Tedium Highlight in Internet: How CompuServe got newspapers to give away their content 40 years ago. 

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Tag results: Internet

The Modem Tax

How a real-life attempt to charge online services for using the phone line became an infamous internet legend. The “modem tax” was a chain-mail boogeyman.

Let The Internet Be Grimy

Meta’s take on mimicking Twitter feels like it was built for brand safety first, and you don’t get fulfilling internet experiences when you build for brand safety first.

The Next Chapter

Online culture sure feels like it’s in a transition phase, doesn’t it? In an attempt to understand what we learned this week, let’s compare it to some prior internet-era shifts.

Surfing Upstream

In an era when hundreds of free web browsers exist, Orion Browser has a novel idea: It wants to charge money. Why’s that? Simple: It wants to fix the paradigm.

Source Tags & Codes

The saga of the Missouri governor reflects a failure by the powerful to embrace curiosity—curiosity encouraged by the HTML language he fails to understand.

Tab It Your Way

How the power-user web browser Vivaldi has managed to maintain a flexible design philosophy in an era when so much is decided for you online.

Dr. Koop’s Digital Korner

How famed U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, at the age of 82, became an internet entrepreneur, and why his namesake website burned out, fast.

By Our Powers Combined …

How the webring became the grassroots tool of choice for sharing content online in the ‘90s. The concept was social media before media was social.

FTP Fadeout

The beating heart of the early internet may have been FTP, or file transfer protocol. But after 50 years of mainstream use, its demise may be imminent.

News In Small Bytes

Newspapers said they wanted to protect the print product, but they were raring to go when it came to experimental online news approaches in the early '80s.

We Were Promised Skynet

Satellite internet was once seen as a holy grail of connect-anywhere online access. It hasn’t worked yet, but the promise is closer than ever.

Now You’re Playing With Power

How I found home networking nirvana with a powerline connection, a form of home networking that might be called poor man’s ethernet. No drilling involved.

Browse Minimally

Perhaps the problem with the modern web browser is that there’s just too much stuff. What if we cut things down to the bare minimum?

The Internet’s Many Branches

The evolution of the top-level domain, a solution to a technical problem that has evolved into something with lots of cultural and marketing value.

The Wires Barely Reach

It took a while for the internet to turn into a major global force, but it wasn't for lack of trying. (Peter Gabriel deserves at least some of the credit.)

Jumping-Off Point

What the heck is a jumpstation, and why did it fade from internet nomenclature? It’s complicated, but the web’s first search engine is in there somewhere.

The Internet of Food

Online food delivery was probably secretly essential to the internet’s success, but it took a while for us to get a food option as good as Grubhub.

The Internet, Through A Filter

As content filters re-enter the digital conversation, a look back at the internet filters of the ‘90s, and the librarian who sold the Supreme Court on them.

Close Your Open Tabs

A case in favor of browser tab minimalism, or closing the tabs you’re not using. Sometimes, information overload has its limits.

Nothing But Net (And Ads)

The rise of the ad-sponsored dial-up ISP offers some useful lessons on promising too much in the age of MoviePass. Good luck getting rid of that ad.
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