> have
> replies, possibly you can call posts in a thread replies of the thread, but
> I don't see how a "catagory" should have "replies". Catagories should have
> threads and possibly sub-catagories. I'm already confused.
>
> Clicking on "ANALOG" to see what it is. I see a question by you about
> current sensing. This is clearly showing me what I call a "thread", which
> is very misleading to call a "catagory". I also now have to make my
> browser
> window wider to eliminate the horizontal scroll bar. I hate that. HTML
> should fit my window, not the other way around. It's *my* screen, not
> yours. Now I see the reason for the width is that there are a whole bunch
> of ads along the right side. Don't do that. You'd do far better to
> advertise your stuff by association, not by getting in my face. Now I see
> that the thread posts are a fixed size in pixels. There's no excuse for
> that. Let it flow according to my window size. You don't know how big my
> screen is or how much other stuff I want to see at the same time. HTML is
> designed to flow. It really pisses me off when a web designer decides what
> the formatting on my screen should look like.
>
> Now I see your post has a small picture in its lower left corner. At that
> size I can see it's a opamp circuit but can't make out any of the writing
> or
> other details. I'm guessing it's a thumbnail to a larger picture you
> posted. Why can't it at least fill the width of the post area. What's the
> point of showing me a small unusable thumbnail if I have to expand it every
> time?
>
> Clicked on the thumbnail and the full size picture popped up right over
> part
> of your post and a part of the next post below. The schematic is now
> clearly readable, but apparently I can't look at it and the other posts at
> the same time. The image itself is actually smaller than the width of the
> post area, so there is no reason it couldn't have been displayed in line.
>
> I'm now going to reply to your post, mostly to test drive the process. I
> don't really have anything to say, but I'll try to come up with something
> as
> a excuse to do a reply. Hmm. Now I notice that your post has a "discuss
> this question" button (why do you assume the first post of a thread is
> always a question? That seems wrong) and other posts have a "Reply" link..
> I'm not sure what the difference is and can't imagine why there should be
> one, but I'll try the "discuss.." button.
>
> OK, that brings up a little edit box immediately below your post. That
> makes sense, but how do I quote whatever part of your post I want to
> respond
> to? I don't like just blurting out something without giving a little of
> the
> context, especially since there are other replies and it will get confusing
> quickly who said what to whom. I wrote some rather content free stuff to
> your original vague (I suspect you were just seeding the forum anyway)
> question and hit "submit reply".
>
> I now see my post at the bottom of the thread, but am bothered about its
> context not being clear. It's not obvious I replied to your original post
> as apposed to one of the other replies. I care about neatness, clarity,
> and
> such details. If the system won't allow me to post that way, I won't use
> the site.
>
> Oh well, gotta get back to some real work now. I guess at this point I
> feel
> about EEweb similar to element14. It's a great idea but ideas are cheap
> and
> it's all about the execution. EEweb looks promising and already perhaps a
> little clearer than element14. I didn't find what I was really hoping to,
> which was a well organzied set of forums with all the normal features one
> expects of forums. However, the site is new and it looks promising. I'll
> keep a eye on it over the next few weeks to see if anything materializes
> such that I feel comfortable using it.
>
>
> ********************************************************************
> Embed Inc, Littleton Massachusetts,
http://www.embedinc.com/products
> (978) 742-9014. Gold level PIC consultants since 2000.
eeweb.com> wrote:
