 ChillinBuzz
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Subject: Spyed Legends
Date: April 25, 2006 @ 8:29 PM
The Netherworld BBS
1992-1996
The largest gaming BBS in Northern Virginia in its day. I served as a co-Sysop and it was here that I fell in love with online communities. We distributed art packs from ACiD and iCE and others. I wrote the NEWz where I learned then that news, or what is today called blogging, was the centerpoint of all communities. In this community Doom was the focus. And we played our asses off. Heretic, Hexen, Descent, ||))(())())||\\//|| ]|[]|[, Quake ALPHA, Duke Nuke'em 3D.. I remember Jyger, Dark Shadow, Strider, Vexus, HaVoC, Xoleras, Thresh, Pitfall, Billy, Wendigo and Silicon Soldier. I always will. These days I hang out on ZDaemon every once in a while to remember dwango5 lvl1.
The Wad Crew
1992-1996
We created levels for DooM II for years. Late night testing, rushed releases, and dreams of official iD release. We should have stuck with it. Fastlane.wad was my most successful deathmatch map, you can download it and other old packs from the TwC download page.
Dimension Music
1997-1999
I founded Dimension Music in early 1997. Originally hosted on netherworld.net/dimmusic/ in fact. I was a pirate and a leader, and so incredibly close to being in so much trouble it's not even funny. Fortunately for me I was too early and the representative from the RIAA who contacted me was sympathetic to our cause, a visionary himself in fact. Jim Griffin introduced me to a whole world of people and a new life began.
Pure">http://www.puremp3.org/">Pure MP3
1998-1999
Jim Griffin said we had many challenges ahead, one of them was legitimacy. The majority of MP3 sites were filled with pornographic advertisements. And how could major labels release major acts to such sites? I leveraged Dimension Music, I threatened not to link to any site containing pornogrpahic advertisements, or who linked to sites that did have them. The concept worked, at its peak PureMP3 had over 2,000 member MP3 sites. I take full credit for cleaning up the MP3 Scene in 1998. Props to Jamuraa for his administrative help.
WinAMP Facelift
1998-2000
The very first skins repository site on the Internet. WinAMP Facelift was developed (programmed and conceptualized) by Mark Streich (gllen) in 1998 and was owned entirely by Dimension Music. Mark soon thereafter leveraged our good faith relationship to hook up some hosting space on DMusic's servers. He used it to build customize.org which was the first multi-skin art site. It blew up ten times as fast as WinAMP Facelift because it supported more than just one genre of application skin. I learned a big lesson that day; as far as art communities go, add as many categories as a community desires and you will beat out anybody who embraces less than you do in all categories. This is applied on deviantART today. We'll open any category that is legitimately requested by the community. Every time we are surprised by how many new artists we embrace.
Artists Management Group / DMusic Network
1999 - 2001
During the AMG years Dimension Music transformed in to The DMusic Network. I went out and acquired the top remaining MP3 sites and employed all of the people behind them with the vision that we would come up with something great. And we did; deviantART.com formed and evolved and was split off in 2001 as its own project. During these years we had many other interesting accomplishments leveraging the AMG family; Rick Fox wore a DMusic hat for a 4 minute interview at the very end (first interview!) of game 4 of the NBA finals in 2000. We worked with many mainstream bands including Blues Traveler whose website we built and deployed as part of the DMusic Network. DMusic.com itself is now owned by Larry Feldman in Pennsylvania. I transitioned the project over to him for some time during 2002 while also working on deviantART.
Gnutella
2001-Present
Gnutella connects millions of people for the rapid sharing of information & media. This is a discussion community about the technology, unfortunately I have not maintained it for years.
deviantART
2000-Present
deviantART is a project I co-founded in April of 2000. It is a thriving society of millions of artists. Or, it is a project that scours the globe for artistic excellence. Or, it is an educational platform for up and coming artists in over 750 genres of art. Or, it is a perfectly documented history of online art since inception. It's social complexity and importance has far outgrown the contributions of its founders; it is a much greater thing than any individual and will outlive us all.
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