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Maybe the french stuff was more useful in practice, the german always seemed scammy, somehow.
And why I believe Web2 should have something like Wordpress to take on Big Tech.
And why I think Web3 should move past grift and peer to peer protocols, and to applications to holistivally serve entire communities. (https://intercoin.org/proposal.pdf)
PS: I have put my money where my mouth is and built exactly this, over 10 years with no VC funding, and it’s profitable. Qbix for Web2 and Intercoin for Web3 https://intercoin.org/overview.pdf
Hm. Seems like just another implementation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex to me. Which I didn't like that much because of the german https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildschirmtext , which reminded me of the stuff you could get on TV, like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext Maybe the french stuff was more useful in practice, the german always seemed scammy, somehow.
Hm. Seems like just another implementation of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Videotex to me. Which I didn't like that much because of the german https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bildschirmtext , which reminded me of the stuff you could get on TV, like this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teletext Maybe the french stuff was more useful in practice, the german always seemed scammy, somehow.
I’m surprised how little the histories of the web include the contribution of the French tech sector for DSL, the technology that made computer networks easy to expand to every house, and the general idea that the Internet could be a domestic technology. Until the late 80s, the Internet was a military and gradually academic tool, but even until the mid-90s, having an internet connection at home was quaint outside of…
Do you mean for digital technologies or for specifically DSL? As I remember up to 1996 there was no commercial DSL in France, but there were excellent ISDN coverage (with rate up to 128kbits/sec with two channels). However it was quite expensive and when DSL was commercialized in France, it was cheaper at the basic rate of 512Kbits/sec. ISDN commercialization started around 1988 in France. In 1996 the Network part of FT started to think how to open the network to higher bandwidth, and it was not so easy because the internal backbone was built on ATM as it was used by Minitel users. Some years later (2002?) with declining Minitel revenues, FT decided to give the priority to DSL, with an adequate IP backbone.
(Source: It's only from my memories, I was involved in Rennes' 1987 ISDN experiment, network organization in 96-98 and commercialization of ISDN and later DSL, in Brittany, from 1998 to 2002)
An important fact hinted at below is: you got the bill as part of your monthly phone bill.
Probably the most common use, not all that interesting to us, was replacing 411 (remember that? I don't think that was the Information number in France.)
Besides porn, it also had online dating.
If anything it was so far ahead of the early web that it hindered adoption of the WWW in France. It was incredibly good and rich, many services that could be used by non-technical people and had a built in monetization system for information providers. It took at least until 1996 before the web could compete and by that time France reluctantly started to let go of their beloved tiny terminals. It took until 2012 (!!)…
Season 7 of the podcast is all about the first times of the web.
A friend showed me Minitel in 1994, and I was half-surprised, half-not-surprised that even on this entirely text-based system, there was still porn (or at least, "visual erotica"). Human nature, eh?
Xavier Niel (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Niel) started his empire with a sex oriented chat service.