Tuesday, June 22, 2010

So how far back do you go?

The Internet seems to have been around since the dawn of time to a lot of users, but that's not really the case. I've been involved in online stuff since 1989, when I used outrageously expensive Tandy computer gear to access Prodigy via dial-up, tying up the home phone and on trips using phone access in hotel rooms (equivalent to free Wi-Fi these days).

I switched over to CompuServe just because of the sheer amount of information available at what was then the premier closed-loop service.  More expensive, but more info.  I was also introduced to e-commerce via C-Serve, buying hardware and software online.  Buying software back then, even the tiny little DOS3 sized programs, on a dial-up was major pain.

Those of us on C-Serve laughed at AOL users, knowing that their closed-loop service was so much smaller than ours.  Whoever really got to the REAL Internet then, anyway?

Who knew, really?

Back then we used, primarily, the Netscape browser and then a very early version of Internet Explorer.

Then came the Browser Wars...it seemed like a new version of each was launched every other month.

And then came Search.  And client-based E-mail.

And then came E-commerce.  And multiple browsers and HTML languages and all the rest of the stuff.
 
And here we are.  You picked up the gameline about where?

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