What's New 
by Andrew Welch

HectorCam

First, we have something completely useless that we've worked long and hard on: the HectorCam. Yes, that's right folks. We have trained a live camera on our African Grey Parrot, Hector D. Bird. This hidden camera sends real-time images of the bird himself to our web pages. 

                                                                  

It's dumb, pretty useless, and the bird certainly doesn't deserve the limelight -- but it was fun to set up and it's a mildly entertaining diversion for us and hopefully you as well. If you're interested in seeing Hector live and in person, point your web browser at http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/Thaumaturgy/Hector/HectorCam.html and bring the popcorn. 

                                           Andrew caught bribing the bird on the HectorCam! 

Beta

It seems that beta testing always takes much longer than anticipated, despite the generous release date padding we give to our products. The bad news is that some of the products we hoped would already be released (Escape Velocity and Barrack) aren't quite there yet. 

The good news is that they are shaping up extremely well, and the extra time we spend putting a little spit 'n polish on 'em will definitely be reflected in the release versions. 

We've also gone to beta on two products we haven't told you much about yet: Avara and It's About Time. We've included some relatively in-depth previews of them in this issue for your viewing pleasure, so be sure you take a peek. 

To keep your appetite satisfied, we've also included updated screen shots from Escape Velocity and Barrack in this issue as well. Both of these games have improved immensely since you last saw pictures of them, so we figured we should pass some new ones along. 

As you might imagine, we're very busy with 4 products in beta -- and other unannounced projects in the works as well -- so please don't ask us when they will be released. We'll let you know the second a product is released, we promise. The best way to stay informed of product releases is to sign up for our announce_list mailing list, or check our web site periodically. 

Web Madness

We've been spending a significant amount of time working on our web site lately, because we hope to make it a great forum for you folks to get information on us and our products. Although a number of things have been -- and will continue to be -- added to our web site lately, we'll just hit on a few of the more significant ones here. 

We've recently added a TechWorks section that is designed for people who are interested in working more closely with us, whether as a developer, beta tester, artist, or software distributor. If you are interested in working with Ambrosia in any of these capacities, we urge you to zip on over to the TechWorks section of our web site and have a look around. 

We have also installed mailing list software on our server that allows us to easily notify you of new and interesting happenings here at Ambrosia Central. To make it easy for your to sign up for one of our mailing lists, we've added a Mailing Lists web page -- http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/Lists.html -- to our web site. There's more information on our mailing lists later on in this issue, so keep flipping those digital pages. 

And of course, anything new we add to our web site will be listed in the "What's New" section on the web site, so you may want to check there from time to time to see what's up: http://www.AmbrosiaSW.com/Whats_New/Whats_New.html 

Thief!

If you see someone with Andrew's car phone, car stereo, laundry, or car battery, please let us know. His Jeep is beginning to look a bit shabby. No, we're not kidding.