j-dom first began in late 1994 as a Bulletin Board System (BBS) running Remote Access for DOS with only one line connected to a 14.4 modem. Jason Kitcat, its founder, soon wanted to add additional capacity but found that Remote Access and DOS weren't particularly scalable. So j-dom was transferred to OS/2 Warp 3.0 with Maximus/2 so that it could have two lines, one at 28.8 bps. At that time j-dom focussed on Science Fiction - Science Fact, offering pictures, stories and more. It also offered online games like LORD, prizes for the best stories submitted by users as well as a comics shop and thousands of files. j-dom also founded *NET with NiteFlite BBS and Locomotion BBS as well as joining FidoNet in late 1995. By this time BBSs around the country were suffering due to the sudden popularity of the Internet. Some of the larger ones began to morph into Internet Service Providers, but most continued with reduced calls.

It soon became clear to Jason Kitcat that BBSs were a dying breed and so he closed down j-dom BBS. He then began j-dom online, what is now called j-dom 1.0, which was three articles produced daily. Yet this only lasted three days partly because it was only experimental and partly because producing a daily site part-time was near-impossible. This occurred in October 1996, by January of 1997 Jason Kitcat had acquired enough HTML experience to try again. j-dom 2.0 was launched as a weekly e-zine with specific areas of interest. The site interviewed big names online such as Jon Katz and Derek Powazek while encouraging readers to write their own pieces. The formula seemed to work as several awards were given. But the design was quite simple and the number of readers, while steady and regular, was only around 100 every week.

So j-dom 3.0 came about. With a complete redesign, improved focus on the affects of technology and a publicity campaign the relaunch began. Within the first two weeks awards came flooding in as did new readers. The launch also announced the arrival of j-dom media, set up to let others take advantage of the expertise gained in creating j-dom every week. With the help of Alex Andronov and other contributors j-dom offered a broader range of articles every week along with its popular features, especially Vision.

But as the end of 1997 draws to a close Jason Kitcat is unsure of how much time he will have to commit to j-dom and so, unwilling to give the readers a bum deal, he's put production on hold. But we can all be sure that j-dom will be back in one form or another...