Voting for Best of 2004 Awards open

Ladies and gentlemen. As 2004 draws to a close this month, we'd like to recognise the people who have contributed the most to our platform this year. We're proud to announce drobe.co.uk's Best of 2004 awards, where we nominate those who've stood out this year, and you get to pick the winners - and hopefully win something yourself.

Organising these awards has been long and hard, and something we've spent the past month (and especially the past week) working on, discussing and weighing up. It's been tough narrowing down the year's news into a manageable list, so we hope you'll agree with most of it.

The focus of the nominations is on what has been achieved this year: what's new or benefited from significant improvement in just 2004. Importantly, to qualify for a nomination, a product or service must have been released and be in the hands of users. If something is hyped this year, but is slated to appear next year, then we'll have to wait until the 2005 awards. Finally, if something or someone isn't listed, then that doesn't necessarily mean we don't care or that we forgot. Every single developer, dealer and bug hunter is worth his or her weight in gold.

Check out the nominations below, listed in no particular order, then go to the form on this page and cast your vote. Voting opens now and closes at 12 noon on the 30th December 2004. Results will then be announced on the 31st.

Also on the 31st, three randomly chosen voters will be picked to win a copy of the recently launched Desktop Repton Plus - the classic puzzle game brought up to date for 2004. Published by Alligata Software, Repton Plus includes Repton 1, 2 and 3 plus levels never seen before.

The nominations

Best commercial software
This is RISC OS software you must pay for to receive.

• Gimp-Print: MW-Software's Gimp-Print opens the printer support floodgates, and ports a collection of popular open source drivers to RISC OS. Although the drivers can be freely downloaded, you have to pay for the software layer that interfaces them with RISC OS.
• RISC OS Adjust: RISCOS Ltd. committed their RISC OS Select 3 operating system to ROM, and released Adjust.
• Aemulor Pro: Aemulor Pro is released by the Spellings.net team, and includes support for legacy screen modes, sound modules and file systems.
• Grapevine 2: R-Comp release Grapevine 2, which now includes ICQ support. It currently is also the only working native MSN Messenger client for RISC OS.
• MusicMan: MusicMan, also by R-Comp, is a friendly user interface to freely available MP3 encoding, decoding and management software with support for Ogg Vorbis. It's perhaps not a tool for a power user, but suited for those who don't want to waste time faffing with taskwindows.
• Artworks 2: Artworks 2 continues to improve, thanks again to MW-Software, especially with the release of version 2.3, which includes graduated transparency and CMYK ink simulation support.

• GCCSDK: The GCCSDK team have been busy improving and testing the RISC OS port of GCC this year. Developments include experimental support for ELF binaries, threading support and updates to UnixLib.
• NetSurf: NetSurf goes from strength to strength, if you can catch a stable build, and as the native open source web browser gathers more and more features, its lack of Javascript support becomes its own hindrance.
• RDesktop: Andrew Sellors impressed users with his RDesktop client, allowing RISC OS computers to remotely administrate and use PCs running Windows 2000 server or XP Pro editions.
• Tom Cooper Classics relaunched: The Tom Cooper gaming classics released online for free by AcornArcade, who scooped the rights to redistribute the titles at the start of the year. From platformers to adventure games, playing Berty's titles again will jerk a few nostalgic tears.
• PCITV: The much anticipated PCI TV card driver, developed by Simon Wilson, was released this year and later gained frame capture and stereo sound support.
• SampleEd: Richard Windley took us by surprise this year with a double whammy release of audio file editor SampleEd and software development environment Sourcery, plus related software.
• Variations: Variations is one of those applications that you can't believe is free. The bitmap image manipulator by Rob Davison has been updated with Warp, thumbnailing, mask editing and other features.
• Graphite: Graphite is a new comer to the scene, developed by Marc Zinnschlag, and is a straight forward flow chart diagram editor.
• TapirMail: TapirMail is a handy shareware POP3 email client developed by David Llewellyn-Jones, that's designed to allow users to check and send email while on the move.
• HID USB drivers: Despite dragging its feet over Impression-X, X-Ample's shareware HID software was well received this year, as it enables Iyonix users to sensibly use USB scroll wheel mice and fancy keyboards.
• RemotePrinterFS: RemotePrinterFS, by Stefan Bellon, enables users to use printers or print servers that use the JetDirect or LPD protocols.
• Sunfish: SunFish is an NFS client written by Alex Waugh, and has gained in popularity this year. New features include TCP connection support and a user interface to configure mounts.

• Unipod: The Unipod has that classic podule look, and it's crammed with goodies. The IDE-USB-100MBit NIC combo card, available from STD, was released this year and certainly revitalised users' aging RiscPCs.
• Omega ethernet: Better late than never, Omega users got their hands on ethernet cards and drivers this year. Although there were a few stability issues to begin with, we understand from MicroDigital that these were gradually addressed.
• X100 case: Everyone complained that the original Iyonix case was as bland as a Conservative party political broadcast, so Castle treated us this year to a series of new cases, like the black and white number dubbed the X100.

• Midlands show: Report: Saw MiMagic hardware running RISC OS 5 demonstrated in public and further details of Select32 revealed.
• South East show: Report: Geminus, VirtualAcorn Linux, AGP accelerated drawfile rendering were demonstrated, plus the show theatre saw Castle and RISCOS Ltd. discussing the platform's future.
• Expo show: Report: Held on the European mainland during the height of the ROL-Castle dispute, Castle revealed their plan to have everyone using RISC OS 5.
• Wakefield show: Report: Denbridge Marine demonstrated RISC OS powered radar systems during the two day event, plus Cino and Adjust presentations in the show theatre.
• South West show: Report: This event saw Aemulor Pro being demonstrated for the first time, and a printer was accidentally treated to a glass or two of champagne.

• Wireless A4 Internet: Dave Higton straps a mobile phone to his trusty A4 to enable wireless internet, of sorts.
• PC in a RiscPC case: Drobe webmaster Ian Hawkins pushes his RiscPC beyond 1.5GHz processor and downgrades it to a PC.
• USB powered combo-media reader: Ian Jeffray fits a combo-media drive to his RiscPC avec Unipod.
• Flash memory drive for your BBC B: John Kortink develops a Flash memory interface for Acorn 8bit era machines.
• DIY laptop case: Rico Naf squeezes a RiscPC into a custom built 'laptop' case.

• Martin Wuerthner: For advancing Artworks 2 to include new transparency and other features, while continuing to develop Gimp-Print, Techwriter and Easiwriter. He was also on the cards to develop Messenger Pro 3, until another developer with more free time was chosen instead.
• Peter Naulls: Drobe writer, GCCSDK contributor and tester, and also founder of the Unix Porting Project, which continued this year to harness the wealth of open source software and encourage others to do so.
• Richard Goodwin: Despite hardware failures, hacker attacks and networking problems, Richard has battled to keep popular forum website Iconbar online, as well as providing webspace to RISC OS developers.
• Andy Jackson: Developed Nutshells, a community edited website that features a database of links and information. As anyone can update and add to the content on the site, the site hopefully won't go stale like other links websites.
• Chris Hughes: Organiser of the Wakefield 2004 show, which ran for two days this year.

• Iyonix motherboard faults: Castle is forced to issue an 'engineering update' to remedy serious faults in customers' Iyonix computers. Incredibly, users are told to cut PCB tracks and solder patch wires, or post their machines off to Castle to fix. Castle informed users that Simtec could also do the repairs as well, but failed to check this with the electronic design firm. Cue STD wading in to remedy the situation, but only serving to confuse the issue. Castle later did a whistle stop tour of usergroups, servicing affected Iyonixes.
• Vantage users locked out: Cerilica's anti-piracy system for Vantage users loses the plot and locks everyone out of the beleagued graphics software. Cerilica later remove the anti-piracy system, although the software remains largely unsupported and buggy to the point of being unusable, users bitterly claim. Meanwhile, Qercus magazine rubs salt into wounds by publishing a front cover designed in Vantage.
• Castle-RISCOS Ltd. dispute: Castle becomes fed up with RISCOS Ltd., and terminates their licence to develop and sell RISC OS, citing various allegations of licence breaches. RISCOS Ltd. refute the claims and refuse to take part in the ensuing PR frenzy launched by Castle. It later emerges that Castle had also sent cease and desist letters to various RISC OS dealers, developers, and their clients, allegedly freezing their income for around two months and tearing a deep division between the Castle and RISCOS Ltd. camps. Castle and RISCOS Ltd. later sign a new head licence, but a source close to the Castle-RISCOS Ltd. dispute recently told Drobe, "it's a miracle that we're still here, and the affected developers didn't seek damages from Castle."
• Not on the right Wavelength: AcornArcade gets into hot water over the free distribution of some Tom Cooper games. The NoughtPointOne site thought it had the appropriate rights to redistribute Berty's classics, but CJE Micros thought differently and asked AcornArcade to remove the Wavelength download.
• Select32 survey muddle: RISCOS Ltd. contacts its Select subscribers to guage the level of interest in 32bit Select. The email is soon republished on Drobe and forwarded to Usenet. Many non-Select users later wondered why they hadn't been included in the survey. RISCOS Ltd. later explain that they intended to survey the wider userbase after Christmas, but the damage is done as many users interpreted the closed survey as an attempt to wriggle out of developing an Iyonix compatible release of Select.

Related articles
Best of 2004 awards results
Midlands 2004 show report
Expo 2004 show photos

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