14 Facts About Chris Gulker

Christian Frederick "Chris" Gulker was an American photographer, programmer, writer, and pioneer in electronic publishing.

Chris Gulker was a 1969 graduate of Western Reserve Academy of Hudson, Ohio, and an alumnus of Occidental College, Los Angeles, where he earned a degree in Comparative literature.

Chris Gulker contributed to the National Press Photographers Association's Electronic Photojournalism Workshop.

Chris Gulker moved to Menlo Park, CA, after the Herald-Examiner closed in 1989, and joined the San Francisco Examiner, where he initially served as picture editor and led the photography staff's transition from film to digital cameras.

Chris Gulker's work made possible an all-Macintosh-produced edition of The Examiner after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake led to a power shutdown that idled the newspaper's publishing system.

In 1994, as "a staff of one" and encouraged by the owner of The Examiner, William Randolph Hearst III, Chris Gulker came to run a pilot project called The Electric Examiner, which routed wire-service stories to the Web.

Chris Gulker wanted to expand this "prototype of a future Web site" to distribute the actual reporting produced at the Examiner but was frustrated in this ambition, as the Examiner was bound by a joint operating agreement with its local rival, the San Francisco Chronicle, and could not move on its own when it came to venturing into new distribution modes.

When Chris Gulker's project was previewed in August 1994 under the name The Gate as a joint operation between the two newspapers, it was judged the "furthest ahead" among efforts to bring newspapers online.

Chris Gulker, anticipating the work of Jorn Barger, was the first to propose a network of bloggers and pioneered two of the most effective means through which blogging emerged as a social medium, the blogroll and link attribution.

From 1997 until 2003, Chris Gulker contributed his column "The View from Silicon Valley" to the weekly technology supplement of the British newspaper The Independent, in which he distinguished himself through "sharp wit and literary ability".

From 2004 to 2007, Chris Gulker was product manager for the Acrobat family at Adobe Systems.

Chris Gulker was diagnosed with an inoperable malignant glioma brain tumor in October 2006.

Chris Gulker died peacefully at his home on October 27,2010, aged 59.

Chris Gulker was survived by his wife of 29 years, Linda Hubbard Gulker.