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?"

My fondest memory

[CptChipJew]

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

Kozmo/Urban Fetch

[autarkeia]

The best service that went the way of the dodo during the boom was either Kozmo.com or Urban Fetch. Though they started out with video & DVD rentals, you could order ANYTHING from them. In one instance, our office was swelteringly hot during the summer. I hopped onto Urban Fetch and ordered myself an air conditioner. I also ordered Palms, ice cream, videos, and Smith & Wollensky steaks.

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:um, yeah

[Alphanos]

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?

Yeah, its called going outside and talking to people.

So going outside and talking to people is a unique service that no longer exists:)?

Zombo.com

[Ieshan]

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.

Slashdot

[DAldredge]

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.

interesting, unique services from the dotcom boom

[Anonymous Coward]

umnn, getting a decent, steady paycheck?

Free Parties

[cyranoVR]

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?

Re:Slashdot

[Brandybuck]

"Hey, don't just put some guys name on the article blurb and expect us to know who he is! Please explain why I should care what this Richard M. Stallman fellow has to say."

Some guy in a suit dot com

[jonesvery]

My favorite dot com service was "some guy in a suit dot com."

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

[highwindarea]

Reasonable chances of getting an job in IT .... that didn't require mocing to India.

Re:DialPad.com

[Buster Chan]

Friends told me about dialpad, but MyTalk was more useful because of its portability. You needed a computer in order to place calls over dialpads telephone/computer network, but you could access MyTalk's long-distance network of connected telephones/computers from any phone in continental North America. In the early days of MyTalk, I was exploiting the system by being a "telephone tourist" -- I'd call as far North in Canada as I could, and as far south in Mexico as I could, and I'd call places like Carnegie Hall and Hollywood and Niagra Falls... and I still look back at those memories with joy. Now I've got a crappy job in a callcenter, and I must annoy those exact places with market research surveys; it's ironic, in a way, that the very places I called for fun are now being called by me at work as part of a torturous job that not only tortures me, but also tortures the people I'm calling at all hours of the day, to ask them questions regarding things about which they have no reason to give a damn.

Re:My fondest memory

[Glonoinha]

My fondest memory of that era : jobs.

Please God let there be one more tech boom, I promise not to piss it all away this time.

Some wakeup call service

[BTWR]

there was some dotcom for wakeup calls for free. My friend and I used to order them for people we hated in our house in college all the time! It was great! We'd hear a 5AM "Who the f--k keeps calling me?!?!?!?"