A Much Closer Look
Observations by The President

Hello everyone! Welcome to the first issue of Black Magic, representing the views of the Coastal Empire NeXT Users Group. CeNUG is a new users group formed in November of 1991 when two new NeXTstations appeared here in Savannah, Georgia. We're just getting started, getting this newsletter into production, and looking for new members.

Who are we?

CeNUG is centered in Savannah, Georgia but will reach out into the South Carolina, North Florida and East Georgia areas.

The group's focus will be end users with a touch of technical detail and programming information from time to time. Ultimately, NeXT computers must be used by someone in order to succeed. CeNUG will try to spread the word that this is a most useful computer for everyone - developers, in-house programmers, graphic designers, business users and hobbyists.

The Newsletter

For now, Black Magic will be published quarterly and mailed to our members in January, April, July and October. After the mail has had a chance to arrive, a Rich Text Format (RTF) edition will be posted to the major FTP archive sites and Compuserve as a tar-ed compress-ed file. The RTF version will be set in Times and Helvetica and will not have the formatting you see here. We want to reach as many as possible.

If you would like to receive the "real thing", just send in $5 and your mailing address and you'll get four issues by mail.

As you will see reading this issue, Black Magic aspires to be more than a outlet for information and a users group newsletter. We are attempting to produce a living example of the capabilities of the NeXT platform in desktop publishing. Everything you will see in Black Magic will be done on and with a NeXT. This does not exclude importing information and graphics from other platforms when necessary. I don't have a flatbed scanner, for example, but I do have friends in the Macintosh community who do. But Macintosh is a close cousin anyway and file formats such as Adobe Illustrator and TIFF are easily transferred between systems.

Help Wanted

Your comments and contributions are welcomed and solicited. In order to get better I need your input, both positive and negative. NeXTMail is always welcome (see side-bar for addresses). Contributions in the form of articles and graphics are gratefully accepted; this groups is still very small and will benefit greatly from outside help. CeNUG will also reprint articles from other newsletters and individuals from outside our group. They will always be reprinted with permission.

Reviews of current software and hardware is important to NeXT users everywhere. Black Magic will publish reviews regularly. Software publishers and hardware manufacturers are encouraged to send us their products. They will be objectively reviewed, published and a copy of the issue in which they appear mailed to the contributor.

"Magical Mystery Ride"

We're off on a journey of exploration riding the NeXT computer. Come join us.

Reach us at:

Coastal Empire NeXT Users Group
7 Woodhull Road
Savannah, Georgia 31404

Internet: rockbox!bob@pirates.armstrong.edu

CompuServe: 70372,1364