RISCDomain is a magazine irregularly published by David Bradforth - a veteran of many projects involving publications covering topics from RISC OS to eBay. RD started life as a bi-monthly product but never really took off and now sometimes appears as a one-off. David had a stand at the South East 2007 show with copies of RD available to browse and buy. You can also buy copies through his eBay store from the link below.Special for 2007
RD has a cover price of £2.99 and is an A5-sized publication. The first thing that strikes you is the quality: it is just a really nice production. It's printed in full colour on good quality paper with a colourful front cover. It is sitting on my desk not out of place next to MacWorld and LinuxFormat, and it looks as though it was produced to a high professional standard. It also has a much cheaper cover price but no DVD. If it was in WH Smith, maybe we might get some new users.
Inside are 56 pages of editorial. There is no news section but there is space for some discussion of current on-going issues and deliberation on the future of DTP package Impression. There are 13 articles, all with some potential interest to RISC OS users. These range from a nicely illustrated guide titled First Steps with RISC OS Adjust, tutorials on selling items on eBay and Amazon, two case studies of people using RISC OS, an article on using fonts, and even some hardware reviews of scanners and printers with advice on compatibility. Finally, there is a nostalgic item titled Acorn and RISC OS in Pictures, which is the cover story.
David has a positive, realistic tone throughout the magazine - he works in professional publishing with Macs and PCs but still likes to get back to RISC OS. The editor acknowledges in his introduction that "elements of RISCDomain have previously been published in other publications," and indeed the article on VirtualRiscPC for Apple computers has appeared in print before. You might also quibble the depth of the case studies features.
Overall though, it's amazing how much interesting new content David has squeezed into his latest special project, and the amount of work that has gone into providing a professional quality magazine for RISC OS users. Let's hope this isn't the last 'special' we see from RISCDomain.
Links
Where to buy RISCDomain