When I started here at Outpatient Surgery 8 years and 96 issues ago, our website was little more than a dumping ground and a graveyard for our print issues. Unless someone stole your print edition at work or you needed to search our archives, there was little reason to visit www.outpatientsurgery.net.

Times have changed.

Today our website is a feature-rich destination worthy of a bookmark on your favorites toolbar and worth a visit every day. Like the industry you work in, things are constantly changing. And like most good things in life, it's free. A few highlights:

• Digital Edition. We now publish a digital edition of the magazine, formatted especially for the web. Ethan Anderson, our superb art director, re-designs every page for optimal online viewing. You can flip through the pages on your screen as if you were holding the magazine in your hands. "The digital edition is wonderful!" a reader wrote in to tell us. "It is incredibly easy to maneuver and read. Congratulations for yet one more innovation."
• This Just In. Five months ago we launched a news service. By news, we don't mean posting company press releases. We're talking real news of interest and importance to you that our team of editors gather, report and write. News reporting is incredibly labor-intensive. You'll find lawsuits, studies and breaking news in TJI. You can sign up to receive an e-mail alert whenever a new story is posted.
• Second Opinions. A growing number of you are talking to each other on our popular discussion board. Got a question you want answered Post it online. You're sure to get lots of responses.
• E-Weekly. Let's not forget about our weekly e-mail newsletter that hits your inbox every Tuesday morning, a digest of news briefs and a link to our popular Instapoll.

You'll find many more reasons to visit our site, including a free benchmarking service (www.outpatientsurgery.net/resources/NSAS) and a collection of useful forms to download. We plan to soon add blogs. Best of all, all this information and interaction is free for all Outpatient Surgery subscribers.

The numbers tell us that more and more of you are logging on. Over the past 5 months, 143,500 different individuals from 147 countries have visited our website, according to Google Analytics. They've visited almost 400,000 times and looked at almost 750,000 pages. According to both Quantcast and Alexa, 2 website ranking services, Outpatient Surgery is No. 1 by far among all sites representing surgical publications.

This is not to say that our monthly print products are any less important. This thing you're holding in your hands with the 3 staples in the centerfold remains our bread and butter, our vital link to you.