Back in the last millennium, I was often mistaken for David Bunnell at conferences. To see why, check out the photo of David from his Macworld days this piece about him in Fast Company, and then look at the pic of me at the top of my old blog.

David died Sunday. No details, so far. His Wikipedia entry says nothing about it, and also has no exact birth date. Just the year: 1947. Same as me.

For all his great work as a publisher, and having lived a very public life for several decades atop the tech world, there was always something private and mysterious about David. For example, why he either erased or buried the digital version of Upside, after it went bankrupt and ceased publication in 2002. That bothered me, not just because I had written for the magazine, but because it was the best chronicler of the whole dot-com boom/bust era. And now that was all gone. Far as I know, David never gave a reason.

But he was a good guy, a good publisher, and a true pioneer. And he's already missed.