The pace of change in technology is dizzying. The Traveling in Cyberspace column began less than 3 years ago with a promise to discuss the emerging capabilities of technology as it related to the interests of SIOP members. Because of its "newness" to many, our first themes were the Internet and the World Wide Web. Back then, the Web was only one component of the ‘Net. It offered little more than text and graphic formatting, and the browsers crashed frequently. The browsers still crash frequently, but the Web is now capable of delivering everything from personalized news to multimedia-enhanced training to live radio. More importantly, it has grown into an indispensable tool for quickly accessing information.

In the intervening years since this column was launched, we’ve also been responsible for SIOP’s presence on the Web. Things have changed quite a bit since then. At that time, John Boudreau (Cornell University) served as moderator of the very successful human resources listserv (a technological precursor to the homepage). Mike Coovert and I (PC) had begun our discussions as to how we could accelerate SIOP’s transition into the information age. That transition began in early 1995 as the TIP home page, which was housed on my computer. For months, only Mike Coovert, Milt Hakel, and I had access to our fledgling homepage as I worked out all the kinks. In April of 1995, we opened the TIP homepage for access to the public (we developed the SIOP homepage in early 1996). About that time I was selected to be the Chair of the "E-Mail" Committee, whose name I changed to the "Electronic Communications" Committee to reflect the variety of technologies that we use on a daily basis.

Looking back, our initial mandate seemed simple at the time: We were to archive TIP issues as they went off to the printer. Soon after, we began providing links to other information that would be of interest to SIOP members, such as grant and conference news. This didn’t seem like a daunting task; our attitude was reminiscent of the comic strip in which the new parents naively ask the doctor if they should wake their newborn child for breakfast. Little did they (and we) know how demanding the new baby would be!

One of the authors (RJW) remembers reading an interview with former Pepsi CEO John Sculley in which he discussed marketing research which found that there seemed to be no limit for the public’s appetite for soft drinks. As the researchers placed more of the product in people’s homes, more was consumed. We made a similar discovery with the SIOP and TIP homepages. The more information we put on them, the more people visited the pages. As more people visited the pages, more information seemed to find its way to us for inclusion. By SIOP ‘96 in San Diego, the TIP home page had been accessed over 40,000 times—only a year after its inauguration!

Our interest in providing SIOP members with a variety of information resources has led us to continually expand the depth and breadth of services provided on the Web site. For those of you who have never visited the site, or those who only occasionally visit to find an e-mail address of a SIOP member, we urge you to visit and explore all that is available. For example, did you know that the following could be found on the SIOP Web site?

• Free SIOP documents (e.g., Ph.D. Training Guidelines, Science and Practice of I/O Psychology, SIOP Report on Affirmative Action, etc.)
• Dozens of up-to-date position advertisements (including internships)
• Links to psychology journals on-line, software for psychologists, and psychology related newsgroups
• Past issues of TIP (dating back to July of 1995)
• Calls for proposals for I/O related conferences (including our annual SIOP conference and the IO-OB conference)
• The current SIOP conference program (when available)
• A listing of current SIOP members with hot-linked e-mail addresses
• A listing of Frontiers publications available from the SIOP office
• Listings of upcoming conferences and meetings
• A listing of links to industrial psychology-related Web sites
• Links to university I/O programs across the continent

This is only a partial listing of the information available. For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity or inclination to visit, we certainly hope you do so.

This column represents a sort of passing of the torch. SIOP now has its own Web site: http://www.siop.org. (Accordingly, the TIP homepage has moved to http://www.siop.org/TIP.html). Day-to-day maintenance of the Web site has moved from the University of Nebraska at Omaha to the SIOP Administrative Office in Bowling Green, Ohio, where Lee Hakel, Esther Benitez, and Ted Smith make sure that the content of the Web site is current. I (PC) will continue to serve as Chair of the Electronic Communications Committee as well as the "Web" master of the SIOP Web site (at least for the near future).

Although the pages retain their familiar look and feel, we are working on reorganizing them to make more content available through the SIOP page and reduce redundancy. Arranging the content and developing an intuitive interface takes time, but we are proud of what we have done and look forward to making further improvements.

We have appreciated all of the constructive comments (and an occasional criticism) we have received on the Web site. We will continue to improve the usability and expand the information provided on the site. In the future, we hope we can provide features on the Web site that will make your life easier, such as:

• Renewing your SIOP membership via a secure transaction
• Paying conference fees
• Purchasing books
• Professional referral services
• Information useful to International members

For now, we thank you for helping us to make the SIOP and TIP Web sites so successful. We hoped at the outset to provide a useful resource for I/O psychologists at all levels, and the number of accesses we have seen on these sites lead us to believe we’re on the right track. If you have any suggestions as to how we can improve the Web sites (or any other comments or questions for us), please do not hesitate to contact us at pcraiger@unomaha.edu or weiss@unomaha.edu.