I just fixed several of the MaplePrimes badges. Two of the badges, 2-Dimensional and Historian weren't being awarded when they should have been. This has been fixed, and now two people have earned the 2-Dimensional badge, and 91 people, the Historian badge.

I also updated the text for the "Popular Post" and "Popular Question" badges. They both now state that the question needs to be viewed by over 1000 people. The number that is displayed at the bottom of Posts and Questions is the total number of views, so refreshing the page counts as another view. To earn the badge, 1000 unique IP addresses need to view your Post or Question. There are several items that have almost 500 unique visitors thus far, so in a couple of weeks, the first people will start earning these badges.

I've just published an update to MaplePrimes that fixes a few minor bugs and adds one new feature:

• Your Bio is now displayed on your profile page. This can be edited on your edit profile page. 
• The paging between Answers, Questions and Posts on a user's profile is now working.
• The rendered image from the 2-D math button is now up 300px wide, which should cause most math to appear better.
• When creating a post, the date is now stored correctly instead of 4 hours off as it was before.
• The "Mark Page as Read" button now works on the Recent tab.

From the outset, the goal of MaplePrimes was to provide the Maple & MapleSim user communities with a platform to ask questions, share knowledge and to collaborate with other users.  And for the most part, the site has exceeded these goals.  Since its inception in 2005, we have received tens of thousands of posts from over 10,000 members, and we are privileged to have accumulated a group of dedicated, knowledgeable users who have become the heart of this community.

I thought that some of you would be interested in Tom Lee's latest blog post at Maplesoft.com regarding MapleSim 4, and what it means to both Tom and Maplesoft.   As always, your comments and thoughts are greatly appreciated.

You can read his post here.

The MaplePrimes community continues to provide very helpful feedback about how well the product is working (and how well it isn’t!).  Thank-you.  We always appreciate your taking the time to report these problems so we can make our products better.  Maple 14 includes several fixes that were made specifically in response to reports made from MaplePrimes, including improvements in:
•    Polygon plots
•    StringTools
•    fsolve
•    Density plots
•    Operator overloading
•    Typesetting involving mods in 2-D math
•    Extensions to DocumentTools[Do] for programmatic refresh of components
•    Searching online help

We've been working hard on the brand new version of MaplePrimes over the last few months. I am glad to announce that the new version will be launching publicly next week. The new site fixes many of the requests we've received from MaplePrimes users over the years, and adds new features that we think will make the new site easier to use, and a better way to get and share information about Maple and MapleSim.

I am happy to let you know that we have just released Maple 14 and MapleSim 4.

Maple 14 provides access to the new MapleCloud Document Exchange, which gives you an easy way to share your work with your colleagues, your students, and the entire Maple community. Other new features include more mathematics for engineering applications; performance improvements; the Maple Toolbox for MATLAB®, which is now included with Maple 14; a new numerical differential equations solver, the Cash-Karp pair; an enhanced point probe for 2-D plots; more task templates; and the ability to execute Maple documents programmatically. To name a few. See What’s New in Maple 14 for more information, and to watch a movie about the MapleCloud.

MapleSim 4 comes with a new 3-D construction environment for multibody modeling, which lets you build, visualization, and interact with a 3-D representation of your model. It also provides flexible probe management tools, a new semi-stiff solver, new components, and an enhanced Project Manager feature which organizes subsystems, probes, and attachments. For the full list, and to see a movie showing the new 3-D construction environment, see What’s New in MapleSim 4.

Maple T.A. 6 is now available. It includes connectivity with Moodle™, a popular open source course management system. It also includes a new web services API, so you can integrate TA with other course management systems, include custom-built solutions. And of course, the Maple T.A. Connector for Blackboard Software® has also been updated to work with Maple T.A. 6. Other new features include a translatable interface for international language support, increased performance, and an enhanced question repository.

As of today, Maplesoft has an office in Germany, allowing us to provide local sales and support to customers in Germany and Austria.  With the opening of this office, Scientific Computers will no longer act as Maplesoft's reseller in these territories.

Additional details are contained in the press release.

I just wanted to let you know that our recent webinar with IEEE & NI, “Accelerating the Model-based Development & Enabling HIL Testing for Mechatronic Systems” is now available on demand through IEEE’s website. If you would like to learn more about the webinar or if you would like to (re)watch, click here.

The new version of MaplePrimes is rapidly approaching the finish line and I am happy to announce that we will be launching it to a group of Beta testers (edit: the Beta program is now live).  A reminder that if you would like to participate in the Beta, please send me a private message and I will add you to the list.  For those who have already asked to participate, thank you.  Everyone will receive a message tomorrow with details about how to access the Beta site.

Back in September, I posted an announcement about our plans for the new version of MaplePrimes.  Well a few months and many, many hours of development later, we are approaching the end point!

The Maplesoft corporate blog has seen the addition of many interesting new posts recently, and I thought I'd share a few of the most recent ones with MaplePrimes.

Visualizing a Parallel Field in a Curved Manifold
Posted by Robert Lopez, Maple Fellow

Speaking of Languages...
Posted by Tom Lee, Chief Evangelist

An analytical model of mornings in the Wright household
Posted by Derek Wright, Application Engineer

MaplePrimes is a community where thousands of members share their expertise and knowledge of Maplesoft products, and of math & technical topics in general.  To help nurture the environment, and to maintain a quality resource for MaplePrimes members, we have decided to extend content moderation to the community.

I expect that the roles of moderators will evolve as we move forward, but to start, moderator’s will have the following capabilities:

• Remove commercial messages (spam) or otherwise inappropriate or offensive content as described  in the MaplePrimes Community Guidelines.
• Re-categorize posts to the correct forum category.
• Select high quality blog posts or message topics to appear on the front page of MaplePrimes.
• Correct bad formatting within messages.