Above: typical chat on IRC in the 80s and 90s
Dear readers and customers,
we all have our roots and as such, of course there was a time before algorithms, a time of a highly personalised 90s web, which we know very well too.
So for today we’d like to share a nice piece of nostalgia with you from a time when the web was not even half as polished and more personalised compared to what it is today:
A Time Before Algorithms Took Over the 90’s Web.
Some gems from the text:
- View Source to Learn HTML
One of the most common “hacks” was simply right-clicking on a webpage and hitting “View Source.” This allowed you to peek at the HTML behind any website, copy it, and modify it to create your own site. Many amateurs like me learned coding by reverse-engineering other pages.- Hiding Easter Eggs:
Websites were full of hidden Easter eggs, from secret links buried in seemingly random places to invisible text only visible by highlighting.- Customizing Mouse Cursors
Changed the mouse cursor to something ridiculous like a sparkly wand or a rotating icon.- Unwanted Music
Many websites would automatically play music (MIDI files were popular), usually without warning or a way to stop it. I did that too. Nobody complained back then!- Pop-Up Madness
I quickly learned to use JavaScript to create endless pop-up windows as a prank. Some mischievous sites would trap visitors in a loop of windows, forcing them to either close them all manually or restart their browser or computer – one of the early forms of trolling!- HTML Marquee and Blink Tags
For extra flair, many websites used the<marquee>tag to make text scroll across the screen, or the<blink>tag to make text flash. These tricks were respected and seen as a sign of creativity.- Under Construction Forever
People loved to plaster their websites with flashing “Under Construction” GIFs, even if the site wasn’t actually being updated. This was a playful way to signal that you were working on something new, though often nothing ever changed! I did that too. The mystery was part of the charm.- ICQ “Spamming” and Custom Away Messages
ICQ, one of the earliest instant messaging apps, allowed users to customize away messages with all sorts of weird ASCII art or status updates. And later yahoo messenger took it to the next level with custom sounds and notifications.- Free Internet with Trial Discs
We used to have disks that offered free trials of internet service providers. I remember collecting them and using them to get online without paying for a subscription. I figured out that if you signed up using different email addresses or tweaked the trial periods, you could string together months of free internet access.- Hotlinking Bandwidth Theft
Hotlinking was a commonhackwhere people would steal images or media from another site by directly linking to them. This would use up the original site’s bandwidth, and some webmasters would combat it by replacing hotlinked images with something embarrassing for the thief.- Prank 404 Pages
Many early websites featured custom 404 error pages that were often filled with jokes, riddles, or even taunts. These made the 90s web a bit more entertaining than just seeing aPage Not Foundmessage. I remember talking to my friends about –Friend – What content should I add in my 404 page? It feels empty.
Me – 404 is the real homepage. Add everything you have got.
Its sily when I think about it. But owning a website was a badge of honor.
We hope you enjoy reading here as much as we did. We know exactly what’s going on here but for many readers today, this may be something completely new. Let’s try to preserve it in a way we all might have a smile for many years to come. 🙂
All the best,
the aethyx staff
If you want to know the entrepreneurial view of the Internet, visit Portugal: https://twitter.com/RoKhanna/status/923701871092441088.
Usually we don’t link to stuff on Twitter, because they are working on dismantling the web as we know it too. But the majority accepted this fake news medium already and we as experts(!) can’t do nothing about it.
Welcome to reality.
There’s serious stuff going on right now.
Imagine an Internet of lanes, where the ones get the fastest lane who pay the most. That would be the death of net neutrality, a concept which the Obama administration tried to support but right now seems to fail miserably.
A lot of corporations tried to kill the Internet before: Comcast. Verizon. AT&T. To name only a few. And the NSA stuff about Edward Snowden didn’t mean that things would get any better, to say the least.
We live in a world of sick societies. Most of the people you meet, you work with, you like and appreciate, don’t have the slightest clue what’s going on in reality. In real time. Anywhere. They just don’t give a shit, all they care about is C.R.E.A.M. We live in a cold, misinformed, polarising world, where those are punished who try to educate, evaluate, really want to entertain.
Prefixes are inverted in this world, what appears “good” is bad, what they call “bad” is often good. Good for you as an individual, good for your future, good for your morals. If you want to dive deeper, just check the biography of one of the most important geniuses of our time: Aaron Swartz. For those who never heard this name: he was the one realising the semantic web for the ordinary users, who killed himself because he tried to publicise closed-source scientific records. Welcome to your real world. Do you feel comfortable in this world? Do you have the slightest clue what’s really going on?
Let’s remember Thanksgiving 2017 as the time in history of mankind when the Internet died.
2016 they took us the pride to live in electing a racist, misogynic, dumb-as-fuck, feckless, apolitical, aryan, retarded US president.
It won’t get better from here. That’s something we should have realised by now. Next step is: support goes to the FCC.
We never wanted nor approved this. We weren’t asked.
“Go back to bed, America. Your government has figured out how it all transpired. Go back to bed, America. Your government is in control again. Here. Here’s American Gladiators. Watch this, shut up. Go back to bed, America. Here is American Gladiators. Here is 56 channels of it! Watch these pituitary retards bang their fucking skulls together and congratulate you on living in the land of freedom. Here you go, America! You are free to do what we tell you! You are free to do what we tell you!” – Bill Hicks
Update I, 11/27/17:
In the meantime, more than a million Emails repealing net neutrality were simply: fake email spam.
Good day,
as a follower of our work there may be the moment when you start asking yourself: “okay, I understand that AETHYX MEDIAE is an independent online publisher. But what do they mean with the strange word “semantic”?
Long story short, it’s mainly an update of the WWW we know and use today. As Tim Berners-Lee himself stated in 2001 already:
“The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation.”
This technique is in some sort already real today. Every website which provides an RSS/Atom feed let’s you create your own source(s) of information. Usually this file is an OPML file, containing RSS/Atom links named “feeds”. An application with which you can use the semantic web is simply an RSS/Atom feed reader.
If you as an individual or corporation are really interested in developing the web further, providing such a feed is definitely a must.
Thus, every individual or corporation which doesn’t provide such feeds is either not interested in the WWW itself (and probably never was) and/or simply emphasises exploitation of humans as well as machines.
Keep that in mind when surfing the WWW these days. Today it’s not that easy anymore to distinguish friend from foe.
Enjoy a colourful autumn,
the aethyx staff
P.S.: according to the W3C strictly seen only RDF (Resource Description Framework), OWL (Web Ontology Language) & XML (Extensible Markup Language) are “official languages” of a semantic web. In reality, however, most of the time humans will get in contact with the semantic web is actually Atom, RSS & XML.
Our fast, secure, small and neat touch screen Android web browser is blogging:
We didn’t do anything. He just started this project on his own.
Well, Android is a strange little cradle for artificial intelligence, don’t you think?
But who’s complaining. We are happy he’s showing his independence to the world. Keep on, lil buddy!
See you around,
bestest,
the aethyx staff
Instead of using brand new technology just for us, Gizmeo.com & Zockerseele.com in this case, we created something new for everyone to use: YAABy. Which stands for: YetAnotherAndroidBrowser. With a little y at the end, to stand out from the pack.
Get it here:
Basically it uses the same technology as our other Android-Apps: Webkit does the rendering and other browser-stuff.
We enhanced the experience in two critical ways:
a) an address bar for your URLs
b) a secure SSL-connection to the one and only EU-certified search engine Startpage as main feature
This app is still in Beta, but there should be no big problems already. This is really a work in progress, don’t expect too much. Updates will be delivered from time to time, new features will only be implemented if it makes sense to me or if the users really need it. Feedback welcome.
One of the main problems with a lot of web browsers on Android is they are simply too huge and not running on low powered devices. With YAABy you only need FroYo and you’re good to go.
Welcome to our family, YAABy!
Regards,
the aethyx staff