My daily routine involves a look at what's new in academic Math via the ArXiv (through the convenient Front interface at UC-Davis), and in academic CS via the lesser-known Computing Research Repository. Actually, I use the nice feature both have to have an email (with links) sent to me every weekday with new posts in my areas of interest.

Maplesoft.com recently posted a new user story that describes how Maple was used by a German company that develops, produces, and distributes towing kite wind propulsion systems for modern means of sea travel and transportation.

Here is a quote from the company:

“SkySails is grateful to Maplesoft, because Maple saved us a lot of time. Using Maple was very easy and quick. The computations we used are probably very basic for Maple, but they were extremely effective for SkySails. When testing the simulator, the correctness of the mathematical model is crucial. With Maple, there was nothing to worry about!”

Click here to read the whole story.

Unforunately, I have had to remove the ability for users to upload HTML files to MaplePrimes. We recently had a user upload 630 HTML files that all had links to their Viagra and Cialis ads. In the 8 months that the File Manager has been available, only one user has uploaded an HTML file, so I doubt that this functionality will be missed. If you need to post HTML to MaplePrimes, you can always just copy and paste its source code into a posting. If you have any comments on this, please add them below.

First, my profile got erased and replaced with some outdated information - like I am working at Tennessee Tech etc. I don't work there anymore (or anywhere else) since June. All my favorite mathematicians/scientists got erased and I have to think again about that and try to recall who was included there. Fortunately, I didn't have this problem with my favorite performance artists etc. - the entry got erased, but I easily restored it. Next, clicking on Dr. produces an empty page titled People who have the title <em>Dr. </em> instead of a list including me and other Drs.

According to the help page ?RandomTools,integer ,

• By default, the flavor integer describes a random integer in the range -499999999994 .. 499999999994, inclusive.

In reality, Maple produces only positive integers, in the range between 1 and 999999999989,

t:=RandomTools:-Generate(list(integer,20));

  t := [395718860534, 193139816415, 22424170465, 800187484459,

        427552056869, 842622684442, 412286285840, 996417214180,

        386408307450, 694607189265, 773012980023, 730616292946,

        106507053657, 396412723003, 944913350029, 210936428922,

f:=proc() args end proc:
convert(f,CompSeq);

Error, (in convert/CompSeq) invalid subscript selector

g:=proc(n) if n=3 then true else false fi end:
convert(g,CompSeq);

Error, (in convert/CompSeq) invalid procedure. Can't convert to CompSeq

maplemint(`convert/CompSeq`);

I just uploaded a small change to the theme of MaplePrimes. Now when you click on any of the tabs on the top right of the page, the red color will stay when you are still visiting a page from that section of the site.

Also, when you click on a link into a section the appropriate tab will become active: Click on a forum post, the forum tab is active, check out a blog entry, the blog tab will be active.

A small change, but it makes the site a bit more attractive.

Maplesoft has just created a new promotion Tell Us Your Story. If you submit a story about how Maple and other products have helped you out, you can win an iPod. Free iPods will be given to three randomly selected people who submit their story here. http://www.maplesoft.com/community/user_experience/ Here is the text from the page: Has any Maplesoft product helped you? Tell us about it! You could win an iPod! Maplesoft is always looking for great ideas and techniques from our user base. If Maple or any of our other products has helped you work more efficiently, creatively, or just simply better with your mathematics, we want to hear from you.

 

Update: The contest has ended. Thank you for your submissions.

http://maplesoft.com/applications/app_center_view.aspx?AID=2017

Answering to Definite Integral post, I tried to do the first example in ?inttrans[fourier],

assume(a>0):
inttrans[fourier](3/(a^2 + t^2),t,w);

         Pi (exp(a~ w) Heaviside(-w) + exp(-a~ w) Heaviside(w))
       3 ------------------------------------------------------
                                   a~

using int,

int(3/(a^2+t^2)*exp(-I*w*t),t=-infinity..infinity);

                                  0

No comment. Well, I tried another example from the same help page,

inttrans[fourier](1/(4 - I*t)^(1/3),t,2+w);

A new version of the File Manager was just uploaded. This version now can convert more files to HTML in addition to Maple .mw worksheets. Now if you upload a .txt .mpl, .m, .html, .htm, .maplet, .mm, or .csv file the contents will automatically be converted to HTML. This allows you to view the file directly on MaplePrimes without having to download the file. You can copy the HTML code into your postings, allowing people to see your text files formatted correctly in your postings. When you upload an HTML file, the file's formatting is left intact. But the file's <head> section is removed so that when you paste the file in, it will not cause problems with the formatting of the site.

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.