Pizza Hut’s First Website • Hacker News Board

Re: Pizza Hut’s First Website

#131

Post by dpkonofa » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 5:28 PM UTC

While probably not really Pizza Hut's first web site, I think this goes a long way to show how a lot of the internet has actually regressed. We've gone from this simple form that just asks "Who wants pizza and where can we call you?" and, instead of going to "Who wants pizza and where should we bring it?", we went to ads and pop-ups and to a place where, arguably, the process is way more complicated than it needs to be.

Advertising kinda ruined the internet.

Re: Pizza Hut’s First Website

#132

Post by spilk » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 5:42 PM UTC

I remember the pizza ordering scene in The Net (1995) seemed very futuristic at the time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUSqX7B5DXs

Re: Pizza Hut’s First Website

#133

Post by ptaipale » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 5:47 PM UTC

ollran wrote: post #37

harshbutfair wrote: post #4

Redirects to the pizzahut.com.au main page for me.

pizzahut.fi for me

Indeed. Too bad it doesn't redirect to pizza.hut.fi

(which was a host at the Helsinki University of Technology, I think it was a Sun box).

Re: Pizza Hut’s First Website

#134

Post by Rebelgecko » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 5:49 PM UTC

Japhy_Ryder wrote: post #96

tgtweak wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amusingly, the date on this article and the fact it still loads today. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-08-25-fi-31168-...

Amazing. I love that the article mentions Snow Crash too.

Me too, although it bugs me that he says Snow Crash "describes a future where Americans excel at only two things: writing software and delivering pizza in less than 30 minutes".

The book clearly states that Americans excel at four things:

music

movies

microcode (software)

high-speed pizza delivery

Re: Pizza Hut’s First Website

#135

Post by Pete_D » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 5:58 PM UTC

mchaver wrote: post #48

Let's collect all the internet's historical pizza moments. I've collected a few from the comments here and added a few. - 1990, Don Hopkins uses the PizzaTool to fax a pizza order. - 1992, Snow Crash is published. Readers imagine interconnected virtual worlds and action packed pizza delivery. Often quoted book in regards to internet, MMORPGs and pizza. - 1994, Pizza Hut's Pizza Net allows users in Santa Cruz to order…

2004, a perl script pizza_party is published allowing to buy pizza from the command line. I think it was even in some distros' package managers for a while.

Slashdot discussion: https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/04/05/07/138238/piz...

Archive of project homepage: https://web.archive.org/web/20040508090713/http://www.beiger...

Re: Pizza Hut’s First Website

#136

Post by toast0 » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 6:04 PM UTC

mchaver wrote: post #48

Let's collect all the internet's historical pizza moments. I've collected a few from the comments here and added a few. - 1990, Don Hopkins uses the PizzaTool to fax a pizza order. - 1992, Snow Crash is published. Readers imagine interconnected virtual worlds and action packed pizza delivery. Often quoted book in regards to internet, MMORPGs and pizza. - 1994, Pizza Hut's Pizza Net allows users in Santa Cruz to order…

1999, i-Opener internet appliance released with pizza key on keyboard.

https://www.salon.com/2000/07/12/i_opener/

Re: Pizza Hut’s First Website

#137

Post by dsimms » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 6:32 PM UTC

tgtweak wrote: post #29

p0cc wrote: post #20

This is not strictly Pizza Hut's first website. Pizza Hut's first website was built in 1994 [1]. This webpage has Javascript (1995) [2] running Google Tag Manager (2012) [3]. The article about Pizza Hut's first website [1] provides more context than just the webpage. [1]: https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/postscript/pizzanet/ [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JavaScript#History [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o…

Amusingly, the date on this article and the fact it still loads today. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-08-25-fi-31168-...

great article! It's not mentioned there, but I think the "conventional phone lines" meant fax, which was a pretty common gateway from the internet at the time. One of the McCools (can't remember if it was Rob or Mike) had a new-fangled CGI script that enabled a HTML form to order Jimmy Johns sandwich and it used UIUCs email-to-fax gateway to fax the local shop. Good times.

Re: Pizza Hut’s First Website

#138

Post by catalogia » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 6:37 PM UTC

magashna wrote: post #126

CDSlice wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or I could just order online and make sure it is right the first time? Also, there is no way I'd just call in and say "Pickup, a large pizza, half pepperoni, well done" because that just seems incredibly rude so calling would take even more time. Much easier to load the website/app and enter your pizza

Every pizza joint around me has better deals when calling in. I can't imagine you've ever called a pizza place. It's a business transaction, there's no pleasantries on either side. It's not rude. They want to move on with the business as quick as you want to hang up. Maybe it's just a North East thing but my calls for pizza are about 10 seconds long and I've never thought "Gino is being rude, he didn't ask me how I w…

Pizza orders can be even faster than that. For me it's often: "Hey dude, same thing?" "Yep." "Cash?" "Yep."

Literally two words from me. A perk of being a regular customer perhaps, but honestly I order pizza maybe two times a month, not that much imho.

Re: Pizza Hut’s First Website

#139

Post by lioeters » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 6:39 PM UTC

yk wrote: post #64

Iv wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"2020 was the year that would decide between two pizza deliveries techniques. Amazon-Google drone-based delivery or the MIT's supersonic pizza railgun"

An hypersonic railgun could cook the pizza using air friction. Also, it would be faster.

Hmm, pretty brilliant point, to cook it during transport to be ready on arrival.

Re: Pizza Hut’s First Website

#140

Post by psetq » Tue, Oct 22, 2019, 6:45 PM UTC

XJ6 wrote: post #52

jeffwass wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, very prescient amazing article! Quote near beginning to put things in context of where we were back in 1994 : “ To participate in the pilot, hungry Santa Cruzers need computers with Internet access and a version of an Internet interface program called Mosaic .” But other interesting predictions: “Instead of simply letting people order a pizza, why not let them design it as well? Instead of showing an ordinary me…

And yet it gets it so wrong too, far more value is in delivering standard pizzas and standard T-shirts than custom pizzas and t-shirts. It thinks that just offering a cart is a waste of the internet's potential rather than worth the billions that it is.

You may be correct in that the bulk of the market is in standard pizza & t-shirts, but the internet/computers didn't create that market.

The article was pointing out what ordering over the internet with computers can potentially add to the ordering experience. Using the "web" in the same way one might have used a fax machine isn't particularly interesting then or now.