Netscape 1994 Time Capsule

jenkin sear writes "Netscape Time capsule site- original splash screens, and much of the original netscape site, including the release notes for version 0.9. Definitely a trip down memory lane.... I saw this link on scripting news" Warm fuzzies. Sure was simpler then. An interesting similiar and unrelated article also popped out recently, a history of microsoft.com.

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Boy does that revive some horrific memories

[Black Art]

When Mosaic Communications Corp (AKA Netscape) first went public, they outsourced their support to a company called Corporate Software (now known as "Stream" (as in "What end of the Stream are you one?").

There were six of us back then, supporting the PC, Mac and about 9 flavors of Unix. I lasted the longest, until the 2.0 betas. (In fact, I still have my Mosaic Communications t-shirt (with the angry Mozilla) and a brochure from the first few months.)

There were some good times and alot of bad. Since we were in Oregon and they were in California, they were willing to ignore us at times. It took a bit to get them to deal with the bugs we and our customers uncovered. (Leading to some very strange calls.)

And then there were the staffing issues. Because many of the original team left for other jobs, we were whittled down to TWO people at one point. (Doing 70 calls a day for a while.) When 1.2 was released to Egghead stores, we had FOUR people on the phones. (And the typos and bugs were bad enough that we got lots and lots of calls.) The staffing problems were not all Netscape's fault though. Corporate Software did not staff for the load that they expected out of a weird power play trying to keep Netscape current on their bills. (Which they were holding back on because Corporate Software was playing these games.)

There are a whole lot more stories I could tell. It was an interesting time in my life. Not certain if I would want to do it again...

And, yes, as far as I know, Stream is still doing support for Netscape. (At least since I talked to any Stream employees, but it has been a while.)