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Internet Artifacts

neal.fun

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Re: Internet Artifacts

#111

Post by rchaud »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #77
dev-slash-zero wrote: post #15

I also would consider Digg to be the direct predecessor of Reddit. If I recall correctly it was more popular until possibly as late as 2010.

"...the top 100 Digg users are responsible for more than half of the content that reaches the Digg front page. Furthermore, there could be as few as 20 'superusers' who are responsible for submitting 25 per cent of Digg's front-page stories. If you do the maths, you'll realise that anyone could set up a company with that many employees and have a far more interesting and diverse front page... " https://www.cnet.com/t…

Most people visited Digg for the comments, not so much the posts themselves.

Re: Internet Artifacts

#112

Post by causality0 »

silisili wrote: post #2

I'm not sure how younger folks would feel seeing this...perhaps that it's ugly, less useful, sparse. And they'd be a bit right. But for me this was a hit of pure nostalgia, flipping item to item. Almost like looking through an old photo album of memories you'd forgotten years back. Thanks Neal for putting it together. Slightly fun fact - the original Space Jam site stayed intact until 2021! https://web.archive.org/we…

I found having to keep backtracking because one swipe advanced two or three screens to be very annoying.

Re: Internet Artifacts

#113

Post by genewitch »

backspace_ wrote: post #42
genewitch wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey give Disney a break they're a small company with only a few employees. Maybe tbe certifier is on vacation.

Looney toons is a Warner Brothers property, not Disney.

I wasn't thinking. you are of course correct. My brain conflated because both are based in burbank. yeah, that's what i am going with.

Re: Internet Artifacts

#114

Post by rchaud »

throwawaycities wrote: post #44
dev-slash-zero wrote: post #15

I also would consider Digg to be the direct predecessor of Reddit. If I recall correctly it was more popular until possibly as late as 2010.

Digg is being relaunched - with Alexis on board. A bunch of the early internet brands are being rebranded/relaunched which is collectively is being branded as the nostalgic internet. Napster, Limewire, Digg, GeoCities…to name a few

"Alexis on board" has about as much value as saying "Richard Branson is an investor". The difference in their goals now vs when they were young and hungry is in orders of magnitude. They are old, out of touch and spread too thin to do anything noteworthy in rebooting an old brand. They're lending their name for credibility, in exchange for equity and board seats.

Re: Internet Artifacts

#115

Post by rchaud »

mrheosuper wrote: post #100

> Appearing in 1997, Ask Jeeves revolutionized search by allowing users to make queries with natural language Man Ask Jeeves was way overhead its time.

Ask Jeeves as a search engine was pretty awful. The natural language thing was a UX gimmick because it was a time when internet users wrote in full sentences. The pendulum has now swung the other way where the search engine now writes out things for us because its users can't write more than 140 chars at a time.

Re: Internet Artifacts

#116

Post by rchaud »

fragmede wrote: post #9

Ishkur's Guide to Electronic Music was updated in 2019. Forever ago in Internet years but more recent than the original.

It is now an overengineered and soulless website lacking all the personality that made the original a classic. It somehow manages to also be laggy on modern machines.

Re: Internet Artifacts

#117

Post by rchaud »

casey2 wrote: post #58

Shame that the Iphone killed the internet seems like it had potential

This doesn't get said enough. The widescreen desktop Internet (even at 800 x 600) was far more creative and fun than the modern transactional app world. The 2008-10 era iOS apps being a rare exception, but that too was snuffed out due to changing App Store guidelines that punished silly apps and favoured the recurring revenue cargo cult.

Re: Internet Artifacts

#118

Post by accrual »

This was fantastic. There are so many possible artifacts that could be covered. Would be cool if each year could be extended to include multiple artifacts! The "Ultimate Showdown" song is apparently still perfectly preserved in my mind. :)

Re: Internet Artifacts

#119

Post by pimlottc »

archon1410 wrote: post #79

The "first MP3", without the background music, and just the voice, sounds a lot better to me than the original I listened to on YouTube. I liked the MP3 more. Any way for me to find similar stuff? Just a good voice singing stuff, without music? I know acapella, and some of it is good, but I'm thinking of something more specific. Just one person singing without music I guess, something poetic.

The acapella version of “Tom’s Diner” is, in fact, the original. The dance version was first put out as an unauthorized remix, but Suzanne Vega liked it and they negotiated an agreement.

Re: Internet Artifacts

#120

Post by vt240 »

lossolo wrote: post #81

No mention of AltaVista? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AltaVista PS. Astalavista was also fun :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astalavista.box.sk

Yeah, I agree that is pretty glaring omission. To myself at least, Altavista was a huge part of that small slice of time, where it seemed instantly, the whole world finally got online with dial-up PPP, opposed to earlier when we might have been accessing the internet through gateways at a BBS, or dialup shell access from the local library or ISP.

I'm sure things seemed quite different if you were on a college campus at the time.

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