Dot-Com Service Memories? 96
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?"
My fondest memory (Score:3, Funny)
My favorite: eSocks.com
Re:My fondest memory (Score:1)
Re:My fondest memory (Score:2, Informative)
Re:My fondest memory (Score:2)
The best part of the commercial was the punchline.
The pets.com sock puppet lying in the dust. As the dust settled, the logo/slogan: "E*Trade: Invest Wisely."
For once, truth in advertising.
Re:My fondest memory (Score:5, Funny)
Please God let there be one more tech boom, I promise not to piss it all away this time.
Re:My fondest memory (Score:2)
I promise not to spend the next one going back to school. I'm going to actually get one of those well-paying jobs doing neat stuff, and enjoy it while it lasts.
Re:um, yeah (Score:4, Funny)
Yeah, its called going outside and talking to people.
So going outside and talking to people is a unique service that no longer exists:)?
kozmo.com (Score:3, Interesting)
Kozmo/Urban Fetch (Score:5, Funny)
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.
Re:Kozmo/Urban Fetch (Score:3, Interesting)
Somes it up nicely, doesn't it? :-)
Re:Kozmo/Urban Fetch (Score:1)
Re:Kozmo/Urban Fetch (Score:2)
AllAdvantage (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:AllAdvantage (Score:1)
Re:AllAdvantage (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:AllAdvantage (Score:1)
Then, surprise surprise, the day before Cashfiesta was supposed to send me a check, they claimed I was cheating and cancelled my account.
But I'm not bitter, really.
The good old days... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The good old days... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:The good old days... (Score:1)
Dear God: Please help the world to use Jabber [jabber.org].
Re:The good old days... (Score:2)
Re:The good old days... (Score:1)
No, check it out some time. It has "transports" which enable you to communicate with people on other IM networks including ICQ, AOL, and MSN.
Re:The good old days... (Score:2)
Banner Driven Software (Score:3, Informative)
I also remember Juno and NetZero providing free internet, the later of which now charges $14.95 a month for dialup.
Re:Banner Driven Software (Score:2)
Actually, there is still a service that basically pays you to receive ads: MyPoints [mypoints.com]. They send you emails with links that you follow to earn points. I've been racking up the points and just a few weeks ago redeemed them fo
Re:Banner Driven Software (Score:1)
Napster (Score:4, Interesting)
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
broadpoint.com (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:broadpoint.com (Score:2)
Then, I moved to dialpad.com - another great way to make free phone calls...albeit, a bit choppy, but hey, I got what I paid for :-P
Zombo.com (Score:5, Funny)
DialPad.com (Score:5, Interesting)
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...
Re:DialPad.com (Score:3, Informative)
Re:DialPad.com (Score:2)
Re:DialPad.com (Score:1)
Re:DialPad.com (Score:1)
Re:DialPad.com (Score:1)
Re:DialPad.com (Score:1)
Re:DialPad.com (Score:2, Funny)
Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Slashdot (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Slashdot (Score:2)
The only high spot was when they ditched Katz
I remember when Ask
Re:Slashdot (Score:2)
Re:Slashdot (Score:2)
And who could forget (Score:1)
Some change *is* good.
Peace & Blessings,
bmac
Re:And who could forget (Score:2)
Most of the time -- the vast majority of the time, in fact -- he puts up meaningless drivel and then expounds on it in the most asinine fashion, and I want to throttle the dreadful little man. But for those rare occasions when he's on duty, a halfway decent story come
interesting, unique services from the dotcom boom (Score:4, Funny)
Free Parties (Score:5, Funny)
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?
Oh beans, mytalk... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Oh beans, mytalk... (Score:1)
Re:Oh beans, mytalk... (Score:2)
You might want to invest in one.
Re:Oh beans, mytalk... (Score:1)
Re:Oh beans, mytalk... (Score:1)
I'm just sayin'...
Re:Oh beans, mytalk... (Score:2)
My company, SurveyComplete [surveycomplete.com], sponsors a service called AloofHosting [aloofhosting.com] which provides free webspace to people. Signups don't get to do anything they want with the space, it is understood that users are meant to host a website, and not use it as a file-server, but for the most part people seem pretty hap
Priceline... groceries (Score:1, Interesting)
It also didn't hurt that their web code had a bug where you could always get the super-low-pr
Re:Priceline... groceries (Score:2)
I loved both of these while I was in college. Each month when I got paid I bought $50-100 in gas (depending on how much I had left) and then did my groccery shopping. I got to the point where I knew which items my Meijer did and didn't have
I was really said to see it shutdown
Re:Priceline... groceries (Score:1)
Well, my friend's mom noticed too. She would reguarly just put ALL of her groceries on her priceline card. She'd charge things priceline's website didn't even offer, like lobsters, to the card,
Some guy in a suit dot com (Score:5, Funny)
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.
My favourite Dot-com memory (Score:3, Funny)
Ricochet. (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Not really a service but a hiuge bottom line build (Score:5, Interesting)
When sites were ad driven (as the parent suggests) things were very cheap if you knew how to exploit them right.
Re:Not really a service but a hiuge bottom line bu (Score:2)
I had actually ordered 50, but they refused to ship the entire order... someone started a class action suit and I ended up getting a $60 check last year.
Re:Not really a service but a hiuge bottom line bu (Score:3, Interesting)
14$ is STILL a pretty good price for 50cdrs, and this is three years later.
Not really a service but a bottom line builder (Score:2)
TellMe (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:TellMe (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:TellMe (Score:1)
So is this an XML based audio format? Wouldn't that waste a lot of bandwidth?
Re:TellMe (Score:1)
Just in case you're not trolling: no. VoiceXML [w3.org] is a language for writing interactive voice applications.
Ahh, the Dot Com Boom, those were the days (Score:2, Interesting)
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!
Re:Ahh, the Dot Com Boom, those were the days (Score:1)
Groceryworks.com (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Groceryworks.com (Score:2)
You might want to check out Simon Delivers...
Re:Groceryworks.com (Score:2)
jackpot.com (Score:3, Interesting)
"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.
Some wakeup call service (Score:3, Funny)
carorder.com - class A idiots (Score:3, Insightful)
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
Sunny Delight Scavenger Hunt (Score:2)
But better than that was the online community that sprung up. When we discovered that SunnyD was using banner ads from a single source, I compiled a JavaScript application
Suck.com (Score:2)
Re:Suck.com (Score:2)
The list (Score:3, Interesting)
Wierdly, some of them are still trading. Ziplink [ziplink.net] (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.
Re:The list (Score:2)
How to screw everyone??? (Score:3, Interesting)
Survival of the fittest (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Good ol' Days (Score:1)