Summer is here, and in common with a number of other sites providing information on nanotechnology, and our gardens, nanoTsunami has dried up and run out of funding, although you can help keep it moist.
It may seem like common sense to some, but the fact is that there isnt really a market for ‘nanotechnology’ information. Four years ago, everyone was curious and excited, but now nanotech is ubiquitous. So without belittling the good work that David has been doing at nanoTsunami, a quick look at the rictus front page gives a salutary lesson in perhaps how not to do it (it looks like nanoTsunami had been dead some time before we discovered it, which makes us wonder how many other bloated rotting corpses may be causing neighbouring websites to wrinkle their noses and consider calling the police).
Can we spot the connection between the awarding of contracts to build an Australian synchrotron, some molecular philosophy from the Centre for Responsible Nanotechnology, the use of speech recognition in Spanish libraries, and Korean therapeutic cloning?
No, not at all. It all may be exciting; it may all be relevant to cutting edge technology (perhaps not the molecular philosophy), but its a grab bag of unconnected technology articles, and there are plenty of similar sites around all scoring 11 out of 10 for enthusiasm, but zero for relevance.
When we started TNT Weekly in 2000 the major worry was whether there would be enough stories to cover every week.
Now Cientifica clients can have a thousand a week if they want to, but to be honest we havent seen too many accounts over the last eighteen months wanting to know about ‘nanotechnology.’ We have seen, however, increasing numbers wanting to know where various elements of nanotech intersect with their business and how to take advantage of nanotech.
In 2004 you can download myriad nanotechnology reports, whitepapers and visit hundreds of nanotech web sites, but why bother? The smart money is already educated. The message we hear loud and clear from business is “give me something that relates directly to our business and you’ll have a sale. Give me another nanotech report and we wont read 90% of it.”