A Labor of Love

This last year has been a different one for us here at PCQuest. It has been a story of constant transition, of new initiatives and of new
learnings. 

To start with, for the first time in our history, we announced an annual calendar, giving out the key stories for every month of the year; and, touch wood, have kept to it so far. More than just the calendar, the stories themselves have been different. We have been doing a shootout a month. We got out the quarterly DVD. We augmented the Users' Choice Awards and changed the way we present that story. The Best IT Implementation Awards were introduced, and we made our first attempts at covering IT implement- ation strategy issues. We made the design cleaner, and redid the sections of the magazine. 

These were augmented by many, small changes within the stories themselves. The Direct Hit Box was added. Starting this month, we have brought back the price list that we used to carry years back, and news reporting has been made compact to accommodate more items. We also introduced the SMS-based Reader Query Service. 

But, the biggest change we made was to set up the online forums at http://forums.pcquest.com. This was started on Christmas day last year to collect ideas for PCQLinux 2004. The forum was so successful that we extended it to provide support to the distribution, and soon enough, to cover other areas as well. 

Many of the changes that I talk of here first originated as ideas at the forum. Even complete story ideas have come from the forum. And so has criticism, criticism that we have hopefully taken in our stride and used to make PCQuest a better magazine. To Shiva_iitm, daj123, hn_88, vasuatpcq, yesgokul, gary_no_1, ask4jm, vbhoj74, sunil_ak47, klinux...and to all of our other readers who burnt the midnight oil to contribute ideas, and to help others in need, we at
PCQuest are deeply grateful.

So, the magazine that you are now holding in your hands is the result of inputs and feedback from readers such as you and, to that extent, is more like what you want it to be, than it was ever before.

There are many things still to be done, things which I am sure will keep us awake in the nights to come, things I am sure that you our readers will also continue to contribute to. Remember that we have a world out there to change. ¨

Krishna Kumar