We’re Gene and Katie Hamilton, the creators of BringBinoculars.com and we’re happy to have you join us. We’ve been using binoculars and writing about them for as long as we can remember. As boating and travel writers we’re authors of Coastal Cruising Under Power (McGraw Hill) and Practical Boating Skills (Hearst Marine Books) and hundreds of magazine articles. We’re long-time syndicated columnist for Tribune Publishing writing about home improvements and authors of Home Improvement for Dummies© (Wiley) and Fix It and Flip It (McGraw Hill). Over the years we’ve been honored as award winning writers and authors from Boating Writers International and the National Association of Real Estate Editors.
We’ve been involved in astronomy for many years operating a telescope and using binoculars. Today we’ve grown to realize and appreciate the many uses and benefits of binoculars in all our travels and interests, so we decided to share what we’ve learned with you and others at bringbinoculars.com.
BringBinoculars.com is the third website we’ve built. The first two – Housenet.com and diyornot.com – are about home improvements.
Here is a link to all of our books on Amazon.
A Little History
Our newspaper column Do It Yourself or Not was the foundation for HouseNet, the first home improvement website we created. Using the column as content we went online and created HouseNet BBS, a subscription-based bulletin board system in 1991 which we operated out of an extra bedroom using a maze of modems running into our home. A BBS, a forerunner to the Internet, was a network of computers and modems using telephone lines that connected thousands of special interest BBS communities all over the world.
With the help of Owens Corning as a sponsor we were able to launch HouseNet on the Internet in 1993 as the only online community serving as a clearinghouse for homeowners and contractors, who freely gave of their time and expertise to answer questions.
By 1996 we were part of AOL’s Greenhouse Program and launched HouseNet on AOL as their home improvement channel. A couple of years later HouseNet was acquired by R. R. Donnelley & Sons and in 1998 Yahoo! Internet Life magazine rated HouseNet as one of the top 100 Web sites.
Do It Yourself or Not has been in newspaper syndication by Tribune Publishing since 1987; it launched online in 1999 at diyornot.com. The feature continues to operate and thrive in the growing online world of home improvements.
