Tristan Louis

Infobox Person
name = Tristan Louis


caption = Tristan Louis, circa 2000
birth_date = Birth date and age|1971|2|28|mf=y
birth_place = Digne-les-Bains, France
death_date =
death_place =
occupation = Internet entrepreneur / Blogger
spouse = Amy Shertzer
children= Munro

Tristan Louis (born February 28, 1971 in Digne-les-Bains, France) is an author, entrepreneur and blogger who has run the site [http://www.tnl.net/ TNL.net] since 1994.

Early work

In 1994 and 1995, as publisher of iWorld (now known as Internet.com and part of Jupitermedia Corporation), part of the Mecklermedia group of Internet online media companies, Louis first became involved in online politics on Usenet, particularly the newsgroup "alt.internet.media-coverage"ref|aimcref|aimcfaq, during debate over the Communications Decency Act and activism against it. In a joint effort with the EFF and the Voters Telecommunications Watch, iWorld and Mecklermedia publicly endorsed a national day of protest ref|iworldprotest, turning the background of web pages around the world to black. The protest received national news coverage and was a catalyst in the planning for a lawsuit (Reno v. American Civil Liberties Union) which went to the United States Supreme Court and reaffirmed First Amendment protection for Internet publishers.

After leaving iWorld, Louis contributed to many publications as a freelance writer, including a popular line of introductions to the internet, and was also involved in several start-ups, including Earthweb and Net Quotient, a consulting group. At Earthweb, Louis reprised his role of editor, hoping to reproduce the early success of iWorldref|tristanearthweb.

From 1999 to early 2000, Louis joined the short-lived dot-com Boo.com; when the company failed, he wrote a detailed analysis of the challenges the company had facedref|boofails, offering some context in terms of running large scale websites, which was widely circulated.

Contributions to standards

Throughout the 1990s, Louis was involved in a number of initiatives led by the World Wide Web Consortium, including the development of an early draft standard for merging television with the webref|tvml. The initiative was launched too early in the development of the web and the effort quickly died off with few people adopting the proposed standard.

In the early 2000s, Louis was involved in the development community surrounding RSS and podcasting, proposing a number of amendments to the specificationsref|rss of the time. The proposal included creating a date element for every item in an RSS feed and provided the theoretical framework to distribute data files over an RSS channel, anticipating what is now known as podcasting.

Writing

In 1994-1995, Louis served as editor on a number of guides to the Internet. He was a principal research editor on four books authored by Michael Wolff: Net.Moneyref|netmoney, Net.Sportsref|netsports, Net.Trekref|nettrek, and Net.Techref|nettech. Louis also wrote articles for a wide number of technology publicationsref|bibliography including "The Silicon Alley Reporter" and "Business 2.0".

Beginning in 2000, Louis started publishing a weblog, which is noted for its dissection and research into technology trends.

Notes and references

# Reavy, Matthew M., 1996, [http://list.msu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind9612d&L=aejmc&F=&S=&P=3800 Group Communication on the Internet] - 1996 study; Louis quoted on "alt.internet.media-coverage": "our group is very vocal"
# Falk, JD and Tristan Louis, 1993 " [http://web.archive.org/web/19990117074918/http://www.cybernothing.org/jdfalk/html/aim-c.html alt.internet.media-coverage FAQ] " (through Internet Archive)
# Mecklermedia Corporation, 7 February, 1996 " [http://www.jupitermedia.com/corporate/releases/96.02.09-protest.html Mecklermedia Joins Protest] "
# AtNewYork Staff, April 11, 1997 " [http://www.atnewyork.com/news/article.php/248321 Earthweb shifts gears, turns publisher] "
# Louis, Tristan, " [http://www.tnl.net/who/bibliography/what_I_learned_at_boo.com/ What I Learned at Boo.com] "
# Louis, Tristan, October 12, 1998. " [http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-tv/1998OctDec/0006.html RE: URL Getting started] "
# Louis, Tristan, October 13, 2003 " [http://groups.yahoo.com/group/syndication/message/698 Suggestions for RSS 0.92] "
# Wolff, Michael. "Net.Money", Random House, 1995. ISBN 0-679-75808-9
# Wolff, Michael. "Net.Sports", Random House, 1995. ISBN 0-679-76187-X
# Wolff, Michael. "Net.Trek", Random House, 1995. ISBN 0-679-76186-1
# Wolff, Michael. "Net.Tech", Random House, 1995. ISBN 0-517-17716-1
# Louis, Tristan " [http://www.tnl.net/who/bibliography/ Bibliography] "

External links

* [http://www.tnl.net/blog/ Tristan Louis' weblog]
* [http://www.tristanlouis.com/ Tristan Louis' official site]