Editorial 03q1
Towards a new era in publishing Dedicated Systems Magazine.
It’s been three years now since this magazine was renamed to “Dedicated Systems Magazine”. Since then, our readership has acclimated to the new name. The reason behind this change was the fact that we felt that the term “dedicated systems” is more comprehensive then “real-time systems” or “embedded systems”.
Last
year (2002) the magazine has been suspended for economic reasons. However
the request for subscriptions remained high and we therefore decided to offer
the content to our readers on a other basis, reducing costs.
We will now start again with an electronic version called Dedicated Systems e-Magazine. After a while and if the request for a paper version remains high, we will then go for some "hard copy" version.
However for this hardcopy
version, we thought it was appropriate to launch a new concept: a multimedia
Dedicated Systems Magazine. The hard copy magazine will be printed in a
smaller format (125 x 177 mm), and will be maximum 44 pages thick. It will include a CD,
whose content will also be published in a special section on our website.
This new
concept offers two major advantages over the traditional paper-only format. The
printed copy will dedicate one page only to each individual article, and will
present a summary of the full paper, followed by the conclusions. Since time is
a precious resource to many of our readers, some of you may find this amount of
information sufficient. However, the full-length versions of the article will be
put on the CD and on the website, laid out in the template you are currently
accustomed to.
The second benefit is one we are very excited about. As far as the magazine content is concerned, we will have a lot more flexibility. After all, we are no longer restricted to paper only; we can just as easily publish multimedia content like video tutorials and presentations. It also permits us to bring you demonstration software that vendors will want to contribute. Companies will be offered CD space to put their company presentations on, which is a new way of advertising.
The new version of the e-magazine will be launched during 2003 on a free basis. Starting 2004, the magazine will be subscription based again.
We are convinced this new concept will make it possible for us to provide you with more valuable content at a lower of no subscription fee. We hope you will enjoy this initiative, and that it will make it easier to keep you informed about the newest technological developments in the dedicated systems business.We hope you will support us with valuable articles and comments to the articles in order to sense better what your requirements are.
