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RichWEB, LLC is a "web-enabling" consulting firm, with offices in West Seattle, WA and Bellevue, Washington. Our founder, Peter Richards, is a long time proponent of the Internet as a business enabling tool, not as a replacement for brick and mortar businesses. While virtual companies have their place, the old economy lives on. Peter got his start with technology in 1989 and later with the web in 1991 (what seems like eons in Internet years) while leading a privately owned corporation, The Banana Pages, as CIO. Before 1991 Peter ran a successful dial-up Computer B.B.S. (Bulletin Board System) which consisted of over 120 active users and some 10,000+ files. The B.B.S. was later connected to the Internet to provide a Telnet and FTP gateway for the users to pass information to the myriad of emerging systems throughout the world. As time went on, the B.B.S. yielded to the much superior Web-Based graphics and the Internet revolution had begun circa 1994. Before the his accomplishments on the Internet, Peter had a long and rich history in the Yellow Pages business. From his meager beginnings as a book delivery driver for the Neighborhood Telephone Directories (predecessor to the Banana Pages) at 16, he is no stranger to working long-hard hours. When Peter finished school, he joined the family company and took on the task of computerizing the production process. At the time some 16 directories were being produced by hand with manual camera work and layout. All artwork and directory publishing was transformed into an electronic format and was completely paginated and produced on a PC. This task being completed on a PC was a coup at the time, as PC publication was an after thought in a MAC oriented graphics world. Peter quickly realized that PC's were just less costly, and could do the same work. "We managed to get 3 PCs, 2 printers and a scanner for the same price as ONE Mac. It just made good business sense." One and a half years later all production was converted to 4-color books. Peter designed and implemented the infrastructure to take all color in house, completely under budget, in time to beat the USWest Dex Color book to the street. Peter later took on all aspects of technology at Banana Pages and completed all networking, infrastructure (including billing and sales management tools), software and management decisions relating to I.T. He was directly responsible for many cost saving and product improving features such as zip+4 in a phone directory, free local directory assistance with an automated agent (he wrote all code and interface to the mainframe for this task), and integration with the company's web products. In 1992, he was named CIO of Banana Pages, and the world was changing, and as a co-owner in Banana Pages, he saw opportunities rising for the yellow pages information on the web.
When the Internet came along and The Banana Pages had taken Peter's advice to get its books and data online. He was tasked with creating the technology to enable the Banana Pages Web product. He wrote the conversion processes for the company's inhouse data systems, which ran on a PICK AP database during the previous 5 years of existance. His process to convert data from the Pick Mini Computer to a SQL database saved countless man hours and made the web-products possible by avoiding duplication in the updates of data sets. Peter was able to create a complete website with a comprehensive yellow pages search engine. "I locked myself in my office with 2 pc's tied together on a coax network. I wasn't coming out until I had the product ready for a live working model.", he says of his start with the online venture. The system also contained the first known use of banner advertising tied to yellow pages categories as a method for monetizing the site. Banana Pages was the first REAL yellow pages to go online with their data. The product became profitable within 4 months of launch. The system was later modified as an open infrastructure technology which the YPI, LLC company was based on. With several active partners, many independent yellow pages companies around the United States came online using the same model as the original product Peter had developed for Banana Pages. At 25, Peter became the "grandfather" of Online Yellow Pages. Even RBOCs were copying the model, when they could keep up!
A rather large contribution to Banana Pages web success was the free classified ads the company provided. Again, Peter was directly responsible for the idea, the code, and the implementation of the product. "We had a very small window to beat the local newspapers to the punch. We knew they were doing something and were going to charge money for it. We wanted to own that traffic, so we launched the FREE CLASSIFIEDS!" Peter wrote the free classifieds and within weeks there was thousands of ads running on the system. Each ad was reviewed by Banana Pages employees for vulgar content and it became so successful it took one person 3 hours each morning to review ads. Peter added features to the classifieds that made it possible to post ads with graphics via email even before the http spec allowing binary uploads. By assigning a code to the email the system would parse incoming emails in the box and automatically attach the MIME encoded jpegs to the ads. The entire YPI (Yellow Pages on the Internet) system was completed in less than 3 months. Peter created advertising spots, free classifieds, ATM locator for SeaFirst Bank, a Search Directory for the now defunct TFC #800 free cell phone service and other user attractions to keep traffic up. When Banana Pages joined the InfoSpace network later in 1995, Banana Pages was the tenth largest provider of traffic to InfoSpace.com’s pages. Peter's work garnered national recognition. He was awarded Most Innovative Product award by the ADP (Association of Directory Publishers). An award he has won twice, as well as a Best Neighborhood Directory award which came with his leadership over the production crew at Banana Pages. The YPI site was also mentioned in the Microsoft Developers Journal as "...this is exactly what the net should be used for." During the process of the sale to InfoSpace, John Richards and Peter continued to excel at their duties with Banana Pages by running the production and sales departments. No other execs at Banana Pages contributed to the YPI project, technology or sales during this fast paced time. They even consulted with InfoSpace for smooth transition. (editor's note: YPI was purchased by InfoSpace and has been merged into the existing InfoSpace yellow pages. Banana Pages no longer hosts an actively updated website and the company has been bought and sold 2 or 3 times. No local owner exists.)
After the sale of the print Yellow Pages product (Banana Pages) Peter had decided not to continue with Banana Pages. In 1996 he was heavily recruited to work for InfoSpace.com by Naveen Jain. Peter first joined the INSP family by providing YP data integration knowledge, but later moved into site wide administration of online advertising ranging from text links, banner ads and complete page tracking campaigns. Peter worked closely with the originator of the proprietary InfoSpace technologies to develop and help guide the features of the ad delivery system. This system generated billions of log entries and required strict administration to ensure proper delivery of the campaigns. A truly huge application. In the meantime, Peter was also doing work for the community. These jobs included the:
(editor's note: Due to time constraints, the West Seattle Chamber and the ArtsWest websites have been passed on the respective organizations. See the main page for a complete list of hosted sites.) Each of these sites contains their own set of complexity, and unique set of variables.
We think you can see for yourself that RichWEB exists to help the business owner get a good ROI in their Internet investment. Whether it's online sales, catalogs, product displays, Online Conferencing or just simply communicating with your clients better. We offer reasonable rates and services and quick up-time. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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