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The Cathouse E-mail
Written by Hillary Meister   

cathouse-tiny.jpg

One of the most common questions people ask other people that work on the Internet is - how did you get started? So this is my story of how I discovered my obsession for being online. 

My first exposure to the Internet was through my trusty ol' Atari 130XE computer. I built a BBS called "The Cathouse" and later moved to an Atari ST computer. Many thought, in those days, Atari would rule the world, Commodore computers would fade away, TRS-1s were trash and IBM had no clue. At that time Macs were barely an apple in Steve Jobs' eyes and Bill Gates was tinkering in his garage with an idea called Microsoft...

While all these "tubes" were connecting and growing, conversation was key - socially, for business, and otherwise. If you were there you'd understand there is no such thing as Web 2.0. With all the social media tools and a focus back to community the Web is right back where it started from. Thank goodness for that. 

Those early electronic bulletin boards (EBBS, or just BBS for short) included such boards as Fidonet with names such as The City of London or GalaxianBBS. SySops were all the rage and software piracy was rampid. I don't remember the dates but CompuServ and GEnie were just beginning their online services. Modems went from 100 baud to 2400 baud and crawled slowly up as technology began to flourish. I ran my BBS on a 1200 baud modem at that time - and that was considered fast!

Since I was one of few females in those days running a BBS I got a lot of attention. Not the bad type, mind you, just fellows that wanted to help out - supply me with equipment, software, advice - that sort of thing.

cathouse-lg.jpg Hence, The Cathouse was born. I owned cats, they ran the house, so I named my BBS after them. The graphic of the cats on the bar (seen to the right here) came directly from the design on my shower curtain.

One of my cats at that time was a big softie, a cat that would mold to any position you put him in. He was like jello and that was his nickname - Jellocat. I snitched his name and it's been my online moniker ever since.

I love the idea of social media because that is really what the Internet is about - conversation and connection.

 

 

 

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Screenshots E-mail
Written by Jellocat   

Screenshots of Websites I've worked on or built. Click on a thumbnail to view the images.

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List of sites: 

AccessAtlanta - A markup of a proposed channel page from 199_. Originally, AA grew out of Cox Interactive Media, now it's COXnet...  I began with Cox in 1995 and left in 2000. My first task with Cox was to work on yall.com, which fed AccessAtlanta some content (especially e-postcards - ours were the best on the 'net at that time!).

1. Old press releases about Cox Interactive Media (or CIMedia). COXnet in its new clothes.
2. AccessAtlanta - as it is today

The Southeastern Association Executive - I rebuilt this site based on the trade magazine published out of Longwood, FL. It was a job short-lived and hard-worked. There were two of us that did the writing for that publication and others owned by the same publisher. We were paid very little for that amount of work. He owned a mansion in Heathrow...  Special Editions Publications is the name of the company.


Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles magazine - Part of NCI.com's family of home and design magazines. It's a challenge working with print people to get them excited and willing to do things such as blogging or contributing web-only content or allowing users to submit their own stuff... Click here for the live site.

Five-Eight - An amazing band from Athens, GA. They've been at it for 15 years or more (20?) and continuously amaze people with their live performances. Click here for their official site.


Scribblet
- This was a creative writing site online for nearly two years. I had a few regulars, but overall, I never seemed to have enough time to devote to the site to make it really stand out. Plus, there are a gazillion creative writing sites out there so why do another one? I do love the name, though... and it's for sale...

Trinket
- I managed this band out of Athens, GA. It was a lot of fun... we did a roadtrip to New York City to perform in front of a bunch of A&R people. We got to stay at the home of a record dude from IRS records. It was a taste of amazingness. The band eventually signed with RCA records and pumped out a couple of CDs. I quit managing them to take care of my other full-time job and trinket-tiny.jpggraduate school. The guitarist used to play tapes of people channeling aliens while on road trips. I had to deal with all the young groupies that wanted to hang out with the band. I also had to deal with the fact that the lead singer was 15 when they started (he belied his age...) and critics thought his songs about sex and love were "too old for such a young singer." What the hell are bands singing about these days? I did several redesigns for the band. Click here to see another one and click here for the last one. Heck, they even got a mention in Rolling Stone magazine! Check out Trinket's former singer, Brian Youmans' new band The Blackout Method on their MySpace page.


Yall.com
- This was the first Website I actually "worked" for through CIMedia. We were doing some amazing, innovative stuff back then and given pretty much free reign to go whole hog crazy. We did one of the first podcasts at that time with yallradio, a predecessor to blogging, MySpace and other social media sites with Y'all Bugs, we featured loads of multimedia, shockwave games, held online chats with rockstars, actors and assorted Southern weirdos, produced a CD of Southern music for Habitat for Humanity, produced a concert tour around the Southeast featuring bands from the CD, and got AccessAtlanta involved to play one of the sponsors and hosts of Music Midtown (I have an awesome poster signed by almost ALL the bands!).

We also had e-postcards (best on the 'net, I swear!), online jokes (thanks to Jeff Foxworthy!), cool stories about food culture (John T. Edge is now one of the directors at the Southern Foodways Alliance), got to interview amazing people - some of which are cultural icons - and overall had a blast.

It must be said: Rest in peace Scott Rogers - an amazing artist (all graphics on yall.com were Scott's originals) and musician who loved to live fast and hard. And to my dear friend, Nicholas Schweitzer, a talented writer and developer - we joked constantly about how funny it was that a Jewish girl and gay guy worked on a Southern culture Website!

I truly believe, if yall.com had survived, it would've been one of the biggest things since grits on the 'net. We were irreverent, yet intelligent about covering Southern culture and even poked fun at the North on April Fool's day with youse.com. Currently, the domain name is owned by a magazine published out of Oxford, MS but it's nothing like what yall.com used to be.

YDS.com
- YDS stood for You Don't Say and was to be the portal for community managers that worked for Prospero Technologies. I worked for Prospero as the community manager/liaison between Prospero, NBCOlympics and Quokka Sports to cover the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Australia. I didn't get to go to Australia, but Prospero had beautiful offices in Sausalito overlooking San Francisco Bay. It was surreally the most unusual job I had ever had.

 

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© 2008 by Hillary Meister - Developed by Hillary Meister
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