Man of many gifts who found his home on web

Peter Sinclair, the Herald's WebWalk columnist since 1997, embraced the net for everything it had
- its vast store of knowledge, its absurdity and its jargon, writes CHRIS BARTON.

Peter Sinclair's short history of the internet began on April 22, 1997 - when WebWalk was born. Ironically his first column was headed No Surfing Required. It was about push technology: "So vegetate! Unhassled by the need to surf, let the web come to you. Well, yes, but at this stage the technology is in its infancy and that's being kind. From our point of view it's not a lot of use yet ... "

He was a brilliant, witty and prolific writer. In his 4 1/2 years as the Herald's web columnist he wrote 200 WebWalk columns for the Connect pages of the Business Herald, 145 Cybersleuths for eg plus the Inbox column and numerous features for the your net page.

He also brought us "Bookmarks" - sites of interest and often absurdity that he'd find each week, during the inordinate amount of time he spent surfing. The bookmarks always had a helpful and/or wry "advisory" - like the one in his first column for "Pyramids - The Inside Story",

"Advisory: do not click on 'Inside the Sphinx'. After an especially prolonged download, you will learn there is nothing inside the Sphinx."

A confirmed webaholic, Peter loved to gently prod the establishment that hadn't yet got hold of this net thing. In May 1997, he rang around insurance companies asking if they would be offering web site insurance to ward off cyber threats.

"Prudential were courteously baffled, with a slight edge of alarm, as if they feared this might be one of radio's phantom phonecalls. I also got the feeling that they would have liked to ask me what an "Internet" was, but were too polite ... "

That month Gary Kasparov lost in chess to Deep Blue: "a machine designed specifically to humble him and prove that the future of thought itself lies not in protein but in crystal." Peter saw the big picture.

"Now, for the first time, silica has defeated carbon... Virtual Reality, where the parameters of who and what you are, your actualness, dissolve into the universal flux of electrons where you can be anything you want: a man, a woman, an insect, a tree. A thing."

In June, he bookmarked the New Zealand Ostrich Connection - a page that's no longer there: "Commercially, the problem with ostriches seems to be twofold: nobody in their right mind would eat an ostrich, and there are only so many drag queens in the world. Also, who needs an omelette that big?"

In July, there was some straightforward advice on how to escape spam: "Easy. Change your name, address, place of work, star-sign, and never go near a computer again."

That month he noted the Queen had gone online: "If Her Majesty spends a good deal of time surfing the net, can you blame her? It must be a relief for the poor woman to mingle anonymously with people who are not her subjects or, worse, her children."

Peter embraced the web for everything it had - its vast store of knowledge, its absurdity, its jargon.

"Freeware and shareware have entered the language: the first is what it says, the second means you can try it for a while before sending a small sum to the developer on the honour system. For those of you still taking your seats in the vast theatre of the internet, this week's column is a quick guide on how to get something for nothing."

He was passionate about search engines - and finding information in "the biggest haystack of all time."

In September 1997, he wrote: "In some 200 million pages of information, Einstein's Theory and 'Big Blonde Bimbos from Amsterdam' have exactly equal weight as far as most search-engines are concerned. How do you sift the wheat from the chaff (if you'll join me in a mixed metaphor)? To make sense of the web, you first have to make sense of the engines themselves. Here's a basic introduction to man's best friend, the spider."

In October 1997, he fell in love - with Internet Explorer 4.0 - Microsoft's new browser and deserted his old flame, Netscape - "with a trace of regret, the pang of nostalgic guilt which sometimes stabs at the faithless."

Around then he also described the net as "largely a huge recipe in search of a chef." He then proved it by using the web to turn several "unpromising ingredients" from his fridge into an elegant Salmon Dijonnaise.

Peter was also way ahead of most on net trends writing at the end of 1997: "New digital compression technology is threatening to mangle recording industry marketing strategies. The latest format is MPEG Audio Layer III, MP3 for short ... "

The year began with Peter's virtual holiday: "If you are what you surf, I'm obviously a complete mess. What on earth led me in search of the Ladybird Spider, for God's sake? Britain's rarest spider ... And how did I end up at the Neanderthal Page? It turns out that 30 per cent of us have the Neanderthal 'bun' at the base of our neck, which explains a lot about Richard Prebble ... "

Peter devoured every topic he could find on the web - girl power, senior net, blasting one's remains into space and finding hangover cures.

In April, a reader asked how to deal with internet junkies: "I suggest you fight fire with fire, and use your computer to investigate options for dealing with what is a very recent phenomenon. Do this: go to www.metacrawler.com and type Internet addiction... "

Peter was not much into chat groups but was an early adopter ICQ instant messaging in mid 1998. "The range of people who use ICQ these days is amazing. For me it's the manager of my local service-station, one of my former radio producers now on British OE, a tame geek or two, several IT contacts and possibly the quickest brain New Zealand has produced this century, former International Mastermind and now Judge of the District Court, David Harvey."

In August, Peter awoke to find John Commins had hijacked his identity by registering sinclair.co.nz. - along with a number of other celebrities. Peter gave him a Dear John letter ending, "Now you'll have to excuse me - I need to find the fly-spray"

Late in 1998, New Zealand suffered a spate of hack attacks. Peter did the analysis. "Spazrat. SlutPuppy. Sharkdogg. Sweetcakez ... What is this garish population which stalks the fringes of the web, moving invisibly in the margins of our lives? According to Carolyn Meinel, author of The Happy Hacker: 'These are the kids who used to make stink-bombs. Now they do the Net'."

1999


In early 1999, Peter followed the rise of the ridiculously overvalued tech stocks: "As they did in the twenties, the shoeshine boys are crowding onto the Internet, captivated by the ease and novelty of online trading. Generally accepted as a sure sign of financial end-times, euphoria - Greenspan's "irrational exuberance" - is being allowed full rein. This isn't investment. It's gambling."

In April there was the Melissa virus: "Because Melissa will undoubtedly have many sisters, and they'll be strutting their stuff as long as there's an internet. Just like real life, there's plenty of recreational malice abroad to balance out the warm fuzzies of the web."

Peter's columns rolled on - MP3, the Australian net censorship bill, portal fatigue with the shutdown the National Business Review site and too much information.

"Information overload isn't new. Medieval monks used to complain about the huge increase in texts they had to study with the arrival of the printing-press. The difference is that our delivery systems are to Gutenberg's what the Cruise missile is to the catapult."

In July he was intrigued by Lip Service, a novel written for and promoted solely in cyberspace by Melisse Shapiro. That was followed by more on cybersquatting and then in September some advice on how spot an internet scam; "..it was obviously a new mailing-list scam. And sure enough, a visit to the FreeBanCo site at once revealed the scamster's footprint: multiple exclamation-marks!!!"

That month he entered the fast lane: "Is it a bird? Is it a plane? No! - it's ADSL ... I'm hopelessly technophile. Give it a set of initials and I'll give it a go. I'd heard the rumours of downloads faster than a speeding bullet ... "

Peter was also vitally interested in how the web changed the rules - writing in October: "The internet continues to resist most efforts to rationalise, restrain or even understand it. Like Band-Aids which won't stick, the legalities of the offline world often refuse to adhere to the web. Most notorious is the tangle of catch-22's surrounding the laws of copyright in cyberspace, but this is merely the most vexing symptom of a general condition."

he was particularly fascinated with the machinations of the US Patent & Trademark Office: "So totally confused have they become by the clamorous demands of the internet that they've taken to helplessly granting patents for literally almost any common process just because it happens to be occurring on the Web."

In October he tried to watch the live video NetAid: "The webcast, despite the presence of the Black Crowes, the Counting Crows and Cheryl Crow, was still a turkey."

The same month there was the adapt or perish story of Encyclopaedia Britannica - "how abruptly commercial arrogance, combined with a refusal to innovate, can morph success into disaster."

November was election time. Peter perused all the parties election sites trying to imagine what Jesus would do. Of Labour he wondered if vanity was still one of the seven deadly sins. "I only ask because Jesus might notice, as I did in a previous column, the miraculous transfiguration an election campaign has wrought on the Labour leader: Helen Clark, Photoshopped into gorgeousness - teeth unsnaggled, eyes blue as a Siamese cat's - is presented as lusciously electable ... She's also been known to covet her neighbour's ox if he earns over $60,000."

He then watched the entire election on his computer: "The good-natured confusion which prevailed on the set, the unfolding political drama, the nasal and reassuring presence of Nigel Roberts, plus the flaky sideshows as Kopu, Henare, Morgan and Delamere got theirs, all combined into the most satisfying local webcast ever. And if sometimes the seats in the Chamber didn't fill correctly, or the presenters occasionally appeared to swim phlegmatically in glue, well, you get that in election-biz"

2000


Peter saw in the dawn of the millenium with style.

"12:00:30 Turn on computer. Lo, it boots!

12:01 Go to window, check heavens. Not an angel in sight. Rapture is running late. Hindus expecting a rain of blood will also be disappointed. The sky is filled with misty fire, certainly, but the explosions are entirely joyous.

12:04 Return to computer, delete provisional opening par: "As fireworks lit up the night sky above the Harbour Bridge, the lights went out in Auckland." Try to think of something else.

1:00 Well, it's fairly clear that nothing much is going to happen. Civilisation, I've been assured by everyone who should know, looks like trundling on as usual for another thousand years. Don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed. The small knot of apprehension with which I woke up this morning loosens, comes undone. For the first time tonight, something in me at last starts, tentatively, to rejoice. We've made it into a brand new millennium, after all, and it looks as though we're off to a fair start ... Chicken Little was wrong. Now, where's that champagne?"

In early 2000 he followed the free internet phenomenon and panned local search engines for their inability to find Eric Watson. Then it was back to a favourite subject: "The Canutes of the global music-industry continue to stalk the shores of cyber-space, their voices shrill with dread, commanding the tide of MP3 to retreat. But the waters are lapping at their feet." In February he defeated the wretched GoHip and Radiate spyware and in May had some helpful advice on the Love Bug.

"By the time you read this, you'll know what to do - or rather, what not to do. Treat any email attachment, especially from a friend, as a potentially explosive device liable to wreak havoc on your HD; and open it, if at all, only with the tongs of the latest anti-viral software."

And then there was Napster: "From its very beginnings, the share-and-share-alike world of the Web was profoundly antipathetic to the copyright concept ... " By June Napster had become a Net soap with Peter taking a cameo role downloading tracks from anti-Napster bands Eminem and Dr Dre - "purely in the spirit of journalistic enquiry, you understand ... "

Next came the quirky internet film George Lucas in Love, the copyright dispute over DeCSS for unlocking DVD movies and the nonsense patent claim on the hyperlink.

His hobbyhorse was micropayments: "It seems self-evident that to discover the online El Dorado everyone has so far sought in vain requires that millions upon millions of surfers are enabled to pay miniscule sums for some of the resources they now get for free ... "

In October he mourned the passing of Deja newsgroup archive. In November the death of Napster. He also participated in 3Com's Planet Project - "an immense four-day interactive poll in eight languages surveying the habits, thoughts, sex lives and dreams of global villagers from whitest Greenland to darkest Africa."

His greatest scoop in December 2000 was the story of Allan McConnell, the 68-year-old Ngaruawahia pensioner who found himself caught up in a web of intrigue involving virtual pet site NeoPets, its ferocious lawyers and his apparent ownership of stealth domain name diverting traffic to a gambling website - www.actioncitycasino.com.

2001


Early in 2001 he found controversy again when he dismissed "Valuenet Global" and BigCo-op and just another multi level marketing dream. "The internet is continually spawning these business models from hell which flourish briefly, then wither overnight." Turns out he may have been right A check of the site today has the message: "we are temporarily offline until September 2001 - grand opening coming in September just in time for Christmas."

In February, he was finding new search engines (such as http://searchpdf.adobe.com) to explore the deep web and checking out the ghost of Napster : "Peer-to-peer computing (www.groove.net) - voluntary user exchanges of content they own on a one-to-one basis - is here to stay." By July, he was not at all happy with the invasion of privacy he saw in Microsoft's Passport in Windows XP. He also didn't think much of the new XtraMSN portal either.

And then he was gone. Peter died last Wednesday. He was an extraordinary talent - a multimedia man who crossed the boundaries of radio, TV, print and the web. An icon of the both the TV and computer screen - to be clicked on many, many times.

* In the absence of a funeral, some readers have asked where they should send a farewell message. We're not sure, but his e-mail address - pete@ihug.co.nz - will be open until Saturday.

Links:


Pyramids - The Inside Story

The New Zealand Ostrich Connection

Metacrawler

NBR

Netaid

Labour Party

Action City Casino

Value Net Global

Search Adobe PDF Online

Groove Networks