Nowadays, we generally accept having computers in the classroom. But back in 1995, it was a radical notion. I co-chaired a committee of parents, teachers, and administrators and we came up with this blueprint on how to do it. Several years later, I was elected to the board of trustees of the school district, and got even more involved in local politics.
Dave Piscitello and Lisa Phifer run a boutique consulting firm called Core Competence. Back in the day, we took a very complete look at the various kinds of all-in-one access/firewall/server appliances that could be used to run a small business in a box.
Well, that is what Marshall and I wanted to call our book on Internet email when we wrote it back in the salad days of 1998. It was just before the Meg Ryan movie came out and would have been perfect. Instead, we were stuck with a crummy title and lackluster sales. Marshall, for those of you that don’t know, was one of the inventors of the POP protocol, so you can blame him for all that spam you now get. Well, who knew?
In any event, Penn Jilette (of Penn and Teller fame) wrote our foward.
You can order the book from Amazon here and there is more information on my site if you want to read a sample chapter.
For a while, I was an expert on Web server software. This site, which I sold to MecklerMedia, listed all the various products available at the time in 1996-7. I was responsible for reviewing the products, posting content, and keeping up to date in this market. Of course, you can’t see any evidence of what I did from the dawn of the Web Era, so you will have to take my word for it.
Remember how hot Intranets were? CMP did a custom published Web site telling how to build them, and also produced a series of print pubs that went as inserts into some of their IT-related publications. It was a fun assignment, and too bad that no evidence exists today from this project dating back to 1997.
Here is how it all started. You have my permission to laugh. From 1995.