Hello World!

It's all about communications.

Since I was a teenager I have worked in broadcasting at New York's listener-sponsored Pacifica radio station, WBAI-FM.

When I got my first computer (an Atari 800) in the early 80s, it was about dialing into Bulletin Board Services (BBSes), posting and reading messages in a community. (I didn't care for the Internet's Usenet -- too big to know everybody, and I didn't like everyone I met.)

For awhile I served within Corporate America as a network administrator and tech support coordinator for a very cool division within Citicorp called Humanware. That was about interface design, and revolutionized how many people think about the machines (including phones) we interact with on a daily basis.

From there I went to ZiffNet -- not ZDnet, which still exists today. ZiffNet was on CompuServe and later on Prodigy, and served to communicate with readers of the Ziff Davis computer magazines. In the late 80s and early 90s we were working on the ultimate BBS, using a consultant by the name of Tim Berners-Lee. When our project failed to launch for internal corporate reasons, Mr. Berners-Lee went on to give his ideas to the world, and thus the World Wide Web was born. I began my site, hourwolf.com in 1995 before the Web was commercial.

At that point I began writing (mostly software reviews) for various Ziff Davis magazines, including PC Magazine and Computer Shopper. Later on I broadened out to writing for online publications such as CNet. When the dot.com bubble burst, I began consulting to small businesses and individuals; often concentrating on their Internet presence, connectivity, and convergence with other technologies. Lately, this has included mobile technologies and home entertainment systems.

Like I say, it's all about communications.

Sure, there are those who'll say that the PC revolution happened thanks to electronic spreadsheets. That may be true, but they wouldn't have had half their value were it not for networks and e-mail. And today such apps are getting more powerful due to online collaborative apps such as Google Apps and Zoho. It's still communicative.

In this blog I'll discuss the past and future of how these technologies have changed us, where they're going, and yes, pragmatic reviews and advice on what to do and how to handle it.

Let's communicate.