Freejack's Web has been online non-stop since 1994. Most of it has changed, however the one constant is that no one has ever visited it. Actually, that's not quite true. Over the years it has been a popular font site, a .mod clearinghouse and many other things. Most of these projects have gone the way of the dodo bird, however the filespace still exists and so do my incessant ramblings.

Who Am I? Ross Wm. Rader Director of Digital Retail Services TUCOWS Interactive Limited 5415 Dundas Street West, Suite 106 Toronto, Ontario M9B 1B5 t. (416) 239-9095 f. (416) 239-8409 ross@ebarn.com     Current Projects: Project Name   Status Apollo   Classified Griffin   Online Minerva   Classified Joshua   Classified     Links: eBarn TUCOWS Internet Direct Canada Newswire Skinny DuBaud Art Bell Sizzling HTML Jalfrezi Andover News Network Graphicjam Digital Arts PDA Central Gaming Place FreeThemes Web Site Garage AntiOnline DejaNews MP3.com NewsIndex Abolish Unsolicited Commercial eMail Gabo Corp Jamie Zawinski W3Design ISO Country Codes Domain Direct Stop Web Abuse Now! Nullsoft Netwinder Development Euroshare Online Advertising Discussion List

I have worked on a multitude of projects with TUCOWS, most notably, eBarn, the TUCOWS Software Store, PilotZone and Internet Direct Business Solutions (nee: idirect.commerce). I regularly speak at industry events, most recently at Fall ISPCon '98 in San Jose. I have been invited to return in the spring for the Baltimore event, you can drop me a line for more details if you wish. Additionally, you can find my thoughts in print from time to time. I've been quoted in Wired, The NY Times and write a quarterly column for Small Business Canada magazine. My current task centers around digital content delivery - an extremely fascinating task. There is a tremendous inequity involved in the distribution of all forms of intellectual property, be it books, music, art or ideas. The inequity stems exists within what is commonly called "the channel", where the product has to flow prior to delivery to the end user or customer (in the case of books for instance, the channel looks like this: author -> publisher -> distributor -> retailer -> customer). The Internet has the potential to eradicate this inequity through a process called disintermediation. Disintermediation is quite simply the elimination of the "middle man" in the distribution process. With the technology available today, there is no reason why the new distribution paradigm couldn't look like this: author -> clearinghouse -> customer. Why is change necessary? Because everyone in the channel (regardless of which one) demands a piece of the action. Traditional channels screw the owner of the IP because of the necessity to pay everyone. This is why it's possible for pop stars to die penniless and software publishers pay retails chains hundreds of thousands of dollars for shelf space. It quite sucks actually - for the time being anyways. Facilitating disintermediation is my job. I just wish it wasn't so hard to spell.