Gary Turner lives one hour north out of London in Northampton, England with his wife and daughter and, when pushed, he describes himself as a passionate technologist and a part-time hyperopic
visionary.
Professional BiographyGary is managing director of Pegasus Software, a UK application software business which has been developing financial and business management solutions for small and mid-sized businesses for 25 years. Alongside his duties at Pegasus Gary sits on the general council of BASDA - Business Application Software Developers Association - and he also sits on the technical committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England & Wales IT Faculty. In November 2005 Gary was included in CRN's A-List, a directory of the most influential people in the UK technology space.
Unprofessional BiographyAfter dropping out of college in 1988, Gary began his early career in a
Glasgow based computer retailer & specialist dealing in low-cost computer based technology for professional video and computer generated design as well as for general and hobbyist use, based around classic 1980's computer systems like the
Commodore Amiga, Atari ST and Acorn Archimedes.
A
teenager throughout the
80's, Gary has been tracking developments in the computer industry with unhealthy interest and has been using personal computers in various forms for almost 25 years.
In
1984 Gary taught himself the BASIC programming language on his
BBC Micro in
the attic of his childhood family home. He fell into the category of the kid in high school computer classes of whom the computer science teachers used to seek advice and expert guidance.
Gary started blogging in 2000, initially as a by-product of teaching himself about web design. But in the summer of 2001 after achieving economic migrant status by relocating from his native home of
Glasgow, Scotland to Northamptonshire in England, his weblog developed into a means of keeping friends and family up-to-date with personal news and events.
He has been cited by leading web and business thinkers including
Doc Searls (with whom Gary once went
Wardriving in London)
Tom Peters,
Christopher Locke,
Joichi Ito and
David Weinberger. Among the many areas of interest to Gary alongside his business applications software background, is the the emergence of future generation web service oriented social software applications and services (e.g.
Google apps,
Flickr,
Technorati,
Last.FM). He is also struck by the profound social and commercial implications the Web is having on personal, commercial and consumer lifestyles and the emergence of the digitally networked society.
Through the relationships formed out of his writing and ideas on the Web, Gary is fortunate to be able to count as friends, some of the world's leading Web thinkers, pioneers and commentators.
This blog is Gary's personal intellectual sandpit where notes his thoughts, ponderings and outlook on how the web and technology in general are progressively developing and affecting our business lives and our personal and social lifestyles. It's also where he combines the serious stuff with his keen sense of humour resulting in a number of popular mini-memes and ideas down the years.
Among the more popular concepts and inventions Gary stakes pesonal claim to creating are :
The Best PowerPoint Slide. Ever.This popular idea from February 2006 stakes claim to being the biggest single draw of traffic to the blog, at it's peak attracting almost 10,000 visitors to the site in a single hour shortly after it was picked up and covered in a number of major web news aggregators and podcasts.
BlogstickersIn 2001, Blogstickers launched as a silly little project to collect blog themed bumperstickers you could attach to your blog's sidebar. He got bored with it and it's been left to rot after collecting nearly 2000 stickers.
Web Fire EscapeA rebrand job on the Boss Key concept, simply installed (again) as a weblog design template button. The little green fire escape
icon gets loaded from my server up to 250,000 times per week.
Switch. Off.A parody of the Apple Switch campaign, only subverted to encourage people to switch off their computers and to discover real life. This seems to have struck a chord with many people, concious of how addictive digital life can be. One of the most popular pages on the site.
Unfamous QuotationsA collection of quotations from people who are not famous, as opposed to people who are famous and who always make it into Famous Quotations books and resources. Had I been unemployed and otherwise able to spent more time developing it, it would have turned into WikiQuote. Cited a couple of times by the BBC website.
Fake Helipads.comA beezer of a get-rich-quick business idea.
ChalkchalkingYou had to be there. Believe it or not but one afternoon in July 2002, I actually took a phone call from a reporter from a US newspaper after this mini-meme-parody got caught up in the actual
Warchalking brou-ha-ha. Chalkchalking was picked up in a retrospective review of 2002 by BBC News.
NapStratAnother ridiculously good get-rich-quick business idea. Later used by a real business in an advert.
WebTorchThe worlds first web based lighting system. Ingenious. Has since appeared as a genuine business elsewhere.
Conference Bloggging BloggingWeblog based conference time travel adventure. You had to be there. Mindbending.
The Web Fridge ProjectA collection of photographs of the contents of peoples refrigerators, was featured as the website of the day in early 2003 by USA Today newspaper!
BLXA new microconent schema designed to usurp RSS which got into all kinds of heavy legal ownership wrangles and then splinter factions emerged and I was forced to scrap the entire project out of spite.
Lockergnome ContributorThe geeking geek's geek,
Chris Pirillo, invited me write
an article as a guest reporter on one of his famous Lockergnome Dailies in April 2003.
Streaming Live Internet Radio In Your CarLong before we had Podcasting, I managed to listen to live internet radio through my car stereo whilst moving. A bit of a faff and quite expensive, but it T0TALLY R0X0RS!
Other Information- Technorati statistics of inbound blog links
here.
- Partial visit/pageview statistics
here - this site usually draws between 100-150k pageviews per month.
E-mail : garyturner[at]gmail.com
AIM : gturnerUK
Skype : garyajturner
GoogleTalk / Jabber : garyturner[at]gmail.com
LinkedIn :
Profile***DISCLAIMER OVERLOAD***
*The views expressed here are those of Gary Turner, and not his employer. His employer isn't
that clever, c'mon."
PS. If you just found this site and think that you might know me professionally, then follow the these steps...
1. Yes it is me. Scary, I know.
2. This is my personal blog, this means the content is personal. Obviously. However, as such, much of what makes me, me, imbues much of my professional outlook and behaviour. This may answer some worrying questions you already had about me but were unable to pinpoint, or indeed it may give you serious cause for concern. Either way, this is a good thing. It means you have finally got in touch with my inner self, next stop your own inner self. Your healing begins here, it's OK to cry.
3. You may ask, "Shit, Gary, you're the [ed: very handsome] MD of a serious [and ultra-successful] software business and obviously very very busy [exercising your supreme intellect and formidable commercial abilities]. Where on earth do you get the time to do this?" -- I post about four or five times a week and take about 10-20 mins per post. By my reckoning, that's about an hour per week. Plus I type fast. Plus, good content management software saves a LOT of time. *I added the bits in parentheses.
You'd also be amazed at how much (or little) you can achieve if you put your mind to it.
In the early evening of Monday the 24th January 1984 (co-incidentally the same week that the Apple Mac was launched), I proudly took ownership of my first proper personal computer, Acorn's finest BBC Computer Model B. A landmark event. Using my BBC in the loft of our family home, night after night I'd go on to teach myself BASIC and Pascal, write numerous programs, play ground-breaking games like Elite for hours on end, all of which utterly shaped me into the professional geek I am today. 