DND: the first Albanian-language e-zine, made at 14

Did you know? Dardania Nentoka Digjitale, DND for short, was the first e-zine (electronic magazine) in the Albanian language. The first issue came out in 1999. We were 14 and 13 years old. Crazy, right?

What it was

DND was a digital magazine sent by email. You subscribed by writing “SUBSCRIBE DARDANIA” in the mail body. Two of us edited it, under the names D1G1TAL WARR10R and ThE MINI0N (that was me), with a small crew of members and contributors of different ages. Our base was Prishtina, but in the editor’s words we had no physical place, only “this digital place in the whole network that grows day by day”.

Most Albanian content online at the time was about politics and the situation on the ground. We wanted to write about everything else: computers, telecommunications, Windows tricks, the early internet, and games.

"Knowledge is POWER, and with power comes RESPONSIBILITY." The motto on the cover of issue 002.

Three issues, about 70 subscribers

DND had three issues. By issue 003 we had around 70 subscribers, which in 1999 felt like a stadium. Issue 002 opened with an editorial on why a hacker builds and a cracker breaks, because people kept calling us a magazine for hackers. My own part, of course, was about video games: a review of FIFA ’99.

"FIFA'99 punon edhe me konfiguracion minimal P-133, 16MB-Ram dhe 20MB vend ne HD. Por me se miri luhet ne P-II dhe mundesisht me 3D kartele grafike (3Dfx, Riva TNT, etj)."

In English: FIFA ’99 runs on a minimum P-133 with 16 MB of RAM and 20 MB of disk space, but it plays best on a Pentium II, ideally with a 3D graphics card. Life, we’ve come a long way.

Why it still matters to me

Looking back, DND was my first brand, my first editorial calendar and my first community. A name, a look, a promise to readers and a reason to come back every issue. Some of the contributors will find themselves in these pages.

Both issues are on LinkedIn as full PDFs, if you want to read them in the original Albanian.

Originally published: LinkedIn, DND 001 · DND 002