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11
08.07

Internet-Related Reminiscence

I remember…

  1. When Napster was popular. While Napster definitely had its legitimate uses, most people used it as a one-stop shop for .mp3s. But, you know, nasty netizens still haven’t given up on downloading costly music for free. They will never give up! They’re dirty little migrants. When the feds shut a particular piracy party down, netizens simply move elsewhere. After Napster, there were Morpheus and Scour. When M & S went down, Limewire, eMule, BitTorrent, &c. began to prosper. When they’re taken out (if they’re taken out) where will people go? mIRC? It’s the only thing that’s been around forever.
  2. When Netscape Navigator was the IE alternative. Firefox is the it browser now. No one uses Netscape. There are people who haven’t even heard of it. I like Firefox but, part of me wants Safari to eat up its popularity. Safari displays colors properly. Firefox doesn’t. I like it best when images look their best – who wants a browser that messes around with color?
  3. When netizens created websites on geocities.com. Then, blog wasn’t a word. Livejournal didn’t exist. Nothing seemed to exist. If you wanted to make your own site for free, you went to geocities. Your site address was long and had numbers in it. It resembled a street address. You could have been number 4531 in Area51 or Tokyo or the Hollywood Hills. geocities.com/tokyo/7792…
  4. When <i> was used for italics, <b> was used for bold, <u> was used to underline, and when <br> didn’t contain a ridiculous /. Now, everyone is nuts about <em>, <strong>, and closing tags. <em> for italics. <strong> for bold. As for <u>, well – no one wants to replace it with anything so, use it while you still can. Underline. Underline. Underline.
  5. When netizens put unstoppable .midis on their sites. Enough said. For the curious, this is an old school site with .midis.

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8 Comments to “Internet-Related Reminiscence”

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I remember when LJ didn’t exist. And then when after a few years, that period where you needed an ‘invite’ to get an account…

Posted by: Jen · August 11th, 2007 at 4:16 am · #

Well I don’t know about everyone else, but I download my music off music sharing communities on LJ…you make a request, and you’re guaranteed to get the track a day later.

Posted by: Amanda · August 11th, 2007 at 7:58 am · #

I remember (and actively participated in) all of them except #1. By the time I realised what file sharing was, napster was already buried.

I hated netscape with a passion and was glad to see its death. My first site was on geocities and had an unpausable midi of the Buffy theme on one of the pages (complete with animated gifs of purple flames!). I still use i and b tags. :P

Posted by: Belinda · August 11th, 2007 at 12:10 pm · #

Wow, that post was a blast from the past, haha. Firefox doesn’t display colors properly? Hmm. My images have never looked any different in Firefox than they have in IE, Opera, Flock, or Safari screenshot services. Though I’ve never actually used Safari.

Oh man, I remember those geocities URLs. And Angelfire! Haha! But you know which one was the absolute worst I ever used? Expage.

As for b and i, well, since those are deprecated, I don’t particularly miss them, nor do I mind using strong and em instead. Though I do wonder why they’re deprecated.

Author’s comment: Expage? Haha. I remember Expage. I never had a site there because people always talked crap about it but, I’d completely forgotten about it until you mentioned it.

Posted by: Shawna · August 11th, 2007 at 12:11 pm · #

I remember when computers cost three to four thousand dollars, when personal laptops weren’t really invented yet, when dial-up was supreme and if you wanted to download something (anything!) you had to keep everyone off the phone line and do it overnight, where there was a good chance it wouldn’t even work in the first place. But really, file sharing was basically unheard of because there were no files to share, save for open-source games and snippets of code that people wrote themselves.

There were no web browsers, because people used online service providers, not ISPs. We used Prodigy. I used to get on and chat with nerdy Pirates of Silicon Valley when I was about seven. Everyone was amazed at the GRAPHICS, which were usually about four colors.

Then, in order to actually create a website, you had to email a guy to ask for a name (which was free), but you could only use certain extensions for certain purposes. Dot org was non-profits only, .com was companies only, etcetera. Back when EMAILS were numbers, not just websites. Back when the only sounds you heard on a computer was primitive sounds that remind you of a first-generation Gameboy. But worse.

This is what I remember. :D It’s so amazing how far we’ve come, eh?

Author’s comment: I had Prodigy too! I don’t know when we first got it but, I remember using it when I was 9-ish and telling people that I was 13.

Posted by: Kudarania · August 12th, 2007 at 11:54 am · #

Oh, I remember the days of Geocities! I belonged to a Redwall (book series) club that was hosted by Geocities, and I remember being absolutely amazed that anyone could just sign up and get a site of his or her own.

Posted by: Julianne · August 12th, 2007 at 9:38 pm · #

2. I can not remember that far back, but I do love Firefox and I have never noticed that it messes around with colours, how unobservant of me.
3. Geocities ruled, I remember when the cool people have geocity website and the uncool people had freeweb websites and even years later the uncool people still have freeweb websites.
4. I must say that I am stuck in the olden days with this, I use i instead of em and b instead of strong.

Posted by: Jane · August 13th, 2007 at 6:16 pm · #

Suddenly, I feel old.

I actually like Safari more than Firefox now. Opera is probably the reigning favourite, though.

Posted by: Jordie · August 14th, 2007 at 8:35 am · #

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