Jason Salas' WebLog

oh man. it saddens me to have read this blog posting, and even worse, to have listened to the related podcast. of *all* people, i would have expected you to 'give credit where credit is due'.

On the subject of "the very humble beginnings of kuam.com" -- my friend... kuam.com did not start in 1999. nor did it simply start posting news stories only after you got involved and took the technical reins.

My only proof comes from the 'wayback machine' or archive.org - check this link:

http://web.archive.org/web/19970423042355/virtual.guam.net/kuam/index.html

you can follow the links therein, and see for yourself the amount of information that was there, back in 1997. hard for me to fake this, as i'm sure you can attest.

in 1997, i tried hard, and i mean *really* hard to bring kuam out from its dark ages, and into the new millenia. it was a constant struggle.

for the record, kuam.com started on my macintosh 6150 in 1997. among the more crowning achievements accomplished with the site i ran for kuam, was the posting of hundreds of photos and minutes of quicktime video, covering the aftermath of typhoon paka, within *24* hours of the passing of the storm. thousands of people emailed to thank me for that effort. it made me feel good to know that with kuam, i helped get the word out to people about the islands survival and recovery of that supertyphoon.

at least, you are paid a salary. i, on the other hand, did it because it was the right thing to do "for the people of Guam". i never made money from my efforts getting kuam.com started. I did finally convince current management to buy the domain from me, but even that took some convincing a few years ago.

Hi Alex,

I realize that you setup the domain and put together the pages that made up the first edition of KUAM.COM. It wasn't my intent to rob you of the credit you very rightly deserve, but tell the story of what happened when I got here as KUAM's first full-time web staffer.

I can see how I may have erroneously clouded this very important fact and left you and your contributions out of this aspect of the story.

You're right, of course. I'll make sure to state that and set the record straight tomorrow on Episode 104. :)

So sorry about the mix-up.

i knew you'd make it right. i just wonder how you can tell the story accurately, if you werent there.

so much time has passed, i really should just let go.

but i'm sure if someone had done the same to you, your reaction would have been just as emotional.

btw, congrats on the perfect newscast.

...and yeah, if someone had done this to me, I'd be pissed. =|

Negroponte's book was one of the first books that I read that talked about the future of the tech industry. I had been reading his column in Wired when I saw his book listed so I had to pick it up.

I haven't really been interested in books from other CEOs or industry drivers. I'm too busy reading development books.