Once again, if you are just joining us on this story, you may wish to click here to read so far.
After the incredibly overwhelming reception (about 8 emails) I received from my print publication, I knew I needed to do something to get more exposure. It was then I met a guy who had some programming skills.
We decided to team up for the next edition of the publication. Only this time, we would shed the paper and publish a disk-based version. I would put together the content and he would program the disk to be a self-executing program. In those days, Visual Basic was the most accessible way to achieve our goal. So, we decided to change the name to \”The National Software Review\”. After all, we could send a floppy disk to anyone, anywhere. And, we discussed making the file available online for people to download.
At this point, I knew I could not handle all the writing on my own. I posted \”help wanted\” messages on various bulletin board services, AOL, compuserve and prodigy. I was seeking software reviewers, and I would provide the software to review. I was up-front with people and told them that their only compensation would be to keep the software they reviewed. As you might imagine, I received dozens of emails from people expressing an interest in joining us. In a matter of days, I had narrowed the editorial staff down to 8-10 writers, and promptly sent them software so they could begin testing the games.
One of the volunteer writers sent me an email suggesting that we code the reviews in HTML and place them on the World Wide Web. In 1994, I had NO CLUE what the world wide web was, let alone HTML. I foolishly snickered at his proposal, unaware of what was to come next.
to be continued…