German Diskmagazines - the great selection?
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In Germany, the first diskmagazine was founded in early Amiga days, when no
one knew that "clist.library" was intended for manipulating copper-lists
:-) or a mad swiss programmer had an idea for a nasty thing called virus...
The diskmag, which was a one-man production by a hacker calling himself
"Marc Aurel", was named "AMIGAzine!", contained many drawers containg not
so many articles (most of which where derived from Net-sources) displayed
by the famous CBM "More". The first issue was published in the late '86s.
Marc distributed the mag for NIL:, you just had to send him a SASE and an
empty disk, and he returned it with the latest AZ issue. In the 68000'er, a
magazine devoted to any 68k-Computer (QL, Amiga, ST and Mac at this time),
appeared an article about the mag, and so "AMIGAzine!" was canceld a few
month later due to Marc had no more time for doing anything than else than
copying the magazine...

A few month later, shortly before AZ died, (in February '87), a second
diskmag was founded by Tilman Wittenhorst, called "AmigaJUICE". Tilman's
mag, which's outer appeareance beared strong reassemblence to AZ, contained
mostly own-written articles and a few PD-programs. AJ was distributed just
like AZ, but Tilman stopped AJ as he noticed the lack of interest of people
to work for AJ.

Again, "a few month later", another Amigo, Holger Lubitz, resurrected
"AmigaJUICE", now as a bootable-disk suitable even for absolute beginners.
He had the same problems as Marc and Tilman before: He couldn't write
enough to fill up the whole disk, and no-one seemed to be interested in
writing for AJ.

At this time, one more diskmag was founded as a kind of "club-magazine" for
a PD-distributor called "AIT, Amiga Idealisten Team". The AIT-Group turned
to a commercial PD-distributor, although the diskmag, "GetIT", is still
published. It has a size of already two disks per issue, but most of this
is filled by display-programms, oversized icons or pd-soft. Also, it
contains many commercial adds for AIT.

Two other diskmags where founded, "AmigaFUN" and "AmigaFaszination". Both
where bad plagiats of "AmigaJUICE", in form and contents.

Holger Lubitz, marketing director, distributor, editor,... of "AmigaJUICE"
had taken contact with some german and swiss Amiga-Programmers. One of
them, Christoph Franzen, wrote a great Text-Display-Program called "Zeige",
which allowed to ban the nasty icons: ZeigE has the possibility to show a
"contents"-page to directly select the desired texts, and many text styling
options: fonts, paging, pictures and more.

Both "GetIt" and "AmigaFUN" began to use "ZeigeE as the saw the great
succes of AJ in the following months. Later, even "AmigaFaszination"
switched to "ZeigE", although the editor formerly critised "AJ" for using
"such a toy"...

Although "ZeigE" no more was an AJ-exklusive program, the other diskmags
couldn't beat up with AJ having new-programms or interesting arcticles. As
AJ sometimes has up to 650 pages of text (thanks to Nico Francois' PP),
"AmigaFaszination" hasn't reached the 250 page mark, and "AmigaFUN"
struggles to reach 400 pages.

More and more people, also well know german programmers like Werner
Günther, Christoph Franzen, Roger Fischlin, Fridtjof Siebert or Jörg
Schließer, are working with "AmigaJUICE", releasing their new programs or
writing articles.

AJ is also know (especially in Germany) for starting an "Anti-PD-Piracy"-
campaign against several german PD-distributors, who thought they could
make a fast buck by selling overpriced "Selection-Disks" called
"Schatztruhe" or something like that. Also, AJ has no commercial adds in
order to be independant from manufacturers.

Currently, as more and more diskmags are founded and die one or two issues
later, AJ is the only interesting german Disk-Magazines which contains much
and new stuff. Esspecially "AmigaFaszination" seems to exist only in order
to collect review-stuff or to make money with commercial adds, and
"AmigaFUN" mostly contains articles "lend" from another sources...

-Ølli

    Sources (Prices incl. PP):

    AmigaJUICE
    c/o Oliver Wagner
    Landsberge 5
    D-4322 Sprockhövel
    SASE and empty disk OR DM 4,-

    or

    AmigaJUICE
    c/o Holger Lubitz
    Postfach 1431
    D-3070 Nienburg/Weser
    SASE and empty disk


    GetIt
    c/o AIT-Usergroup
    Erlenkamp 13
    4650 Gelsenkirchen
    DM 10,-

    AmigaFUN
    c/o Heiko Bernhörster
    Düsseldorfer Str. 59
    4060 Viersen 12
    DM 5,-

    AmigaFaszination
    c/o Michael Süßer
    Werderstr. 66
    4690 Herne
    DM 5,-