Jeffrey Hoffman - Biography
Owner of Firstwebcam.com, Jeffrey Hoffman is a 1966 graduate of Nichols School in Buffalo, New York and received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1970. He has lectured at Buffalo State College and was a regular freelance sports photographer for the Buffalo Bills, Buffalo Sabres, and Buffalo Braves, till they moved. Working over 30 years for his family’s printing business, Hoffman published, and then also edited Buffalo's first four-color, slick sports magazine, Buffalo Fan between 1975 and 1978; and then, converted it to Bflo, the area’s first city magazine, till 1981. In 1983, with owner Bob Rich, Jr.’s support, Hoffman brought Buffalo Bison baseball back to radio and did play-by-play with long time friend Pete Weber. In 1986, Hoffman became Sports Director at WWKB Radio and its’ first evening sports talk host.
But perhaps least known about him is that in 1981, Hoffman created, and then sold to American Airlines the very first in-flight video ever to air on commercial flights. The video, about Deer Valley, Utah…the last great ski resort built in America, was shown for over two years on all of American’s wide body flights in the U.S., Hawaii and Europe and seen by millions of intrigued passengers. In 2001, after living in Florida for nearly a decade, Hoffman returned to Buffalo, his birthplace, to study and, then, develop truly "live" webcam technology.
In the almost five years since it's inception, Buffalowebcam.com has gone from nothing to over 1.6 million page views per year…This site, FirstWebcam.com, is the portal for all this web development and new technology; and in 2007, had over 7.4 million visitors to camsites in Aspen, Colorado, Delray Beach, Florida, Ellicottville, Rochester, and Buffalo, New York. For that, and other reasons, Hoffman received a coveted BETA (Buffalo Emerging Technology Award) in the New Media category, going up against such powerhouses as WKBW TV (ABC) and WNED TV (Public Broadcasting).