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20 Jan 2024
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Arrick Publishing is a container for my internet publishing ventures. Here's an overview of the history.
In the early '90s before the internet became popular I was certain that networking was going mainstream. At that time there were several individual players with their own networks such as CompuServe and Prodigy, and of course BBS (Bulletin Board Systems). I investigated becoming a Prodigy dealer but decided I wasn't made for sales, I just knew the technology was going in that direction.
Then around 1994 Netcom gained traction and I got a subscription to "The Internet". The search engine Yahoo looked like this and AltaVista soon followed. Netcom had their own browser named NetCruiser which was written in Visual Basic but most people used Mosaic. There was a button to turn off images to improve page load speed of our 1200 baud dial-up connections. These were amazing times.
After being in computers since the mid-70s this whole internet thing looked like a major game-changer to me and the possibilities were endless. I immediately built a website for my Robotics business and canceled my expensive magazine advertising - it was bold and slightly reckless. It was just so obvious where this was going in spite of random articles to the contrary - (2) (3)
Even though I'm an engineer at heart, I started having all sorts of ideas about publishing technical information on the web and that's what I did. It was a sideline business and I just learned as I went. I learned HTML and FTP and Photoshop and experimented with fun graphics for the site.
Listed here are a few of my publishing projects. They all look so cheezy but that's how we rolled in the '90s - Web 1.0 baby!
One of the first projects I chose was to publish information I had collected on PC/104 products. PC/104 is an industrial computing platform - basically a small, stackable ISA bus computer. I pulled out my files and started building content. Everything was simple HTML with a few tables thrown in and a <BLINK> tag every once in a while.
This resulted in an online magazine (an E-Zine) at CONTROLLER.COM. At first it was just free information because that was the spirit of the web at the beginning but eventually I was able to sell ads on the pages because it was generating good traffic with value. Never in my remote imagination did I ever see myself as an ad salesperson, it was completely out of character, but it was like shooting ducks in a barrel.
; "Controlled.com")
Early on, before 2000, I was challenged by a company that had a magazine named CONTROLLER related to aviation. They demanded I give them the domain name because they were using that name. This was early in web history and the laws weren't settled yet. Ultimately I ended up selling them the name to avoid a legal battle. This could never happen with modern laws governing domain name ownership. Because of this I switched my online magazine to CONTROLLED.COM and that's where it remained. The wayback machine archive has no capture of Controller.com from the early days but it looked something like this 1997 version -
; "Controlled.com")
Along with embedded systems information I maintained a list of various resources for engineers. These pages mostly listed vendors of products. I did all this for free but eventually sold a small number of ads on a few of the pages.
; "Engineering Resources Controlled.com")
One of my most successful publishing ventures was PC104.com. The website was very simple showing a list of PC/104 vendors and links to their websites. At the peak it had around 50 listings. I wrote server code in PERL to rotate the header image and layout, and to reverse order the vendors randomly.
Customers regularly asked me for a banner ad at PC104.com but I didn't want to mess with it. In 2001 I gave in but had no way to value it. I was thinking a couple hundred dollars a month. To discover the real market value I made an Ebay auction and let the vendors decide. The value was $1800 and Megatel was the first winner.
I also had the PC104.ORG domain name and ran the PC/104 Consortium's website for several years then turned it over to them. I also had PC104.NET which redirected to PC104.com.
As the years went on I got busy with Synthesizers and the new model was to serve Google ads which didn't sound like fun. In 2014 Advanced Micro Peripherals purchased PC104.com from me and I moved on to other projects. As of this writing it is not functional.
; "PC/104 Embedded Systems Vendor Supplier List")
As early users of the internet will remember, many topics had a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions). During the years of PC104.com I wrote the PC/104 FAQ. The PC/104 FAQ is currently hosted here.
; "PC104 FAQ")
In 2006 I was honored to be asked to be a judge for the PC/104 design contest in San Jose California and presented an award there. I got to meet most of the people in person I had been selling ads and listings to for 10 years.
; "PC/104 Embedded Systems Contest 2006")
; "PC/104 Embedded Systems Contest 2006")
I also wrote the STD Bus FAQ and hosted it at Controlled.com. The STD Bus FAQ is currently archived here.
Because I was so early in the market, many of my customers, most of whom were manufacturers of embedded computing products, didn't have websites. Many of them recruited me to build their website, so I did and made some extra money. I built the first website for about 50 companies, maybe 100. All of it was hand-coded HTML, before CSS, Javascript and PHP - the glory days. Here's a sample from 1997 -
; "PC104 FAQ")
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