New vintage computing publication

From: evan <evan947_at_yahoo.com>
Date: Thu Apr 8 19:24:09 2004

>>>>> will help attractive people

LOL, of course I meant "help ATTRACT people"... sorry
about the typo! As I said we will make mistakes. :)

--- Computer Collector E-Mail Newsletter
<news_at_computercollector.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> Having conferred with Jay West, I'd now like to
> introduce the readers of this mailing list to a new
> publication, the Computer Collector E-Mail
> Newsletter.
>
> A few of you already know me as evan947_at_yahoo, the
> guy
> who collects handhelds/PDAs. More than a few of you
> know Michael Nadeau, formerly of Byte magazine, who
> founded the Classic Tech E-Letter a few years ago.
>
> Meanwhile, I and Sellam Ismail (who EVERYONE knows)
> pondered starting a print magazine for the hobby
> last
> fall. Ultimately we decided the hobby just isn't
> big
> enough yet to support that.
>
> Instead, early this year Mike handed over the reigns
> of his newsletter to me. For those who don't know
> me,
> besides being a computer collector, I (like Mike) am
> a
> veteran technology reporter. Paid my dues at
> Gannett
> (which owns USA Today and other papers), was a staff
> engineer at a product review lab for telecom gear,
> and
> spent 3.5 years at eWeek (formerly PC Week.) I'm 29
> and grew up on Apple and Atari.
>
> The first thing I did as the new editor is change
> the
> name. I think "Computer Collector E-Mail
> Newsletter"
> is more intuitive and will help attractive people
> who
> aren't necessarily familiar with our growing hobby.
>
> I also changed some of the fundamentals. Before,
> the
> newsletter had infrequent publishing, and in each
> issue an attempt was made to cover all of the news
> out
> there. That's a difficult way to run things. So
> now,
> the newsletter is published every Monday. Also, in
> every issue we have one main article (news, opinion,
> etc.), vs. trying to be a comprehensive news outlet
> every single week.
>
> By "we" I mean myself, Mike, Sellam, and author
> Christine Finn (Christine's known for writing the
> book
> "Articacts: An archeologist's year in Silicon
> Valley"), and Erik Klein, who runs
> www.vintage-computer.com.
>
> Of course we did not want to overlap with this
> mailing
> list. Tech tips are clearly this list's domain. So
> with the newsletter we're sticking to the root word:
> news. To be crystral-clear, we're not a forum, and
> we're not going to duplicate existing efforts.
>
> We also didn't want to duplicate fragment the
> existing
> online classified ads and marketplaces of Sellam's
> and
> Erik's web sites. So instead they each send me
> their
> top three or four ads on alternate weeks, which I
> publish in the newsletter. Along with the ads
> there's
> a link that says "click here for more," taking
> readers
> to their respective sites.
>
> So as you can see, we've revamped the old Classic
> Tech
> E-Letter into something that's fresh, consistent,
> and
> clearly carving out its own niche.
>
> Besides the few of us behind the scenes, we also
> solicit guest writers. For example, Visicalc legend
> Dan Bricklin gave us a column, as did the Digibarn's
> Bruce Damer. Macintosh inventor Jef Raskin did an
> interview with us. We interviewed the CTO of
> Hewlett-Packard's printer division, and even IBM's
> David Bradley -- better known as the guy who
> invented
> Ctrl-Alt-Delete. We also went to suburban
> Philadelphia to write about a video game conference.
>
> We currently have about 450 subscribers. On our
> informational site, which is
> news.computercollector.com, there is additional
> content. There's a computer history bookstore, a
> small but growing page of tales from collectors, an
> events calendar, a summary of our articles to date,
> and yes, some lame Google ads to help us pay for the
> hosting.
>
> Anyway, the newsletter is FREE, and if you subscribe
> we promise to never, ever give away your email
> address
> or send you spam. We also would love to have some
> of
> you write guest columns. The slate is wide open;
> write about anything you're passionate about in the
> hobby. If you're not a writer, then just send us
> your
> ideas for articles, and/or news we should be aware
> of.
>
> Sometimes, we'll make factual mistakes, and we
> promise
> to be vigilant about identifying and correcting
> those.
> As I told Sellam, I respect and fear that most of
> the
> readers of the classiccmp lists know way more about
> computer history than I ever will. So please bear
> with us when, not if, we mess up.
>
> Thanks for taking this time to read this long
> message.
> To subscribe to the newsletter, go to our site
> (again, that's news.computercollector.com), click
> the
> subscribe link, and just put in your email address.
>
> Thanks again,
>
> Evan Koblentz
>
> PS -- I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. If you
> visit the area and want to chat about vintage
> computing over a drink, I'm always interested.
Received on Thu Apr 08 2004 - 19:24:09 BST