IN THE SPOTLIGHT

YNOT: This week’s guest is Steve Tietze, sometimes known as Gateway to friends and associates, who entered the adult industry with one of the first adult sites catering to PDA owners.IN THE SPOTLIGHT

YNOT: This week’s guest is Steve Tietze, sometimes known as Gateway to friends and associates, who entered the adult industry with one of the first adult sites catering to PDA owners. His background in technology keeps him up to date on the latest developments in the wireless/handheld market and he is always trying to pioneer new technology that the adult Internet industry can benefit from. Aside from being a true visionary, Steve is a great guy and a very good friend to YNOT. So tell us some more about this PDA stuff, Steve. What’s your story… and what exactly do you do?

Gateway: That’s a good question and I sometimes find myself asking that! Well, about ten years ago I started out as a 3D modeler and level designer for a few video game companies. I worked on several projects for Id Software (makers or Doom, Quake, etc.). After doing a few games, I decided to try to form my own company with some good friends of mine. This worked out and we have created a 3D RPG game called Vampire: The Masquerade.

After being in the game industry for about ten years I burned out and left the company to do my own thing. I had always been talking back and forth with some people in the adult industry and did some minor work for a few companies.

YNOT: So what brought you into the world of the adult Internet?

Gateway: I figured what the hell! It couldn’t hurt to do work in the adult industry, so I started out designing sites, building an amateur site for my girlfriend and various AVS sites. This gave me a good opportunity to learn A LOT about the adult industry. There are some negative things I would rather forget, but it taught me how to build sites geared for surfers on how to get traffic, how to keep your traffic and how to make money off the traffic that leaves your site.

I had been tinkering around with the idea of doing games for the Pocket PC. The first game was a very simple memory game where you had a bunch of boxes and you had to match two of the same image to remove them, etc. After selling quite a bit of those, to my surprise I started getting a lot of emails asking for adult content for the Memory Game. A light bulb went off! It started out slow and dim, but then eventually began brightly shining. People want adult images on their Pocket PC. So with that in mind, I started doing a lot of research on how to bring an adult site with images, video, etc. to the users’ PDAs (Pocket PC’s or Palm Pilots). This is where the idea of Pocket-XXX (www.pocket-xxx.com) came about which has been up and running for the past two years now.

YNOT: Ah… it’s starting to come together for me now!

Gateway: This led me into another direction of actually developing my own technology to help bring content from the Web (HTML, images, video, audio, etc.) to a user’s PDA which then could be browsed offline. Wireless wasn’t the solution then and still isn’t very feasible to the mass market now, so I created a new company called Syncalot which is a complete all-in-one package that allows users to sync Web content to their PDA’s on a daily basis, in it’s basic form.

Having been under wraps for the past eight months, we are now finally ready to come out and kick some ass with Syncalot! The main thing with Syncalot is that it’s for any type of site including news, entertainment, shopping, health, and of course, adult.

YNOT: So, Syncalot aims to make it easier for surfers to get Web content delivered to their PDA without the need for expensive wireless hardware or connections.

Gateway: Exactly. Our goal is to develop a portal where PDA users can come and choose from various types of Web sites to be synced to their PDA, as we are a content delivery system for both Webmaster and end user. Our mission is to help Webmasters expand and develop their PDA formatted web sites, which will work on our system and bring ultimately the best sites from the Web to the end users’ PDA for viewing.

YNOT: What kind of legal issues do you have to deal with here? Anything out of the ordinary?

Gateway: There are always privacy issues when you run a huge portal. There are the issues of Syncalot not being responsible for what type of content is delivered from our system to the user and of course the adult sections need to be protected from the prying eyes of minors. My lawyers have been instrumental in helping me develop my dream and keep it within the legal bounds.

YNOT: Any other obstacles you are dealing with?

Gateway: When I decided to go into the adult industry, I chose to test something new for me and to learn and see if I can rise from the bottom and reach the top… which I’m still working on! However, I have learned a lot about Internet marketing and how things work in this industry, which I will apply to Syncalot and any other project I develop.

YNOT: With your type of background, what areas do you see a need for improvement in our industry?

Gateway: When I went to my first Internext in New Orleans, I was surprised to see the lack of technological knowledge so many Webmaster had, and yet money just seemed to fall into their laps at an early time. I rarely see people trying to pioneer new ideas themselves, and instead many opt to follow and duplicate an idea that is already working. Sure there is high risk involved in attempting innovation, but I have never been afraid to try.

YNOT: Any beefs with the industry?

Gateway: I find it really annoying with all of the bickering in the industry and the lack of honesty and trust that seems to plague a lot of companies. Hell… I thought strippers could be bad sometimes, but come on! I have many more rants, but I’ll spare you. There are a lot of positive things I have learned from many people who have helped me get to the position where I am.

YNOT: I’m sure we could talk about all of that for hours. In fact, I’m sure we already have!

Gateway: This is business, and business can get nasty at times, but it’s also supposed to be professional, which at times I just don’t see. If you’re not honest or trustworthy, word can (and should) get around about you.

YNOT: Where do you see Syncalot and your PDA porn plan in the short and long run?

Gateway: The plan with Syncalot is to develop a community of Web sites that my users can view with our software. We have taken the first steps about two years ago when we built one of the first adult sites that brought content to the PDA. Doing this first helped us realize and listen to what our members of our site wanted to see brought to such devices.

YNOT: Any predictions on the future of the adult Internet?

Gateway: Well, in the next five to ten years a lot of things are going to change and people will become more mobile, there will be better wireless devices, cell phones, better laptops, better PDAs, etc. What you have to try to do is look into that crystal ball and see your own vision and where you want to be.

YNOT: Any advice?

Gateway: If you’re thinking of getting into the industry, you must do your research, talk to people, and form your own opinions. Something that works for someone else might not work for you. There is NO one solution, so try to be creative, come up with new ideas instead of just following others. Use the Webmaster resource pages at sites like YNOT and take in as much information as you can even before you start to build a site. Lay down a plan of attack and don’t count on making a lot of money right away, as it takes time. Don’t give up! If things aren’t working out, find out why instead of moving to another project.

YNOT: Right on! Alright, let’s wrap this up. We’ve got Internext to attend here! What do you want to tell all of the Webmasters out there to get them to flood you with requests and demos in Florida?

Gateway: I just want to say that if you have been thinking of expanding your current Web site, now is the time to do it! With over seven million PDA users and growing each year, it’s another excellent outlet to generate income, and it’s only going to get better!

YNOT: Terrific! Well, I wish you continued success Steve, and thank you for providing such a cool service and for being our guest this week!

Stay tuned for great things to come from Syncalot folks! For more information about Syncalot, contact Steve at gateway@syncalot.com.