.KEYWORD editorial0299
.FLYINGHEAD FROM THE EDITOR-IN-CHIEF
.TITLE Pure Internet Publishing
.DEPT
.SUMMARY It’s a brand new year and change is in the air. In his February editorial, Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz showcases some of the major changes that are in store for PalmPower and Component Enterprises, the company that publishes PalmPower and DominoPower. If you want to be the first to know about the exciting news, read this article.
.AUTHOR David Gewirtz
Pure Internet Publishing is a trademark of Component Enterprises, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.
Isn’t it funny what you have to go through to protect a trademark? Palm Computing is all too aware of the trials and tribulations of trademark protection. After all, Palm had to give up the use of both "Pilot" and "PalmPilot" after the Pilot Pen Corporation of America acted to protect their pre-existing rights to the trademark "Pilot". Then, just when things stabilized around the use of "Palm" to describe Palm Computing’s small computers, Microsoft put the words "Palm PC" into use. In this case, it was Palm Computing that had the pre-existing trademark and "Palm PC" was out and "Palm-sized PC" became the nomenclature of norm.
.CALLOUT If you’re a member of the press, please send your contact information to news@palmpower.com so we can keep you posted on exciting news.
Now, of course, it became much more important for Palm Computing to do everything possible to protect and enforce the use of their trademark. While they managed to successfully transit brand awareness from the Pilot name to the Palm name, establishing yet a third brand for the same device would be a horrendous challenge.
So what does that all have to do with you and with us?
Well, of course the PalmPower trades on the brand equity of the Palm brand. When we started the magazine, we negotiated with Palm for permission to use the name "PalmPower". We were granted informal permission, always with the intent to gain much more formal, legal approval for the use of the name.
If you’ve been a very careful reader of PalmPower this month and last, you might have noticed a few different words on the bottom of each page and in our masthead. At the bottom of each page are now the words: "PalmPower is a trademark of Palm Computing, Inc., used by Component Enterprises, Inc. under express license from the owner."
We’re now the official, exclusive licensee of the brand "PalmPower" from Palm Computing. This is a wonderful event for us, since it formalizes and officially gives us access to a wonderful, powerful brand. At the same time, we’re supporting Palm’s efforts to protect their brand equity in the Palm name. Special thanks to all the folks at Palm Computing for making this happen and a special thanks to Jason Firth at Steinhart & Falconer for challenging all the stereotypes and being a most cool lawyer.
This is only the first of many exciting changes you’re going to be seeing from Component Enterprises in the next few months. We’re finally completing our transition from an amalgam of disciplines (part software developer, part journal publisher, part trapeze artist) to what we’re calling Pure Internet Publishing.
It’s an interesting transition. When I started my first company back in 1987, it was to develop add-on software tools for programmers. While that company eventually failed because the product it was based on was discontinued (read The Flexible Enterprise for the whole story), I stayed in the software tool-making business, sort of.
In 1992, I formed Component Software, which was to make database engines for multimedia. We eventually created a nicely successful product called FileFlex, which is in use in millions of CD-ROMs worldwide, including those produced by the likes of Apple and CNN.
In a strange twist of fate, I wound up writing a book on Lotus Notes (that’s another, very long story…but that’s when Denise Amrich arrived on the scene). Through another strange and bizarre series of connections, that book led us to the fine folks at the Cobb Group division Ziff-Davis, who asked Denise and I to start a journal on Lotus Notes. This was to begin our five-year relationship with ZD (and was to be the first of five journals we were to do on Lotus products).
Eventually, we wound up having two completely unrelated lines of business: the journals we were doing for Ziff and the FileFlex database engine (as well as a few other ancillary software trinket products).
By mid-1997, however, Ziff was apparently feeling the pressure of free content on the Web and decided to close down the Cobb operation in Louisville. While we still had the revenue from our software products, we definitely felt the loss of the Ziff journal-related revenue. More importantly, we’d found a business we truly identified with and seemed to "grok" on almost a cellular level. We really were into this journal thing.
And so, we decided to go it on our own. We reincorporated as Component Enterprises, Inc. Thus began the process that was to beget PalmPower. There was an enormous amount of effort and cost to create the first journal. We had to develop, from scratch, a revolutionary journal production system that would create the Web pages you’re reading now. We had to recruit authors; put together an in-house editorial, production, and sales team; bring in the Internet feeds and the server farm; and work out an agreement with Palm Computing.
But, as you all know, we did it and PalmPower launched 14 months ago, in January of 1998.
Throughout it all, though, we also had our software business. A visit to our corporate home page would disclose a strange amalgam of business activities from developer tools to journals. In fact, we relied heavily on FileFlex revenues to fund the launch of PalmPower and then DominoPower. Unlike most Internet companies, we were determined that Component Enterprises was to be profitable from day one; we were going to live off our revenues. FileFlex, for a time, made that possible.
The problem was that FileFlex and our related software products had a de-focusing effect on us — and on me. I was not only responsible for running the company and being Editor-in-Chief, I was also the lead developer on FileFlex. At times when I wanted to put my efforts into growing our Internet publishing business, I had to help provide technical support to database developers. It was, put mildly, a pain.
But, as I said, we’re reaching a very exciting time of change here at Component. Last month, we sold FileFlex to Stephen Amontis, our former technical support manager (and the guy some of our advertisers will recognize as also one of our former ad sales people — another guy doing two jobs). Steve’s now out on his own, making a go of FileFlex Software as it’s own separate business. And we’re no longer in the software business.
We’re finally, exclusively, purely focused on Internet magazine publishing. Pure Internet Publishing. That’s us. And with over half a million readers across publications — and more than three million page Web impressions a month — we’ve actually become one of the more popular destinations on the Internet.
It’s really quite exciting. If you now go to our corporate home page, you get to visit a very nice hub site, updated daily, that gives you the headlines and features from all our publications.
Before I close out this month’s commentary, I need to talk for a moment to the members of the press that read PalmPower. Please send your name, phone, address, and email contact information to news@palmpower.com with the subject "PRESS LIST". We’re going to be launching more publications and otherwise making some very interesting announcements in the next few months, and we’d like to make sure you get the news first.
.BEGIN_SIDEBAR
.H1 Product availability and resources
The Flexible Enterprise, by David Gewirtz, is available at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ISBN%3D047107246X/componentsoftwarA/.
Our Component Enterprises corporate home page is available at http://www.component-net.com.
Visit Stephen’s FileFlex Software site at http://www.fileflex.com.
.END_SIDEBAR
.BIO
.DISCUSS http://powerboards.zatz.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@@.ee6c9e6
