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Biography


Last updated December 18, 2009

What I Did

Working as a freelance writer and entrepreneur. My What I Do page has the latest.

My current biography:

"Glenn Fleishman started writing about technology in 1994 and never stopped. He writes continuously for The Economist's Babbage blog, has been a columnist since 2000 for The Seattle Times, and is a senior contributor to Macworld. Glenn spent three years as a weekly guest on KUOW-FM's arts and culture show, and regularly appears on APM's Marketplace Tech Report. Glenn was a pioneering journalism blogger, launching his Wi-Fi Networking News site in 2001 with original reporting ever since. He also writes reguarly for Ars Technica.

"Glenn is also a contributing editor at TidBITS, the longest-running Mac publication, where he programs site features, including a content-management system. Glenn has written many, many books, the most recent being Take Control of iPhone and iPod touch Networking and Security (iOS 4 edition) (Take Control Books, 2011) and Five-Star Apps (Peachpit Press, 2010).

"In the 2000s, Glenn wrote extensively for Business 2.0, The New York Times, Popular Science, and Wired.

"Glenn lives in Seattle, Washington, with his wife and two sons. He has a degree in graphic design from Yale College, and has lived at various times in New York, California, Oregon, Connecticut, Maine, and Washington."

2000-present

An account of what I did since 2000 can be found via my blog. In short, I've been working as a freelance writer, and operating some entrepreneurial concerns.

1997-1999

From 1996 to 1999, I served as conference chair for 10 Web design, marketing, and advertising conferences held in several different cities. In 1998, I worked part-time at Phinney-Bischoff Design House as their in-house IT guy and Web programmer.

Since 1999, I have shared office space with several colleagues, including writers, designers, a photographer, an illustrator, and a book publicist. I'm on Office 5.0 at the moment having followed a trail across Seattle from Aurora (Fremont) to Westlake to Green Lake to Greenwood to Fremont (not Aurora).

1996–1997

I sold Point of Presence Company in fall 1996 to join Amazon.com where I was the Catalog Manager from October 1996 to May 1997.

At Amazon.com, I dealt with managing, increasing, and improving a catalog of books (back when it was only books) that grew from one million to 2.5 million items during my tenure. I created tools to help internal clients better track and retrieve information about titles -- as opposed to orders and transactions. One of the systems I created built "title authority": a set of linkages between books that are the same work but have different ISBNs. (Some of my latest thinking on authority and book information is at the Isbn.nu, notably a page on Ethan Frome.)

A more amusing summary of my former job appears courtesy of an Italian translation (by human being) and back to English via Babelfish: "Glenn Fleishman is responsible of the field catalogues near Amazon.com, a bookcase American on-linens that she boasts beyond 2,5 million titles."

In early May 1997, I returned to freelance writing and consulting. You can visit my Writing page to see archived articles.

1991–1996

For most of 1996, I wrote a twice-monthly column called Web Spy for adobe.mag, a now-defunct spin-off of Adobe Magazine. My friend Jeff Carlson took over the column until the magazine expired. These columns are available here.

From July 1994 to June 1996, I moderated the Internet Marketing Discussion List, a forum for discussion of marketing to and on the Internet. It had over 7,000 subscribers on its last day.

I co-founded Point of Presence Company (POPCO) in mid-1994, just as the World Wide Web started taking off. It was one of the very first Web development and hosting companies, and we had an interesting run of it, turning a profit in 18 months, and hosting some interesting early ecommerce and publishing firms, including Pacific Coast Feather Company and Peachpit Press.

Prior to POPCO, I worked as a managing editor for Open House, a Seattle-based book packaging company that's since dissolved. While at Open House, I managed the workflow, technical editing, and production of several books published by Peachpit Press.

Way back when (1991-2), I worked for the also now-defunct Center for Creative Imaging (Camden, Maine) during its heyday as an Eastman Kodak Company facility. I served as the course manager, in which capacity I dealt with hundreds of software and hardware vendors and dozens of instructors while keeping the facility up to par technically. I provided technical assistance on the Ted Turner Time Man of the Year cover for 1991. I also worked in Camden for High Resolution, a high-end four-color imaging center.

Education

Yale College, Yale University, 1986-1990. B.A. in art, concentration in graphic design. Attended the Yale Summer Program in Graphic Design in 1989 in Brissago, Ticino, Switzerland.

Quirks

I can tell you about every computer I've ever owned. I know the only word in the English language that begins with "tm" (as can actor/writer/director Stephen Fry). I taught myself to read. I'm an auto-didact. I pick up language quickly, almost without effort. I studied German for seven years, Italian for one. I'm a bike commuter most days. I believe that no one knows how existence works, especially people who claim to have a single, simple answer. Structured procrastination is my religion. I've been reading TidBITS since 1990 (see below). I appear on the cover of a French book by Diderot.

[TidBITS Reader Since 1990]