Behind The Sites: A Mini Series Profiling Mac Webmasters
#3: The Mac Observer's Bryan Chaffin

by Joey Cooper

The Mac Observer is a rapidly growing Mac site with a mix of daily news, opinions, links, and reviews. Bryan Chaffin took a minute to answer some of our questions, and he talks about how The Mac Observer runs.

Q: How did The Mac Observer come about?

The Mac Observer was founded as Webintosh by Dan Hughes. Dan had another project at the time called The Cyberdogpound and used that site as a platform to launch Webintosh. I was part of the team that helped launch Webintosh and when Dan decided he was ready to do other things, I jumped at the chance to take over Webintosh. That was in August of 1998. In December of 1998, Dave Hamilton joined the company and currently holds the position of President/CEO. On December 28th of that year, we changed the name to The Mac Observer and have been kicking some Mac butt ever since.

Q: What do your duties at The Mac Observer include?

Officially I am the Executive Vice President and Editor - in - Chief. My role is to manage our content and our staff. Dave and I work together on almost every aspect of the site, but our main focus is technically divided into content and business issues. It works well that way.

Q: What kind of computer setup do you have?

I have a PowerCenter Pro 240 from Power Computing that is powered by a PowerJOLT 400 MHz G3 upgrade card. I have 320 MB of RAM and two 17" monitors, one of which is powered by the Voodoo 3 2000. I also have an iMac (266 MHz iTouch enhanced iMac from Elo TouchSystems) on my desk that handles my network routing and crunches full time on SETI@home data for Team Mac Observer <http://www.macobserver.com/seti>. I use the iMac to handle streaming broadcasts or other content that I prefer to have visible at all times, as opposed to being covered up by the gillions of windows I tend to have open at any given time on my main machine.

A PowerMac G4 is in my future, but it will be hard to give up my PowerCenter Pro (Go Power Computing!). :-)

Q: Your first Mac?

Ah.... My first Mac... The first Mac I could actually call my own was a Power 100, also from Power Computing. I bought it during the brief period when Power Computing models were being sold by Computer City, the retail chain bought out by CompUSA a couple of years ago. Prior to that I spent lots of time at Kinko's Computer Centers getting the work finished that I needed done.

Q: Who else do you work with at The Mac Observer?

There is our President and CEO, Dave Hamilton, as I mentioned above. We recently brought Greg Snyder on as V.P. of Sales and Marketing, and he has been doing extraordinarily well. Greg was formerly the V.P. of Marketing and Corporate Communications for Mactell. Wes George is our Business Editor, and he writes a column called The Apple Trader as well as our daily feature, The Apple Stock Watch. Kyle D'Addario is our Copy Editor, though he is really more of a News Editor for us. He has been a big part of our increased coverage during the last few months. Thomas Stafford is our Assistant Editor.

Other staff members include (in no particular order!): John F. Braun, Bill Troop, The Idiots (Gary Randazzo and Randy Soare), Michael Munger, Nancy Gravley, The iTeens (Steve Siercks, Jordan Streiff, and Chris Rogers), Oliver Dueck, Cory Harrison, and Gavin Mahan. We have a few people who write under pen names for us as well.

Q: On average, how much time a day do you spend working on The Mac Observer?

I work from 50-60 hours per week on The Mac Observer. That will hopefully decrease as time goes on and we continue to bring on more incredible people like we have now.

Q: What's your favorite part of working at The Mac Observer?

THE MAC! I love the Mac. I love reading and writing about it. It's great to have people tell us they like and appreciate what we do and our readers constantly reward our hard work by continually coming back. There are few rewards as great as knowing you are offering a service that people appreciate and in which they place value.

I truly have one of the greatest jobs on the planet, and it's almost obscene that I can get paid for something I enjoy so much. :-)

Q: What's your favorite game right now?

Wow. I am a massive Myth-head, and I still think that Myth 2, from Bungie Software, is one of the greatest games to ever grace a computer screen. I get so bored with First Person shooters, though the technology behind them is certainly impressive. I also enjoy Civilization and other resource management games.

The game I am most looking forward to is Halo, also from Bungie. That game includes almost everything I am looking for in a game and it looks great to boot. I do hope that they include a 1st person perspective though.

Q: And your favorite game of all time?

Myth 2! Marathon 2 gets the runner-up nod.

Q: Can you give us any hints of surprises coming in The Mac Observer's future?

Think More. We have lots of announcements we will be making during the next year. :-)

Go ahead and give The Mac Observer a visit... thanks for your time Bryan!

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