The Internet shop will open early in the new year, says Neil Spellings of Spellings.net, who also noted the benefits of online distribution of software: costs are kept to a minimum allowing more cash to be passed onto the developers, and the ability to deliver software and upgrades 24 hours a day. The notion of sticking purely to online sales is certainly not a new concept, and you could even claim that in 2004, it's a tried and tested method of doing business. However, that's not to say it's a poor idea, and if it keeps the Spellings.net team developing RISC OS software, then it's a smart approach to take.
Neil has also asked for any software authors who are "interested in online commercial opportunities" to contact him, which is a good initiative because perhaps if some RISC OS developers were paid a little more, they'd stick around longer. The last time we heard, which was 2002, his company employs three staff and enjoys a turnover of around 100,000 quid. Neil also wants to start bundling relevant hardware, such as graphics cards and LCD monitors, with his company's software.
The Spellings.net team, consisting of Neil and programmer Adrian Lees, first started out with Aemulor, but are now also juggling the development and marketing of CinoDVD, Geminus and DeskDebug. In a way, the team are treading on thin ice with the user base, having somewhat hyped up CinoDVD and Geminus, and now DeskDebug, while offering no real release timescales. The fact that Aemulor has proved to be such a success and turned out to be a pivotal component in the RISC OS platform's migration to 32bit ARM cores, means the Spellings.net team have earned themselves enough trust to ward off accusations of vapourware.
We reported yesterday that Spellings.net are to be the distributors for Niklaus Weiss' DeskDebug, a new development tool for programmers, and that it'll be at the Midlands show on Saturday. We now know that DeskDebug will cost 50 quid (ex VAT) and is RISC OS 3.5-5 compatible, but won't be available until Q1 2005.In an announcement this morning, Neil added: "I'm very excited to welcome Niklaus as our second programmer. Niklaus has spent many years working on this, which shows in its ability to offer advanced features and continue where other debuggers fall short."
DeskDebug enables programmers to more easily hunt down bugs and crashes in their software, allowing them to hopefully release more stable software to end users. DeskDebug includes features such as single step through ARM instructions, source code and WIMP redraw and message handlers,ARM and FPU register display, breakpoints, context, stack and variable display for C procedures and error trapping.
Author Niklaus, a Swiss RISC OS user, says he's been working on the software for the past five years, and most incredible of all, it consists of 12,000 lines of ARM assembler.
Links
Spellings.net website