From The Top

Welcome, Amiga Clubbers to the first issue of Club Amiga Magazine. We intend for this magazine to come out on the 1st of each month, exclusively to members of Club Amiga and we intend for it become something that is useful, informative and fun for you.

Community has always been an important part, and some would argue the MOST important part of the Amiga. No other platform really has it in the way that Amiga does and it is for sure that it is only the community that has kept the Amiga going through the dark times since the bankruptcy.

The idea behind Club Amiga is thus a recognition of the importance of this community, and more, that many in the community would like something extra, a more formal organisation or entity which allows them to practice and announce their Amiga citizenship.

To us at Amiga, this means more information, more news, special negotiated deals, merchandise, and articles and columns from Amiga personalities. What it doesn't mean is something that competes with the existing published magazines. The dark times have been particularly hard on them, and they have played a large part in keeping the community going. The last thing we want to do is compete with them in fact we will do our best to try and support them.

We want your opinions and ideas about what this club should become. What would you like, what wouldn't you like, how can this club evolve and grow? What issues will face the Amiga platform over the next year and how can the club help? In short we want this club to be your club as much as it is our club. Please e-mail your thoughts and comments to cam@amiga.com.

As you can imagine, this first issue is a bit (well, a lot) of an experiment so if it is bit rough, or not exactly what you expect, then tell us!!!

Amiga is on the verge of a rebirth in the world. AmigaDE is taking off big time. AmigaOnes are shipping and AmigaOS4.0 is close to release. We want Club Amiga to play a big part in that rebirth.

Update Square

This is a regular section where you'll find announcements and news relevant to everything that is Amiga. Obviously, this will evolve as the club itself evolves and because this is the first issue, news is a bit scarce.

• On January 13, 2003, Amiga released a comprehensive user document detailing the new feature set of AmigaOS4.0. Click here to view it.
• Zeoneo Ltd, an AmigaDE content company have announced their latest product, Invasion, a stunning return to the alien terrors of the 1980s. See http://www.zeoneo.com/ for more information.
• IBM announced their entry into the mobile market with the 405 processor, a direct competitor to the ARM based Xscale of Intel. To start the ball rolling they have created and released a reference platform, which brings the PPC instruction set (and the possibility of both AmigaDE and AmigaOS4.0 support) to the PDA and Smartphone market. See linuxdevices.com/news/NS9222005703.html for the full announcement.
  

Marketing the New Amiga

Crazy Little Thing Called Marketing

Marketing is all about the identification, cultivation and harvesting of opportunities. It has been likened to the strategic planning and execution of a political campaign, where you discover the capabilities of an individual and work out how to use and promote them in the most effective manner.

At Amiga, we see our marketing resource set as great new product, a small but passionate community, a strong brand name and disaffection for many with their existing computer solutions.

So how do we go about creating an advertisement for the new product, one of the key elements in any marketing campaign? In this article, we want to share with you the thought processes behind the creation of our first AmigaOS4.0 advertisment, and then share it with you, an exclusive to members of Club Amiga.

First part of the process is what are we trying to say in this advertisment and why? The why part is the easiest. We want people to buy the product. The 'what' part, what are we trying to say to make them buy the product is the hard part.

What Are We Trying To Say?

To start to come up with an answer, we first need to identify exactly who will see this advertisement. In part this has to do with both where will the advert be seen (thus determining its viewing audience) and how it is presented (thus determining what elements call to the attention of the viewing audience).

Our initial target must be what is often called the 'low hanging fruit', those potential customers who only require the slightest nudge to consider a purchase. For these people the advertisment is more an announcement that the product is or will be available. This market slice can be divided into two, those who are still active members of the Amiga community and those who have owned an Amiga in the past and still have an interest in and affection for the platform.

This advertisement is thus for these people. It, or elements of it may be reused in future advertisements for different market slices, perhaps by way of a common metaphor, and we will consider this later.

The product itself must obviously be identified. Whilst some marketers do believe it is acceptable for a person to look at an advert and not have a clue as to what is being advertising, these tend to be the ones about to experience an enforced career change. The simplest concept is often the best and this is what we have gone for in this advertisement - namely a rendered image of the AmigaOS4.0 product box itself. This is important because not only does it let them know instantly what the product is but then it also gives an expectation for the product, such that when they go into a shop or browse a webshop, they will see this product, more or less as depicted and it will reinforce its implantation in their mind.

The most important thing is that the viewer of the advertisement walks away with a phrase or image in their mind, so called 'product implantation'. Since we are not going for an image based approach for the central theme of the advertisement, it becomes a phrase. This does bring with it issues, namely those of localisation. For example, you don't want to have to support a separate advertisement for each language. This can be mitigated against somewhat by picking a very strong and short phrase, which can then end up becoming a synonym for the product itself.

Reaching the rest of the world

In trying to sell AmigaOS4.0, we are essentially launching it into a world that has forgotten about the Amiga. Yes the low hanging fruit knows about it, but if we want a cross slice phrase that binds the marketing campaign together, we have to address all possible targets.

For a computer solution, continuity is obviously important. People buy from an established manufacturer, thus bringing themselves a feeling of security, quality and longevity. For an operating system, this is very important, since the operating system defines the application base which controls exactly what you can do with the product.

For Amiga it is more so, since many potential customers, whilst remembering the Amiga will also have forgotten about it, heard rumours about bankruptcy, being adrift in the wilderness.

The ideas of 'rebirth' and 'dawn' can be considered possibilities but they also add to the idea of a hiatus, hardly a confidence builder.

To bring the ideas of contintuity, staying power and experience together, we went for the phrase 'The Legend continues'. Most legends have a feelgood factor, it imparts longevity and it pays the necessary homage to the product itself, which is important for the pride felt for it by the existing Amiga consumers. 'Continues' emphasizes continuity whilst also being a truthful statement cleverly it raises no issues of suspension or reactivation. It is a legend and it is continuing.

So we have the AmigaOS4.0 software product and the phrase 'The legend continues'. For the low hanging fruit, this could be enough. Obviously they would like to know where and when but since these have not been made public yet, this has been excluded from the advertisement, changing its purpose slightly to being an announcement of impending product rather than an actual product release. This is fine - anyone remembering the pre campaign for the PlayStation 2 will remember that it started over a year before the product was released, and did a lot to damage sales and the ultimate viability of the Sega Dreamcast.

So we have a product announcement emphasizing the product and its continuity. What we don't have is a statement of its mission. Whilst not essential for active Amigans, it will give them an idea of where the future emphasis will be for their platform. For the uninitiated, it can be crucial in the second phase information acquisition (that takes place after the viewer has stopped and considered the advertisement (the first phase)).

Amiga has been talking since 2003 of the move towards a user centric model, of making technology invisible, empowering the ordinary to achieve the extraordinary in the digital universe and a host of other marketing phrases.

The concept we explored and liked a lot was a statement of what the AmigaOS4.0 can be used for, distilled down in the most generic and yet most specific elements. What do people do with computers? They work on them, play games, listen to music, surf the internet, draw pictures,
send emails etc.

We then hit upon the idea of the four elements of the ancient world. Could we distill the four elements of digital activity. This lead to us writing down pages of tasks and categorising them lo and behold, the four elements were revealed.

This concept of the four elements could thus become the common metaphor for the entire AmigaOS4.0 marketing campaign. Any customer can releate to the elements without having to understand what is going on in the advertisement, and thus provides us with a second 'grab' i.e the first grab is 'AmigaOS4.0' followed by, what is it for and the second grab is now 'Work - Play - Create - Connect' followed by, on what?

The four words even worked well together in spoken sound, always a nice bonus.

Beyond The Language Barrier

However, as mention earlier, text is always an issue with an international campaign. 'The Legend Continues' can just about get away with it but four separate words is a bigger challenge. In the end, we decided, why use words at all. Always use visual rather than lexical.

The image for 'Work' was a challenge because we had to consider all types of digital working, not just a word processor or a spreadsheet. By going for the hammer and spanner, we hope to abstract the concept of work, and crossing it in the manner of a skull and crossbones emphasized its motif nature.

The image for 'Play' was slightly harder because again we wanted something that didn't make the viewer focus on a particular play aspect. We did consider a joystick but in the end opted for a Space Invader, since it has become iconic since it first hit the market, a legend in itself.

The image for 'Create' was made slightly easier because Amiga intends to focus on Audio and 2D applications in some focused marketing drives. An alternative image was a musical score sheet with paint flicked against it but it was considered slightly more abstract than the obvious notes and paintbrush.

The image for 'Connect' was the hardest, and provoked the most disagreement. By 'Connect', we mean both the physical concept of connecting the computer with other devices and the idea of users coming together, whether that be with each other or with remote resources, such as the internet. It has to cover everything from peripheral connections, IR, Bluetooth, WiFi, 802, GPRS/GSM, DSL/Cable/Satellite to all the possible connection tasks - email, internet, messaging, multi-player gaming, sharing pictures and video. In the end we opted for a single symbol that represented the most used on line task, emailing, but that didn't explicitly state 'email' and thus restrict the idea.

Final Touch

The final touch, apart from the obvious corporate branding and information was the phrase 'Embrace Digital Living'. This was a last minute addition and again, it provoked a lot of discussion, mainly to do with balance and saying too much/disturbing the what and why message.

'Digital Living' is a big buzzword at Amiga, although more often used in connection with the AmigaDE, the idea that task is more important than technology and that computers are there to be used, not to be computers. It is a corporate mission goal and as such, it was deemed necessary to attach it to the AmigaOS4.0 project in order to create a cross product message.

Of course the advertisement still had to be put together, the ideas turned from concept into professional artwork. Luckily we had the services of an up and coming graphic artist who is steeped in the lore of Amiga and so who could add that 'Amiga' touch to it that only comes from being a part of the community.

As always, there were compromises, things thrown out, changes to the message etc but both Amiga and the test groups seem to have liked the end result. We hope you do as well.

Ben Hermans on AmigaOS4
by Ben Hermans

Development of OS 4.0 is proceeding well albeit somewhat slower than we would have hoped. This is in part due to the fact that we had to spend more time (again) on doing the AmigaOne firmware (BIOS) because of the wide-range of supported CPU modules.

Beta-testing has been in full swing for several months and translators from all over the world have been busy "localising" the OS.

We finally got around to releasing a more detailed features-document which can be viewed at http://os.amiga.com/os4/OS4Features.php. The feature set was well-received and provides a more indepth view of the project and its status. More revisions of this document are due to be released in the next few weeks.

We know that the wait has been long, much longer in fact than anybody would have expected -- or liked, but bear with us as we really are there

The Club Amiga Logo
by Mark Rickan

Anatomy of a Logo

At first the idea of creating an image to represent the next generation of Amiga users seemed reasonably straightforward. This is after all, a platform that has a richly textured background with images from every source imaginable. For nearly two decades an entire generation has been captivated by circuit boards, chips and semaphores.

Huh? If only it was that simple!

The Future is History

Our objective in creating the first version of the logo was decidedly simple: design something that was emblematic of the legacy of the Amiga but at the same time conveyed change. Instinctively we decided that because the boing ball was synonymous with the system it would be our focal point. Updated with a little 3D rendering and a glint of reflective geometry it was ready to go.

The second part of the design was a bit more of a challenge. With the introduction of the AmigaOne and OS4, it was obvious that we were experiencing a fundamental change in the architecture and vision of the platform. We wanted to suggest a shift in both magnitude and time. The result was the metallic portal that encompasses the boing ball - the gateway where the achievements of the past meet the opportunities of the future.

A little creative license on naming and a catchy phrase and our work was complete. Or was it?

A Sense of Community

Soon after submitting our initial logo design, we received some constructive feedback. Passionate voices proclaimed that the hallmark of any successful technology was not something that could be surface mounted. The whole paradigm shift was pretty hip, but what about that intangible quality that has always made the Amiga? What about its spirit? What about the people? And by the way, let's not be too literal or too abstract, too structured or too Warholesque, too techno or too cuddly!

How about a few palm trees, a bit of neon and a marguirita? Eek! Which Moss was going to model this Kate or Fleecy?!

After some careful deliberation, our sense was that the Amiga spirit could only be captured through those that know it best: the members of the community. What followed was a revised version that we feel achieved an interesting balance between the technology and the individuals that make it all real.

After all, what makes the Amiga is the people. Enjoy! Mark Rickan and Mohamed Moujami P.S. Thanks to those fearless souls that were willing to allow us to use their mugs!

The AmigaOne Experience
by Rose Humphrey

Having been one of the very lucky few to have actually seen an AmigaOne working back in April 2002, I was delighted to get my hands on one of my own, to play around with as I pleased.

Things didn't start off too well, though. I wanted to show at my local user group's once-every-three-years beanfest in June, but I didn't actually receive it - UPS and 'plane timetables permitting - until 4pm the day before. One G3SE motherboard, one hard disk with Linux pre-installed, sign here please. One happy afternoon fitting it all together and testing later (yes, for despite the advice I give to everyone else, I had already purchased all the parts necessary to produce a working system), we were ready to roll.

I was a total newcomer as far as Linux is concerned, so I took the precaution of buying SuSE 7.3 PPC, which comes complete with two hefty and fairly comprehensive manuals. A worthwhile investment, believe me, as over the summer it came in for some heavy use. Linux is a powerful OS, but it can be a scary thing when you're sitting there faced with only a 'bash' prompt. Fortunately, there is a pretty good choice of graphic interfaces, including one that is designed to look like the Workbench. but it still isn't as smooth and intuitive as a real Amiga.

On the other hand, the G3 processor (an IBM 750CXe at 600MHz) was a revelation, even with a bulky, monolithic OS like Linux. Having already used Macs, I was used to the G3, but the AmigaOne seemed a lot more zippy than the PowerMac's respectable, if unexceptionable, performance under MacOS 9.2. Even more impressive was the heat given off by the processor: a miserable 50°C with no cooling whatsoever, brought down to room temperature by simply gluing on a heatsink for a graphics or northbridge chip. This is one cool and silent computer. I have to admit to a certain lack of patience with chronically noisy, overheated PCs ever since.

What else? Oh yes, stable. Mine is currently running as a Samba and Appletalk server, and I'd have absolutely no hesitation in recommending it to a company for use as a server. In fact, that's exactly what I intend to do, as - to paraphrase the electric razor man - I liked the computer so much I decided to sell it.

All that remains is to install AmigaOS4 when it arrives in a month or so. Linux is good for servers, but give me AmigaOS for my desktop any day.

Members' Corner

The Amiga Club is not about Amiga, it is about those who are members of the club. Many of you have have made significant commitments to the platform, enduring poor service, costly products and of course the laughs of the PC owning friends. Against all the odds, you have carried on supporting the Amiga in anyway you can. Well, we want to hear about you, and so do the other club members.

We intend to spotlight at random a club member per issue, asking and answering the questions that only have meaning to fellow Amiga club members, and perhaps allowing for new friendships to be created.

This will be done by supplying a standard set of information. If you do not want a piece of information made public -- for instance email address, location etc -- then just leave it blank. From CAM #2, we will start highlighting the first club member. We will also create a web-form for you to fill in, instead of e-mailing this information.

To qualify for the March/2003 issue, please e-mail the following information to cam@amiga.com with the subject "Members Corner".

Name/Moniker:
Email Address:
Location (can be general or specific):
Amigas owned and currently used:
How do you use Amigas in your everyday life:
Five favorite Amiga apps:
Five favorite Amiga games:
First Amiga experience:
Why did you join the club:
How do you see the future of Amiga:

notice : CAM Editor reserves the right to remove any part of the information submitted.

Letters

The next issue of Club Amiga Magazine will dawn a new feature -- letters from club members. We invite you to send your Club Amiga comments and suggestions to cam@amiga.com with the subject "Letters".

That's all for this time. See you all in the next issue of Club Amiga Monthly!