Another new site has appeared to fill the void left by Drobe.
 
'risc/pi' is aiming to keep users abreast of all the developments in the RISC OS and Raspberry Pi worlds.
 
Other sites which do a better job of keeping up-to-date than us include:

• RISC OS Blog
• RISCOSitory

It's also worth keeping an eye on the Announcements section of the RISC OS Open forum and the news aggregation site, RISC OS News Network.

For the past several years Drobe have run their yearly Drobe awards, in which members of the public nominate and vote for the RISC OS products and people who they believe have best served the platform over the course of the year. After a quick check with Drobe foreman Chris Williams to make sure he wasn't planning on running the awards this year, the staff at TIB decided it would be a good idea if we picked up the metaphorical torch and ran the awards ourselves. So, ladies and gentlemen, prepare for the first annual Icon Bar awards!
 
This year there will be four categories open for nomination. Once a suitable number of nominations have been collected, the voting booths will be opened. Then at the end of the year the votes will be tallied and the winner and runner-up for each category will be revealed. The categories for this year are:

• Best commercial product
• Best non-commercial product
• Best new development
• Best RISC OS show/event

Of course, if you want to nominate something that doesn't fit into any of the above categories, feel free to send it in and we'll see what we can do!
 
Update: Thanks for all your suggestions. Voting is now open until the end of the year.

There has been much discussion in the forum about Micro Men, a short film written by Tony Saint that was shown on BBC4 last week. The film is based on real events, and tells of the rivalry between Sir Clive Sinclair and Acorn Computers in the 1980s.
 
Chris Williams of drobe.co.uk has written an excellent a review of the film, and interviewed the film's producer, Andrea Cornwell, to find out more about the show.
 
Link: Micro Men (on iPlayer, available until 21st October 2009)

And so farewell to another part of RISC OS; as noted in our forum, longtime RISC OS news and articles website Drobe has closed... or, rather, entered "archive mode". (Note to all other websites: please do this, rather than just disappear, taking your content with you.)
 
A full announcement is to follow, but it's been clear for a while now that the time to run the website just hasn't been there. Many thanks to Chris Williams, original founder Peter Price, and everyone else involved in Drobe over the years; for all the occasional controversy, Drobe did a fantastic job at covering RISC OS online, comprehensively and intelligently. And that's a harder and more time-consuming job than it looks.
 
UPDATE @ 22:40: And here is that announcement. Whilst the main news and articles service is ceasing, the plan is to build the site up as a RISC OS resource site; anybody interested in helping with this is encouraged to get in contact. User webspace will also continue, and a new message board is planned. Any future updates to the site will be announced on their new Twitter feed.

Anyone reading this will have seen it by now, but just in case you gave up hope (but, erm, kept coming back to us for updates), Drobe has - after a few sparks of life recently - now relaunched.
 
There has been some criticism of the new design; visually, I think it looks great, but then I've always enjoyed websites that are clean and simple and uncluttered. My biggest complaints with the old design were that the masthead looked too busy, and there wasn't enough white space; both of these issues have now been addressed. (Although can we have the logo back in colour? Pretty please?)

Each week we hold up a mirror to the people of RISC OS and reflect the current topics of debate.
 
In this, the third exciting installment:

• Demo versions of software
• BBC iPlayer protests won't aid RISC OS
• Another user says goodbye

RISCOS Ltd have stated that they require 100 new subscriptions to RISC OS Select before they can make any commitment to producing an Iyonix version.

In order to provide some motivation, I've set up a pledge at PledgeBank where Iyonix owners can collectively register their interest. If you sign the pledge, please remember to contact RISCOS Ltd to register your interest officially. When the target of 100 is met, an e-mail will be sent to each of the signatories and RISCOS Ltd.

For more information about the features of RISC OS Select and the level of support needed to produce the Iyonix version, please see Paul Middleton's comments on the RISC OS Select mailing list.

Link: Iyonix Select pledge

Peter Naulls today released his RISC OS port of the Firefox web browser, having received his target amount of pledges.

Weighing in at a 9.5MB download, you will need at least 25MB of spare hard disc space, and lots of RAM to load it (Peter's help file suggests around 30MB to load, which can get to over 64MB whilst using it). You'll also need at least RISC OS 4 with long filenames and more than 77 files per directory. It is apparently possible to persuade it to load in RISC OS 3.7, but it's unstable if you do so.

People downloading this beta release of the browser are urged to fully read the !Help file within !Firefox before attempting to use it, as it contains usage information and bug reporting information.

This particular release is based on the Deer Park Alpha 1 browser, which was recently released by the Mozilla developers for testing purposes. Although it's not currently as responsive as other native RISC OS browsers, it does show that a lot of work has gone into porting the browser, and that there is still some work to do.

Links
RISC OS Firefox Port
RISC OS Firefox Beta Download