As you know, over the past few years there's been a general downturn in the number of articles appearing on The Icon Bar. In response to pressure from our readers, we've come up with a radical new stimulus package designed to combat this issue. Starting today, the author of any new article posted on the site will be rewarded with a bounty, which they will receive within 10 working days of the article going live. For full details about the different bounties that can be awarded to each article, please see our sponsor's site. Don't delay; submit your article today! ^*
 
 

We celebrated the 10th anniversary of our first article on March 10th. Where were you? Come to think of it, where were we? Yeah, we forgot about it too (but we are getting on a bit).
 
In fact we even forgot to renew the domain and didn't notice until this morning when some spammers called NUTFACE tried to hijack the site. Normal service has now been resumed, so expect our next article shortly before Christmas.
 

Well it's that time of year again. It hardly seems like a full year since we last wished all our readers a very Merry Christmas. Once again, most of you are probably too busy downing the bottle of something-that-you-found-in-the-back-of-the-cupboard, and stuffing yourself with mince pies to notice this post, but we're still going to say it anyway, just like we always do.
 
Merry Christmas to all our readers, and we hope you have a wonderful new year - whatever you're doing and however you're celebrating.
 
And don't forget to vote for The Icon Bar Awards 2009 before the voting closes on New Year's Eve!
 

Reader Mike sent in these pictures of something he found while out walking his ferret. Yes, we have readers with ferrets. Although the concept of a reader with a ferret confuses us, luckily we don't have to use our brains for this update because Mike was kind enough to send in some words to accompany the pictures.
 
Standard disclaimer: As most of you have probably noticed, this was our April Fool's piece for this year. If you liked our UK:Resistance theme used for the fool then you'll be glad to hear it's been added to the theme selector available from your account control panel. Of course in the end the joke was on us, because UK:R changed their website design from traditional red and black to their new colourful layout a couple of months ago. Oh well!
 
Click the owly pic above to see the article in its intended guise.
 
 

Once again the time has come to wish you all a Merry Christmas. By the time you read this, chances are that Christmas has already been and gone, although I'm sure some of you will have a peek at the site today whilst chomping on your mince pies :)
 
From everyone at The Icon Bar, we would like to wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year. Thanks for reading TIB in 2008 (what there was of it to read!) and we'll see you in 2009. Oh, and don't forget to vote in Drobe Awards 2008 poll while there's still time!
 
Links:
Christmas (Wikipedia)
 

 

Well it's that time of year again. It hardly seems like a full year since we last wished all our readers a very Merry Christmas. Yet again, most of you are probably too busy downing the bottle of whatever-it-is that you found in the back of the cupboard, and stuffing yourself with mince pies to notice this post, but I'm still going to say it anyway.
 
Merry Christmas to all our readers, and we hope you have a wonderful new year - whatever you're doing and however you're celebrating.
 
Links:
Christmas (Wikipedia)
 

Honestly, did you really think you could get rid of my marathon programming threads that easily? And myspace? Eewwww. Podcasts, on the other hand...

New features

But in all seriousness, our transformation into an Apple fanbois wet dream was due to our latest feature, the site themes feature thing, from which you can select from a selection of different themes with which to alter the site more to your liking. So far we've got the standard TIB and AcornArcade themes, as well as the Apple one, and a simple RISC OS one. More themes will be arriving as soon as we can get the sword away from Rich and chain him back down behind his keyboard.
 
There's also a new script we're playing with to allow RSS updates of forum posts. Either using a regular RSS reader, or setting up an RSS "account" in Thunderbird (etc.) pointing here:
http://www.iconbar.com/forums/rss-rss20.php
...you'll be able to see when new messages have been written. It's like that list down the side of the main site, but even more divorced from the forum itself! You can change the rss20 bit to rss09, rss10 or atom03 for other flavours of feed.
 
Links:
Site themes feature thing
Forum RSS feed