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Netscape, We Hardly Knew Ye...

In 1995, I started using email. In my first college days, my friend Virge anointed me with a playful email handle - toddity. She never told me that your email address was somewhat permanent, and I spent the rest of my university days with an username that amused most who got a message from good, old Eudora. At that time, I used Netscape as my web browser.

Fast forward almost 15 years. I moved on first to Internet Explorer (Microsoft had a monopolistic hand in it), and then to Firefox from which I am penning this blog entry. Somewhere along the way, Netscape was acquired by AOL and sent down the river on a slow obsolescence. Until next week, when Netscape will end up on the scrap heap with Prodigy, Compuserve, and Excite@Home.

How much the internet has changed. I can wax poetically on blogs and social networks, but I can also remember messageboards, usenets, IM, forums, web 1.0, HTML, and the world wide web when www. was a foreign concept. The concept is still the same - connecting to the world through a common language. The kids will never know Netscape, but they will know each other better than we could have imagined in the heady 1990's when Eudora was my lifeline and toddity was something of a novelty.

Comments

TheNeedyMother said…
Ok, Todd. I kid you not when I say that only a month ago, I cleaned out my computer and found a bunch of emails from my Eudora from... you!! Yes, in my current computer, imported from my old one, I had a tiny, tiny sliver of Todd's thoughts circa 1996... holy cow!
00:21
Todd said…
Crazy! It is funny how your mind brings back these memories, which take on a different color when you look back - Eudora, Eudora...
12:49
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