If you remember these 10 things... you're old.
My generation is a privileged generation, we witnessed the popularization of the internet, perhaps we did not witness its invention in the 50's and 60's but who care if only a few could use it at university labs. The interesting thing about the internet came after, in the 80's with the World Wide Web... and when regular people started using this technology was in the 90's... that's where I was, I have been living it, I have been a party, I have been a party, I have been a party, so I have been a first to have an internet at my school... and actually only two of the whole school have had an internet and one day we thought about an experiment, an email account and send us a message to see if we get there... jajaja can believe, after our experiment we call ourselves by phone and we have been so excited about this new phone phone call...
We have come a long way since then, now there are web 2.0, social networks, new forms of electronic commerce, blogs, etc. At that time we had no such things but we had other things, if you remember them... you're old.
1. Filling tone: earlier the internet access was directly through the phone line, so if you wanted to connect you had to dial a phone number through your modem and by marking you could listen to a marking tone similar to that that that that fax does by answering a call (I can't believe that the fax's still alive).
2. Unconnect to use your phone: precisely because you connected through the phone line if you were connected your line was busy, so if anyone at your place wanted to speak by phone or was expecting a call you had to get off the internet.
3. Guesbook: was a visiting book that most websites had. The idea was that you could "sign" the visiting book and leave some comment, was as a grandfather of "comments" on blogs or forums.
4. Under construction: who doesn't remember entering a website to discover that there was only an .gif image of a sign of "men at work" and the famous legend "under construction."
5. Sites map: It's true that many websites still use but let's be honest who needs a site map today? Previously browsing online was something relatively complicated, to start with there weren't a lot of Spanish spots so if you didn't speak english you were fried, and also web developers weren't so focused about user experience but about the technical issue, so to find information at some siege you required from the "map" so as to avoid losing you.
6. Chat rooms: That's right, there's still chat rooms but outside of the erotic chats who uses them? At his time it was a very innovative idea, you entered a chat room for interest, country or age and you could have with people from anywhere in the world - and how exciting - there was only one problem about what to talk about? Most chat conversations were something about this:
Hey!
Hey how they are...
That's good.
What about some woman?
And that followed and followed for hours... now there are forums, blogs and social networks so the chat rooms are sentenced to death.
7. ICQ: this service also remains alive but how many of you use it? Before the MCN Messenger the ICQ was the software to communicate with your online friends, so that they get an idea how old they are I will tell them that I remember that the way they explain them on their website was that they were a beeper-like but online system. And those who didn't know that's a beeper are young and have their lives ahead of them.
8. Geicities: one of my favorite internet services in those far away days as it allowed you to do your own free website and you could choose what neighborhood you wanted to live in: great!!! You could use a "simple" editor or do the HTML site so I started learning HTML independently and it was really fun. Of course the problem was: what will I do about my website? So at the end let's say I put an end to something very similar to the website that Homer did in a chapter of The Simpsons.
9. Napster: once we had this great file transfer service that allowed free share of music in mp3 format, obviously because of copyright problems the service had to have been killed, however lays the ground for the creation of new information and file transfer protocols that today are very popular as Gnutella's.
10. Netscape: who doesn't remember this wonderful browser that made many open their eyes and realize that Internet Explorer was, is and will always be a scumbag. Netscape was a functional, beautiful and elegant browser. Unfortunately the browsers war did not survive in the 90's as Microsoft was a giant and crushed it, especially by investing in Apple's actions and negotiating that the Mac's listed browser was Internet Explorer... was a bad time for all... ooh.. ooh...
Okay, if they remember these 10 things means that they're actually grandparents in cyber space, but don't worry about them, they just mean we've been living more and more experiences with the good internet than others, what things will bring the future? Nobody knows, but I'm dying to see them...