Developments in European information issues: Networks and relays – Services – Products, June 2003

Gas and electricity sites

The new web pages on gas and electricity have a different URL so you may need to change your bookmarks if these are among your favourites. You can now find them at http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy/gas/index_en.htm and http://europa.eu.int/comm/energy/electricity/index_en.htm. The pages have the same clean lines and easy structure of the recently launched new road transport site at http://europa.eu.int/comm/transport/road/index_en.htm. Included on both the gas and electricity sites is the April 2003 Second Benchmarking Report on the Implementation of the Internal Electricity and Gas Market which has been updated to cover the candidate countries.

Medical devices

Less easy to use than the energy and transport pages is the new medical devices website at http://europa.eu.int/comm/enterprise/medical_devices/index.htm. While the home page contains some useful material - and will include more, such as national transposition measures and guidelines, when fully constructed - it has not yet fully embraced the new Europa look. Users have to scan two long parallel columns in search of the information they want.

CORDIS Interactive Help Desk

CORDIS has launched a new interactive help desk. Users can post queries or follow up on earlier ones. Alternatively they can search the substantial collection of FAQs. Only registered users have access to the service but you can register quickly free of charge at http://www.cordis.lu/helpdesk/registration.htm. Registration allows access also to other CORDIS services such as CORDIS Express (a weekly e-mail newsletter on EU research and innovation), MyCORDIS (the facility to tailor the CORDIS home page to your own needs), the Advanced and Professional search, RAPIDUS and Quick Pick (e-mail alerts based on saved search profiles), Partners Service (online creation and updating of your own record seeking potential research partners), and DOCMAIL (e-mail delivery of large documents from the CORDIS Document Library instead of trying to download them).