Why do people decide to blog? Is it because people are interested in what they have to say? Is it because they want to increase the search engine rankings on their own sites or is it just because the blogger themselves think that the general public are remotely interested in what they have to say?
Well whatever the reason actually is... and I think its probably a bit of all three for me... I have decided to setup a Blog.
Ive actually had various blog sites before including my own website which I think I launched back when I was 16 or so... which would mean it was... er.... 1996. It was a crappy website (although I though it was good at the time) which had various bits of information on it about me and links to my other sites. I remember putting a big news article on there when I got my first car, a green Citroen Saxo.
I started building websites around 1996 actually, it was when I started at Accrington & Rossendale college doing computing science. The internet was pretty new then to me, you had Netscape Navigator and I think Internet Explorer had just come out too.
We used to go into the libary and go online and look at various stuff, probably mostly pictures of half naked women... I was 16 afterall.
Then one day another student found out about a service called Hotmail which enabled you to get your own email address... this mean you could signup for a Geocities account and setup your own website. I was hooked, I started building all sorts of websites.
Some showcased various computer games I had written (in C++) and of course my own personal site.
During college I setup a site called The Programmers Vault which was a site for programmers and it had various tutorials and guides on there, some I had written others where sent to me by users of the site. Once I started university though I didnt have enough time to run the site so I sold it to Dr. Dobbs Journal which is an American programming magazine.
While at Lancaster university I also setup a blog site called boredcam.co.uk when I was at university which was almost ahead of its time.... it was almost a facebook style thing but I never pursued it which was obviously a big mistake. However it did end up getting everyone involved in the site (myself and my fellow students who lived with me) on the front cover of various local newspapers and on various radio shows. The highlight being getting to go to London for a TV show called Loose Lips with Melinda Messenger... woooo!
University finished and I found myself taking a job in Lancaster at a local ISP called Business Serve which was good for a variety of reasons, firstly it made me realise that all that time at university was worth nothing in the real world... well it was... but my visions of a £30,000 per year salary were quickly smashed when I was working for just £12,000 per year.
The job was really good for me though because it was there that I realised I really wanted to setup my own company. I had done my own stuff since I was a child, doing websites for local businesses. selling computer games at school, etc... always wanted to be in business.
I saw what things they were doing right and what they were doing wrong, I also met various people that would (in the future) come and work in my business.
I actually remember once at the end of the day talking to one of these people, Matt, about how I was going to quit and setup my own business and perhaps in the future offer him a job. I'm pretty sure he didn't believe me or though it was a pipe dream, well maybe he did believe me, but a few years later I did offer him a job.
Anyway I eventually left Business Serve in 2002 and decided to setup my own business called Ekm Systems. Our first product would be a hosted ecommerce solution called ekmPowershop.
The rest as they say is history... or another blog post!