Introducing iMechanica

Here is a post that you can email to a colleague to help publicize iMechanica.

Dear Colleague:

I'd like to tell you about iMechanica (http://www.imechanica.org), and hope to get you involved. Please register for a free account. It will only take you 18 seconds. You will receive a password in an email, and you are on your way to be an iMechanician. (Your email address will not be visible to other users.)

iMechanica aims to use the Internet to enhance communications among mechanicians, and to pave a way to evolve all knowledge of mechanics online. iMechanica is hosted on a server at Harvard University. iMechanica is free: writers are free to post, and readers are free to read. Here are some numbers of iMechanica: node/559.

You can read every post without registering. To write in iMechanica, you need to register for a free account. You can post findings in your lab and observations of a working day, exhilarating or otherwise. You can post advertisements of conferences and jobs. You can upload preprints of your recent papers, a practice permitted by most journals. You can even post a preprint of a paper already published in a journal, so that your paper gets one more chance to find its readers. You can also post your lecture notes, or post a question about mechanics in a
forum. Really, you can post anything you see fit.

Why do you want to post in iMechanica? Because you love mechanics and because you want to help others learn mechanics. Well, these may be part of the reason. Perhaps more importantly, you would like to help yourself by helping others to discover you and your work. Suppose you post an entry of interest to other mechanicians, say an entry on an upcoming conference. If a reader is impressed by the quality of your post, perhaps she would like to know who you are. Click your name attached to the post, and she lands on your profile, which has the URL of your homepage. Also appearing on the post is a link to your blog. She will see your recent research if you have posted any. She might be so impressed and decides to subscribe to the RSS feed of your blog. You now have a fan for your work. She is notified whenever you publish anything in your blog.

If you are concerned that you may not find useful things if everyone is posting, you should try the search engine of iMechanica, or just Google. Perhaps it is also time for you to discover RSS feeds and social bookmarking. With all the creative energy pouring into the technology of the Internet, it is safe to say that the development of the Internet will far out pace that of mechanics. If a post is worth finding, you will find it.

Traditional modes of communication in our community under serve students and industrial practitioners. iMechanica aims to provide an easy platform for students and industrial practitioners, as well as academics. Creative uses of mechanics in industries have already been heavily discussed in iMechanica.

iMechanica runs as a common, like Boston Common or Central Park. A common belongs to no one in particular, but belongs to whoever uses it. There is time to relax in a common, there is time to build one. Both bring you enjoyment. The best way to help building iMechanica is to think what is good for you. Let software and the collective behavior of all users take care of the community. And so, my fellow mechanicians: ask not what you can do for iMechanica - ask what iMechanica can do for you.

Features in iMechanica are powerful yet simple to use. However, they are difficult to describe in words, just as it is difficult to describe how to ride a bicycle by an email. So, why not explore? Stop pondering over this post, and go straight to visit http://www.imechanica.org.