just found a treasure trove of extremely obscure BBS history stashed away on IA

thank you hard-working book scanners for preserving this rarity.

if you're familiar with BBSing in the 90s, you'll remember just how fast the vast majority of boards disappeared in 1995. it went from multinode 24/7 bbses to disconnected phone numbers in just a few months

this book accounts for the very small number of BBSes that made the transition from telco-only to "telBBS" or telnettable/web-accessible boards

3/4 of the book is a carefully curated list of 500 boards with screenshots of their homepages and bbs login/title screens. most importantly, the URLs of these boards is preserved so we have a chance to look them up on WBM some day.

https://archive.org/details/internetbbss00rich

i've noticed in recent years that the laudable return to personal homepages has generally brought with it a very specific re-imagining of 1990s web design - usually lo-fi 1994 html-only and neon cyberpunkish affairs with loud animated gifs.

lost in that specific imaginary are 1996-1997 corporate designs that brought a slightly more conservative aesthetic that nonetheless remained playful.

if you played Inherit the Earth: Quest for the Orb, Dinotopia, or Faery Tale Adventure 2 you would remember The Dreamers Guild. this is their corporate site still live and maintained by joe pearce and brad schenck.

https://inherittheearth.net/dgi/indexnf.htm

Did you know? The second web browser in history, and apparently the first one designed to be multiplatform, was coded by Nicola Pellow – a crucial step in making the web accessible to a wider audience at the time, and having a lasting impact on the development of the WWW #nowebwithoutwomen #webhistory #powercoders https://nowebwithoutwomen.com/

https://metaparadox.dreamwidth.org/2680.html

"does anyone else remember Matmice, a web host for kids and teens from the 00s? If so, do you remember the novel/story sites where people posted fiction they wrote?....
When I found out Matmice was shutting down sometime in ... 2008... I opened up Microsoft Works and backed up copies of every single one I was aware of.... I saved over 200 different stories...."

If you wrote one of these, get in touch with the archivist (who isn't me)!

cc @ashley

A trip down memory lane ...

https://www.webdesignmuseum.org/web-design-history

It's funny, when the web and personal computers first got started, recipes were often cited as the 'killer app' hauled out whenever an enthusiast wanted to explain why regular people would want a machine in their home, or why they'd use the 'net.

Now some 30yrs later, it seems like recipe sites are the harbingers of everything wrong with the web. So many of them are now mostly SEO-laden link-farms, and ad-revenue trash.

Enjoying seeing all these #dh updates. Any recommendations for where a #histodon who's a complete DH novice can get started teaching themselves? Main interests right now are scraping author info (especially nationality and place of work) from archives of two journals, and also just #webhistory in general

@histodons

Given the recent news about YouTube account deletion, I've started a public spreadsheet to collect links to tech/internet-related videos to download and save: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1BApiBHo63Muxa567gcb0IewNHZPQT4UIJ26vzOKR1Hw/edit?usp=drivesdk

There's so much important historical ephemera - ads, edutainment, training videos, etc - that was never formally saved but can be found on YT.

My current plan is to slowly collect download videos and upload them to the Internet Archive.

(@admin1, would you consider boosting this?)

I've been on here for years and never actually did an #introduction post. Better late than never?
I'm a #neurodivergent #British #Trans Woman with #Dyspraxia, #Dyslexia and #Dyscalculia. I'm a recovering #tech / #computing hobbyist (trying to give it up, don't encourage me).

I'm into #art, #sewing/ #textiles (very much a newbie though), #crafts, #music, #writing / #fiction and #slowmovement.
I was atheist but I'm trying to get into #paganism (#celticpaganism / #celticreconstructionism specifically) and am planning to learn #welsh.

I'm a fan of #doctorwho and I've just started getting into #startrek.

I'm very interested in #webhistory and the #indieweb.
I've had follow requests on (and will likely indefinitely) since the Twitter exodus but feel free to request a follow, I'll accept if you seem like an ok person. Don't be offended if I don't though.

My latest newsletter, for all the #webhistory fans and Web 2.0 romantics -> What was it like using Flickr in early Web 2.0, in the age of digital cameras and before Instagram changed everything? https://www.cybercultural.com/p/flickr-before-smartphones-and-instagram

Resilient Web Design, by Jeremy Keith @adactio.

Great history book on some of the lesser well known phases we went through to get where we are, and what (I hope) we learned from it in terms of principles.

"""
Even if you made a mistake, the browser’s implementation of Postel’s Law ensured that you’d still get a result. Surprisingly, there was an attempt to remove this superpower [..]
"""

https://resilientwebdesign.com/chapter4/

Re-#introduction: I'm currently a lecturer in WGS at Gonzaga Uni. I study #webhistory, specifically how #lgbtq folks used early digital communications. I founded and curate the Queer Digital History Project (queerdigital.com), which preserves info on #queer spaces online pre-2010.

I also have a book coming out in Aug 2023: The Two Revolutions: A History of the #Transgender Internet (https://nyupress.org/9781479818310/the-two-revolutions/).

So mostly, I share old tech stuff that amuses me.