The links that appear at the top of entry forms have been updated, now when you click on "Upload/Use File or Worksheet", the following text is automatically inserted into your posting: Please replace this text with the link to your file. The link can be found in the File Manager This is to help remind you to copy and paste the link code from the File Manager back into your posting. If you have any comments on this feature, please comment on this post.

Nice implementation of Drupal. I like it!

You can now use Google code search to look only at source files. Right now, Mathematica is handled natively (as the drop down on the advanced page shows), but one can still get to maple files by specifying file:\.mpl as a work around. While it can also be used to search plain text files (to search mws files) as well as XML (i.e. mw files), it is less clear how effective searching in those types of documents would be. People seem to have taken to posting to the Google Code Search Group to ask for their favourite missing language.

We have just launched a brand new version of MaplePrimes that has many new features, tweaks and a fresh new visual design. These features are focused on making the site as easy to use as possible. The site will be coming out of beta very soon and we would like to get as much feedback from users as possible. Please comment on this post with any comments that you have about the new version of the site.

New features for the site include:

• Maple Ranking - All users are rated based on how active they are on the site. You get points for every posting that you make to the site. The more points that a user has the higher their Maple Ranking.
• Maplesoft.com login - You can now log into the site using the same information that you use to log into Maplesoft.com. If you already have a MaplePrimes account you can continue to log in as you did before. If you have a Maplesoft.com account with the same e-mail address as your MaplePrimes account your accounts will be linked together.
• Redesigned file manager - All files automatically have their own page that makes it simple to paste the contents into a posting. Images are automatically resized and creating HTML versions of worksheets is easier.
• Toolbar added to entry boxes - Buttons now appear at the top of all entry areas on MaplePrimes. This makes it easy to enter HTML or Maple code. Quick links to the file manager are also provided.
• User profile images - Upload an image to your profile that will appear next to your name on all comments that you place on the site.
• Email pages - A link is now shown on the bottom of every post that lets you forward the post to an e-mail address. You can use this to share a post with a friend or colleague or save it for yourself.

A user's Maple Rank is a way to see how active they are on MaplePrimes. There are four rankings as seen in this table. New users have no Maple rank. You receive points for posting various items on MaplePrimes such as blog entries, forum posts and comments. The more points you have, the higher your Maple rank. This system is similar to the feedback system on eBay, however instead of the points being assigned by users, points come from using the site.

The table below shows the number of points that each user receives for each type of posting.

All entry boxes have a set of buttons shown above them. You can use these buttons to insert the HTML tags required for common formatting on MaplePrimes.

All MaplePrimes users can upload an image that will be displayed next to their name when they post anything to MaplePrimes. You can choose any image that you like, it could be a picture of yourself, your cat, your favorite math expression, whatever.

Images can be up to 85 pixels by 85 pixels. They must be in GIF, JPG, or PNG format.

To upload your picture, click on "my account" on the top left of the page. Then click "Edit". Scroll down until you see the "Picture" section. Click "Browse" and then locate and double click on your image. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and click "Submit". You will then see your image on your user information page.

All posts on MaplePrimes have a link on the bottom labeled "e-mail this". Clicking that link lets you send a link to the post off to an e-mail address. You can use this to send it to a friend or colleague or just e-mail it to yourself to save the link.

MaplePrimes will be unavailable from 1:00 EDT till about 3:00 EDT on Monday, September 25. We will be making some major updates to the site that will greatly improve almost all aspects of the site. Be sure to come back Monday afternoon to check out all of the changes, I'm sure that you will like them!

Hi to All! This is a true top secret story from Ph Dr S.Arlou When I was a callow youth at my first year at the university I was very proud of my high rate in general course of physics. Besides I was rather good at mathematics as I was able to add fractions and find derivative of functions. I had only one thing lift to study – mechanics of materials. To my greatest disappointment I couldn’t manage with my test work on mechanics of materials after twenty attempts! The only consolation I found in the team of the same unfortunate students. It seemed to me that a student with an excellent knowledge of physics had to understand mechanics of materials. Its roots according to my brilliant conjecture™ are hidden exceptionally in physics. What’s the matter? Years passed… More years passed… Some more time passed. All the time I tried to find the answer to my question, how mechanics of materials should be taught so that a child would be able to understand it, at least in general. During these hard meditations I had to be involved into absolutely useless things: post graduation studies, presentation of Ph.D. thesis, teaching at technical university, marriage at last. But Maple with its analytical potential burst into my life as a tornado. The answer came with a lightning speed. Mechanics of materials is short of the power of the power of analytical computing. We need as much of it as our head or laptop can contain. In one word I invented Mechanics of Materials™ only to converge teaching of mechanics of materials to discussions about weather, magazine Forbes ratings and so on… or discussing scientific problems which are far beyond from our standard mechanics of materials curriculum. My congratulations to all students on the occasion of a new academic year! Details
maplesoft.com mechofmat.com

Being new to Maple I can't figure out how to do a 3d plot of a function w/ 3 variables. I want to be able to also do a space curve to show the constraints. Anyway, here's the function. f := proc (x1, x2) options operator, arrow; (339+(-1)*0.1e-1*x1+(-1)*0.3e-2*x2)*x1+(399+(-1)*0.4e-2*x1+(-1)*0.1e-1*x2)*x2-400000-195*x1-225*x2 end proc I am not able to show it. Thanks, Bill

Global Optimization with Maple An Introduction with Illustrative Examples --- An interactive electronic book --- Written by János D. Pintér Published and distributed by Pintér Consulting Services Inc., Halifax, NS, Canada and Maplesoft, a division of Waterloo Maple Inc. Waterloo, ON, Canada © Pintér Consulting Services Inc., 2006 ISBN 1-897310-15-3 Electronic version available by download (from Maplesoft) or by e-mail (from the author). Single user price: USD 99.00; group and site licenses are also available. Please contact the author

If you ever wanted to be able to download the manuals for Maple and other Maplesoft products, you now can download PDF versions of the manuals. Manuals include; Maple, Maple T.A., and MapleNet User Manuals, Maple 10 Quick Reference Cards, Maple Introductory and Advanced Programming Guides, and more. Download them all from the Maplesoft Documentation Center.

In this episode Tom Lee sits down with John McPhee the inventor of Dynaflex Pro, in his office at the University of Waterloo to discuss dynamic models of physical systems, difficulties one might encounter when commercializing a product, and his work on modeling the piano hammer action. Paul Goossens joins us via telephone from the American Control Conference to talk about DynaFlexPro and other engineering products; and we bring you an interesting selection of news and mailbag items.

To mark the end of eleven very fruitful years in residence at the University of Waterloo, I have written a goodbye essay. The title and abstract appear below, along with a link to the full text. The essay describes my long-term research goals and presents my personal vision for the future of the areas of mathematics in which I work.