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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?"
Was that SuperBowl commercial right after the burst where they showed a wrecking ball destroying buildings for .com's that were clearly really stupid ideas.
My favorite: eSocks.com
Vonal Declosion
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...
At one point Urban Fetch dropped off a "free" CD along with a DVD rental that the bicycle delivery people had "written, produced, and directed." It was horrible-- all I can remember was something about "what can we fetch fo' u?" rapped to nasty pseudo-hip-hop music. I scrawled a "please never deliver one of these promos to me again" note on it and returned it alongside my DVD rental.
Ahh, the good old days.
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
Yeah, its called going outside and talking to people.
So going outside and talking to people is a unique service that no longer exists:)?
Alphanos
I remember DesktopDollars, which was a system where you were paid to have advertisements placed at the top of the desktop. It promised $150 an hour. I made $7 in three months.
I also remember Juno and NetZero providing free internet, the later of which now charges $14.95 a month for dialup.
The World is Yours.
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!
Well, if you can't find a more specific service, you can do everything at Zombo.com. Anything. Welcome. Anything. You can do anything at Zombo.com.
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...
I miss /. they was it used to be, when tech articles didn't have to be written to a 3rd grade level to get more than 20 posts.
umnn, getting a decent, steady paycheck?
One public service my NYC dot-com provided was parties. Of course, these shindigs were intended as exclusive events with closely guarded invitation lists...but as you might expect, after about an hour everything would go out the window.
Bar-hoppers would see the line outside our offices and assume they had stumbled upon a new night club or spontaneous rave, and would proceed to talk their way in. We gave everyone nametags as they entered - I rember this one time I saw a guy that had written "SINGLE" on his. Yeah, those were some wacky times.
Of course, the parties themselves sucked compared to what other (bigger) dot-coms were doing - no caviar, no jumbo-tron screen, no smoke machine, no go-go dancers...but they're still in business though, so I guess that was the right thing to do?
As I recall, this service started up in 1997 or so. Some guy in a suit knocked on my door and said, "I hear that you know about this 'internet' thing -- I'll leave a big sack of money outside the door of your apartment every two weeks if you'll show up at my office for a couple of hours each day and sit there playing video games."
After that, about every three months or so a different guy in a suit (at least I think it was a different guy) would knock on my door and say, "I hear that you know about this 'internet' thing, and I also hear that there's still room for more sacks of money in your apartment; if you'll show up at my office for a couple of hours each day, and tell me that 'the rules have changed,' and that I 'don't get it,' I'll leave a bigger sack of money outside your door every two weeks.
I guess their their funding dried up or something.
* * *
It is a dada story -- it has no moral.
Reasonable chances of getting an job in IT .... that didn't require mocing to India.
I think this internet thing sounds like a good idea
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
This has got to be one of the dumbest moves of all time - selling cars at invoice through dealers who charged a lot more.
Basically, you could go to carorder.com, select
your car, and then they'd sell it to you. You'd
deal with a local car dealer (or they'd truck it to you on a flatbed truck)
I wanted a 1999 civic lx. Cheap, reliable transportation (especially when buying said vehicle at invoice) I had recently been in
an accident and my old car was a total loss. This
was in august/september of '99.
A week or so later, the supply of '99 civics has dried up. They offer to sell me a 2000 civic at '99 invoice price (about $500 below 2000 invoice) if I wait for a month. Since I'm driving a rental courtesty of the idiot who totalled my last car I take the deal.
About a month later (early october I think) I get
a call from the dealer telling me my car is ready. I get there are check it out. We go in to sign the paperwork. I ask about the whole carorder.com deal.
The dealer person says that they don't know the whole story, but a check arrived in the mail. She pulls the check out. It's from caroder.com and it's for about $2300.00. They basically gave
me a free downpayment on my car. I asked if I could make a copy of the check. I framed it and posted it in my office.
The moral of the story?
Losing money on every sale but making it up in volume probably isn't a good idea, especially when you are losing $thousands per sale.
Still, it was a sweet deal for me. The free TiVo I
got at networld+interop in may of 2000 was also a nice runner up. These were the glory days of N+I with a private party every night in vegas.
--chuck