Editors Corner
Aaron Timbrells own bit of the magazine.
I have to be honest and say that I had no idea what on earth I was going to write in this editors column. I was going to do the usual "start of a new volume...new series starting..amazing commercial products on the CD" type column. However I think RISC World readers are smart enough to read the contents page themselves. So instead here is some thinly disguised waffle with an alcohol base.
Dave Holden, Jim Parry (ex Smart DTP) and myself were sitting in the hotel bar after the first day of the Wakefield show. We were just sipping a small half (hmmmm - DB) and were chatting about the show and things in general. Somehow we got onto the subject of projects that we had worked on that should have sold massive numbers, were continually asked for by customers and sunk like a stone once released. Eventually we came to the conclusion that the products names had been wrong, and that's why they hadn't sold.
My example was the knitting program published by iSV Products, called FairIsle. After releasing our cross stitch software we were asked again and again to do the same for knitting, and eventually we did. Having just dug through my old accounts I can see that FairIsle sold under 30 copies, so it was hardly a great success! I think that perhaps the fact that it was the same 25 odd people who kept asking for it may have had some bearing, but that's not the point.
Anyway I had a quick think and said we should have called it "KnitScape". Thats a far better name, however Dave Holden pointed out that in fact a better name would have been "InterKnit Explorer". Somehow we then got onto the subject of site licenses, and Jim then made the point that if you had a site licence for either "KnitScape" or "InterKnit Explorer" then you could run them over a Woolless Knitwork.
Next time I go to Wakefield I may try drinking the water not the beer. See, I told you this was waffle.
Editors Rant of the month
And this time it's a Wakefield based rant. I really do enjoy the Wakefield show, and it seems so do many others. Then again a few exhibitors didn't seem to, basically because they weren't selling much. Why? Simple, either they had nothing new to sell or their body language on the stand wasn't quite "come in and have a look" but more "bugger off". I overheard a few nameless exhibitors whinging away about the state of the RISC OS market. Well quite frankly either do something about it, or why not "bugger off" yourselves. Sitting in your own ever increasing hole and moaning about it won't solve the problem.
Some people were very surprised when I sold the iSV Products range of title to APDL. I sold it because I was going to try to do something different, the something different being VirtualAcorn. One day I might tell everyone the full tale of how this came about, but now isn't the time. Anyway my point is simple, either adapt to the changing market and get on with it, or sit there whinging and get buried. Don't be too surprised if you see a few "old faithfuls" turning up their toes over the summer this year, but I for one have no intention of being one of them.
Printing RISC World
The new look of RISC World means that when you want to print an article on your printer it will have the light yellow background. However most web browsers allow you to turn off the background images when printing. The example below shows the print dialogue box from Fresco.
As you can see the option "No Background" is ticked. If you want to print out any of the RISC World pages then make sure you have clicked a similar option in your browser.
Aaron Timbrell