User:Beachsidepress

Hi, my name is Ron and I am a book publisher, MediaWiki skinner, and dabble in other areas of interest.

I joined Wikipedia June, 2007. I have been using the Internet since 1994. In June 1994, I was one of 35 employees supporting Best Internet,  in Mountain View, California (Now Verio Communications). Best was then the hands-down leader, perhaps the first, Internet communications company in the world that serviced homes, and dare I say it, businesses on a wide scale basis (they served Silicon Valley). When Best started a year earlier, the majority of the Internet was for government, scientific, and educational purposes, and many people in the online community were shocked, and dismayed when a business for businesses joined the Internet. See Opening the network to commerce. It seemed almost every newspaper in 1996, when the Internet was young for commerce, predicted the Internet was doomed to utter failure. I got a kick out of that. It's kind of funny too that the San Jose Mercury Online doesn't offer articles earlier than 1998 - after the Internet was established as a viable medium.

I received a little flack on my first article for placing one of my authors, Scott Fivelson, who is notable in his own right, on Wikipedia.

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