Surfing the web like it's 1999

Рет қаралды 9,125

Күн бұрын

We're browsing screensavers, browser themes, eBay in the 90s, AIM away messages, 90s tech trends and Y2K prep.
Back in the 90s, surfing the web felt different. Browsing wasn’t influenced by algorithms. We stumbled across websites and topics that wouldn’t have been surfaced to us otherwise. And webpages had fewer ads with more content per square inch. It felt like the entire world was available to us for the first time. I’m taking a look at a few of my favorite websites from 1999. We’ll be using the Wayback Machine to browse the web. The Wayback Machine's archive was much more limited in the '90s than it is today, so some of these webpages were archived in the very early 2000s, but we'll get close enough.
00:00 Intro
00:26 Browsing screensavers for download
02:27 Do I already have MALWARE?!
02:27 Internet Explorer skins
03:38 eBay in 1999 feels the same as today
03:43 eBay laptops
04:01 eBay PDAs
04:48 eBay PC games
05:19 eBay "Internet games"
05:39 eBay Other Hardware was weird
06:19 eBay thoughts
06:30 Boing Boing
07:17 Quick stop at Amazon in 1999
07:35 AIM away messages
08:33 AIM tricks (no ads?)
08:59 AIM profiles were early social media
10:10 90s tech tends and predictions
10:17 Apple ditches the floppy
10:36 USB was still new
10:57 MP3s getting DRM?
11:23 Bands release albums on ZIP DISKS
11:39 Best tech of 1999: Games, Hardware, Consumer Tech, Apps
12:47 Y2K prep
13:43 Wrapping up
#retrocomputing #retrotech #earlyweb #oldweb #90s #internetexplorer #msie

Пікірлер: 77

@sskento Ай бұрын

I bought Final Fantasy 7 for PC back in the early 2000s on eBay. It showed up in a plain box with burned CDs with the "ff7 disc 1" "ff7 disc 2" etc. written on the CD-Rs. None of it worked, haha. eBay did refund me and I bought a different one that worked great. But I think about it every time someone mentions ebay or ff7

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Haha that sounds like an authentic early eBay buying experience. Glad you got a refund!

@TherronKeen Ай бұрын

I'm curious if maybe they sent you a playable rip of the PS1 discs made to be played in an emulator! me and my friends had a lot of "backup" copies of PS1 games back in the day

@hornick18 Ай бұрын

My favorite one back when I was a kid was the screensaver that "melted" the screen.

@MarioGoatse Ай бұрын

I remember back in the day looking at 66mhz CPUs thinking that no CPU would ever get to 1ghz. That's just insane! 1TB hard drives were even more of a dream. Then all of a sudden technology started blasting past at break neck speed. Your top of the line PC would be considered within a year or so.

@seanc.5310 Ай бұрын

Once Pentium chips dropped things just started taking off like crazy with clock speed

@_xtel Ай бұрын

I remember sitting in class and calculating how many floppies I’d need to equal 1TB. My young brain couldn’t handle that at the time.

@digl_live Ай бұрын

This channel is going to blow up soon. Ain't no way this is only 1k views worthy.

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Thanks! Really appreciate it!

@MacBack123 Ай бұрын

I agree, i thought this was from a channel with around 100K subs! Turns out only 1K! This is very incredible production!

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Thank you! It’s been a lot of fun putting these videos together. Lots more content on the way.

@WyMustIGo Ай бұрын

1996 was when I first wrote code to stream video over the internet. It was a few years after the time we switched from porting Imagine 3D on the Amiga to the PC back when I worked at Impulse. The 70s-2000 was the real tech revolution... In the 70s our internet was mainly Usenet and also services such as Compuserve and Delphi, and of course the BBS scene.

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Streaming video in 1996?! You were on the leading edge.

@WyMustIGo Ай бұрын

@@RetroTechDreams Yep, streaming video in 1996 over the internet. Was done around the same time we made the non linear video editing system (The Edimator).

@HvZ08 Ай бұрын

Love this kind of look back at the past. Maybe it wasn't all bad

@spingleboygle Ай бұрын

when a 40+ year old website about a screensaver looks more visually appealing than anything nowadays

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Haha right?

@email6743 20 күн бұрын

40?

@xryanxrulezx Ай бұрын

Man.. the Sony Aibo.. and RealPlayer!!! That was my main before Winamp!

@CoolStory-Bro Ай бұрын

I had Voodoo 3 years before we got the internet. In 1999 the net ment nothing to me. Good times. Thanks man.

@rhyses_ Ай бұрын

3:43 and on made me realize how, as a kid, I fell in love with computing so much. The crazy selection of interesting and unique devices all a page away was a spectacle to browse. I miss this era of computing so much

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

I still want to buy all of them!

@ImJCyo Ай бұрын

God this was an era for sure. I miss it, but I also don't miss how slow things were back then.

@DSOSCE Ай бұрын

downloading screensavers from unknown sources was the fastest way to get malware on your pc back in the day :D

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

And now I’m nostalgic for it 😄

@Adam814cool-retro Ай бұрын

liked and subbed :D amazing editing! also, kewl channel icon. :P

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Thank you!

@_xtel Ай бұрын

Believe it or not, we use to buy/sell AOL/AIM accounts. This is how I got my handle now. 3 & 4 letter screen names were hard to come by. “xtel” is one I bought and never resold. Ahh, the good ole days.

@kevdogyt08ti Ай бұрын

Oh yeah, back when I was a teenager... Ah, memories...

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Same

@philipmurphy2 Ай бұрын

Good thing about them times is no social media as of yet, especially Facebook

@schwiftynintendonerd Ай бұрын

The science elf Did a realy cool setup where you just use the Internet like normal but its setup in the background with the wayback machine but you don't have the faff problem of using it if that makes sense I highly recommend the video

@lahuk1194 Ай бұрын

I don't think I was online in 1999 (I was kid) but went online a few years later and I do just about remember sites looking like these. Its nice to see the Internet like this; it looks more real, more fun, definitely more unique. I wish the Internet still looked and felt like this, just with the tech improvements we have now.

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

And with the high-speed, always online Internet access we have today

@lahuk1194 Ай бұрын

@@RetroTechDreams High speed yes, always online not quite. I'd prefer the internet was a bit less mobile, more than in 1999, but less than it is now.

@xBINARYGODx Ай бұрын

those aim websites are the not early social media - AIM itself and your AOL profile were. I dont think most people even remember linking to a site unless it was for pictures that would be less easy for someone to steal in some way.

@homogenized Ай бұрын

This was great!

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Thank you!

@amadeusfuzz4320 Ай бұрын

i spotted diablo! best game ever

@itsrickyschannel. Ай бұрын

8:58 - Today I learned about 90's web tools that act similarly to the modern Cardd or LinkTree

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Turns out all we wanted was just a simple way to post online

@itsrickyschannel. Ай бұрын

@@RetroTechDreams So true.

@grapeswithcapes8314 Ай бұрын

Subbed at 1.5k! I'm an early adopter

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Thank you!

@xXBlueSheepXx Ай бұрын

KZfaq algorithm working good today

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Haha thanks!

@protophase Ай бұрын

Yesss make me feel old! Keep the videos coming.

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Thanks!

@ja2347 Ай бұрын

Whats the title of the sound track you are using in the background?

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

It’s all music from Epidemic Sound

@ja2347 Ай бұрын

@@RetroTechDreams Thank you

@user-zw9gf6if8s Ай бұрын

damn, I miss that

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Same

@mr.clorox Ай бұрын

Cool sauce

@galaxycraft0075 Ай бұрын

I badly want to see how to get something to make your windows 10 ui look like windows 95/98 without hacking stuff.

@nmac101 Ай бұрын

theres a program called retrobar that makes your taskbar look like the windows 9x one. you can also make it look like xp or vista

@galaxycraft0075 Ай бұрын

@@nmac101 Alright, thanks.

@spootymaniacs Ай бұрын

as above comment said, retrobar is a program that does that, theres also: OpenShell, WindowBlinds, and Start11

@LeonardGr Ай бұрын

What about SITO, that art collab site? I'm trying to revive that site

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

I’ve never heard of it, thanks for the rec!

@kofteburger Ай бұрын

Hmm Neoplanet.

@tenebrisity6170 Ай бұрын

Great vid.

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Thanks! Really appreciate it!

@tenebrisity6170 Ай бұрын

@@RetroTechDreams i have a recommendation for a video. I forget the sites name, however it is a random old website browser, it has something to do with finding non-html sites if i remember correctly? And it'll randomly put you on sites from the 90s to 2000s. I was saddened once because i found a blog of a cancer patient, he ended up dying... It was updated by his family to say so.

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Was it Wiby.me with the “Surprise Me” button? I played with it at the beginning of this video: The best websites for retro fans kzfaq.info/get/bejne/nK2GfJeL2pebgoE.html

@tenebrisity6170 Ай бұрын

@@RetroTechDreams THANK YOU! I HAD LOST IT!

@RetroTechDreams Ай бұрын

Glad we could figure it out!