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Desert Island Retro

Old Websites


wearecity
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I got an email from svp, the other day and it got me thinking about sites I used numerous times in the early days of the net, which I either haven't used for 10 plus years or were big well known sites, which have now gone.

I don't think looking at the address svp is the original site, which I'd buy hundreds of blank dvds and sleeves etc, but haven't used for numerous years. 

Then there's play.com, a dvd/cd buyers heaven, but now no longer, having changed in to a marketplace before closing down altogether. 

Anyone else got any popular websites in mind from the early days of the web, that literally everyone raved about and used, but have since gone out of business or changed to a different format. 

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jungle.com springs to mind, bought loads of bits from them, were kind of a DVD/Games/CD and hardware parts hybrid.

They seemed to have a good business model at least for consumers where they would just add x% margin to any product. So whilst everyone else was charging say £60 for a SCSI cable they paid about £2 for, jungle were just applying the % margin to £2. So I remember I got quite a bit of cheap SCSI stuff for the company I worked for at the time.

Another big site was uk.imdb.com which was the UK hosted IMDB. Amazon bought them but up until quite recently (I would say last two years) you could still use uk.imdb.com to get to the site.

Finally long term users will remember www.altavista.com which was the search engine of choice in the early days, pre-dating Google. When I was at university it was the standard homepage in Netscape - in the days where you could pay for browsers!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I also still have a large amount of that blank media from SVP.

After seeing this post I thought, why am I still keeping it? so opened up a fresh box of 25 discs to check if still OK only to find the print from the label on the disc below was now imprinted onto the blank surface of the disc above! On all 25 except the bottom one!....and I presume the same on the other 5 packs of 25 😁

Oh well, at least I now have a large gap in my cupboards for something else!

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Yeah I remember SVP and getting lots of Bulkpaq DVD-R media but if I really wanted a good burn it would be onto a Verbatim.

Can't remember the last time I burnt anything onto optical media now.

I do remember sites related to the MP3 media players, Winamp (it really kicks the Llamas ass), and Sonique, and spending time on the sites related to the community created visualisations and skins for both players. (MP3 files on PC was a big thing back then, we didn't have Spotify or Apple Music)

I remember animated GIFs everywhere as well, Spinning Globes and Bouncing Mail Envelopes. Also fancy Page Counters and Guest Books.

Edited by Mort
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4 hours ago, Mort said:

Yeah I remember SVP and getting lots of Bulkpaq DVD-R media but if I really wanted a good burn it would be onto a Verbatim.

Can't remember the last time I burnt anything onto optical media now.

I do remember sites related to the MP3 media players, Winamp (it really kicks the Llamas ass), and Sonique, and spending time on the sites related to the community created visualisations and skins for both players. (MP3 files on PC was a big thing back then, we didn't have Spotify or Apple Music)

I remember animated GIFs everywhere as well, Spinning Globes and Bouncing Mail Envelopes. Also fancy Page Counters and Guest Books.

 

3 hours ago, niallquinn said:

lovefilm.com, used to borrow a few dvds a month, rip them, and send them back, and swap them with Echo and other old FF users.

Yep, same here Svp and Bulkpaq and a copy of Nero, sorted.

 

 

Used to do the same in the day also with discs from SVP. Seem to remember I had to buy discs with Taiyo Yuden or some special Azo dye, think they were normally RiDisc or Ritek. Used to use Lovefilm too, built up a great DVD-R collection... Having to decrypt the films and then remaster them without extras. Quite enjoyed it, despite being more effort than just plugging a portable HDD into the TV.

Used to use businesses like MicroDirect for PC bits, they died years back. 

 

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Currently owned digitals : T7 Encore, T7 Original, Astra iPub and Storm Street Casino.

MFME cabinets : Genesis cab DIY by No1Stoney, Interplay conversion and Vegas Strip conversion (both are works in progress!)

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Lowering the tone of the thread/place, but there were a couple of controversial ones as well, which I only visited out of curiosity, once or maybe twice.

Rate My *** .com, showing toilet bowls let's say and the one which showed, murder scenes and accident scene pictures, *ot*en.com

Hope I haven't offended anyone, but those two were well known sites in the late 90's.

No intention of looking to see if they still exist, because they were disgusting.

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 19/06/2021 at 05:09, wearecity said:

Lowering the tone of the thread/place, but there were a couple of controversial ones as well, which I only visited out of curiosity, once or maybe twice.

Rate My *** .com, showing toilet bowls let's say and the one which showed, murder scenes and accident scene pictures, *ot*en.com

Hope I haven't offended anyone, but those two were well known sites in the late 90's.

No intention of looking to see if they still exist, because they were disgusting.

What about the other shock sites? One in particular "you spin me right round baby right round..."

 

Used to use bigpockets.co.uk for my media and the like!

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I used to order loads off stuff off Play.com but it closed down around 2011-2012, didn't matter to be honest especially with all the torrent sites floating about whether public or private so had to learn another avenue very quickly.

 

Zippy🤐

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11 hours ago, slasher said:

What about the other shock sites? One in particular "you spin me right round baby right round..."

 

Used to use bigpockets.co.uk for my media and the like!

I don't know the spin me right round baby site, but it did remind me of the internet sensation, the dancing baby, that went what we now call viral back in the late 90's.

http://www.dancing-baby.net/BabyMus1.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dancing_baby

I seem to remember I even bought a disk where you could get the baby do different dances, also with screensavers/backgrounds etc on it.

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Meat spin dot com - warning definitely not safe for work or family

 

What about

-badger badger badger mushroom mushroom 

-do what you want cos a pirate is free (lol limewire)

-look at my horse, my horse is amazing

-splish splash I was taking a bath 

 

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