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?"

Comments

AllAdvantage

[Strike]

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.

Re:AllAdvantage

[RevAaron]

you may have ahd a mouse emulator, but i got you beat- i built a lil contraption with my lego mindstorms and a taken-apart trackball... hooked that shit up with alladbantage+everything else... i think there was about a 640x180 of usable space on the screen. but i didn't care- i did it whilst i sleapt, and in vmware. eh eh eh. worked like a charm, and nothing could detect it- alladvantage could sniff out a lot of the click emus later on... :D

The good old days...

[BigZaphod]

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?

Napster

[Captain Splendid]

Can't have this thread without mentioning Napster at its peak.

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

DialPad.com

[vasqzr]

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...

Not really a service but a hiuge bottom line build

[adzoox]

I used to take advantage of Buy.com's outreageous specials and free shipping deals. I was listing 20 epson printers on eBay a week in the summer of 2000. My price - shipped free overnight - was $50.00 - retail (lowest) for the exact same printer was $149.99. I shipped OVERNIGHT FOR FREE to ebayers. Lots of nice free feedback and profit - I sold them for $75-$90.

When sites were ad driven (as the parent suggests) things were very cheap if you knew how to exploit them right.