Handjive Magazine
Current Status
I'm sad to say, but HandJive Magazine is gone. It has been since
The URL that brought you here (http://www.phosphor.com/handjive/
most likely) has been inactive since
The History of HandJive Magazine
My friend, Patrick, and I originally started HandJive Magazine when we both worked for LaserMaster, a printer manufacturer. He had this great idea for a magazine covering a variety of subjects, the catch or hook being that it was published only for handheld computers. At the time he had a Newton and I had a PalmPilot (Pilot 1000, I think, possibly I had installed the Pro upgrade at that point). Within a few weeks, we were publishing the magazine and people seemed to like it. We both liked writing and there was plenty of stuff going on in the handheld market.
We were not prepared for the rigors of regular publication. He had a wife and kids. I had other projects I was working on.
Our original hope was to start the magazine, publish for a while on our own, garner enough interest that others were willing to take on some of the writing, and go strong for a long time. We weren't looking to make money or get famous because of it, just enough to keep doing what was really a fun project.
Eventually, real life took over and the issues got further and further apart. Slipping a deadline always troubled me, but what can you do. Family and friends come first. The magazine slipped so far down our (Patrick's and my own) list of priorities, that at the end it had been 9 months since the last issue.
We finally decided to pull the plug when the renewal for the Web server fees came through. They weren't expensive, but there wasn't any point in spending the money if we weren't going to publish the magazine. I still retain rights to the handjivemag.com domain name. It doesn't cost that much to maintain, (including the email services associated with it) so I plan to keep it for the foreseeable future. You never know when some bright idea might pop up.
Where Are We Now?
Patrick is doing IT work for a local college and running his own Macintosh consultancy, [machine]Methods.
Michael is in Minnesota doing systems engineering for company based in Herndon, VA.
We still keep in touch and hang around together, but not working at the same company and having so many things to do makes it difficult sometimes.
You are invited to stick around and check out the rest of the site. You'll find some of the reviews I did for the magazine, as well as several other things I've written over the years.