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AAW Goes Green with Online Journals

Ed Davidson

Ed Davidson

Joined
Jun 16, 2004
Messages
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Location
Colorado Springs, CO
All current AAW members now have online access, through the Members Area of our website, to every issue of the American Woodturner - 25 years of online Journals, at your fingertips!

And, AAW is now offering a full membership for $38 per year to those who would prefer to receive the Journal electronically, though the AAW website - passing the savings of not mailing the Journal on. Click on this link to read the full announcement from AAW President, Tom Wirsing.

If you're not a current AAW member, and would like to see how the online Journal works, click on this link to view a short "How to Navigate the Online Journal" video.
 
better and better

Ed , the benefits of membership are really kicking into high gear lately.
Not so long ago I was openly critical of some of the "benefits" which were promoted, but which actually at the time did not exist. Notably the vendor discount program.
Now, though, we've gone to six issues a year, the vendor program is online and growing, the entire history of the magazine is online for member use...and more....
This is wonderful, and I tip my hat to all who have worked to make it so.
It's fast becoming a bigger and bigger bang for the buck to send in the membership dues. This can only have a positive effect on everything. For all of us.

Well done everyone. Truly.
 
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I guess that it is OK, but I was hoping for a more user friendly PDF format that I might be able to print rather than the Adobe Flash presentation. I find the "Cool Iris" type scrolling pages at the bottom difficult to grab the right page since they are shifting and changing size as the cursor passes over them. Personally, I like to read stuff from a piece of paper that I can carry around with me and write margin notes rather than being stuck in front of a computer monitor.
 
Bill,

At the $48 (or higher) membership level, you will continue to receive the hard-copy version of the Journal in your mailbox every two months. The "virtual" online Journal is offered to all members in addition to the hard copy.
 
AAW "green"

Here we go again.....
The "dues", $40, then $45, then $48, and on and on and....
Now the "green", now $38, then maybe $48, then $58, and on and on and....
In the future, maybe discontinue the subscription, going to single issue price, maybe $75 or so?
Then, in addtion to the "dues" of $38 for the "green" they gotta start a fee for each edition, then when that becomes not so profitable, tack on a download fee per article, and on, and on....
Which ought to just thrill the advertisers, who have jumped ship.....
Beginning to see a pattern here, all you subscribers who were not allowed to vote on any of the above?
Methinks the powers that be will in all likelyhood jerk my membership to shut me up. Only time will tell.....
A parting suggestion...change the title on the cover to "TITANIC"... after all, it only took one sexual pervert to gripe about the logo to create a panic to re-do the cover, so that it would not hurt the sensitive of us. R.I.P.:mad:
 
Thanks!

This is a great step forward in making the years of good information available to relatively new members, and saving paper to boot.

We are a Star chapter, and require AAW membership to join our chapter This will make the value of AAW membership to our chapter members even more apparent. I appreciate the efforts of the board and the AAW administrative staff in balancing the different interests and making this valuable material available to members. I hope, and believe, that this service will attract more members.

I fully understand making a reasonable attempt to protect journal articles from widespread unauthorized copying. Maybe in the future a way will be found to make copies for shop use, but this step does the job very nicely. While the flash player takes a bit of getting used to, I am overwhelmingly glad to have access to the information. Thanks again to all who made this possible.
 
Ed Davidson said:
Bill,

At the $48 (or higher) membership level, you will continue to receive the hard-copy version of the Journal in your mailbox every two months. The "virtual" online Journal is offered to all members in addition to the hard copy.
Click to expand...

I wasn't really griping about a freebie, but just expressing my druthers that a PDF seems a bit more user-friendly even though it is not quite as sexy as an Adobe Flash Dance. I think that the younger guys are a bit more into reading everything online -- even their newspapers. I may occasionally look at the online version if I want to get a sneak preview or find an old article (even though I have a fairly complete set of back issues.

Mr. Don said:
Here we go again.....
The "dues", $40, then $45, then $48, and on and on and....
Now the "green", now $38, then maybe $48, then $58, and on and on and....
In the future, maybe discontinue the subscription, going to single issue price, maybe $75 or so?
Then, in addtion to the "dues" of $38 for the "green" they gotta start a fee for each edition, then when that becomes not so profitable, tack on a download fee per article, and on, and on....
Which ought to just thrill the advertisers, who have jumped ship.....
Beginning to see a pattern here, all you subscribers who were not allowed to vote on any of the above?
Methinks the powers that be will in all likelyhood jerk my membership to shut me up. Only time will tell.....
A parting suggestion...change the title on the cover to "TITANIC"... after all, it only took one sexual pervert to gripe about the logo to create a panic to re-do the cover, so that it would not hurt the sensitive of us. R.I.P.:mad:
Click to expand...

Are we waxing eloquent? The last time that I checked, the cost of all periodicals (and most everything else) has been increasing steadily for quite a few years. I am sort of amazed at how much "data" could be extrapolated out of the simple statement about the current cost of dues.

Malcolm Tibbetts said:
Did Mr Woodward get out of bed on the wrong side this morning?
Click to expand...

Well you know it is going to be a rough day when the wrong side of the bed is next to a wall. 😀
 
Bill Boehme said:
I guess that it is OK, but I was hoping for a more user friendly PDF format that I might be able to print rather than the Adobe Flash presentation. I find the "Cool Iris" type scrolling pages at the bottom difficult to grab the right page since they are shifting and changing size as the cursor passes over them. Personally, I like to read stuff from a piece of paper that I can carry around with me and write margin notes rather than being stuck in front of a computer monitor.
Click to expand...

Bill, I agree, for me, having the old issues as FLASH rather then PDF is of zero value (but then I bought CD's many older journals years ago)

Ralph
 
I think the $38 online membership is a great idea. You got my money and I love the online access to the back issues of the magazines. For those that are complaining about the format, switch to "Paper View" - very similar to PDF.

Great idea! Should attract a lot of new members.
 
I am a newbe & was on line today checking out the journals. I think its great to be able to view and get information from current and past issues. Great idea.
 
thank you for the opportunity, i have only looked at some covers and their descriptions, what was done on the equipment of the time is very humbling
 
Recently Diane (my wife of 36 years) and I have been moving my woodturning stuff to a different shop.
She has been sorting all my magazine and tools and fasteners & on & on.
I think she may be incouraging me to start taking magazines electronicly.
Boxes and boxes of magazines.

Going with an electronic membership does not mean that I can't pay a little extra (maybe upgrade to a business membership or something.
The AAW currently has a lot of benefits. Good work people.

As President of Flatland Woodturners (not a Star Chapter like the other club I belong to), I keep telling them of about the benefits as they come up.

I recently sent out a message to all the Flatland Woodturners members letting them know about all the new benefits added this year. 6 issues of The Woodturners Journal, Electronic Membership, Merchant and vender discounts, the end-of-month drawing and the end-of-year drawing.
I incourage other club Presidents and Newletter editors to do the same.

Man I sure think this would incourage them to join the AAW.
Then I would have more people to draw from for doing club demonstrations.

Thank you AAW
Jerry
 
I think that making past journals available is a great way to add value to the members! You can be sure that I will point this new benefit out at chapter meetings for folks who may not have joined yet.

It think the adobe flash takes a little getting used to but I can always print out a particular article. If you have a pdf writer like Cutepdf writer which is free, you can always save an article as a pdf for convenient reference.

Way to go AAW!
 
Links to journals work only sporatically. I tried three different browsers and flushed caches, still more misses than hits.
 
Bob,

There appears to be an obscure little bug running around somewhere in our system that causes "aged" browser sessions to sometimes get confused in our members area, especially if you go back and forth between the members area (woodturer.org) and the forum (aawforum.org).

To solve this confusion problem, try closing down your browser completely, then start up a new/fresh browser session, and then go through the AAW members area log-in process.

Regarding this bug, we only have sporadic antidotal information about what happens to make it manifest, and we’ve been unable to reproduce it on our machines in a reliable way. If anyone encounters this members area log-in bug, and you can reproduce it, please get in touch with me – I’d really like to get a complete rundown on what’s going on with your machine:

- Operating system used
- Amount of memory on board
- Brand and revision of browser used
- Internet connection details
- Anything else that would help isolate the issue
 
This is awesome!

After having a quick look the other day and then reading this thread this evening and getting more familiar with how it functions - I am extremely impressed! You can print pages including to a pdf if you have full Adobe Acrobat and likely with a pdf print function. On a 23" HD display I recently upgraded to on our 7 year old desktop, it is simply amazing. Did find that the instructional video took a long time to load on DSL. On my Laptop with XP Pro I have had my IE v7 browser collapse twice when clicking on the next page arrow. Have already printed off a few things from the late 80's early 90's. Thank you much.
 
Mike Brazeau said:
After having a quick look the other day and then reading this thread this evening and getting more familiar with how it functions - I am extremely impressed! You can print pages including to a pdf if you have full Adobe Acrobat and likely with a pdf print function. On a 23" HD display I recently upgraded to on our 7 year old desktop, it is simply amazing. Did find that the instructional video took a long time to load on DSL. On my Laptop with XP Pro I have had my IE v7 browser collapse twice when clicking on the next page arrow. Have already printed off a few things from the late 80's early 90's. Thank you much.
Click to expand...

Is it saving pages as a PDF image file or as a PDF document?
 
Ed Davidson said:
Bob,

There appears to be an obscure little bug running around somewhere in our system that causes "aged" browser sessions to sometimes get confused in our members area, especially if you go back and forth between the members area (woodturer.org) and the forum (aawforum.org).

To solve this confusion problem, try closing down your browser completely, then start up a new/fresh browser session, and then go through the AAW members area log-in process.

Regarding this bug, we only have sporadic antidotal information about what happens to make it manifest, and we’ve been unable to reproduce it on our machines in a reliable way. If anyone encounters this members area log-in bug, and you can reproduce it, please get in touch with me – I’d really like to get a complete rundown on what’s going on with your machine:

- Operating system used
- Amount of memory on board
- Brand and revision of browser used
- Internet connection details
- Anything else that would help isolate the issue
Click to expand...

Thanks Ed. I tried again tonight with the same machine (HP with Vista) from a fresh boot and got the dead link. I've tried Firefox and Google Chrome with the same result. I actually get the page to load about 30% of the time. I have a Mac that I will try next.

...Bob
 
Ed...

I just tried to open the journals with a different machine (Mac iBook G4) and used both Firefox and Safari browsers. Both browsers had some difficulty getting the journal list page to load but both eventually got to the list and opened a specific journal. However, upon paging several pages, each browser suddenly closed. Firefox gave no reason for the closing, but Safari indicated that there was a problem with the Flash plugin. The date of the Flash plugin I am using is 1/10/10.

...Bob
 
Bill Boehme said:
Is it saving pages as a PDF image file or as a PDF document?
Click to expand...

Bill -seems it is an image file as searches for words within the pdf document do not work. I save things in a multitude of folders under Turning Downloads, so I make the title as informative as I can to help when looking for something.
 
The videos on using the Journal access are great.

It is taking some time to discover the hidden riches of the online journals implementation. The search works great. It would help if the volume number was listed or popped up with the year, since the index references volume numbers. But I just add the volume number to 1985 and it gets me there.

I see now that printing is easy. The more I use it I see the advantages over a strict PDF presentation. It is becoming very familiar, and the PDF style already seems awkward.

The videos help a lot and are slickly produced. I have set up two new links on my tool bar, one for the online journal and one for the index. That speeds things up a lot. Have had no problem connecting using Chrome.

Very, very nice job.
 
Ed...

I was able to access the journals page once last night. Since then, it's back to "page error". As it turns out, the same problem occurs for the Meeting Minutes page.😕

Given that I am using 5 different computers (PC and Mac) and several different browsers with the same result, it would appear that this bug is both persistent and potentially affecting many others.

Do you have a way to monitor the frequency for "page error" incidents for attempts to access journals and meeting minutes?

...Bob
 
Bob and I just had a nice talk over the phone - and the problem he was having has been fixed. The underlying issue was that Bob was trying to access the AAW members area via a Google search, not going to the site through the AAW homepage or via a bookmark on his browser. Accessing the members area via Google seems to give some browsers problems - so don't do that 🙂
 
Thanks for the help, Ed. Who would have thought that Google would have been the culprit? I am perusing many years of journals now and all is well.🙂

...Bob
 
I just checked out the online Journal and really love it! I wouldn't stop getting the hard copy because I cut out anything I think I might use someday and tape that into a notebook. Sort of like making a custom Journal for my interests.

I am computer incompatible so, for me to like something "new" online is saying a lot. 😀
 
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