Stan Flack, MacMinute Publisher and MacCentral Founder, Passed Away

I just found out about the passing of Stan Flack through a note on Macworld (formerly MacCentral). Stan was the founder of MacCentral in 1994, one of the first Mac Web sites in the infancy of the Internet.

I started Macs Only! in 1995 when the rapport among Mac Web sites was very high. I corresponded quite frequently with Stan, who published MacCentral from Maritime Canada, and talked to him at Macworld Expos. He was a great guy and he made MacCentral into a commercial success as the advertising boom hit the Web. He even managed to become a sponsor for Macworld Expo and large banners noting such were hung throughout the halls.

Ultimately, Stan sold MacCentral to IDG who publishes Macworld magazine. MacCentral became Macworld magazine's Web daily news site. Eventually the name was changed to the current Macworld.

Afterward, Stan began publishing MacMinute, a publication that used our style of Mac news reporting, a short paragraph on the salient part of the news whether posted elsewhere or from a press release. But Stan was able to do it all day on the fly rather than each evening for the following day and built up a large readership as a result.

According to the Macworld note, Stan was a professional newspaper man before jumping onto the Web. This may partly explain his success--twice.

I checked MacMinute this morning to find strangely that it had not been updated since Friday. I am deeply saddened to learn the reason for this. I will miss Stan.

Bill Fox