Greetings and best wishes for the Year End.

SideLines, December 2005

Our thoughts are especially with those who have received the rough end of the stick, through natural or social disaster.

As a gift to present and future Co-op members, we have created a new family of blogs. These are centered around a blog called "The Research Cooperative Community" (see www.researchco-op.blogspot.com). The subsidiary sites are all free, courtesy of blogger.com, and could be useful for individuals, groups, or companies that wish to promote or discuss research writing or language services online.

Blogger.com provides free hosting for simple blog sites that are adequate for many purposes. The sites are easy to use because the instructions are all online, and because blogging systems have improved rapidly in recent years. The system offered by blogger.com is highly refined and is designed for first-time users. No previous internet experience is needed to set up your own site.

What I have done, in effect, is reserve a goodly number of relevant addresses for the use of Co-op members. Since no cost is involved (other than my time), these can be maintained indefinitely on the zero budget of our Co-op.

The new blogsites are listed in the menu at www.researchco-op.blogspot.com (visit the blogsite and the links menu to see them). If you have registered at our main Co-op site (www.researchco-op.co.nz) to use the forums, then you are automatically a Co-op member and can apply, by email to me, to use one of

For editors, translators and others who have limited financial resources, or who are trying to get themselves known and established in their chosen field, these free blog sites may be very attractive. Because they are linked to the main Co-op website, they form a family closely-related sites that has the potential to become highly visible on the internet.

Do not expect these sites to be highly visible immediately - their visibility will depend on the combined efforts of all persons involved, over time (for members with suitable financial resources, a single blog could be given greater visibility through paid advertising).

Please visit our new Network site, consider, and apply! If you have questions about how to use the sites, or what can be done with them, then ask me, or use the online Help system at blogger.com.

Thanks, Peter J. Matthews (for The Research Cooperative), with the assistance of Jules Verne of the Wikimedia Commons, 2005.