An updated look at the alternative options people have voted for so far.
The voting form for the 2015 RISC OS Awards poll went live seven weeks ago tomorrow – and the current tally stands at a few short of 140. This is a notable improvement on last year’s poll, which received around a hundred entries after being open for over two months, although still a little short of the previous year’s 150 – and ideally, even that could be bettered.
As noted in the previous round-up of alternative votes, it’s likely that the lower total number last year was a result of the method chosen for the poll – which relied entirely on you, the RISC OS-using community, to think back over the preceding year and decide for yourselves what to vote for. In short, you had to try to remember all of the things that had happened, all of the software that was released, and so on, and fit what you could remember into the various categories – and that may not have been as easy as it sounds ‘on paper’.
This year’s poll takes a similar approach to the year before last, with a number of options in each category, but with an additional option to vote for something else entirely – and for the benefit of those who have yet to vote, it’s time to do a second round-up of those “something else” votes.
As before, what follows is a straightforward list of those suggestions, broken down by category, with no additional comments other than the reason for the vote in some cases. They are in no particular order, other than the order in which I found them as I scanned the votes for the purposes of this article, and I have only listed those categories for which I have seen alternative votes. This list is updated from the previous version, so it includes the alternatives that were previously listed – but new additions are italicised.
Best commercial software
- Messenger/NetFetch
- Fireworkz Pro
- ROOL’s for the Norcroft development suite
- EasiWriter
Best non-commercial software
- rRaw
- Pluto
- CustomVDU
Best game or diversion
- Moonquake
- Hopper
- House of Cards
- Doom port by Jeff Doggett
- CountDn
Best hardware
- Raspberry Pi Zero
- Allwinner Tablet (although RISC OS is yet to be ported to it)
Best show of initiative
- Pi-Top, for developing a laptop that runs RISC OS natively
Best website or online resource
- Arcsite.de
- RISCOS.fr
- riscosnews.wordpress.com
Most innovative or interesting project
- All those getting RISC OS to run on new hardware!
- RiscOSM
- Otter browser
Best overall contributor
- RISC OS Open Ltd
- Jeffrey Lee
- A4com
- Jon Abbott
- Martin Wuerthner/MW Software
- German Archimedes group
- Robert Sprowson
- R-Comp/Andrew Rawnsley
- 3QD (for the latest VRPC CD and resources)
- RISC OS programmers/community as a whole (for being exceptionally helpful on newsgroups/forums)
- CJE Micro’s
- Martin Avison
- Paul Vigay
- Orpheus Internet
- Sine Nomine
Broken cog of the year
- R-Comp, for not updating their ARMini website for 14 months to reflect what is for sale.
- apdl.org.uk, because the site hasn’t been updated in a long time. (Note, however, that this suggestion came with a question: “help needed?”)
- Archive Magazine for erratic publication schedule.
So with the options presented on the voting form, and the list of alternative suggestions above, there really is no excuse for not getting on with it and casting your vote in the RISC OS Awards 2015!