October .... 1996. I was working as tech correspondent at The Economist and had managed to push the story of ecommerce being exciting not because of Amazon but because these guys at Viaweb were helping you set up stores yourself.
So I am on the phone to PG going over this and that late one night--because of timezones. And I'm asking all these questions, trying to figure out how to get it across in five hundred words in The Economist.
Really excited about revealing this cool company in The Economist. Next day, I am writing up the story and my assistant flags me down, interrupts again, and again 'It's urgent'. Turns out my dad is really ill (he's been fine ever since). Leave the story half written on my Atex terminal, off to the hospital, with a promise I'll call in to finish it, don't get back to my desk for a month and story never runs.
ViaWeb and PG a success nonetheless :)
Hey HNers,
One of the things I've just launched is a dead-simple Daily Business Briefing. We send out 12 stories a day after scanning 2-3,000.
Some questions:
(a) Is it too simple?
(b) Will people want/need to personalised it?
(c) How should we get them to personalise it? (Explicitly or is there some better way?)
