One is with the innovative Internet "TV station," HVACtv.com. I was among several industry citizens appearing in the premiere Webcast on Aug. 29, discussing an industry topic of concern and participating in a live Internet chat. Our production deadline required me to write this prior to the Webcast, and its freewheeling format left me unsure which of numerous topics I was prepared to discuss would end up on the live feed that evening. So I can't tell you what I talked about or how the program played out, but I can say that I'm excited to be a part of this innovative program. PME's hydronic heating guru Dan Holohan also was scheduled to participate, along with Taco's Dave Kunz and Dave Sweet, giving presentations on vertical pumps and zone valve controls, respectively.

HVACtv is a venture of Ed Nowak, Jr. and Dan Sheppard of the Providence, RI-based advertising agency Sheppard Legar Nowak, Inc., which represents Taco and other PHC industry accounts. Nowak described it as "a place for industry professionals to talk to one another and to provide information they can use on a daily basis."

Webcasts will take place on the last Tuesday every month, starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, and I will be a part of many of them, as will Dan Holohan. You can view the Webcasts by registering at www.hvactv.com, and downloading the appropriate media player from the site.

PlumbingOnline.com

Also, it's chock full of industry news, provided by the staffs of PM Engineer and Plumbing & Mechanical, our sibling magazine for contractors. The news we provide to PlumbingOnline gets updated weekly.

This partnership has been a bit of a culture shock for us. PME and PM have always been monthly magazines. Suddenly, we've found ourselves having to break away from that leisurely production schedule and generate stories on a weekly basis, per our agreement with PlumbingOnline.

Know what? It isn't that hard, and serves as a serendipitous example of how the Internet is improving our lives.

Providing PlumbingOnline with weekly news content has forced us at PME to be more attuned to industry events. We've found a lot more going on than we had considered when we were focused only on filling a news section once a month. We had limited space to fill, and as a result were forced to ignore or discard quite a bit of information of widespread interest to industry citizens.

We still have limited space to accommodate news in our print edition. Many of the articles reported on PlumbingOnline will never appear in print, although they will be on the PME (www.pmengineer.com) and PM Web sites (www.pmmag.com), as well as that of PlumbingOnline. In this manner, our affiliation with PlumbingOnline is forcing us at PME to better serve the industry, and all of you become better informed. PlumbingOnline also wins, by giving users another compelling reason to pay them a visit.

This arrangement further serves notice that readers who want to stay fully informed will have to check us out electronically as well as read the ink on paper. Like it or not, this is the future, and there's no way around it.