Hello Arelor!

** On Thursday 06.10.22 - 05:40, Arelor wrote to Ogg:

I've heard the same that FB membership is on a decline, but
I haven't heard what users are replacing it with.
Instagram seems like a total waste of time to me; it
doesn't foster comms - it foster's "look at me and my
stuff!"

It loooks like IM from mobile platforms is the prefered
substitute for facebook and other common social media,
which sounds bonkers to me because they are not the same
thing at all. However, that is how it seems to be :-)

A very interesting podcast about a week ago:

Oct. 9, 2022: 554: The promise and legacy of the early web

The web of the '90s and early '00s has inspired many nostalgic
projects, but it's not just the aesthetics that people miss.
This week, we take a look at the efforts to build a new, open,
decentralized web. Canadian programmer Mike Killingbeck talks
about building RE-AOL, a re-creation of the beloved early-web
platform. Writer, COMPOSTmag editor and senior organizer with
DWeb projects at the Internet Archive Mai Ishikawa Sutton, and
Alicia Urquidi D¡az, metadata & data services librarian at
University of Toronto's Scholars Portal and volunteer archivist
at DWeb camp, discuss the ideas of the decentralized web.


https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-55-spark/clip/15941206- 554-the-promise-legacy-early-web

The first interview is with a fellow you has built RE-AOL - an
interface that emulates the look and feel of the original AOL
environment.

Other interviews are about DWeb.

Throughout all interviews, there were elements about the BBSes
of retro days.

--- OpenXP 5.0.51
* Origin: (} Pointy McPointFace (21:4/106.21)

Re: BBS Population, DWeb, Re_AOL
By: Ogg to Arelor on Sun Oct 16 2022 05:24 pm

It loooks like IM from mobile platforms is the prefered
substitute for facebook and other common social media,
which sounds bonkers to me because they are not the same
thing at all. However, that is how it seems to be :-)

A very interesting podcast about a week ago:

Oct. 9, 2022: 554: The promise and legacy of the early web

I certainly didn't live the AOL days. Internet/network coverage reached my region so late that
we mostly skipped the early days, I think.

I commend boraxman for mentioned alternate search engines. The certainly capture the feeling of
browsing sane non-ad ridden sites XD

--
gopher://gopher.richardfalken.com/1/richardfalken
--- SBBSecho 3.15-Linux
* Origin: Palantir * palantirbbs.ddns.net * Pensacola, FL * (21:2/138)

Arelor wrote to Ogg <=-

I certainly didn't live the AOL days. Internet/network coverage reached
my region so late that we mostly skipped the early days, I think.

I commend boraxman for mentioned alternate search engines. The
certainly capture the feeling of browsing sane non-ad ridden sites XD

I was around then but never had an account with AOL. I like the idea of a
retro web, though. I liked the old style web pages that were mostly all information and few ads. I had a couple of pages back then. Created them
with what little HTML I knew. :)


... The number you have dailed...Nine-one-one...has been changed.
--- MultiMail/DOS
* Origin: possumso.fsxnet.nz * SSH:2122/telnet:24/ftelnet:80 (21:4/134)

** On Thursday 06.10.22 - 05:40, Arelor wrote to Ogg:

I've heard the same that FB membership is on a decline, but
I haven't heard what users are replacing it with.
Instagram seems like a total waste of time to me; it
doesn't foster comms - it foster's "look at me and my
stuff!"

It loooks like IM from mobile platforms is the prefered
substitute for facebook and other common social media,
which sounds bonkers to me because they are not the same
thing at all. However, that is how it seems to be :-)

A very interesting podcast about a week ago:

Oct. 9, 2022: 554: The promise and legacy of the early web

The web of the '90s and early '00s has inspired many nostalgic
projects, but it's not just the aesthetics that people miss.
This week, we take a look at the efforts to build a new, open, decentralized web. Canadian programmer Mike Killingbeck talks
about building RE-AOL, a re-creation of the beloved early-web
platform. Writer, COMPOSTmag editor and senior organizer with
DWeb projects at the Internet Archive Mai Ishikawa Sutton, and
Alicia Urquidi D¡az, metadata & data services librarian at
University of Toronto's Scholars Portal and volunteer archivist
at DWeb camp, discuss the ideas of the decentralized web.

https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-55-spark/clip/15941206- 554-the-promise-legacy-early-web

The first interview is with a fellow you has built RE-AOL - an
interface that emulates the look and feel of the original AOL environment.

Other interviews are about DWeb.

Throughout all interviews, there were elements about the BBSes
of retro days.

We didn't have AOL in Australia, so there isn't any nostalgia for it here. If anything, I remember people lamenting AOL and its users.

There are still a fair number of 'old style' websites around.

Go to
https://wiby.me to search for some
or
https://wiby.me/surprise/
to get a random site.

Neocities is also pretty cool.

Gemini is also an attempt at bringing back simplicity, though I find Gemini a little too austere and small for my liking.

The key is open protocols, which are simple and can be implemented without the need of heavy technology.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

We didn't have AOL in Australia, so there isn't any nostalgia for it here. If anything, I remember people lamenting AOL and its users.

We did have the local variant.... There used to be rafts of CD's with their offerings on it. AOL Australia, sometime known as Australia Online.. not
sure how long they lasted here though. While we didn't have the original pre-internet AOL we certainly got it trying to be an internet provider.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Good Luck and drive offensively! (21:3/101)

We didn't have AOL in Australia, so there isn't any nostalgia for it If anything, I remember people lamenting AOL and its users.

We did have the local variant.... There used to be rafts of CD's with their offerings on it. AOL Australia, sometime known as Australia Online.. not sure how long they lasted here though. While we didn't
have the original pre-internet AOL we certainly got it trying to be an internet provider.

Spec

Oh really? I never heard of it! I did find an "Australia Online", which still seems to exist, but is a regular ISP. There were ISP's with "accelerator" software which came on CD's. The ISP was with (Netspace) also had its own dialer which cames on its own CD. IT also had some dial up accelerator, which I think was just caching and compression and various other "tricks" to make web pages load faster.

Was the AOL back then different to Australia On Line today?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

Oh really? I never heard of it! I did find an "Australia Online", which still seems to exist, but is a regular ISP. There were ISP's with "accelerator" software which came on CD's. The ISP was with (Netspace) also had its own dialer which cames on its own CD. IT also had some dial up accelerator, which I think was just caching and compression and various other "tricks" to make web pages load faster.

These were early dialup days.. There were ISP CD's everywhere. As you mention most tried to either hide the dialup information and settings, making it more easily digestable for the masses, or involved some kind of compression or
other jiggery pokery to make it at least appear faster. For what its worth Netspace actually started in life as a BBS run by a disabled kid. I forget
what was "wrong" with him now... something physical but he's s'posed to be a bright spark.

Was the AOL back then different to Australia On Line today?

Yes... it was a subsidiary of AOL, I don't recall what happened to it or over what kind of time frame now. Most of our early internet adopters were BBS users and the AOL package was to dumb and restrictive for them, at a time
when there weren't enough new or "dumb" users in the market.

Australia Online today, is at least partially the remains of a company called ozonline. Oz was bought out by someone, and some years after AOL had thrown
in the towel they adopted the Australia On Line moniker. In short the two aren't really related at all.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Good Luck and drive offensively! (21:3/101)

These were early dialup days.. There were ISP CD's everywhere. As you mention most tried to either hide the dialup information and settings, making it more easily digestable for the masses, or involved some kind
of compression or other jiggery pokery to make it at least appear
faster. For what its worth Netspace actually started in life as a BBS
run by a disabled kid. I forget what was "wrong" with him now...
something physical but he's s'posed to be a bright spark.

I joined up back in 2000, or 1999, and I got a CD with a dialer. But the dialer didn't connect to a specific portal. Many ISP's I recall did this. Maybe because it was easier for people than configuring it in Windows. I didn't use it that much because I moved to Linux soon after.

At the time, Netspace was quite good (always was actually). It was recommended by a friend who switched to it from IBM I think. The network wasn't that congested, which was the case with other ISP's such as Alphalink which although cheaper, were really, really slow during peak hours.

Was the AOL back then different to Australia On Line today?

Yes... it was a subsidiary of AOL, I don't recall what happened to it or over what kind of time frame now. Most of our early internet adopters were BBS users and the AOL package was to dumb and restrictive for them, at a time when there weren't enough new or "dumb" users in the market.

Australia Online today, is at least partially the remains of a company called ozonline. Oz was bought out by someone, and some years after AOL had thrown in the towel they adopted the Australia On Line moniker. In short the two aren't really related at all.

Spec

I don't recall anyone ever using the Aussie AOL myself. The Australia Online around today didn't seem to be related in any other way other than similarity of name. I first accessed the Internet using a University account.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)

I joined up back in 2000, or 1999, and I got a CD with a dialer. But the dialer didn't connect to a specific portal. Many ISP's I recall did this.

You'd have to go back to about ~93-95 somewhere to see AOL offerings.

At the time, Netspace was quite good (always was actually). It was

Never used them myself, but I have a friend that has stuck with them since
they moved to the ISP model and did tech work for them in the past.

I don't recall anyone ever using the Aussie AOL myself. The Australia

In the circles I moved, the CD's were pretty common, and I saw a lot of
people use the 30 day free trial, but as mentioned their interface was
heavily locked down, and restrictive. You could only connect with a Windoze system from memory, couldn't share the link on a network, were largely
limited to the applications they provided. I don't recall seeing anyone that actually signed on to continue using them beyond the trial period.

Spec


*** THE READER V4.50 [freeware]
--- SuperBBS v1.17-3 (Eval)
* Origin: Good Luck and drive offensively! (21:3/101)

I joined up back in 2000, or 1999, and I got a CD with a dialer. But dialer didn't connect to a specific portal. Many ISP's I recall did

You'd have to go back to about ~93-95 somewhere to see AOL offerings.

Ahh, I was still in school then, and only had heard of the Internet. That's "Before my time" so to speak, at least in an online context, so that explains why I didn't really come across it.

At the time, Netspace was quite good (always was actually). It was

Never used them myself, but I have a friend that has stuck with them
since they moved to the ISP model and did tech work for them in the past.

In the circles I moved, the CD's were pretty common, and I saw a lot of people use the 30 day free trial, but as mentioned their interface was heavily locked down, and restrictive. You could only connect with a Windoze system from memory, couldn't share the link on a network, were largely limited to the applications they provided. I don't recall
seeing anyone that actually signed on to continue using them beyond the trial period.

I deliberately put up with a broadband connection for years in order to stay with them. Customer service back in the Netspace days was second to none, and in 1999, they were one of the fastest ISP's.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/24 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Agency BBS | Dunedin, New Zealand | agency.bbs.nz (21:1/101)