Time for a roundup of all the bits of news we've missed while we were slacking off last week...
 
We've recieved word that German RISC OS dealer bluebirdy.de has ceased trading as of the 3rd of July. Unfortunately we don't have stats on how may German visitors we have to the TIB site, but the guys at BlueBirdy have always seemed to be very active in the RISC OS scene (including designing their own desktop theme in our themes section), and I'm sure that they'll be missed.
 
Cerilica's Vantage has been officially launched as of July 6th, and some people have had emails saying that it has been shipped; however, no such luck here at ArgoNet towers, so a review will have to wait a while longer.
 
We've been getting questions about the state of some of the other RISC OS news services (when you think about it this might seem a little odd, but we're all friends here). The Acorn Cybervillage still seems to be down, despite Stuart's best efforts to relocate; we were able to read it last week, but not right now. It's not the end though, as Stuart was saying recently that he's been impressed with the number of offers of help he's had. Drobe is currently an empty directory listing, but that's because it's being prepared to be filled! When there's more information we'll let you know here on the news page.
 
We haven't posted a full report on the latest Mico offer (partly due to it being pretty much straight advertising, and partly due to Microdigital's attitude towards some organisations and individuals), but APDL are offering a Mico at £399.99 for an 8MB memory, 4GB hard drive, 48x CD machine. The price includes VAT, keyboard, mouse, software etc. but no monitor. The idea is to sell machines at a price similar to the old BBC Micro to try to bring the benefits of newer hardware to enthusiasts still struggling with older machines.
 
John Kortink has reduced the price of Viewfinder cards by 10%, to celebrate the opening of his new website. With the rewrite of the ZapRedraw module, programs such as Zap should now not only work properly, but work even better as it makes use of the ViewFinder's hardware acceleration.
 
And finally, the POSum has its own website . This POS system now has a web server plug-in called e-COMmerce, integrating regular shop sales and e-commerce mail order.