Grapevine.NET
by zYX/a51


It's been approximately ten years in the making but finally 
you're reading it. Grapevine is back in the year of 2004!

Is this the genuine article though? LSD's Grapevine was 
originally created over a decade ago as a simple message 
box intro and progressed into a fully fledged disk magazine 
spanning up to three disks. So how dare a group of guys 
make a website, name it Grapevine, and compare it to the 
original?

The philosophy is simple!

Although the original production was based solidly in the 
UK Amiga scene of the early nineties it was never really 
about the computer it was running on or the format it was 
distributed in. There was a sense of community. Pages and 
pages of scene news that had to be sorted into A-Z order 
of group name so you could find your way through it. Endless 
arguments over articles entitled "Elite vs. Lamers". And once 
you'd read through all the scene-orientated texts there were 
still sections covering... Well, covering virtually any 
subjects that people wanted to put fingers to keyboards over.

Ideas and debates were flying electronically around the UK 
and the rest of the world long before the explosion of online 
web forums and blogging. But, there seems to be a concern 
that because of these new forms of, let's say, electronic 
publishing there is no longer a need for a reborn disk magazine 
in this day and age.

Far from it!

Take a few quick searches on Google and you'll find hundreds 
of blogs and forums on virtually anything you'd like to find 
about about. Take out the ones you'd actually find interesting 
to sit down and read and I doubt you'd still have that huge 
list in front of you. Most forums have the odd well written 
entry but the vast majority of them are one line replies, off 
topic rantings and pasted texts from previous postings. Blogs 
have slightly more content but they can't be fascinating all 
the time so you'll tend to scan over them in the same way.

But what about well produced websites featuring professionally 
written articles?

I'm all for them. Why else would I be writing here (hehe!). 
But the continuing trend of the internet seems to be if you 
want to read anything good you'll either have to be bombarded 
with pop up advertisements or pay a monthly fee.

Have you seen anything on the internet that seems to replace 
Grapevine? The diverse range of subjects, the infectious music 
modules playing in the background, the fact it's totally free 
and uncorruptible by the evils of money. And possibly most 
importantly, knowing you can read an article, disagree totally, 
write a scathing reply and it'll appear in the next issue if 
you watch the deadlines!

The internet hasn't killed books, magazines or newspapers so 
why should it destroy disk magazines. Being realistic they can't 
exist in their original format and gain a significant number of
 readers. But they can be redesigned to exploit the web and the 
internet for their own purposes. With the introduction of versatile 
web technologies such as Java and Flash, magazines can still be 
"coded". Only this time... Anyone, anywhere with an internet 
connection can join in the community!