..:: 20 years StarinkWorld - a "brief" retrospection [1] ::..
Recently - from 24th March until 14th April 2020 - we published on our both Facebook groups day by day (except on weekends and holidays) memories, stories and other insights on the occassion of the 20th anniversary of the StarinkWorld website. Hereafter you will find all parts of the StarinkWorld stories.The very first Starink website went online during 2000 - at that time we hadn't a top level domain, but a third level domain: http://starink.exhome.de (not online anymore - only an archive version at web.archive.org).
At that time the former co-webmaster Stefan and I only had the few information we were able to collect from the CD booklets as at that time almost no information was available on the net about Ed Starink. And the only picture from Ed we had was the one from Synthesizer Spectacular.
At the time the website started as a fanpage and we started to review - track by track - Ed's cover albums but also his very own compositions.
We also tried to improve our services with an e-mail newsletter, a forum, and even a marketplace. Later on we replaced the marketplace by a service called "auction watch" which was in fact part of the newsletter. Weekly we sent a newsletter with Starink related items on the several auction platforms such as ebay, hood, ibazar, and others.
A little later Patrick, a French Ed Starink fan, joined us and created his own fanpage about Ed Starink. This one became an affiliated website with a different webdesign (as far as I can remember it was a Flash based design), but based on the little information we had collected until then.
At a certain point we decided to provide StarinkWorld not only in English, but also in Dutch, French, and German. As it was rather elaborate to update all 4 versions we later abandoned at least the French and Dutch version again. However, the remainings are still available as all translated interviews and reports are still accessable from the English website.
In 2001 I was able to contact Ed Starink and it was a big honour for me being invited by the Starink's to their home in France. In September 2001 I met for the very first time my big idol Ed Starink, and of course his charming wife Nicolette and their good friend Marijke. It was a very warm welcome and I was so tremendously excited to meet them.
Of course we also had some "business things" to do... ;-) Taking pictures from his studio and of course it was the huge opportunity to ask Ed (almost) everything we wanted to ask him. Fortunately I prepared an interview in English, but Ed agreed to give this interview in German. I was positively stunned and rephrased/translated our questions again. This interview can be read in 4 languages on the website. By the way: the Dutch translation was done by Kees Wesselius, a relative of Joop Wesselius, the owner of Wesselius Audio (they did the mastering of Synthesizer Greatest).
This visit also marked the birth of the official Ed Starink (fan) page... more changes in the years to come!
