About The ParkerPress

History

The ParkerPress

The ParkerPress started as a snail-mail newsletter back in the late 80’s. The idea came from a friend of mine who put together an announcement for birth of his child. Mike England sent out the birth announcement as The New England Times. I loved the play on words, and the overall idea. As a Lisa/Apple II/Mac user back then (about the only platform I could afford where you could get decent page-layout software) I decided to start doing the same kind of letter for my family and friends.

Some informal “non-titled” letters were sent out in the late 80’s, and the first issue of “The ParkerPress” came out in July of 1991, and I followed that with 10 more issues in what turned out to be roughly a yearly issue.

The World Wide Web

I registered “parkerpress.com” in January of 1996 to figure out an easier way to create/publish/distribute the news, thinking that the Web would be a good way to do this (we were “experimenting with web functionality at StorageTek in 1993/1994). This would be a great way to share and learn as I hand-built (i.e., using “vi” to create html files on a Unix server) the original site.

It took me about 3 years to decide to actually stop sending out physical issues, with the last issue coming out in October 1999.

Over the years, I’ve added, removed, and modified various information, but the three that have been the most persistent are my family genealogy, the Colorado Rocky Mountain Trip Reports (CRMTR), and my various photo albums.

The Future

I’m always looking for new ideas and ways to present information. I do know that I want to integrate my photography albums into my site better, and look into a commerce engine to help sell some of my prints. Other than that, it’s all “up in the air” and “subject to change at any time”.

Steve