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Merry Christmas By Chris Williams. Published: 24th Dec 2004, 15:29:37 | Permalink | PrintablePass the salt, ta Just as we were, for a change, enjoying a warm August, 2004 seemed to move up a few gears and, all of sudden, we found ourselves in December. So now it's that time of the year where we pull on those itchy green hand knitted sweaters that are always lurking at the bottom of a cupboard somewhere and raise a glass to those who've helped keep this site running in 2004. Look away now if reading articles of an emphatic nature is known to induce nausea. You have been warned.
 Credits
Our warmest thanks go to Martin Hansen for his insightful observations, Paul Stewart and Eddie Lord for their well received networking guides, dgs for his world wide activity coverage, Ian Jeffray for his USB hardware guide, Ian Chamberlain for his support and news tips, and everyone else who has contributed in some way to Drobe's output - be it advice, photos or tip offs. Also I have to thank assistant editor Peter Naulls for his numerous articles, technical advice, spelll checkin, editorial input and ability to remain calm when I propose headlines like, "TOP RISC OS DEALER STOLE MY CAT". Thanks also must go to Ian Hawkins, the Drobe servermaster, for keeping the whole show running smoothly, adding top new features, bravely dealing with browser bugs and our bandwidth bill, and upgrading the hardware powering the site. Without you all, the site just wouldn't be. If you want to join in and contribute to the site, drop us an email.
Statistics
To date, we've served over 2,800,000 pages of content this year to over 245,000 unique visitors. That's over five pages a minute, on average, and an increase of 25% over last year's page impression count. While the larger, more mainstream portals and forums that often link to us get this sort of traffic on a good week, we're particularly encouraged by the increase. The most read article of the year is Paul Stewart's NFS guide, followed closely by the RISC OS and AmigaOS comparison in second place. Third place is the cost to modernise RISC OS 5 and fourth place goes to Martin Hansen's 'My Iyonix and I'. Fifth place is the kiss and make up of Castle, RISC OS Ltd and other developers.
Reflection
2004 has been a long lesson for everyone in the RISC OS market. We've had accusations, denials, "public trials by propaganda" and resolutions. We've had companies realise that no one likes a bully and developers recognise that their priorities ought to be their customers, the end users. We've seen RISC OS seeping into new embedded markets from moving information displays to hotel rooms and also breaking into the ARM 9 architecture platform. Desktop RISC OS has seen updates to both development streams and also new hardware, notably the Unipod. Software development was slow at the start of the year, but the summer appears to have fostered new and updated applications, ports, utilities and games.
If you haven't voted yet in the Best of 2004 awards, then what are you waiting for? Cast your vote and let the platform know who's been naughty and who's been nice this year - plus, you could win yourself a free copy of the recently launched Desktop Repton Plus title. It takes only a couple of minutes, or perhaps longer if you've been at the mulled wine early. Closing date is the 30th of this month, results announced on New Year's eve.
Finally, thank you, yes you, for reading drobe.co.uk, posting comments, telling us when we've screwed up, and giving us a reason to keep the site up to date. If you know a RISC OS user who isn't keeping up to date with RISC OS, tell 'em where to point their web browser. Yes, you know it. And thanks also to every developer and dealer for sticking with RISC OS, for not suing us or otherwise persuing litigation beyond a friendly subpoena, and giving us news and kit to eagerly write about.
Have a safe Christmas and great New Year - we've got a couple more articles scheduled for the remainder of this month, but otherwise Drobe will return in the 2005.
Links
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Useful links
News and media:
Iconbar •
MyRISCOS •
ArcSite •
RISCOScode •
ANS •
C.S.A.Announce •
Archive •
Qercus •
RiscWorld •
Drag'n'Drop •
GAG-News
Top developers:
RISCOS Ltd •
RISC OS Open •
MW Software •
R-Comp •
Advantage Six •
VirtualAcorn
Dealers:
CJE Micros •
APDL •
Castle •
a4 •
X-Ample •
Liquid Silicon •
Webmonster
Usergroups:
WROCC •
RONE •
NKACC •
IRUG •
SASAUG •
ROUGOL •
RONWUG •
MUG •
WAUG •
GAG •
RISCOS.be
Useful:
RISCOS.org.uk •
RISCOS.org •
RISCOS.info •
Filebase •
Chris Why's Acorn/RISC OS collection •
NetSurf
Non-RISC OS:
The Register •
The Inquirer •
Apple Insider •
BBC News •
Sky News •
Google News •
xkcd •
diodesign
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Revin Kevin
Merry christmas to all!
Merry Christmas from Barnsley (where its snowing) am I the only RISC OS user left in barnsley ?? theres a christmas cracker question for you all 
