====================================================================== _ __ _ <>_ __ _ || /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ || A M I G A U P D A T E /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ || -News and Rumors- / \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_|| (An Occasional e-mail KEEP THE MOMENTUM GOING || Newsmagazine) ====================================================================== AMIGA and the Amiga logo are trademarks of Amiga, Inc. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 990226 A M I G A I N C : N E W P R E S , N E W M A C H I N E S ! N E W G R O U P , N E W T E K P O R T I N G T R A I N I N G A T A M I G A 9 9 N E W N E W Y O R K N E W U R L F O R A M I G A Y E L L O W P A G E S F W D N O W T A K E S C R E D I T C A R D S Editor's Thoughts and Introduction: Sometimes, there's news that just can't wait. Today is one of those days, and at "Amiga Update" we don't have to wait. Therefore, you get another issue right now so we can all enjoy this news together while it's fresh. The changes announced by Amiga Incorporated in today's release should bring a smile to the faces of all Amigans. Read it for yourself below and enjoy. We find the timing of this announcement very interesting. We've begun hearing rumors (which we were planning to mention in the next issue) that Gateway was upset with the lack of progress at Amiga Inc. Could be they decided to do something about it. While we're at it, we've included a few other stories we've gathering in the last few days. Count the number of times the word "NEW" appears in our headlines (well, okay, we cheated a bit with NewTek and New York.) But at least for now, we have good news and news pointing to the future in a positive way. We like that. Brad Webb, Editor ---------------------------------------------------------------------- A M I G A I N C : N E W P R E S , N E W M A C H I N E S ! Amiga Announces New President and Fast-track Development Plans SAN DIEGO, Calif. - February 26, 1999 - In a series of meetings in San Diego, representatives of Amiga Inc. and Amiga International met to hammer out the details of technical, strategic and marketing plans which will see the launch of a range of new Amiga-based computers for the next millennium. The company has relocated its headquarters to San Diego and Jim Collas will be serving as the new president of Amiga. "Amiga is an amazing opportunity that we must act on now or it will be lost forever," said Collas. "The Amiga(tm) platform is ideal for Internet-ready, consumer-oriented digital appliances of the future. The Amiga name is associated the world over with user-friendly, low cost, powerful computing. We will take this philosophy into the next generation, enabling products from hand held Internet appliances to high-end graphics computers that help the user rather than frustrate them." Collas, formerly a senior vice president for Amiga's parent company, Gateway, will be running Amiga as a wholly independent subsidiary operation and will integrate Amiga Inc. and Amiga International under the new Amiga corporate structure. His leadership will allow the company to step up a fast - track development program that is currently underway. Amiga is planning to launch next generation products worldwide before the New Year. They will be announcing detailed product plans and introducing several of their strategic partners over the summer. Products currently targeted for the initial launch are a development system, an Internet appliance, and a low cost home computer in the tradition of the Amiga A500 that dominated home computing in the late eighties and early nineties. The developers system will be available with a software development suite for low cost development on the new platform. Jeff Schindler, in charge of product strategy for Amiga, is planning the new Amiga product line. "The Amiga community has been doing incredible things on a platform which hasn't had an official update in eight years," said Schindler. "They deserve a system which lets them show off their talents." Amiga's administrative center in San Diego will shortly be complemented by a software development center under the leadership of Dr. Allan Havemose, vice president of Engineering for Amiga, in San Jose, California. The Silicon Valley team will be rapidly expanded over the coming months to develop revolutionary Amiga multimedia layers over the real-time Neutrino OS core from QNX Software Systems Ltd. Petro Tyschtschenko will continue on as managing director of Amiga International and will also play a critical role in guiding the current Amiga community through the transition to the new Amiga architecture. "The new Amiga plans are a rebirth for Amiga and an exciting journey into the future," said Tyschtschenko. For further information on Amiga and Amiga products, please refer to www.amiga.com and www.amiga.de. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- N E W G R O U P , N E W T E K FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Newtek is coming to Manchester, NH! New Amiga User Group is Forming! Join Video Hardware Services & Ralph Messana of Newtek at The Black Brimmer Restaurant on Elm Street in historic downtown Manchester, New Hampshire on March 4, from 1 PM until 8:30 PM.. See first hand demonstrations of the Video Toaster Flyer, Lightwave 3D, Aura, Frame Factory, Calibar and much more. See what Newtek's been up to and get a taste of what is to come. There will be SPECIAL PRICING on all Newtek products for this event, so you won't want to miss it! We'll have some appetizers available later in the day while you see the coolest video products in the world demonstrated first hand. Get answers to those questions that you've been waiting to ask! See how ImageFX can be the "Photoshop" for your Flyer. What the heck is a Co-Pilot? Check out the Mega Toaster 4000 Tower case for the A4000 desktop. Looking for an accelerator for your Amiga? or you just want to find out what's going on with Amiga Technologies; The Black Brimmer on March 4 from 1PM to 8:30 PM is the place to be! Check out http://www.videohardware.com for directions or call (603)627-5337. During this event, we will be handing out information for the first meeting of the Lightwave-Amiga- Aura-Flyer-Toaster User Group (L.A.A.F.T.). Among other things, the first meeting will be used to pick a "better" name and to decide the group's focus. If you use a Newtek product, you'll definitely want to attend. This meeting will be held at our new location at 250 Commercial Street Suite 4011, Manchester, NH. We'd like to hold it Sunday afternoon, March 7, since Ralph will still be in town (hopefully, it is Sunday after all). Check out http://www.videohardware.com for more information, or call (603)627-5337 for directions. About Video Hardware Services Headquartered in Manchester, NH; Video Hardware Services has been selling and supporting Newtek products since 1995, and Amiga systems since 1991. Video Hardware Services is the areas only authorized Amiga service center providing Depot and On-Site Amiga and Video Toaster/Flyer sales and service for the regions cable companies, colleges, and independent video producers. About NewTek With headquarters in San Antonio, TX, NewTek is the leader in providing full- featured video editing and special effects tools that allow anyone to produce professional video and graphics. The company's products are used worldwide on projects from home video to feature film including some of this season's most anticipated blockbusters, such as Men In Black, Titanic, The 5th Element, Lost in Space, and The Jackal. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- P O R T I N G T R A I N I N G A T A M I G A 9 9 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 23 Febuaray 1999 DiscreetFX Hosts Software Porting Seminar at Amiga99 The Amiga has some very powerful software available for it at very affordable prices. Feature rich applications like ImageFX, Wildfire, Video Toaster/Flyer, Pagestream 4.0, Photogenics NG, Fantastic Dreams, AmiIRC etc. help define what an Amiga is and provide modern software for Amiga customers. The Amiga does not have the wide breath of software applications available on other platforms though. This is a double edged sword, on one hand the Amiga gets the benefit of avoiding bloated over hyped but bug ridden and under powered software. But on the other hand many popular and mainstream applications that customers demand when they buy their computer are not available for the Amiga. Products like Quicken, Quickbooks Pro, ACT, Dragon Naturally Speaking, and most educational software titles don't make it to the Amiga. Also many of the high-end SGI applications which are well suited for the PowerPC Amiga & NG Amiga are not available for it. Unknown to the Amiga community is the fact that many successful developers for other platforms are on the lookout for new operating systems and computers to port there well know applications to. They lack the knowledge and Amiga background to port their software but are willing to subcontract Amiga developers to do it for them. With other top selling operating systems now becoming very controversial and falling out of favor now is the time to approach these developers. Bill Panagouleas brings his past experience at negotiating deals and managing these types of porting projects to the Amiga Development Community to help them. Learn how to stop being a starving Amiga developer and instead become a wealthy one by bringing popular best selling programs to your favorite machine. Also you will be helping the Amiga become more widespread and popular by making the software many know and love available for Amiga. The aMozillaX project "http://www.amozilla.force9.co.uk/" (Netscape Communicator for Amiga ) has already shown how just getting one popular application ported can raise the bar on Amiga converge in the mainstream press. Everyone knows that popular software drives hardware sales. Don't miss out on this very special event if you are attending the Amiga 99 show and happy porting. Please see http://www.amiga-stl.com/sched.html for more information. e-mail: billpana@cwikmail.com ---------------------------------------------------------------------- N E W N E W Y O R K February 23, 1999 For Immediate Release: Finale Development, Inc. is proud to announce the next generation of our popular usenet newsreader, NewYork II, which will debut at the popular Gateway Amiga Show in St. Louis, March 12th. Over the past year we have listened to, and implemented many user suggestions and have arrived at what we believe to be the best newsreader on the Amiga platform. If the Amiga press loved NewYork when it came out two years ago, then we can hardly wait for the reviews of NewYork II .. offline reading, mass- decoding of entire newsgroups at once, 'bookmarking' of important articles, powerful kill-file prefs to block spam .. it's all in there and more. Wrap this up in a familliar, fully Amiga StyleGuide compliant interface that looks and feels like an Amiga *should*, and you have a powerful app which is also easy to master. For a sneak peak, visit the new NewYork II page on our web site: http://www.finale-dev.com/NewYorkII/index.html You'll find the best of the old, supercharged with the brightest of the new in NewYork II. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- N E W U R L F O R A M I G A Y E L L O W P A G E S Amiga Yellow Pages now has an easy to remember URL! Thanks to Amiga.tm, Amiga Yellow Pages can now be found by entering ayp.amiga.tm on your browser. Amiga Yellow Pages continues to grow with new entries arriving every week and increased traffic. It has already passed the 10,000 hits barrier since starting out last June. Remember, Amiga Yellow Pages is FREE, non profit making and WORLD-WIDE! From User-groups to large companies, you can be listed in AYP and all that is asked of you is a return link back to us from your website. Special! If you have Amiga products to sell, but can't afford your own website Amiga Yellow Pages can design a large display advertisement similar to the one for Fore-matt Home computing, look under "S" for Software Vendors to get an idea, note: large ads are at my discretion and cost you nothing!!! We are also looking for more Amiga Usergroups for listing in our user-group section. AYP is in Association with AmigaSoc and Amiga Survivor. Amiga Yellow Pages. If you're not in, you're seriously losing out. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- F W D N O W T A K E S C R E D I T C A R D S 25 Feb 1999 Hello, We at FWD Computing are happy to announce that we are now able to accept major credit cards (VISA, MasterCard and soon American Express) for the purchase of computer software from us. Now all of your purchases can be made over the phone, by mail or at computer shows. We are in the process of doing the coding to also accept via Secure Server over the internet (we are approved already to do so, we just need the programming time to make the changes.) This should make it much easier to get the latest Amiga Software for your computing needs. We will of course continue to accept both checks, COD and cash at shows. Thank you, Frank and Carol Davis FWD Computing fdavis@iquest.net http://members.tripod.com/~FWDcomputing/ Working to make computing fun! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Amiga Update on the net: All back issues available at: http://www.globaldialog.com/AdventureCentral/AU/index.html Stop by and check out our archive! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright 1999 by Brad Webb. Freely distributable, if not modified. ====================================================================== _ __ _ <>_ __ _ A M I G A /\\ |\ /|| || / ` /\\ A M I G A U P D A T E /__\\ | \ / || || || ___ /__\\ U P D A T E / \\_ | \/ ||_ _||_ \__// / \\_ amigaupdate@globaldialog.com ======================================================================