AOL pretends to be the internet • Hacker News Board

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#121

Post by lostlogin » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:18 AM UTC

TreeInBuxton wrote: post #118

grose wrote: post #104

Remember AOL keywords? They basically had their own private DNS alternative. Every commercial on TV for a website would say "AOL keyword !" instead of the actual URL. I guess it was a lot less scary for your average internet user to type in "nick" instead of " http://www.nick.com ". I feel like we still kind of have the "URLs are hard" problem. I've noticed a lot of ads in Japan tell the users to search (presumably G…

> Do people still type "www."? From my experience, yes. I am getting merried next month - we have a wedding website via "with joy", which had a URL a bit too long to fit on our wedding invites, so I set up a redirect of "wedding.surname.tld" - the amount of people who messaged us saying the website didn't work, and it turns out they were putting "www." beforehand was staggering (until I added that as a redirect too).

If you are ever in a tech support role and have to see how people use computers, it’s actually horrific.

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#122

Post by icedchai » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:19 AM UTC

qw wrote: post #76

silisili wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yahoo had a lot of the same features, but never did it as cleanly as AOL. Perhaps because AOL provided an actual native client whereas I believe Yahoo was always just web based, which marred the experience quite a bit. I guess the ultimate takeaway is that there's not a lot of money to be made if they're all gone now.

Yahoo Messenger was available as a Windows program. If they had focused more on chat and video calls, we might be using it now instead of Slack and Teams

Same with AOL Instant Messenger. At early startups, we coordinated all our “ops” work in private AOL chat rooms. AOL or Yahoo could’ve built Slack in 1999.

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#123

Post by offices » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:26 AM UTC

hnlmorg wrote: post #70

mattl wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When was that? I briefly used AOL as a dial-up service in the UK circa 2000 because of the toll-free number and penny a minute billing and don’t recall this.

From what I’ve seen and read, AOL in the UK was a very different beast to AOL in the US.

I've just been trying to jog my memory of it and it's difficult to find the relevant information among the masses of information about US AOL.

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#124

Post by VHRanger » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:30 AM UTC

TreeInBuxton wrote: post #118

grose wrote: post #104

Remember AOL keywords? They basically had their own private DNS alternative. Every commercial on TV for a website would say "AOL keyword !" instead of the actual URL. I guess it was a lot less scary for your average internet user to type in "nick" instead of " http://www.nick.com ". I feel like we still kind of have the "URLs are hard" problem. I've noticed a lot of ads in Japan tell the users to search (presumably G…

> Do people still type "www."? From my experience, yes. I am getting merried next month - we have a wedding website via "with joy", which had a URL a bit too long to fit on our wedding invites, so I set up a redirect of "wedding.surname.tld" - the amount of people who messaged us saying the website didn't work, and it turns out they were putting "www." beforehand was staggering (until I added that as a redirect too).

In cases like this I'd just make a QR code of the url

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#125

Post by offices » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:32 AM UTC

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote: post #47

adamgamble wrote: post #23

So apparently a local Birmingham, Al BBS originally had the name America Online. Steve case purchased the name from him for 10k and that BBS became known as the matrix.

Please tell me he sold the name "The Matrix" to Warner Bros.

I imagine Neuromancer predates both

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#126

Post by ydnaclementine » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:35 AM UTC

grose wrote: post #104

Remember AOL keywords? They basically had their own private DNS alternative. Every commercial on TV for a website would say "AOL keyword !" instead of the actual URL. I guess it was a lot less scary for your average internet user to type in "nick" instead of " http://www.nick.com ". I feel like we still kind of have the "URLs are hard" problem. I've noticed a lot of ads in Japan tell the users to search (presumably G…

It's possible to create your own AOL keywords in firefox by setting the `keyword` field in `Manage Bookmarks`. Bookmark hackernews, set the keyword to `hn`, then all you have to do in the address bar is `hn` and you're here.

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#127

Post by AlecSchueler » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:41 AM UTC

VHRanger wrote: post #124

TreeInBuxton wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do people still type "www."? From my experience, yes. I am getting merried next month - we have a wedding website via "with joy", which had a URL a bit too long to fit on our wedding invites, so I set up a redirect of "wedding.surname.tld" - the amount of people who messaged us saying the website didn't work, and it turns out they were putting "www." beforehand was staggering (until I added that as a redirect too).

In cases like this I'd just make a QR code of the url

Then your tech support simply changes to guiding people in the use of QR codes.

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#128

Post by offices » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:42 AM UTC

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #27

Those AOL discs made for amazing frisbees as a kid. I would hurl them and they would fly for what felt like a million years, until they smashed back to Earth with the force of a meteor.

I can't see all that e-waste being accepted today

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#129

Post by AlecSchueler » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:43 AM UTC

sneak wrote: post #119

grose wrote: post #104

Remember AOL keywords? They basically had their own private DNS alternative. Every commercial on TV for a website would say "AOL keyword !" instead of the actual URL. I guess it was a lot less scary for your average internet user to type in "nick" instead of " http://www.nick.com ". I feel like we still kind of have the "URLs are hard" problem. I've noticed a lot of ads in Japan tell the users to search (presumably G…

Now it's instagram usernames (and the app stores, as you pointed out). We gave people the concept of portable identity with domain names, and they rejected it for another walled garden.

Instagram usernames are much easier to reason about if you don't understand/care about the differences between domains, subdomains, tlds, protocols etc.

We gave people a messy solution that assumed they would care about implementation details.

Re: AOL pretends to be the internet

#130

Post by doublerabbit » Thu, Sep 07, 2023, 9:55 AM UTC

grose wrote: post #104

Remember AOL keywords? They basically had their own private DNS alternative. Every commercial on TV for a website would say "AOL keyword !" instead of the actual URL. I guess it was a lot less scary for your average internet user to type in "nick" instead of " http://www.nick.com ". I feel like we still kind of have the "URLs are hard" problem. I've noticed a lot of ads in Japan tell the users to search (presumably G…

> AOL keyword !

And we've gone full circle. We have the same today, just in a form of a #tag.