Diskmag News

New e-mags (also called diskmags) for our planet. At least there are plans. As you know, Szum of Cryogen has been working on "the first and only" international issue of Dragon since spring 2000. As we know from reliable sources he was first alone with his idea and asked Adok of Hugi for aid. Adok gave him the contact addresses of two people interested in diskmag-making: Avalanche of Trinity and Spock of Wild Bits, the main editor of the 4k zine Wilby. Both were added to the staff of Dragon int'l.

Little, however, did they write, and so Szum looked for more co-editors. Once again he asked Adok, this time about the contact address of El Afghano. Adok knew Mohammed's address from his announcement postings to comp.sys.ibm.pc.demos. Szum sent Mohammed a short e-mail: "the truth is out there.." Mohammed replied, bascially saying "what the fuck", whereupon Szum explained to him his plan and offered Mohammed to become a co-editor. Mohammed indeed became weak, thinking that becoming the co-editor of another magazine might increase his popularity so that one day he would really become the "president of the e-mag scene". He finished off two short articles - and indeed was made co-editor.

Szum demanded more articles, saying that if he continued to get articles at this rate, the magazine would be finished in a month's time and might beat Hugi. Mohammed then wrote another sluggish text, but did not get a response. After almost a month he contacted Szum again. Szum replied to his "friend", as he called him by now, that he was busy with his final exams and for this reason the mag was delayed. We know that he also has problems getting the coder to finish the work on the engine. Well, yet another dead-born zine project, we would say.

Then there are the makers of Scenecity. While the tendency rather goes from diskmags to web-based magazines, they go the other way round: their attempt at making a scene portal having been online for a year, they announced in March that they were going to make a diskmag. In April they wrote they lacked articles and as they wanted to make a quality magazine, "the publication was delayed". Until when, was not included. Naturally the people who might have supported it lost faith. Although a screenshot that looks more like a CD-player interface than a diskmag system is now online, people do not trust the magazine. But in the middle of August 2000 editor Sacri announced that it would come soon. You know how much time has elapsed since August 2000.

There was also the new project True, a merger of Shine and Fleur, two diskmags whose editors had experienced headcrashes of their harddisks short before. What does this mean - merger? Well, in this case it just meant that D-lee would send Baloo the 300 kbytes of articles that had been written for Fleur #5 (with few exceptions, all by him alone). Baloo would code a new diskmag interface, as he had lost the code of the old one, and then put it together. There would be one pretty big issue. Then it would probably become like the old Shine, only enhanced with D-lee's articles - which, considering the activity-span of most diskmag editors, would become fewer and fewer with time. The final result would be: Fleur would be dead, and Shine would have a different name.

In fact True was released under the name "Shine #8". And Fleur is more dead than ever.

We too heard about the project Sunny led by a former member of Artwork, the group that released the diskmag Generation on the Amiga. Looon and Visualice are allegedly involved in the project. "The magazine release is scheduled in a week!" - That's what we heard in summer 2000. Now, half a year later, neither of us has ever seen Sunny.

Well, we already knew then what "in a week" means among diskmag editors: After all, Scenial #5 was scheduled to come in a week in fall 1999. Now it is still not there. The official reason: yet another headcrash. A headcrash that occured in early 2000.

We can conclude that all these new or reborn projects have one thing in common, it is highly uncertain if they live up to their promises. Therefore it is better to trust the already established e-magazines.

Mohammed Napoleon & Afghanbashi

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