About
In 1993 I got my first exposure to the graphical side of the internet, before that I had been working for a Vancouver based marketing and advertising firm developing billboard and sign for various clients, from lumber supply shops to car dealerships. In addition, I had experience in developing signs, brochures, and t-shirt for organized amateur sporting events.
In 1994, I started university and in order to supplement my lack of funds while going to school I fell back on my graphic design abilities and decided to go into building websites. Back in the mid-1990s the sites on the internet were moving from straight text to text plus some photos or logos. I saw a niche. One whereby I could add some visual impact to otherwise simple and boring sites.
Needless to say, as the development of various web based technologies occurred I continued testing my abilities. With the input of animation into the mix, I taught myself how to develop Flash animations. With the increase in popularity of streaming media, I taught myself how to stream video and audio down the internet.
My first experiment into a full streaming internet web-site was SantaTV.com. I started SantaTV.com back in 1997 over my Christmas holidays. The intent of SanataTV.com was to allow children to interact with Santa Claus during the Christmas holidays. They could see Santa read stories and check his list. In subsequent years, I worked at developing ecommerce into SantaTV.com, Christmas related items were sold through the SantatTV site during the holidays.
The development of SantaTV.com led to the an idea of pushing advertisements on the internet to users by their location. In a sense advertising would be targetted to a specific user. The idea was to use unique variables of a given users to advertise local companies that would be relevent to the user. So no more would a user in Neptune, New Jersey recieve ads for a Los Angeles based restaurant.