I was deeply saddened to read the news that the "vintage" web hosting site, GeoCities, has closed its doors forever.
Although I can't claim to have invented the Internet, I've been hanging around online since 1997, which is quite an achievement considering there were very few Internet service providers in Northern Michigan at the time—a whopping grand total of 2! In fact, our first ISP was Northern Michigan Libraries, and our email address read something like this:
xxxxxxxxxx@northernmichigan.lib.mi.us
What a mouthful, huh?
Needless to say, there were no "high speed" connections at that time. Everything was strictly dial-up, and although our computer had a 56K modem, the fastest speed we could manage was a blazing 26,400 bps because we live in a rural location.
I was a little slow to embrace the computer age because I was still heavily involved with amateur (HAM) radio, so all of my hobby time was spent on 10, 11 and 2 meter rigs. When we finally did buy our first computer and discovered the net, it was love at first sight—NO STATIC. Amazing!
As I recall the Internet as I remember it over a decade ago, I'm struck by how innocent and uncomplicated it all was by today's standards. Yet even then, GeoCities was a big deal—as big, relative to the size of the overall Internet, as Facebook or Twitter is today. I did try creating a few of my very early efforts at web pages on GeoCities but, ultimately, preferred the free advanced web editor offered with Angelfire.
Although most of my early web pages are long gone, I have left one collection of Angelfire websites up and running for posterity's sake, I suppose. Birdie's Virtual Places were created to compliment Excite's Virtual Places Chat.
I experimented with java script and applets, creating all the graphics, writing the HTML and installing music on web pages. The music players on these pages still work, although the quality of the sound is pretty pathetic by today's MP3 standards. They were saved in a .wav format that was heavily streamed to allow slow dial-up connections (like ours) to load the web pages. These .wav players, as antiquated as they may seem now, were still light-years ahead of the more common MIDI players which only played a type of computerized elevator music.
So far, Angelfire seems to be hanging in there, but I imagine (like GeoCities) it, too, will eventually close someday, and Birdie's Virtual Places will only be a fond memory for me. For a peek @ what the net looked like over a decade ago, feel free to take a look at my vintage web pages someday.
Like the dinosaurs, these old-timers may be extinct before you know it. :(
~ Robin
Although I can't claim to have invented the Internet, I've been hanging around online since 1997, which is quite an achievement considering there were very few Internet service providers in Northern Michigan at the time—a whopping grand total of 2! In fact, our first ISP was Northern Michigan Libraries, and our email address read something like this:
xxxxxxxxxx@northernmichigan.lib.mi.us
What a mouthful, huh?
Needless to say, there were no "high speed" connections at that time. Everything was strictly dial-up, and although our computer had a 56K modem, the fastest speed we could manage was a blazing 26,400 bps because we live in a rural location.
I was a little slow to embrace the computer age because I was still heavily involved with amateur (HAM) radio, so all of my hobby time was spent on 10, 11 and 2 meter rigs. When we finally did buy our first computer and discovered the net, it was love at first sight—NO STATIC. Amazing!
As I recall the Internet as I remember it over a decade ago, I'm struck by how innocent and uncomplicated it all was by today's standards. Yet even then, GeoCities was a big deal—as big, relative to the size of the overall Internet, as Facebook or Twitter is today. I did try creating a few of my very early efforts at web pages on GeoCities but, ultimately, preferred the free advanced web editor offered with Angelfire.
Although most of my early web pages are long gone, I have left one collection of Angelfire websites up and running for posterity's sake, I suppose. Birdie's Virtual Places were created to compliment Excite's Virtual Places Chat.
I experimented with java script and applets, creating all the graphics, writing the HTML and installing music on web pages. The music players on these pages still work, although the quality of the sound is pretty pathetic by today's MP3 standards. They were saved in a .wav format that was heavily streamed to allow slow dial-up connections (like ours) to load the web pages. These .wav players, as antiquated as they may seem now, were still light-years ahead of the more common MIDI players which only played a type of computerized elevator music.
So far, Angelfire seems to be hanging in there, but I imagine (like GeoCities) it, too, will eventually close someday, and Birdie's Virtual Places will only be a fond memory for me. For a peek @ what the net looked like over a decade ago, feel free to take a look at my vintage web pages someday.
Like the dinosaurs, these old-timers may be extinct before you know it. :(
~ Robin
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