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Tuesday, December 26, 2006
White & Nerdy
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
I had intended to write a post every day, but I did not realize how difficult it is to find the time to write. How do all these people write blogs every day? There is so much information on the web it is amazing. I have plenty I can write about: Geeks celebrating "being different". It would be great if more of the world could accept differences rather than fighting about the differences. And then I could write hours on the Geek way of life: logical living. My wife thinks I'm nuts, because I always think there is a logical way to do everything.
I also thought it would be fun to write about my Geek Dad. I was telling my daughter (who at 10, and considers herself a geek) today some things she probably did not know about her grandfather when she was complaining how he is technically challenged as he was having difficulty faxing me some info. She did not know that he worked with Bill Gate's team (and met Bill pre-millionaire state)to help them develop the first Microsoft DOS based PC keyboard and mouse.The company(Alps) he worked for also developed the keyboard and mouse for Steve Jobs' Apple computer too. And there is supposedly the first book on Air Conditioning in his basement that he co-authored. He reverse engineered from an early competitor one fo the first black and white TVs and then helped develop the first color TV for Emerson Radio/TV. One of his best stories is how he helped come up with the name "Epson" while working for C.Itoh, a very large Japanese trading company that was selling one of the first digital printers the EP1 - their first success in the US.
If I only had more time in the day. Maybe if I sold a million GeekGeer pocket protectors a year I could retire and just write (and fish).
Sunday, November 12, 2006
This post is coming directly from Google's new Online Doc and Spreadsheet application. It seems very geekish to use this new Google tool. Google itself is such a Geeky company. They were another set of college computer geeks that pushed outside the box of typical internet search tools and came up with a winner to the billion dollar tune and now challenging the ultimate GEEK Master Bill Gates at his own geek monopoly game.
It used to be Microsoft's Bill Gates vs Apple's Steve Jobs, but Steve the master of geek idea innovation, moved away from the code wars and blew away bill in the online music world. Bill is attempting to fight Steve in this music world with Zune, in his usual "No new Idea" concept of Microsoft's typical "replicate better and use the monster MS monopoly, not innovate" inventive model.
The Google Geeks are going attacking MS from their own monster monopoly of the search engine ad revenue base by offering competing tools to MS's Microsoft Office Monopoly. Or maybe it will be some totally new Geeks who have yet to even enter the scene that will be the ultimate challenge the old Geek power base. They're probably freshman in college somewhere . . . making trashy videos for YouTube.com.
Saturday, November 11, 2006
GeekGeer is eleven years old on November 27th, 2006. The internet was a relatively new thing back then. The World Wide Web (www) was brand new that year.
I owned and ran a company called Digital Presentations. We produced digital (electronic) slides with a program called Aldus Persuasion (and Microsoft PowerPoint). These electronic slides were then output to a color acetate, or a 35mm slide or presented from a person's computer using a video projector that could project the computer image onto a large meeting room screen.
We thought we might expand our business into this new world called the World Wide Web for clients that might want to present their information on the WWW. We had a number of clients such as Pfizer and Viacom that had expressed interest in doing so.
We began this large research project to evaluate what the market potential might be and surfed the web daily for new opportunities and technologies for our clients. At the time the Web was primarily a world populated by geeks. You still needed to be a bit technical to figure out how to access the internet, and web. AOL was still non-internet based dial-up, proprietary "BBS or bulletin Board System". The web was cool and mostly text based, but the "web" allowed images and art.
Digital Presentations could use the same technology and applications we used to create electronic slides to create cool looking web sites. We needed to create a sample site to experiment with this new technology. Our first site produced was called the digital pool, based on the art of the cool digital photo of a Tsunami wave, a very geeky piece of art. From that Geeky wave came the idea of GeekGeer - the first home of web surfing gear, or gear you should wear while surfing.
Our first product were GeekGeer Glasses. With an optopmitrist friend we produced and sold thick black frame glasses with lenses that were treated with a special anti-glare coating, that eliminated the annoying glare of bright computer screens. We sold a couple of dozen world wide. We were not making much money, but it was fun to be getting emails and checks from people around the world for these funky black, but useful glasses.
The next product we added was cool looking pocket protectors. I thought maybe I could bring back the pocket protector. We sold dozens of these too, again around the world. The reach of the internet was truly world wide and amazing. The profit from the sale of pocket protectors was barely enough to pay for the cost of the electricity to power the computer the website was served from. But it was fun and the site was really only and experiment in this new online world.
I still sell the pocket protectors if anyone is interested. They make great pen holders for brief cases or backpacks. Pocket protectors for pockets are a tough sell, considering that less and less people even wear shirts with front chest pockets anymore, and the new advanced technology of pens means pens rarely leak - although if you ever had a pen leak and spoil a favorite shirt, you should try a pocket protector.
In the process of developing the web site I developed a very cool looking GeekGeer logo. Developing logos is always a lot of fun, but this was was probably the most fun I had creating a logo. I developed it with Adobe Illustrator version 2 or 3. They had just came out with a new function that could put gear "teeth" points on circle. The G's turned into gears and it animated well and I thought it looked kind of cool. Others did too.
Next product - something else (besides geekgeer glasses and a pocket protector) to wear while you surfed the web - a cool looking, top quality geekgeer cap and t-shirt. We sold dozens, but I have to admit, I probably have worn more geekgeer caps and t-shirts over the past ten years than I sold. They're great 100% cotton T's. I have also given away plenty too.
About six months after geekgeer.com was born, my daughter Maddy was born. Of course I came out with GeekGeer for kids T-shirts. I will have to try and dig up a photo of Maddy sitting on my lap with her GeekGeer T-shirt while surfing the web with me, while she was barely old enough to hold up her head. I had to keep her interested at the computer while I worked, and came up with "Geekman" or sometimes called "GeekGuy". Geekman was her favorite cartoon until SpongeBob hit the scene.
By the time her sister Rachel was born, three years later, I had put geekgeer.com on hold to work on more serious endeavors to pay for the ever increasing cost of diapers and baby formula.
Digital presentations and GeekGeer.com merged into a company called GeekGeer Communications. My primary business was developing, producing, and technical consulting on presentations for corporate 100 executives for their large meeting events. After a key client commented that I needed a more serious name than GeekGeer Communications, I started doing business under the name MarshMedia, LLC. GeekGeer.com continued as a fun hobby.
And that what it is today, but maybe at age 11, GeekGeer.com and Geekman will begin a renewed life on an online world that has grown far beyond what Geekman could have ever imagined or maybe he did imagine the wild world wide web, and just waiting for the right time to venture beyond the local world of Maddy and Rachel. Watch out SpongeBob, the nut that lives in a pineapple, here comes Geekman!
I owned and ran a company called Digital Presentations. We produced digital (electronic) slides with a program called Aldus Persuasion (and Microsoft PowerPoint). These electronic slides were then output to a color acetate, or a 35mm slide or presented from a person's computer using a video projector that could project the computer image onto a large meeting room screen.
We thought we might expand our business into this new world called the World Wide Web for clients that might want to present their information on the WWW. We had a number of clients such as Pfizer and Viacom that had expressed interest in doing so.
We began this large research project to evaluate what the market potential might be and surfed the web daily for new opportunities and technologies for our clients. At the time the Web was primarily a world populated by geeks. You still needed to be a bit technical to figure out how to access the internet, and web. AOL was still non-internet based dial-up, proprietary "BBS or bulletin Board System". The web was cool and mostly text based, but the "web" allowed images and art.
Digital Presentations could use the same technology and applications we used to create electronic slides to create cool looking web sites. We needed to create a sample site to experiment with this new technology. Our first site produced was called the digital pool, based on the art of the cool digital photo of a Tsunami wave, a very geeky piece of art. From that Geeky wave came the idea of GeekGeer - the first home of web surfing gear, or gear you should wear while surfing.
Our first product were GeekGeer Glasses. With an optopmitrist friend we produced and sold thick black frame glasses with lenses that were treated with a special anti-glare coating, that eliminated the annoying glare of bright computer screens. We sold a couple of dozen world wide. We were not making much money, but it was fun to be getting emails and checks from people around the world for these funky black, but useful glasses.
The next product we added was cool looking pocket protectors. I thought maybe I could bring back the pocket protector. We sold dozens of these too, again around the world. The reach of the internet was truly world wide and amazing. The profit from the sale of pocket protectors was barely enough to pay for the cost of the electricity to power the computer the website was served from. But it was fun and the site was really only and experiment in this new online world.
I still sell the pocket protectors if anyone is interested. They make great pen holders for brief cases or backpacks. Pocket protectors for pockets are a tough sell, considering that less and less people even wear shirts with front chest pockets anymore, and the new advanced technology of pens means pens rarely leak - although if you ever had a pen leak and spoil a favorite shirt, you should try a pocket protector.
In the process of developing the web site I developed a very cool looking GeekGeer logo. Developing logos is always a lot of fun, but this was was probably the most fun I had creating a logo. I developed it with Adobe Illustrator version 2 or 3. They had just came out with a new function that could put gear "teeth" points on circle. The G's turned into gears and it animated well and I thought it looked kind of cool. Others did too.
Next product - something else (besides geekgeer glasses and a pocket protector) to wear while you surfed the web - a cool looking, top quality geekgeer cap and t-shirt. We sold dozens, but I have to admit, I probably have worn more geekgeer caps and t-shirts over the past ten years than I sold. They're great 100% cotton T's. I have also given away plenty too.
About six months after geekgeer.com was born, my daughter Maddy was born. Of course I came out with GeekGeer for kids T-shirts. I will have to try and dig up a photo of Maddy sitting on my lap with her GeekGeer T-shirt while surfing the web with me, while she was barely old enough to hold up her head. I had to keep her interested at the computer while I worked, and came up with "Geekman" or sometimes called "GeekGuy". Geekman was her favorite cartoon until SpongeBob hit the scene.
By the time her sister Rachel was born, three years later, I had put geekgeer.com on hold to work on more serious endeavors to pay for the ever increasing cost of diapers and baby formula.
Digital presentations and GeekGeer.com merged into a company called GeekGeer Communications. My primary business was developing, producing, and technical consulting on presentations for corporate 100 executives for their large meeting events. After a key client commented that I needed a more serious name than GeekGeer Communications, I started doing business under the name MarshMedia, LLC. GeekGeer.com continued as a fun hobby.
And that what it is today, but maybe at age 11, GeekGeer.com and Geekman will begin a renewed life on an online world that has grown far beyond what Geekman could have ever imagined or maybe he did imagine the wild world wide web, and just waiting for the right time to venture beyond the local world of Maddy and Rachel. Watch out SpongeBob, the nut that lives in a pineapple, here comes Geekman!
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Tuesday, January 24, 2006
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