Slashdot Mirror
Dot-Com Service Memories?
Buster Chan asks: "As the dotcom boom was still going strong in 1998, there was a service called MyTalk, which I used to send/recieve e-mail/voicemail/telephone calls/horoscopes and so forth, for free; it was mostly a unique, ad-driven way to avoid paying a quarter for telephone calls from payphones. Most of the ads were recruitment ads for the U.S. Army. MyTalk was a major tool for my online socialization when I was seventeen. Does anyone else have fond memories of MyTalk, or know of similar services that exist for free nowdays, or does anyone remember using interesting, unique services from the dotcom boom that no longer exist?"
What, like kozmo.com? Delivering movies and snacks was a good idea, in theory...but apparently not a sustainable business model. I knew bad things were coming when they started delivering Rolexes and other rediculously expensive things...
Okay, it actually didn't provide me with anything ... but it paid WAY better. I was the first person that I knew of in my circle of friends at my university who signed up for it, so I got a lot of friends and their friends and their friends ... ad inf. to sign up and as a result I started banking some decent cash. At one point I was making upwards of $150 a month for having a mouse emulator just do random clicks for 8-10 hours a night a few days a month.
I remember back in 1998 when email was still pretty useful and not so spam-filled. And how ICQ wasn't entirely bogged down in crap and was still mostly just a messenger. What happened to those services?
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
I was lucky enough to be working for a cybercafe/reseller/small ISP at the time and had access to some serious bandwith. It was during this period I managed to track down all the rare songs I hadn't heard in years. I must have downloaded dozens of tracks a day.
Good times
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
I used a similar service through broadpoint.com. It worked like a prepaid phone card, only you earned minutes before the call was connected by listening to ads. The big downside to it was that if you listened to enough ads to have a nice conversation and then got a busy signal, your time was wasted because the minutes wouldn't carry over to the next call.
At the end, they limited the number of free minutes per month before shutting down entirely.
Going there now, it seems to be some sort of web directory.
It still exists today but it's not the same. I used to use it to make free calls back home all the time. It worked great for calling relatives, long distance relationships...j
Basically you signed up for free, then dialed the number with your mouse, and used your microphone/headphone to talk in full duplex. Very good sound quality, even with a 56k modem. You'd hear a "thank you for using dialpad.com" and it would call your destination. Completely transparent, no operators involved. The other party had no idea.
It was also great for prank calls. The calls seemed to get routed to a local number, so they couldn't call you back with *69 or caller ID. I'm sure a subpoena could though...
Nothing like stalking an ex-girlfriend anonymously, without having to buy a pre-paid cellular phone.
After a while, DialPad started limiting calls to ten minutes, then they started charging...
Things I miss are the sites where you could get free webspace to do whatever with, and not have to fart around with banner ads, popups, etc. Granted that's moot since I have a friend who hosts one of my sites.
This sig no verb.
I know a lot of people didn't like it, but I loved it. You picked out your groceries online but not the brand, and placed a bid. If your bid was accepted, you got the grocery at that discount rate. Then, you went to the store, picked out items from your list, and paid with your priceline card. The only thing I didn't like was that you had to keep your items seperate from normal stuff in checkout, and pay twice.
It also didn't hurt that their web code had a bug where you could always get the super-low-price tokens.
More than mere navel gazing.
Had a 128kb/s Ricochet Wireless modem, man that thing was sweet. Anywhere in LA, I could get on the 'net as fast as my home connection (128k partial T1) ... at the time, that was pretty trick.
Had some great times in Griffith Park with that modem... so suck that they went under and couldn't manage their network, because it was huuuge to have wireless connectivity like that.
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
When sites were ad driven (as the parent suggests) things were very cheap if you knew how to exploit them right.
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
You can still use them to get a couple of different services, but cellphone apps today have the same capability.
Now their focus is VoiceXML applications.
Holland
Boy the way Steve Ballmer said,
Unix now is finally dead,
Windows was king they all said
those were the days.
Didn't need no business plan
so said the investor man
And now the stocks are in the can
Those were the days.
We all ran Windows 98
Blue screens that we had to hate
Gee our Packard Bell ran great
Those were the days
Mr. we can use a man like Linus Torvalds again
Those were the days!
Unknown host pong.
I did their opening promotion - you had to "play" a slot-machine game that came with 25 spins. Instead of cherries and bars, they were banners. Of course, you kept "winning more spins," so it took forever to finish an entire run. I had 25 friends sign up so that I could get a free Palm V (like $300 at the time) - I even signed up 30 just to be sure they wouldn't accuse me of cheating. Sure enough, they did. They would only send automated replies for like 2 weeks - even though I would email them all documented proof of my ~30 signups, until they just stopped replying at all. I sent one last email saying:
"You win. This is my last email I will send you. I have written a report of my experience with you, where you scam college students with the lure of a free Palm pda and then get your exposure, then don't give them their prize. I am planning on sending this to CNN.com, ABCNEWS.com, Yahoo, MSNBC, etc"
Wouldn't you know it, not 5 minutes later, the VP of the site emailed me. I had my Palm the next week.
14$ is STILL a pretty good price for 50cdrs, and this is three years later.
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
Wierdly, some of them are still trading. Ziplink (ZIPL) is quoted at $0.0001 on NASDAQ. Their web site is still up, although most of the pages are bad links. Their last news item is "ZipLink, Inc. (NASDAQ: ZIPL), a wholesale Internet connectivity provider, today announced that the company plans to suspend its operations effective today, November 17, 2000."
Despite this, the stock is still tradable, and a few people trade it each day.
I know I am posting this so late, that no one may ever see it - but I just have to say, after reading through the replies - We were basically asked - what was cool, what do you miss about the dot.com era, and most of the replies are about how easy it was to screw over a vendor!!!! So many ppl found a way to profit over a vendor's attempt to offer a deal to the customer - buying online then selling it for more on eBay, while having the vendor ship for you?? Getting extra checks and just keeping them? Signing up to browse the web then having a mouse emulator do it for you?? The list goes on. Just one more element to add to the long list of failed business practices that led up to a very fateful economical crash. And some of those very same ppl who did the screwing, are now themselves screwed as they are unemployed, etc. Sheesh!!!
If the business model does not take into account the basic greed, selfishness and cunning of the environment, then it is doomed to failure.
That is not to say that I agree with the actions of the above posters, but it is naive to believe that the companies did not bring it upon themselves.
Q.
Insert Signature Here