Syndicomm
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Syndicomm was co-founded by Tom Weishaar and Kent Fillmore, then purchased and expanded by Dean Esmay, who brought in partners Eric Mueller and Gary Utter to operate the Apple II and Mac forums on the GEnie online service back in the early 1990s. It rapidly expanded to operate a dozen forums there, as well as on America Online. Syndicomm later expanded to the Delphi online service as well, and operated customer service forums for several other companies.
Eric Mueller left the company in 1995 and went on help start PlanetOut; in 2000, Esmay and Utter sold Syndicomm to Eric Shepherd, who has operated Syndicomm ever since. Syndicomm is now the world's largest dealer of Apple II software and books, with exclusive licenses to distribute a wide assortment of software from companies including EGO Systems, Parkhurst Micro Products, and The Byte Works. In addition, Syndicomm is an exclusive distributor of programming languages, developer toolkits, and manuals from Apple Computer, with permission to reproduce copies of books for sale.
Under Shepherd, Syndicomm's ventures in the Apple II community have also included operating Syndicomm Online, a multi-forum, subscription-based, proprietary online service that catered to the Apple II community. Syndicomm Online, founded in December 2000, closed in December 2006, at which time Syndicomm also handed over operation of the A2Central.com news portal, founded in the summer of 2000, to Sean Fahey. Syndicomm also published Juiced.GS, the last remaining print publication for Apple II users, from Volume 7, Issue 1 (April 2002) through Volume 12, Issue 2 (June 2007) before transferring publication rights to editor-in-chief Ken Gagne.
