August 22, 1989 was the day that Chatham Township Data Corporation was incorporated. Today marks the twentieth anniversary of its founding.

CTDATA isn't what I do for a living anymore. But developing it was a major focus of my life for a number of years. Those of you who have known me for a long time know how important it has been to me.

I want to thank my wife Kathleen, my family, and friends for their support. Thanks also to David Plaut and Barry Tash who provided the money to get this enterprise off the ground in the early days.

From the third floor of the J Building at RPI, to Morris County, NJ, to Wall Street, to the kitchen table of a small house in Newtown, PA, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We are planning to celebrate CTDATA's 20th anniversary in August 2009. By that time, I hope to restructure the home page of CTDATA.com to reflect the business as it is today.

It's been a long time since the home page of CTDATA.com has been an active blog. More active blogs exist at Operation Gadget, DaveAiello.com, the RinkAtlas.com blog, and HockeyRefCast. I plan to move the CTDATA blog off of the home page but keep it, since there is still some historical value to what was published here.

I'm trying to decide how much space to devote to aggregating activity from the more active sites that we publish, and how I want to promote the ongoing businesses of weblog consulting and small scale webhosting. I'll post an update when I've made a decision.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This article was originally published on CTDATA.com on November 23, 2000.

There is no doubt in my mind that of all American holidays, Thanksgiving is the greatest. I often wonder how a holiday like this has survived through the constant change that is our nation's history. Yet all Americans, regardless of our beliefs, take the time to be with friends and family and to thank God for the blessings that He has bestowed on us.

Each year, The Wall Street Journal publishes two articles on its Editorial page on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I want to thank them for making these articles available on their free Web Site, OpinionJournal.com. Reading them is one of my favorite moments of the season.

The Desolate Wilderness, taken from Nathaniel Morton's New England's Memorial:

Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof:

So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years, but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb. XI, 16), and therein quieted their spirits....

And the Fair Land written by Vermont Royster, 1949:

.... We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth....

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family from everyone at CTDATA.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This article was originally published on CTDATA.com on September 11, 2002.

On September 11, 2001, over 3,000 people died in terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Today, we remember all of the victims, and particularly the friends of CTDATA who were killed in the attacks:

• World Trade Center
  
  
  
  • Vito DeLeo, mechanic at World Trade Center, USA Hockey official
    
  • John Eichler, retired executive at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, brother of Joan Aiello
    
  • John Pocher, bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, alumnus of Essex County Chiefs youth hockey program
    
  • Kalyan Sarkar, Port Authority seismic engineer, father of Kishan Sarkar-- a Rensselaer alumnus
    

  
  

• American Airlines Flight 11
  
  
  
  • J. Nicholas Humber, executive at Enron Wind Corporation, Rensselaer Class of 1963
    
  
  

Posted by Dave Aiello at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This article was originally published on CTDATA.com on November 23, 2000.

There is no doubt in my mind that of all American holidays, Thanksgiving is the greatest. I often wonder how a holiday like this has survived through the constant change that is our nation's history. Yet all Americans, regardless of our beliefs, take the time to be with friends and family and to thank God for the blessings that He has bestowed on us.

Each year, The Wall Street Journal publishes two articles on its Editorial page on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. I want to thank them for making these articles available on their free Web Site, OpinionJournal.com. Reading them is one of my favorite moments of the season.

The Desolate Wilderness, taken from Nathaniel Morton's New England's Memorial:

Here beginneth the chronicle of those memorable circumstances of the year 1620, as recorded by Nathaniel Morton, keeper of the records of Plymouth Colony, based on the account of William Bradford, sometime governor thereof:

So they left that goodly and pleasant city of Leyden, which had been their resting-place for above eleven years, but they knew that they were pilgrims and strangers here below, and looked not much on these things, but lifted up their eyes to Heaven, their dearest country, where God hath prepared for them a city (Heb. XI, 16), and therein quieted their spirits....

And the Fair Land written by Vermont Royster, 1949:

.... We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth....

Happy Thanksgiving to you and your family from everyone at CTDATA.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 10:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

This article was originally published on CTDATA.com on September 11, 2002.

On September 11, 2001, over 3,000 people died in terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Today, we remember all of the victims, and particularly the friends of CTDATA who were killed in the attacks:

• World Trade Center
  
  
  
  • Vito DeLeo, mechanic at World Trade Center, USA Hockey official
    
  • John Eichler, retired executive at Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft, brother of Joan Aiello
    
  • John Pocher, bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, alumnus of Essex County Chiefs youth hockey program
    
  • Kalyan Sarkar, Port Authority seismic engineer, father of Kishan Sarkar-- a Rensselaer alumnus
    

  
  

• American Airlines Flight 11
  
  
  
  • J. Nicholas Humber, executive at Enron Wind Corporation, Rensselaer Class of 1963
    
  
  

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dave Aiello wrote, "On August 22, 1989, Chatham Township Data Corporation was officially incorporated. We're pleased to still be in business 17 years later."

"In July 2006, the RinkAtlas.com North American ice rink directory was launched. This site was launched out of my frustration with other rink directory websites that haven't adopted cutting-edge technology. RinkAtlas uses the Google Maps API to display the locations of over 1000 rinks that are east of the Mississippi River."

"We expect to complete the RinkAtlas database of rinks in the United States by the end of September."

"This year is the sixth anniversary of a new tradition for our company. Each year since the year 2000, I've written a brief message on our corporate anniversary that helps to document our history. I'd like to take a moment now to rewind history:"

• 16th anniversary, 2005,
• 15th anniversary, 2004,
• 14th anniversary, 2003,
• 13th anniversary, 2002,
• 12th anniversary, 2001,
• 11th anniversary, 2000.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 8:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

We added some new content to the Weblog Improvement website for the first time since it was launched in November 2004. The new information on that site includes:

• the methodology we use to build and enhance weblogs,
• a partial list of our clients,
• additional contact information.

This is the first in a series of enhancements to WeblogImprovement.com that begin to incorporate the design techniques that we first used on our clients' sites.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 9:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Season's Greetings from everyone at Chatham Township Data Corporation. In 2005, we completed the migration of our server infrastructure to a Linux platform that's optimized for expansion of our hosting business. This was on the drawing board a year ago when I wrote our holiday message but didn't get completed until November due to the priority of other work that clients had requested.

The final migration steps took place under the intense pressure of infrastructure problems. We could only get away with running obsolete servers for so long. The Service Notice article published on the RCNJ website is a cryptic reminder. We didn't lose any data in this failure, but a lot of content temporarily disappeared from this and a few other websites. This will never happen again, because we now have geographically diverse servers with replication of daily backups between them. We should have had this in place a long time ago.

Earlier today Martin O'Donnell and I met briefly because he's in town visiting his father. We talked about the strategic options that a friend of his has in building a web presence for a new women's clothing store being opened in Seattle. I gave my opinion, which was to be conservative and focus on what could be done well rather than implementing a laundry list of web and e-commerce services in the quickest way possible.

I added that we should take a fresh look at CTDATA's websites and services from time to time, and make changes where appropriate. The ideas we came up with for his friend: focus on excellent implementation of a basic informational website, and build slowly from there to a robust e-commerce presence, make a lot of sense for a startup women's fashion retail store. What would a similar approach mean for this company at this time?

Continue reading "Focusing on Marketing Now that the Great Migration is Done" »

Posted by Dave Aiello at 1:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

CTDATA customers whose mail service resides on srvb1.ctdata.com may have experienced problems sending email to addresses in the ctdata.com domain. We corrected this problem a little while ago. Email that was in the srvb1 mail queue should have been delivered.

If your recipient has still not received an email you sent recently, please resend the message.

Posted by Dave Aiello at 4:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)