Harley Email Digest

In the early years life was wonderful for Ken. Then in July 1991 he created the Harley Email Digest (The HeD). This mailing list was the first Harley-specific Internet and Usenet⁽¹⁾ resource.
Besides providing an Email forum, Ken provided Email and FTP archive servers and an interactive application that could be "Telnetted" into to browse the archives, request subscriptions, etc. The WWWeb was not yet invented.

Late summer 1992 I believe saw the Usenet rec.motorcycles.harley newsgroup created after several hostile public votes. My digest played a role in first soothing those who demanded to have something "show the need", and then later take the flak for "providing for the need, so a newsgroup is unnecessary".

By December 1994 further insanity overtook Ken and he accepted responsibility for the MetallicA Email Digest. The MetallicA Digest was retired at the end of 1999 after a considerable drop in usage.

These web pages in support of the Email Digest were made public on January 17, 1995 after some delay⁽²⁾ in dropping Thinkage firewall barriers to the Web.

In Mid-October 1995 an experiment in hosting a model-specific Email forum was created by subscriber Don Moses for those interested in Road King specific discussion. A year later at the end of October 1996 saw the experiment terminated due to lack of participation by its subscribers.
Naturally I took the opportunity to encourage the Road King subscribers to join the Harley Email Digest.

Now days the Harley Email Digest is run as a digest issued twice a day during the week. Every back issue of the digest is available to subscribers via the web archive services at this site.
The web server also support a keyword/author lookup facility for browsing the back issues. Currently there are over 1700 subscribers in at least 26 countries receiving the digest.

The Telnetable server was retired at the end of 1999, and the FTP archives no longer 'advertised' to new subscribers since late 1999. Such is the WWWeb.

Ken was also the creator of the original newsgroup, net.cycle, which was later renamed to rec.motorcycles during the great newsgroup renaming. As you may now guess, Ken has been around the networks for a few years...

The computer and network resources necessary to maintain this publication all these years has been graciously provided by Ken's former employeer, Thinkage Ltd. Who's generosity not only includes the physical resources, but acceptance of the lost productivity time caused by Ken's distractions in list-management. Strange occasional subscribers would also phone the Thinkage office manager, or send Email to senior staff with silly trivialities.

In July 2003 the digest took a step towards independent identity and acquired it's own domain name of the-hed.net (and also the .com, .org and .ca versions.) Registration of domain names and domain name service for the digest has been generously sponsored by volunteer donations from the list members themselves.
Also as of July 2003 secure (encrypted) web-services, where necessary, are hosted courtesy of Dognose Productions -- the list-manager's own excercise in online commercial identity.

(2) This delay stopped me from being the very first web Harley resource and I have to settle for second place.
I was ready to go live on the web several months earlier, but the firewall issues had not been resolved before Don Crafts, a digest subscriber, created in late 1994 the first Harley web resource called the World Wide Glide. It was a most excellent resource, but I should have been first. heh... :) :)
On June/2001 the World Wide Glide website was shut down, making me the oldest Harley site on the web now.

©opyright 1995-2007 by harley-request (at) the-hed.net