The future of Dot Journal

Submitted by Patrick on Sun, 12/30/2007 - 9:40pm.

Indulge me in a bit of history for a moment, will you?

The site you are reading today is the latest generation of a publishing process I started in the early 1990s. I had always been a fan of computers and knew I wanted to make it my career, yet I also enjoyed writing. In the beginning I started publishing shareware reviews via email and BBS downloads. As the 1990s marched on I moved to electronic publishing via Windows help files. It wasn't pretty and the software package used, RoboHelp, stunk up the joint.

Quickly, I moved to publishing an email newsletter called Cybernews. The internet came onto the scene and I moved to the web using a site called CompuNotes. We caught fire and at one time we had the second highest subscriber base of any email newsletter. Back then it was easy to determine ranking, since everyone used a product called Listserv to handle their distribution. Number one? The Wall Street Journal.

In the mid-1990s no one was talking about monetizing the web, but more about getting information people. Today you see ads all over the place (look to the left) in hopes of people making money on their works.

My career moved in a different direction and I didn't have time to devote to the site. The last measurable time I spent working on it was when RSS hit the scene in 1999ish. Come 2000 I needed money and made the decision to sell the site. Yes, I do regret it. The site is now part of someone's vast inventory of unused domain names. You can't even see it via archive.org. I do have a screen shot of the Frontpage workspace used:

I started Dot Journal to continue the experience of providing real reviews to people. I've long felt that reviews on the internet are usually in the extreme, which doesn't let people see the truth. The problem was I just ran out of steam. It takes passion to do review things and I just was pooped out.

I am recharged now.

There are so many new areas to explore. In the past it was pretty much hardware, software and books. Now there are websites, web services, ecommerce processes, video and much more.

That's my story and how this site started and why. I look forward to continuing the journey.