Hi everybody!

Stephen Pair wrote:

> Doug Way wrote:
> > My only random bit of advice is that you might consider not
> > putting free CD images online which are *too* recent... that
> > might discourage people from bothering to subscribe (since
> > they can get it for free), and then you wouldn't make enough
> > money to continue operations, which would be a loss for everyone.
>
> I agree with Doug on this point.  I don't know the answer, but whatever
> you do, make sure you can continue publishing SqueakNews.  Free is nice,
> but I'd rather have something available for a price than have nothing at
> all.  Judging by the product, you've put a lot of work into it.
>

I am grateful for these comments! If you look at my message I suggested the first 3 issues should be placed only, and in fact the third issue may prove to be problematical since its size is about 118MBs and I may have problem with free redistribution of one of the items in the contents on the web. Obviously We can't really offer all past issues for free and these will be the only ones that will be freely downloadable on the web for a foreseeable future, but I have no objections for the first issues to be given out for free because people will not appreciate them unless they see them. Talking about them seems to help from the amount of the messages generated but when people see them they will understand that
these are not just a few pages that are put together. Every issue is piece of software that has to be carefully integrated and tested. In this list we are either developers or at least are familiar with the software development process and I don't believe there will be one person who after seeing them will decide that they are not worth their price. Think about the process: Articles (many of them active) have to be collected, formatted and edited, and integrated under one image (which if you think about the variety of the images they are coming out of it by itself may be a hair raising experience). A general theme and a navigation has to be set up. There is also a lot of artistic effort goes into them. Artwork
has to be prepared and included. The overall issue has to be tested. Then CDs have to be prepared in a way (i.e. hybrid) that all systems should recognize them as different types of CDs, yet still should share the substantial part of the CD among these different file systems.  Each burned CD has to be tested on at least a Mac and a PC. (poor Linuxers have to get them untested so far). I believe when people realizes the effort that goes into each issue there will be eventually more subscribers.

...and don't worry, as long as there are paying subscribers Squeak News will continue to be published.

>
> Here's an idea: consider other publications on non-squeak content and
> find other people to be the editors of those publications.  These people
> could learn the SqueakNews platform for constructing the content of
> their publications.
>

There is actually a serious discussion of coming up with a Kung Fu/Self defence/healing e-zine based on the technology of Squeak News (look for the article "Capturing the knowledge of a Kung-Fu Grandmaster" coming up in February of March 2002). Another one about a cook book that uses a central server to share recipes is also on the table (look for the "soufflé" article that will come out in December).

>
> - Stephen

Cheers

Tansel