I am going to try something new in an effort to combat the lack of time I have to complete major projects on ETS (until or if ever contributions pick up to make this place more financially viable). We'll see how this goes and whether I can keep it up. I have opened a new section that we are tentatively calling "Equipped Briefings." This will contain pages with brief reports (hence the name) on new products and such. Every quarter we would start a new page, so they don't get too long. Some products may later get reviewed in greater depth or complied into longer dedicated pieces. Links may be put into main articles to items reviewed on the Briefings This is not a substitute for the detailed reviews, but these are whole lots quicker to do, so they should be able to be much more timely. We'll see how it goes and make decisions about the future based on feedback and whether it helps generate any more contributions with more fresh material on the site. <br><br> http://www.equipped.org/etsbriefings202.htm

It's terrific!

I like it.<br><br>Any chance of us forumites adding to them in the future? For example, the infamous "uncondom" debates we've had have spawned a lot of ideas, most worthwhile.

Link Pleez!

Doug,<br><br>Excellent! Great idea. <br><br>While I understand that you have been busy, I have missed your writings. As soon as I have money to give, you'll get it. It won't, by any stretch of the imagination, allow you to give up your day job, however.<br><br>This post did not show up for me. I found it only through the replies. Just letting you know.<br><br>Take care,<br><br>Andy

Kevin,<br><br>Absolutely, members here can contibute, but............<br><br>I have in the past gathered some threads from the forum, and as it turns out, this is the subject on one of them (see the link at http://www.equipped.org/watrfood.htm#WaterStorageContainers for an archived discussion from The Survival Forum on the subject of Condoms and Alternative Water Containers for Mini-Kits). FWIW, I'd love to add more such collections, but, again, it takes times to actually reformat and clean it all up to work. Unfortunely, a lot of this is just time-consuming grunt editing and HTML formating. <br><br>There has always been, and continues to be, the opportunity for others to write articles for ETS. The difficulty, as a few have discovered, is that it's a whole lot more work than it looks like. Most of those that I have published have been written either by professional writers or by academic reasearchers whose work someone else has already edited for publication elsewhere. <br><br>Even when someone does something, I have to find time to edit it, and my experience has unfortunately been that this often takes an inordinate amount of time (and editing is one of the things I do professionaly) plus formatting before it is acceptable for publication on ETS. I have a couple pieces in hand for the Urban Survival section that I need to get posted, but haven't had time to finish.<br><br>Anyone who wants to do something is free to query me, see http://www.equipped.org/submission.htm for guidelines. Something for the new Briefings section would actually be a good place to start since they don't have to be long. But, it still requires good writing and the ability to take reasonably decent digital photos. Beleive me, I'd love to find some regular contributors to add stuff to the site, but it needs to save me work, not add to it. <br><br>There are also a couple of opportunities for those who are not great writers or survival experts, but who would like to assist. See http://www.equipped.org/etsfi_volunteer.htm for some opportunites that require a relatively limited commitment of time and effort, but which would significantly improve the resporuces available for others on ETS.<br><br>Does this answer your question, or are yiu sorry you asked?

Andy,<br><br>Always appreciate the support. Upgrading this software is on the list, though a bit lower than the top. It's a pretty complicated task because in order to do so we have switch from Perl to PHP based software (don't ask me what the difference between the two is), which apparnetly involves a fair amount of time, effort and at least a small investment of capital. Unfortunately, the original software developer sold the company the the new company discontinued the Perl version, so the upgrading is only of the PHP version. Reportedly, many of the issues we are dealing with have been solved in the latest version. We originally chose the Perl version because it was tried and true and we actually had some basic understanding of Perl. Oh well.....

Excellent Idea, Doug!<br><br>Mac

I like it, it gives me something new to read, and it can show the difference between initial reaction to long haul use by compairing reviews.

Doug,<br><br>The link to the submissions guidelines contains an error. There is an extra "htp:" in it. <br><br>Those of you wanting to view the page should just delete the extra characters from the web address. It works fine after that. It may not matter, Doug will probably have fixed it by then :)<br><br>Take care,<br><br>Andy