When I first started using the Internet.

[Chimpy Chompy]

I used it to find thousands upon thousands of Star Trek-related websites, 98% of which were hosted by Geocities and had names like "David's Star Trek Home Page"

Yeah, I remember those days. I don't go right back to the start of the web like some hoary old men here but I came aboard in 96 ish, when geocities was still popular, we searched with yahoo\excite\altavista, and people tormented us by embedding midi music in their pages.

Little personal interest sites like that feel very much a thing of the past. I guess thanks to the availability of blogs and wikis, people don't feel inclined to start their own sites from scratch, especially given the new technologies one has to learn to keep up to date.

 

[trekkiedane]

I've used this text-to-speech demo: http://public.research.att.com/~ttsweb/tts/demo.php for most of the sound communications from my PC to me!

 

[Agent Richard07]

When I first joined I had an AOL account and when I logged on I would get a lovely voice telling me 'you've got mail'. I used to get so excited.
Then I realised that AOL was just a little village and it was hard to escape...
Still miss that voice thou ~ and getting mail

I use that as my email sound.

Oh oh how can I do that

I use a small program called SimpleCheck to check for email every 10 minutes. It gives you the option of choosing a sound.

Here's the "gotmail" sound file.

 

[SeerSGB]

I used it to find thousands upon thousands of Star Trek-related websites, 98% of which were hosted by Geocities and had names like "David's Star Trek Home Page"

Yeah, I remember those days. I don't go right back to the start of the web like some hoary old men here but I came aboard in 96 ish, when geocities was still popular, we searched with yahoo\excite\altavista, and people tormented us by embedding midi music in their pages.

Little personal interest sites like that feel very much a thing of the past. I guess thanks to the availability of blogs and wikis, people don't feel inclined to start their own sites from scratch, especially given the new technologies one has to learn to keep up to date.

I know the feeling. My first site was a Star Trek site on Geocities that got shut down in the purge of fansites in the 90s (When Paramount was on the warpath). I was so proud My next site (a Geocities site, again) was set up for 'Trek RPGing and fanfic, and actually attracted a small following cause I had odd ball ships that I had thunk up (essenitally) on the fly, before it got popped for a TOS violation.

I agree with the idea that blogging and social networking is killing/has killed the little homepages. Everyone takes online shit so serious these days.

 

[backstept]

most of my early 'net days were spent on AOL . . . we had 3 computers and only one of us could be on the net at any one moment
I remember the early days of AIM, napster, etc
after AOL I think we had USA Datanet
I remember friends of mine had Juno
I remember mostly just going on looking for pictures of star trek ships, playing 'trekkers' (trek checkers) on startrek.com, and waiting sometimes 15 minutes for Final Fantasy VII music midi files to download . . . freakin' loved that game
then around 1999 I discovered 3D graphics and I would spend hours looking at the galleries at 3dlinks.com, and searching for star trek models to download
stumbled upon scifiart.com and found the jackpot!
then in 03 or 04 I found scifi-meshes.com which I later found out was created by former scifiart.com guys after SFA went belly up
later became a moderator at SFM and been dicking around with 3d graphics for just about 10 years now

 

[Marc]

At uni in 1991 using dumb terminals to a DEC Vax. Couldn't do much beyound e-mail and access to usenet News.

At home joined a group called APANA in 1992/93 which provided e-mail and usenet via batching. Would use UUCICO to retrieve the information. Was also about started using FreeBSD (v1.0e) and then it was on to SLIP. Then from there I went through the modem speeds from 14.4 to ADSL2 - the days when you could download FreeBSD and install from floppies. Then it was on to PPP and time to move on from APANA.

One thing about APANA - it must of provided a good training ground - there are a number of peope involved who now working for a very large Australian ISP.

 

[Wheo]

Ah, in 1994, my dad was attending the University in my hometown. He worked with computers a lot, and, since I was only four years old at the time, he usually took me with him. He set me up my own Hotmail account, and showed me some websites and programs on the computer that I could play games with.

Within a couple of years, I was surfing teh interwebs like an old pro. So, basically...I've been online my entire life (barring the first four years)-that's the only real upside to having been born in the '90s. I can't remember a time before computers (my fail, I know). ^_^;

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I think I first got online around 96, but the ISP was terrible and in the end I got rid after a month and got Sky TV instead, because they cost the same at the time. Then a year or two later I got back online when they started offering unlimited flat rate connections. Got a hotmail account I still use. Found a chatroom that I enjoyed going to, met someone there I still chat and IM with to this day.
Got a Yahoo email account for YIM and found Trekbbs around 99/00 and lurked for a while, ended up signing up for the fights in TNZ. Ah entertaining times.

 

[ITL]

I was a relative latecomer to the Internets - sometime in 2004, I think - which is strange, as I've had computers since the early 80's and I do enjoy being online so very much.

Mind you, I did go without a computer for a few years in the 90's when the net was really taking off and my life was moving in a different direction back then, so it all passed me by for a while.

When I did finally get online, it was with a dialup package that I could only use during off-peak hours. When I finally got broadband it was a fecking revelation! And one of the first sites I found? This one.

 

[Major Chord]

I think I first went online back in '97/8 ish. We got our first family computer( that I remember, at least) in '95 when I was 3. I'm sure my father used the internet for work long before I didscovered it, but when I did eventually go online, it was for games on cartoon network .com and stuff like that. I got an email account in 2002, so that I could email one of my favorite teachers. I guess it goes to show as a sign of my geekdom even at that age, that my email address was 'ncc1701a@...........'.

It wasn't until 2005 when we moved into this house that we had DSL, and that was when I really started using the 'net. Youtube, Wiki, etc. I started using forums around a year and a half ago, and Facebook only a year. Oddly enough, I never got into AIM, or YIM much. I do IM occasionally, mostly through facebook chat, but I'm just not a big fan. I prefer email.

 

[RJDiogenes]

I first got on the Internet in the Summer of 1993 when St. Margaret's closed and I took my office computer, with its internal modem, home. I logged on to AOL (making up my Username "RJDiogenes" off the cuff when the names I had prepared were already taken) and started participating in their Forums (Star Trek, Science Fiction, Kung Fu: The Legend Continues, and a couple of others). I also joined two or three dial-up BBS's-- remember them? One was a Star Trek board, one was photography; I can't remember what else.

 

[tharpdevenport]

A few months into me getting my first computer (rent-to-own) and dial up, I discovered TrekBBS. I registered and meant to post. I forgot. Cut to later when I find I can't get logged in. Turns out I was a casulty of the Christmas Massacre years back.

I remember getting, after returning the computer and cutting service, those goddman AOL discs in the mail every week. It became a joke on the internet and people where making things out of them because of the sheer qauntity that came. I think I microwaved a couple of them. I also recall possibly writing on one: "Does not live at this address, return to sender", just to make them take this shit back.

I ended up nick naming AOL, AOHell -- which as it turns out -- even though I thought it was an original creation by me -- was already in use.

 

[Sakrysta]

I started out while student teaching. The school I was teaching at had internet access, and I would play around with it occasionally when I had time. Summer of '97 I got a desktop (Packard Bell!) and signed up for AOL like everyone else who didn't know any better. I remember downloading sound effects like "Welcome to AOL - you will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy." Joined an AOL chat room where a bunch of Trek fans played a made-up Star Trek Jeopardy game, complete with sound effects & audio clues. With AOL chat, you had a folder to house the sound effects, and if you typed something like s: and the file name then the audio would play on your computer and anyone else's in the chat room who had that audio file on their computer in that same folder. It was really cool! All the players got pretty close, at least for internet people, but then the guy who ran the game died of a heart attack. After that it just wasn't the same.

And by then I was fed up with AOL, signed up for some other service, and the rest is history! I know I learned a lot about the internet while searching for Trek stuff, as well as stuff on Earth 2 and Earth Final Conflict. I used to spend hours reading Trek reviews by Tim Lynch, Jammer, and Jim Wright. Those were really cool - Tim Lynch was my favorite.

 

[Lindley]

I don't really remember my earliest web visits that well. I do know that when BeOS first appeared, I was curious about it. Never did end up using it, but I checked out their website.

It looked pretty cool, really. I think it had the links set up to look like icons on a desktop. Naturally I clicked on the link for "Trash". Anyone want to guess what was in there?

 

[Rii]

When I first started using the internet we had to switch our packets manually. Through the snow. Both ways. And we liked it that way!

 

[trekkiedane]

Naturally I clicked on the link for "Trash". Anyone want to guess what was in there?

That never was a good place to hide your pr0n -but apparently it is one of the oldest hiding places

 

[Holdfast]

I guess my story's similar to many others here, hopping onto the net around mid-nineties. I don't think Star Trek was the first thing I searched for, but I'm betting it was in the top 5. I distinctly remember thinking "let me see if there's really as many random Star Trek sites on the internet as I've heard!". There were. Most of them really bad, too, it has to be said. I had one of those appallingly amateurish sites myself too for a while I think.

 

[JuanBolio]

I had heard of this internet thing often in the news media in 1994 and 1995, but I did not get to personally interact with it much until December 1996. I came back from college to spend Christmas break with my family, and there my parents introduced me to their shiny new internet connection. The computer had a state-of-the-art Windows 95 operating system and something called "Internet Explorer 3." (I later learned that this put my parents' computer in the minority; most websurfers were using Netscape at that time).

I would double-click the Explorer icon, then type in the username and password, then spend several minutes listening to the 14K dial-up modem make modemy noises. Finally, the browser popped up.

Back then, there was no Amazon, Google, Myspace, Youtube, Facebook, or Twitter, but there was Yahoo. I used it to find thousands upon thousands of Star Trek-related websites, 98% of which were hosted by Geocities and had names like "David's Star Trek Home Page" and "Carly's Voyager Website." Each site typically sported white text on a starfield background, and came complete with a counter, a guestbook, some Trek photos (which took several minutes to download), a notice saying that the parts of the site were "Under Construction" (complete with a yellow man-in-a-hardhat logo), a little bit of Star Trek information that anyone surfing the net for Trek sites would already know, and a page of links to similar websites (and startrek.com).

Usenet forums were still widely used at the time, but my generation of internet users missed out on those because we were first introduced to the net through web browsers. Instead, we congregated on web-based message boards like the one at Trekweb. Message boards are still my favorite part of the Web. Some things never change.

Um, I hope you didn't think I was going somewhere important with this. I just felt like reminiscing, that's all.

Ah, yes, I remember all those good old things. I got started mainly through my school in 1996/1997. The old Star Trek pages, 14.4 modems, "Ate My Balls" webrings.... brings back such fond memories.

There are days I miss those times, when the net was new and exciting.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I remember searching "comics" once, via Yahoo, to find comic publishers (for submittle), and I got ... early internet search engine days ... porn results. Almost makes me wonder what I would have gotten had I searched "comic strips"...

 

[trekkiedane]

^