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OUR INTERNET PEDIGREE.

Summary of the key milestones and developments in a 30-year internet history.

Here is the full version - a long read!

30 years ago Roland Sharman formed Premier Internet Corp (PIC) in Santa Monica, California. PIC registered the domain web-design.com. This really was the very early days of the internet and Sharman started to door knock local merchants in Santa Monica telling them the should have a "WWW" with their name and a website. This was like selling ice to eskimos! We could see the future but convincing people was very difficult. But over the course of time PIC acquired 30 plus customers for websites at $1,000 set up and $50 per month hosting and management.

Notably one customer was a wine merchant interested in selling wines online. Sharman developed an online catalogue and shopping cart so everything could be done on the website except payment, they had to mail a cheque. This might have been one of the first shopping sites ever but sadly laws concerning transport of alcohol stopped it before it started.

In late 1996 PIC launched creativecontacts.com as an online database where photographers could list themselves and show some of their work. Interesting to observe is that we were telling the photographers that potentially 70,000 people would be able to see their listing - the internet was very, very miniscule then! Below is a screen shot - this is early web design! Ahead of our time it didn't really take off!

We launched Citibase in 1997.

described at the time.

"Many cities are looking for ways to use the Internet to better serve its residents and businesses. Some link their Homepages with various chamber of commerce Websites, tourism or real estate private sites. This tactic forces browsers to examine many sites to try to find any specific information about businesses serving the city. Only one product allows both businesses and individual residents access to a city database to post their own listing--citibase.

citibase is a unique interactive database that allows small to middle-sized cities (up to 1,000,000 population) to offer every business and resident within its boundaries publication on the Internet, and further allows each to interactively maintain their own data records. This eliminates the timelag and expense of processing by city personnel.

citibase is a flat database with a proprietary search engine allowing searches over keywords or name. It is maintained on the city’s server or other server, and hot linked to the city Homepage. Authorized listers access citibase using their browser, self-supplied username and password, create their own unique entry, and allow access later to edit that entry.

Businesses can enter unlimited service or product categories to reflect how searchers use keywords in searches for service and products in the host city." Ahead of our time it didn't really take off!

As time progressed our customers were always asking for changes on their websites and there were no such things as Content Management Systems so we set about creating a method whereby internet site owners could post topical news. We developed the first commercial Java Applet called Newsbreaker®.

awards,

Was recognised by JARS no less than THREE times. Once with a Top 5% award and Two times with the coveted Top 1% award. Also it was similarly rewarded by Earthweb's Gamelan reviewers with Two What's Cool awards. Below is a screen capture from the Jars site.

In this instance we were ahead of our time but it did find a commercial audience. Some very big names in software, government agencies, fortune 100 companies and many others. Some other well known users of the Newsbreaker applets include KLA-Tencor, SCO, Dictaphone, The St. Paul Companies, Biztravel.com, CMP’s Techweb, DOT Colorado, Robertson Stephens & Co., NADEPJAX (US.Navy), City of Karlskrona (Sweden), NOREPS (Norwegian Emergency Preparedness System), Election 97 (UK), US Veterans Administration and the United States Navy.

Some outstanding reviews such as "Newsbreaker Alert is one of the most exciting technologies for direct marketing on the Internet" Greg Schroeder,V.P. Marketing, New Century Mortgage Corporation . Newsbreaker has the potential to revolutionize Direct Marketing on the Internet by enabling direct and immediate scalable, reliable communications to audiences small and large at an extraordinarily affordable price."
Below are three reviews for big names you would know.

In 1999 Premier Internet Corporation which included Newbreaker was sold and Sharman moved to Adelaide in South Australia.

In 1999 Arajenona Pty Ltd. South Australia founded WebWork (webwork.com).

Getting deeply involved in using PHP and MYSQL Webwork developed many websites for customers such as APD Group (South Australia's largest privately owned parcel delivery and courier company), LISAsoft Pty, The Veterans of the Vietnam War,Inc., Pacific Communications and Investment, Credit Finance Corporation, Giftfest, Copy with Cream, Biz-Card Australia, Wap-connect Pty Ltd, Colores Cosmetics.

WebWork also designed and developed "A new on-line website design tool, hosted on your server or your ISP, that avoids all the pitfalls of fancy, software generated sites. You wont need their voluminous manuals, articles or tips to understand Webwork. And with Webwork there will be no more "blue screen of death" crashes. Just reliable, functional, fully featured websites in a fraction of the time."

Description form a press articel "The aim of Webwork Webuilder is to allow anyone with no knowledge of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) and no ability to use FTP (File Transfer Protocol) to be able to construct and maintain their own fully featured websites with a simple point and click interface.

This is a whole level of sophistication beyond GeoCities-type freebie sites. The standard features offered by the software include a discussion group/forum with an editing function, links for external resources and an automatically generated contact information page with the ability to include thumbnail pictures of staff members.

A products page displays thumbnail pictures of a product, with a brief description and price, a pop-up window for each product with full picture and full description and a picture gallery provides the ability to add and delete pictures at will.

Webwork Webuilder offers other stuff that comes standard with many websites but you can use this online software to create your own website in just a couple of hours."

In 2004, as a joint venture with a customer we launched an online furniture store (furnitureonline.com.au). This was the first site we developed where the bank agreed to allow us to take credit cards online. In 2004 they were very nervous about what is normal now. We heard a ping of the first sale about one hour after the site went live. As a business it was succesful but there were some limitations, remember this is 20 years ago, people would not buy sofas or armchairs if they could not sit in them. Beds, mattreses, tables and chairs no problem. We also had huge logistics problems and although profitable we closed the business in 2006.

2006 also saw the founding of Sail Shade World Pty Ltd (SSW) which is still operational to this day. SSW is a large e-commerce business with a global footprint selling in over 60 countries so other activities ceased and all my work was on managing SSW. The SSW websites are constantly evolving and improving on the "back end" and significantly it is SSW that has made us SEO experts.

A partial listing of Newsbreaker® technology Licensees
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