Since January 1994, they have also published a free electronic newsletter, Internet-on-a-Disk, which discusses Internet trends and points to Internet resources for business, education, and the blind. It is frequently cited as one of the best resources for education and for the blind (who can "read" electronic texts with computer devices that provide voice output). In February 2006 they began posting that same kind of content in a blog -- "Blogging About Books" http://www.samizdat.com/blog
Their Web site , started in May 1995, attracts a broad audience of book lovers, Internet novices, people interested in the prospects of business on the Internet, educators, and the blind. And in January 2002, they opened an online store at http:/store.yahoo.com/samizdat.
From June 1996 to November 2003, Richard hosted a weekly chat session
about business on the Web, with entrepreneurs as guest speakers.
You can see links to edited transcripts of all those sessions at http://www.samizdat.com/chat.html
In March 2006, Richard together with Sudha Jamthe started a new business
chat series, this time bi-weekly and taking place at
http://iblogcom.blogspot.com/
The company is run by Richard and Barbara Seltzer. (seltzer@samizdat.com )
Richard worked for Digital Equipment (now Compaq) for 19 years, where was the Internet Evangelist in the Internet Business Unit. He was one of the handful of people who helped Digital to recognize and take advantage of new business opportunities on the Internet as the first major company to use the World Wide Web for marketing . He helped customers rethink their business models. After leaving Compaq, he worked as an independent Internet marketing consultant.
Based on his experience both at Digital and his consulting work, he was frequently called upon to speak and write about the Internet and where it is headed. His book The AltaVista Search Revolution published by Osborne McGraw-Hill is now out in a second edition. His book Shop Online the Lazy Way was published by Macmillan, can be ordered at Amazon.com, and can be read online at http://www.samizdat.com/sho.html His related Online Shopping Directory is available at www.samizdat.com/shopping.html Wiley recently published another book of his -- Web Business Boot Camp, for sale at Amazon. Another book of his, The Social Web, dealing with how to build a simple and effective Web presence at little or no cost is available for free at his Web site. He calls himself an "Internet evangelist" because of his passion for the subject and his contagious enthusiasm. He also writes and publishes novels, plays, and children stories. (Short resume. The full, lengthy version of his resume includes a list of his publications, with hyperlinks to the full text of many of them.)
Barbara has experience in marketing, in use of the Internet, and in early childhood education. She now works for as an executive assistant at New England Medical Center in Boston. (resume)
Their son Bob was the founder of MindLabs, an educational company and of Trenza, an Internet startup, in Cambridge, MA. He is now an associate at Care Capital, a venture capital firm focused on the healthcare industry http://www.carecapital.com/people.asp#seltzer He graduated from Yale, majoring in Molecular Biophysics and Biochemistry, and has an MBA and an MS from the Wharton School. He was national chess champion for his age group four times. His first 951 tournament chess games are available at www.samizdat.com/chess.html
Their daughter Heather lives in New York and works as Production Manager in the Theater Department at Barnard College, while beginning a career in modeling, acting, and dance. She graduated from Sarah Lawrence College.
Their son Michael has written two novels: Behind Locked Windows and Life. He graduated from Northeastern University, and works for Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
Their son Timmy is in the in the ninth grade at Catholic Memorial School in Boston. He runs a "fanfic" Web site where he posts his own work and edits and posts his choice of the best fanfics on the Web http://www.samizdat.com/fanfics
Some mentions of our efforts:
Internet Handbook for Writers, Researchers and Journalists by Mary McGuire et al. (2000) -- "a site with lots of personality; lists full-text sources available on the net and other jewels." (p. 38), "Internet on a disk, newsletter, electronic books. Newsletter provides interesting commentary...disability info...electic, well worth a visit" (p. 176).
The Boston Software Newspaper, October 1998
Fast Company, Aug./Sept., 1996, "You Are Your URL"
Boston Globe Sunday Magazine, June 2, 1996, "Creatures of the Web"
Internet World Magazine, January 1996, "Best Personal Home Page," p. 42.
Scout Report, December 1, 1995
Web Review, October 30, 1995 (also extracted here )
Net Guide Magazine, September 1995 , "The 50 Best Web Sites," p. 52.
Internet World Magazine, September 1994, "Digital Lit" by Kevin Savetz, p. 88.
Internet World Magazine, January 1995, "The Best Education Resources" by Dave Taylor, p. 41.
ANALOG Magazine (sci-fi), April 1995, p. 169.
Cultural Treasures of the Internet by Michael Clark, Prentice Hall, 1995.
The Internet by Email by Clay Shirhy, Ziff Davis, 1994.
At one of these schools, there was a very knowledgeable head of the computer center. He had an Internet connection of his own, and was well aware of the educational resources available. But he didn't have the time to hunt down, download, and printout material for the faculty; so he preferred not to spread the word on what's available.
At another school, which had a computer center, but no Internet connection, we proposed that we could come in and help them get connected, and provide advice on how to make the best use of the resources in the classroom. We made a presentation to the department heads, and got what seemed to be an enthusiastic response. But the headmaster decided that they were doing enough "new" things for now, and put the idea on hold. Since then, the science department got an Internet dial-in account through a nearby college; but no one seems to have time to use it.
From those various contacts, we learned that 1) the overwhelming majority of teachers have access to Macintosh or IBM-compatible PCs; but 2) very few have any idea of what is available on the Internet and even fewer have access. And of those with access, most are limited to email accounts, and most have very limited disk space allotted to them, so they can't do any serious downloading.
Meanwhile we kept reading the education-related newgroups and distribution lists such as kidsphere, LM_NET, and PACS-L.
It was an item that we saw from PACS-L in Feb. 1992 that gave us the seed of the idea that grew into PLEASE COPY THIS DISK. The itemdealt with the problem of "drinking from a firehose". Ken Laws wrote at that time, "The solution is to pay someone to filter and condense just the information you want, then supply it in an easy-to-scan format.... Do what you can to encourage entrepreneurs in this area. When they offer such services, be willing to pay for them."
We believe that while some people are indeed trying to drink from a firehose, others are simply going thirsty. We'd like to help withboth problems by providing bottled water.
We had started a little book publishing company back in 1974 -- the B&R Samizdat Express (B = Barbara, R = Richard, Samizdat = self-published, and it sounded so much like a train we call it Express instead of Press). We had successfully self-published a couple of my children's books (The Lizard of Oz, and Now & Then & Other Tales from Ome), and had been handling a trickle of orders ever since. Now, we decided that the time was right to revive that old venture with a new project to put Internet material on IBM/Macintosh computer diskettes -- to publish books in a form designed to make it easy for people to make their own copies, to put public domain information in the hands of the public.
As we got started, we made two discoveries that made this effort all the more important to us. First, we found out that many blind and visually impaired people have access to computer-based reading aids which can use plain ASCII text. They are, however, limited by the amount of material which is readily available to them in that simple, basic format.
Second, we learned that certain publishers are moving into the CD-ROM business, and are copyrighting their electronic versions of public domain texts. In other words, at a time when technology makes it possible to spread classic texts and government information to a very wide audience at very little cost -- to make our cultural heritage as freely available as water -- some publishers are trying to reverse that trend, and lay claim to these texts for themselves, and discourage people from making copies of electronic texts, just as they discourage them from making photocopies of printed books.
Our approach is the opposite of that, as indicated by the name PLEASE COPY THIS DISK, (which was inspired by signs at the Children's Museum in Boston, which read "please touch.").
Our primary audience consists of teachers and librarians, and we encourage them to make as many copies as they need, for colleagues and students. We hope that many will begin to use these disks as substitute text-books; or will put together material from several different disks to assemble their own anthologies.
We also hope that the material which they see and use on our disks will give them a taste of the vast and rich resources available on the Internet and will inspire them to get the kind of access that they need. To further that cause, we offer two Internet reference disks, packed with information useful to the Internet beginner. We also provide details about where we obtain the material on our disks, and encourage people to connect directly to the source.
We do not own the information on our disks. Our role is to help spread it to the people who need it and want it.
We believe this project is in the Internet spirit of sharing and that it can help spread the benefits of Internet information resources to those who do not yet have full access.
When people do make copies, we encourage them to please treat the information and its originators with respect. They should think of this as an extension of the Internet -- "Internet-on-a-Disk" -- and treat the information with the same consideration as if they had obtained it directly from the Internet.
We provide these texts as they are found on the Internet. We do no additional editing. We believe the people who originally input or scanned these texts made every effort to be accurate. But we cannot guarantee the accuracy. We ask our customer to accept these texts "as is," in the spirit of sharing which prevails on the Internet. (If for any reason you are not satisfied with a disk which you purchased directly from us, you may return it for replacement or refund.)
For the material we obtain from the Internet, we respect the clearly stated wishes of the originators of information. Whenever the document itself does not indicate whether the material can be freely copied, we contact the source of the information for permission to include it on our disks (and for our customers to then freely copy it). We include a copy of such permission messages in the README document of the disks they pertain to.
We charge $10 per disk, each of which typically contains the equivalent of hundreds of pages of text. (In some cases, three or four books are packed on a single disk). We add new titles frequently.
We gather the information for our disks from a wide variety of ftp, gopher, and Web sites and also LISTSERVs. These are on-line libraries of information which are typically free to anyone who has the capability to connect. We then organize and provide this material on IBM or Macintosh disks so you can easily use and copy it.
Unfortunately many of the people who most need the information either have no way to connect to the Internet or have email only, or have very little disk space allotted to them, or have to pay high hourly fees or long-distance charges for their connection . Those are the people we have designed this service for.
There are also others who theoretically could get the information for themselves who simply don't have the time or the inclination to learn how to find and get it. Not everyone wants to become a fisherman. Many would prefer to buy their fish in a store.
Each issue includes pointers to the latest public domain etexts available on the Internet, as well as essays by Richard Seltzer, and letters to the editor. As the Internet evolves, so does the newsletter, with increasing coverage of the Worldwide Web and the "curious technology" which is fueling this phenomenon.
In May of 1995, our Internet provider, TIAC , made available 10 Mbytes of free Web space to subscribers with SLIP accounts. Almost immediately, we began to take advantage of that opportunity, posting all issues of the newsletter, with hypertext links to the resources mentioned.
In May of 1997, with the size and traffic at our site rising and TIAC raising prices, we moved to Acunet, in Marlboro, MA. Acunet valued our content and welcomed us, offering 25 Mbytes of free Web space. We continue to add new material (including complete books) to the site, experimenting to find out what is most useful and interesting to our audience and how best to present it. We now use the services of HiSpeed.
Soon after, Rastislav Skultety, then a high school student, set up a free mirror site for us in Slovakia. In May 1998, Lovely.net set up a free mirror site for us in London. And in June 1998, we stopped email distribution, which had become a time-consuming hassle. We focused our energy on generating new and useful content, instead of on list maintenance, and simply posted new issues at the our Web site.
In October 2002, we finally gave Yahoo Groups a try. You can now, once
again, receive Internet-on-a-Disk by email. Either send email to
subscribe-ioad@yahoogroups.com
, or register at the Web site http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ioad.
You can also use that group to discuss related matters and share insights
with other readers and with me (Richard Seltzer seltzer@samizdat.com).
The overall topic was Business on the World Wide Web, but each session had its own focus, and often the focus topic would carry over for three or four weeks (depending on participation). The format was a group of peers discussing subjects of common interest, sharing with and learning from one another. I handled the publicity -- sending out email notices each week -- and also edited the transcripts (making them more readable by reconstructing the threads of discussion) and posted them at http://www.samizdat.com/chat.html There you will see our upcoming schedule, as well as links to all our transcripts.
We held weekly chat sessions at hosted discussion space provided by
SiteScape. Their technology enabled us to chat in HTML (rather than IRC
or Java), which meant that visitors see everything that was posted during
the chat session, not just what transpires after they arrive. Also, transcripts
were automatically saved.
Richard's short resume.
Richard's complete resume. This is a very
large document, with a complete list of his publications and hyperlinks
to the full text of many of them.
Photo of Richard
Can we help you build an Internet business? Richard Seltzer is an independent Internet writer/speaker/consultant. Click here for details. or send email to seltzer@samizdat.com
This site is Published by B&R Samizdat Express, 33 Gould St., West Roxbury, MA 02132. (617) 469-2269. seltzer@samizdat.com
For a library for the price of a book, visit our online store at http://store.yahoo.com/samizdat
Return to B&R Samizdat Express
Buy Richard's book Web Business Bootcamp (published by Wiley) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0471164194/brsamizdatexpres
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