I recently came across a terrific bit of Internet history. Back in early 1994 I hired a fellow named Chris Locke to build a Web initiative for the company I ran at the time - Mecklermedia. Chris was one of the few people in the world who really "knew" the Internet and the recently announced World Wide Web. Chris and others believed that it would be extremely complex and difficult to create and run Web site --even for the largest organizations.

MecklerWeb was proposed as the Web solution for any company that wanted to have a Web site.

So take a look at the early proposal and the naive nature (now 12 years later)of the offering.

By the fall of 1994 Chris and I went our separate ways in terms of how the Web would develop. I believed that Mecklermedia needed a "vertical" position on the Web and Chris felt this was a bad decision. I felt at the time that Web sites would one day resemble magazine publising "online" and that this would be particularly true for trade publishing. The present day JupiterWeb is in fact a result of that decision.

Now read a pundit's report about my decision to change MecklerWeb. I am pleased the way things developed even though at the time I was lambasted not only by this report but also by Jared Sandberg in The Wall Street Journal. Our stock price got walloped over my decision. Time has proved to be my friend as my prediction back in 1994 proved to be 100 percent correct.