Editorial Thoughts and Musings from the editor about Amihoo's Launch.
Feautures: From our correspondant: Global news and views on the Amiga scene from around the world.
Ross Vumbaca. (Australian Correspondant) About himself and the Amiga scene downunder.
Robb Perrone (USA Correspondant) Enters stage left and introduces himself and his Amiga usage.
Competition Time Win a game!
Talkback Let off Steam about the anything Amiga. We want your views!

Just who is behind this new website is still a mystery, however, it is widely believed that it is in fact Jim Collas, the former CEO of Amiga before Gateway kicked him out and closed the business down. It is rumored that Collas was so overwhelmed by the hundreds of messages from Amiga well wishers that he decided to write the new website, Amihoo.com, as a tribute to the Amiiga community.

We called a number of Amiga celebrates around the world to ask them their opinions, we started with Andrew Korn Editor of Amigactive Magazine, here is what he said. "Sorry, Who are you? Do you know it's midnight? Jim Who?" and then he put the phone down. Undeterred we contacted Ben Vost, former editor of the now defunct Amiga Format, "Who's Ben Vost?" asked a bewildered security guard at Future Publishing.

In the end we managed to get hold of a non-Amiga celebrity, a user by the name of Mikey C. "I vaguely remember Jim Collas." was all he could say before putting the phone down too.

So there you have it, if you are an Amiga user then check out http://www.amihoo.com

The latter only being rekindled by the release of the SDK. Here's Hoping that Bill,Fleecy, Gary and the rest can deliver.

Amihoo contains more links than my previous effort, whilst still retaining all the information unique to what made AYP so distinct, i.e. Description, address, phone numbers etc. etc

Unless there is a good reason, Amihoo will only feature websites which are generally updated regularly, for example, I have wherever possible made sure that only websites that have been updated within the last six months are featured, everything else (unless usefull) has been junked.

Amihoo is hosted on Wirenet. I would like to take the opportunity to thank Neil Bothwick for all the help and support he has given me to get this project off the ground. Special thanks also to Andrew Elia for acquiring the amihoo.com domain name for me.
Thank you both!

Amhoo and Amihoo magazine will also evolve and change as time progresses, I will probably have to add subcategories to amihoo in the future as links become more a plenty (hopefully) and go on to make the magazine a bit slicker too
Some points:

• No more frames! Yes, Amihoo is frame free
• Standard entries will always be free.
• I plan eventually to charge for banner advertising.
• Have competitions to win a top software title at least four times a year, starting next year.
• Continue with the policy of fast loading pages, this means low graphics, low frills, but fast information at you fingertips. Let's face it, you come here to get the information you want as quickly as possible so that you can get on with your Amiga hobby. I hope that amihoo will deliver on this

About Amihoo Magazine

My Aim is to make this an interesting place to visit on a monthly basis. For your enjoyment and pleasure I am introducing "From our own correspondant" a feature on the Amiga scene around the world. I am pleased to announced that already signed up to are:

• Ross Vumbaca (Australia Correspondant)
• Robb Perrone (US Correspondant)

Robb will be reporting things to us from a US flavour. Robb has contributed articles for other websites and magazines in the past, so expect a good and entertaining read from him also.

Sadly we are still lacking in correspondants in:-

• Europe
• Canada
• Rest of the World
  - Anywhere outside Europe, USA, Canada, Australia

I'm also hoping to have Amiga Celebs/industry figures contributing the odd bit every now and then - fingers crossed.

One more thing, if you use Amihoo to contact a dealer, service or organisation, please tell them that you got their details from here, Believe me, you will benefit from it in the long run - trust me on this one, for I have a cunning plan.....

Finally, why did I call it Amihoo.com? Well, I didn't think the name up, it was suggested to me by some bloke, think his surname was Korn, forget his first name, think it begun with an A..............

Kind Regards

Drop me a line at mikeyc@amihoo.com

Hi! Who am I you wonder? Just an isolated Amiga user in Australia who "tries to get by" using an Amiga (and tends to fail)

Australia is a vast place, and the Amiga is hardly known anymore - though we have the occasional usergroup in some states - many Amiga users are alone, and like myself, the only way they can keep tabs on Amiga related events, is via the internet.

"Usergroups? Where?" - Well as far as I can tell, there are about six user groups in Australia, five of which meet regularly for the usual "check out my Amiga"/program tutorials/"this is our newsletter" type of thing. They tend to be isolated since they're all separated by large distances, and none of them are in my state (except for a very distant one), so I can't attend any of their meetings. They don't organise shows, except for one (CAUSE) which organised the "Amiga Downunder 99" show last year which I attended. Another user group (MAUG) suggested that they would organise a show for 2000, but there is not much word of it yet. Before the "Amiga Downunder" show last year, there had been another "show" organised by a Victorian user group, and even though they had a "successful" event - I heard quite a different story..

The fifth user group is new and was launched last year at the Amiga Downunder 99 show - ADUG. Many people including myself, joined up on that day. Some members of a Victorian usergroup were overheard in conversation, and they seemed particularly enthusiatic to join, to say the least. ADUG is supposed to unite Australian Amiga users from all over Australia and New Zealand, but very little has happened apart from a basic web page, and I was unimpressed with their disorganised efforts
e.g they failed to inform "members" of their web page - I only stumbled upon it by accident. Many people did't even know if they existed. This is also the case with the "Australian Amiga Developers Association", launched at Amiga Downunder 99, and MIA - presumed dead (I found a link to them just now - but it doesn't respond..hmmmm)

"Ummm.. I dunno about those usergroups.. Is there another way I can communicate with local Amiga users? Sure.. There is believe it or not - an Australian Amiga newsgroup! aus.computers.amiga is the name, and I encourage you to subscribe to it! Perhaps you need help, or want to ask an Amiga related question with a local perspective - "Was that an Amiga I saw on those neighbours re-runs?" * or your looking for a piece of Amiga hardware locally? The aus.computers.amiga newsgroup is a good place to start. Sometimes announcements appear there too.

Recent highlights include:

* A local PC dealer constantly trying to flog an A1000 for "a reasonable offer". What the hell does he want for it? People have asked and asked - and he insists on "a reasonable offer"..

* A user and an Amiga dealer "discussing" the finer points of reasonable hardware prices for old Amiga hardware, or lack thereof (at said dealer).

* Some amazing bargains:

Splatt wrote in message ...
>I was lucky enough to get for $7.50 (bargain) an Amiga 4000 with an
>Amijoe G4, 256mb ram.. oh hang on.. im lying..

* Some bloke with a fake e-mail address trying to sell us "GAS SAVING TIPS"

Well that's it for me this month.. maybe I'll talk to you in the newsgroup.

Ross.

* Illustrative purposes only. Not recommended for real world use.

This is going to be what, I hope, is the first of may articles that I'll be doing. For this one, though, let me just use it to give you an idea of who I am, how I got into Amiga, and what I do with mine. So, if that's ok with you [and really even if it isn't :) ], here I go…

My name is Robb, most call me…Robb [at least of the printable names, but I won't talk about my ex-wife here]. I first got into computers way back when. When, that is, I first saw a TRS-80 that a neighbor had bought. [Now before anyone out there places my age to far back into the cretaceous, let me just say that I was out 10 or 11 at the time. Which, I know, still make me oldish, but not ancient]. [You'll notice, too, that I tend to use a lot of parenthetical speaking. Don't worry, it's just the typing equivalent of a speech impediment]. From that time on I was hooked. I taught myself a bit of BASIC. Enough to go into local Radio Shacks and add code to their demos that would make them self destruct [remember my age and tell me YOU never did anything prankish like that]. Of course I finally grew out of that. I went on, sometime in high school, to buy a used PET, which I used to fine tune my BASIC skills.

After high school, I took several courses in computer science at the local community college. By this time the Apple II's were the thing [I remember the college had 10 or 15 of them hooked up to one 20 meg Winchester hard drive. And, boy, did we think that that was the bomb. A few [or several, however you want to look at it.] years later the PC hit the scene. This whole time I was in & out of school and broke. I wanted and Apple II [then PC], but could never afford one.

Then one day, around '86 I think, I was reading a BAM magazine. It was an article about Todd Rundgren. In it he just raved about this new computer that would do many things at once, and had built in stereo sound and what not. Right, it was an Amiga. Soon after I called around and finally found a shop that had one. After going and experiencing it for myself, I knew that this was the computer for me. Of course, I was still broke, but I had a plan. You see, I had just finished with community college and had been accepted to U?C Berkeley [which I never did finish, due to a decision to get married and drop out.
Or was it drop out and get married? I know, bad decision but, again, I won't go into my ex-wife here]. At the UC I used part of my student loan to get an Amiga 500.

Fast forward a bit….to a point were I had a good enough job that I was able to get an Amiga 3000, which is what I still have. Unfortunately I have not been able to afford to upgrade it much [see above about ex-wife]. However, I still enjoy it a lot. What do I do with it? You might ask [I'll assume that you did]. Mostly I use it for making music. - I use "Music-X" & "Bars & Pipes Pro". Which, if you know music software, are two of the best programs ever made for doing computer music. Now I know there are those who will go on and on about how great some of the stuff for other platforms are. I think that they either don't cover things as well, or are too bloated [like some OS's that I won't mention, not to mention my ex-wife, which I won't mention here]. I use these programs with a MIDI bass and several sound modules. Now, however much it pains me to say it, there is one thing that can be done on the other platforms that I have yet to be able to do with my Amiga. That is, quadraphonic mixing. That is, mixing to four separate channels with fade going not just left/right front/back, but diagonal too. Of course to do this you need to be able to use two or more sound cards together and none of the software, that I 've seen will allow this. With, perhaps, one exception.
There is a program that I saw that claims to be able to do this. At least I think that it does. I've tried to contact the author to confirm but he has never responded. It's called "WaveTracer DS" and can be seen at: http://www.virtualworlds.de/WT/index_e.html. On the web site it say "supports Amiga®-audiohardware and AHI-soundcards, you can use more than one outputdevice at the same time - so multichannel-replay with at least 4 audio-outputs is possible", so maybe this is what I'm looking for. If only the author would respond. I mean, not to age myself again, but I have a quad system at home with many quad recordings. And if you have never listened to something in quad you should, it's the bomb [NOT the same as surround sound. Not neccesarialy better, just different].

Well, I've gone on enough for this time. Again, this one was mainly an into to me and my Amiga background. Next time I'll talk way more about Amiga and much less about me [and not at all about my ex-wife, who I won't mention here].

Robb.

We want your views! Tell us about anything Amiga related, including Amihoo and the Magazine. The best views will be published here every week with the writer of the best letter, over the month, winning a £10 Epic Marketing Voucher