🚀 go-pugleaf

Hello Akron & Ohio!

Unbelieveable... is the only comment I can express to what I just
received via email!

A Northern Ohio newspaper said they could not link our "Akron Ohio Area
Internet Directory" because it is a competitive threat. Furthermore, our
public service oriented project could not be advertised in their
respected newspaper since it competes for advertising revenue. At first
I started laughing...Then I started to realize how serious this could
be.

I was told to sleep on this before I shared my views to the USENET in
Ohio. My fear is I've never slept well through a nightmare, so I'm going
to share some random thoughts, should anyone at all care...

Maybe, we should start campaigning to stop all public projects from
providing valuable content about the communities we live in? Or better
yet, boycott the companies that started offerring Internet Services in
the past year! Yea, that's it... Only do business with an ISP with a
proven history!

Should we take out all the content that is presently offered FREE to our
area merchants in the restaurant, hotel, travel, entertainment,
government, educational, and non-profit industries so we can place ads
in this one traditional print media? Humm, then we might not have
anything to offer?

Is it that some big city executives look down on companies started and
based in small rural towns? Let us not forget... Quaker Oats was started
in Ravenna Ohio (referenced within the first paragraph of their
companies history web page at http://www.quakeroats.com/brf_hst.htm )
and later merged into the former Akron based company. 

Should anyone ever in the future consider spending several years
researching and developing an internet project not only without pay, but
a monetary investment to keep the project available FREE to the public?
As it acheives a level of readership and start selling a few
advertisements to help pay the bills just watch what competition starts
comes out of the woodwork!

The confusing part of all this is we already have a couple of
traditional media partners on other projects which have directly
resulted from our work on the orginial Akron, Ohio Area Internet
project.

We do strongly believe that regardless of any sentiment toward or
against our strong Internet history of developing and managing
"Information Technology", we will continue to serve the internet
consumer with services NOT based on greed! It is really interesting
that  some traditional media is running to the 'net to provide Internet
services and advertising. Of course many are in fear that the 'net will
effect them as it has the Postal service and telephone companies. Truth
is, we will always have traditional print media in addition to the 'net.
People will continue to read their newspaper in the bathroom or other
library. 

In time Internet competition will be based on a proven level of service
to the subscribers, not based on their existing advertising base. That
is the only gain traditional media has presently. In our case, we
represent over 78 years on Internet experience between 12 people at the
Internet Service company we market for and our "Information Technology"
publishing company.

What are the traditional media that have public Internet service doing
for their non-profit communities? I can give several examples of school
projects that do not cost the school a penny for web hosting! Not by any
of the newcomers in the internet biz, at most maybe a token gesture,
most interestingly.

I can't write anymore I'm so angry... I just want everyone to know that
the project several of us have spent full-time almost two years
developing is located at:

URL:http://www.config.com/ohio/summit/akron/

It is a project that all other content publishing community directories
will be judged! It is the most content rich community directory
structure in Ohio. Over 40 MB of text in excess of 700 web pages!

Content has already been typed for five North Ohio Counties which will
be added on-line soon.

Our statistics have been publicly available for a couple of months in an
attempt to prove and show access records. We have experienced in excess
of 3,000,000 file transfers during one month. We average around 50,000
file accesses weekly with this past week at 82,446 only at
www.config.com projects.

We welcome discussion on this topic. Support your local Internet content
publisher by advertising on any public oriented project! I promise not
to automate any spam advertisements. I do not promise that I might not
teach someone how to extract the email addresses of any Internet
services company owned or managed by a traditional media company that
could be used to market a real ISP! This article is off to Deja-news for
posterity.

DISCLAIMER - There are many GREAT newspapers in Ohio that support
Internet projects. The Plain dealer is one example & The Record-Courier
of Portage County is another. I just feel safe not referring to the name
of huge newspaper in Northern Ohio.

Best Internet Regards,
Joe Rinehart, Project manager
co-founder & FAQ author for alt.cd-rom.reviews & akr.biz
Surfin' the net before the web!
Electronic Marketing since '89
-- 
config.sys Productions, LTD, 254 W.Main St., Ravenna, Ohio 44266 USA
VOICE: (330) 297.9595   FAX: (330) 296.4005   emailto:joe@config.com
See the first URL ever placed in a computer magazine at our web site!
InternetURL:http://www.healthyreferral.com URL:http://www.config.com/