Public Address | Cafe | Stories: The Internet

Kyle Matthews

Thu, 23 Oct 2008 15:04:30 +1300

For those who want to poke around in the book, but don't own a copy, it's reproduced here on a wiki (which seems to make it editable, which could be interesting).

I presume done so with the permission of the publishers/author.

ropata

Mon, 22 Sept 2008 20:16:02 +1200

@Russell,
Re: your Solution 6 story, http://publicaddress.net/system/topic,1304,stories_the_internet.sm?p=65842#post65842

I worked for those guys in Auckland for a couple of years, '98-'00
I knew a lot of people caught up in the dotcom frenzy buying up wayyy too many shares in Sol6. Even though the BBC's chief financial reporter advised people to…

Juha Saarinen

Fri, 19 Sept 2008 14:04:03 +1200

We (Damon, Nick and me, AKA Xerxes Ltd) wrote the first graphical installer for ICONZ, complete with Netscape 0.99, Windows Trumpet PPP dialer etc.

So you, Damon and Nick were responsible for that pair of floppies. I remember sitting in a serviced apartment after arriving in Auckland, wondering if the…

giovanni tiso

Fri, 12 Sept 2008 17:09:50 +1200

I'm always on the lookout for horror stories involving the Internet, and I'm struck by the fact that – asked to come up with worst moments – pretty much nobody has (myself included, I'd hasten to add), save for a hint by Rob I think and maybe one other. So…

Jason Kemp

Wed, 03 Sept 2008 19:38:36 +1200

The great thing with the internet is not having to physically be somewhere else for a meeting or activity. This is a major change that is helped by mobile phones and the like.

Back in the late '80's I worked in Australia and the UK and had to fly every…

FletcherB

Wed, 03 Sept 2008 08:20:44 +1200

I do like the idea of still being able to go places where you can escape the broadcast technologies and the Internet. In theory.

I think it would be nice if anyone who wanted to connect or be contactable was able to.... no matter how small or distant their location.…

Jason Dykes

Wed, 03 Sept 2008 07:58:37 +1200

I know. They really need to sort out their connectivity there! I think maybe the high hills separating the coastal strip from the Wairarapa valley will prevent it though.

I do like the idea of still being able to go places where you can escape the broadcast technologies and the…

Jackie Clark

Tue, 02 Sept 2008 16:23:56 +1200

Oh, Jason. That's just sad.

Jason Dykes

Tue, 02 Sept 2008 13:21:35 +1200

6 days of trying to figure out what we used to do before...

About three years ago my partner and I rented a place on the Wairarapa Coast to get away from it all for five days. I was surprised how far you can actually drive beyond Martinborough – places…

andrew llewellyn

Mon, 01 Sept 2008 15:28:05 +1200

Ian Llewellyn said:

Not quite an internet experience, but my first with computers. My father is a genius and back in the 1970s he built a machine that played Pong.

Interesting – I was reading these without checking who said what, I thought to myself, hey, my uncle did that…

Bart Janssen

Mon, 01 Sept 2008 13:48:24 +1200

At the other end of the spectrum.

Today faults got our broadband and phone back online after 6 days.

6 days of trying to figure out what we used to do before...

It's time like the last few days that made me realise how embedded the internet is in our…

Rob Hosking

Mon, 01 Sept 2008 08:53:34 +1200

If you really get a kick out of this you a probably wearing glasses. I know I am ;-)

Yes to both. It sounds like a kind of Red Dwarf for data.

Which brings me to my internet stories:

Firstly, I'm going to voluntarily disqualify myself from any prize thingy.…

Sam F

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 15:12:10 +1200

Wow – a lot of people really have had meaningful, intense experiences involving the Net. Respect to you guys.

My experience with the Internet has been pretty much completely ordinary. We had no computer at all in our household until 1997, which was when I got to joyfully stuff away…

Jackie Clark

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 14:03:38 +1200

But I really hooked into it in 1994. It was a sad time for us; we were struggling with infertility, not yet sure about what to do, not even really comprehending what had happened to us. That was the year that I discovered that the shower is a good place…

Stephen Judd

Sat, 30 Aug 2008 08:57:46 +1200

And that was when the whole country was on a 256k pipe.

Most of which I chomped up on day on the help desk at Waikato when I got wind of the exploding whale video, which I must have been one of the first people in NZ to see.

I…

Deborah

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 23:55:57 +1200

1987, sort of, when I was writing an Honours dissertation in Accounting and Finance (I used to be an accountant, which accounts for the somewhat tense looking cat), and one of the somewhat nerdy but nevertheless interesting men in the class was able to access the computer at home via…

Kumara Republic

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 22:38:03 +1200

My entry in the Otago Uni Arana Hall yearbook, circa 1998:

"Come back at 1am when I've rolled out my 15m modem extension cable."

Russell Brown

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 17:16:54 +1200

The info must have been stored at the organisation's subsidiary in Wellington, I told myself, because it couldn't possibly have come all the way from America in that time. It was some weeks before a colleague could convince me otherwise.

And that was when the whole country was on a…

RBentley

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 16:12:06 +1200

I worked for a research organisation that, in the late 80s or perhaps early 90s, hooked up to the Internet through IBM ATs. On the first occasion I used the Internet connection to access information held in the US I thought it would take some minutes to retrieve, but amazingly…

Che Tibby

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:04:24 +1200

i'm looking at my flatmate and saying, "you've got a what? a modem?

"does this mean we can hack into the US military establishment and start a world war? because, well, i'm a little bored today."

it's 1992 and he's got an external modem that he plugs the phone line…

Hiro Protagonist

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:51:43 +1200

Memorable stuff for me:

My first experience programming a computer ~1974 using port-a-punch fortran. Waiting a week for the printout to come back only to discover a syntax error.

Going online to videotex at 1200/75 with chunky 'graphics'.

Hacking 1200/75 videotex modems to enable operation at 300bps to access bulletin…

Kyle Matthews

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 14:32:24 +1200

I first went online in 1994 when the University of Otago started handing out stonebow email addresses to students. The Stonebow is one of the two bridges that crosses the Brandywine river in the Shire (the pop server was brandywine).

For a few weeks it seems relatively useless. It was…

George Darroch

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 12:56:50 +1200

By comparison to most here, I was a late adopter.

My first time on the internet was at MOTAT, the museum of science and technology, in 1996. There was an exhibition of various amazing technologies, and the internet was one. I was a 12 year old at the time, and…

Jason Dykes

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:51:36 +1200

I'm a believer.

In 1988 I was in a university politics class using SPSSX software to analyse election results. I had logged in to the computer using my name. My lecturer was talking to us all, showing how to prove quantitatively that farmers were more likely to vote National and…

Mysterex

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:15:43 +1200

My treasured memory is the first time I was smacked for downloading too much from the 'internet', in 1985.

I had been working with the first PCs since 1982 as an MBasic programmer and got hired by Digital in 1984 to support their Rainbow PC. For $10K you got a…

Danielle

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:13:18 +1200

MST3K... now *there* was a show.

giovanni tiso

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 11:10:08 +1200

By about 1993 I was reading newsgroups on the Waikato VAX cluster and came across alt.tv.mst3k (about Mystery Science Theater 3000), when I asked what on earth this was all about somebody sent me tapes from the US.

Sigh. I so miss Usenet.

Julian Melville

Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:56:11 +1200

In about 1989 I was doing a communications software course at Waikato University in which we used a Unix box. I remember being told not to message or annoy one particular user if we saw him on there because he was connecting from (Cornell? Princeton? somewhere like that) to use…

nic.wise

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 21:02:58 +1200

@grumpykiwi:

Also contrary to the above, I actually wrote the first graphical installer for ICONZ in late 1994, at Jeremy's request, using a very early version of VB. Since I was still working for the Bank at the time, and knee deep in the Post Office integration, I didn't have…

Russell Brown

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:26:51 +1200

Without the internet we’d have remained blithely ignorant—conceding all power and authority to the doctor, just like the good old days.

Thanks for that, Paul. I know doctors probably hate it, and with some reason, but patient-empowerment via the internet can change lives, as your story shows.

My [[http://www.listener.co.nz/issue/3555/columnists/11375/the_human_condition.html|last Listener…

richard

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 15:14:52 +1200

Quoth Paul:

Am I the only one round here who used Internet in the 'eighties? When I went up to Nottingham University in 1983, I met Janet – the Joint Academic Network. Strictly speaking, she wasn't Internet but a private network of universities which plugged their Crays into one another.…

PaulM

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 12:51:11 +1200

Here's my story--and I'm telling it because it's something I think anyone who thinks they'll ever need a surgical procedure for skin cancer should be aware of. While I understand why doctors detest the internet (every hypochondriac with a mouse can tell them how to do their job) it helped…

giovanni tiso

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:40:33 +1200

What happens when the alphabet reaches it's mathematical outer limits. Will the alphabet need to have additional caricatures. there is already a tendency to add numerals to words in order to have them accepted as unique keys, in this ever increasing equation. Is the Internet a solvable; will it come…

Rob Hosking

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 11:32:00 +1200

Briefly...

It's been a love/hate relationship.

Well, more a 'I bet that's interesting'/'why the f*** am I wasting my time on this sh*t*?' relationship.

And you know, this is something which has never happened in any other part of my life, ever.

Ahem.

Danielle

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:52:23 +1200

FletcherB, another costello-ler! I thought Simon and I were the lone NZers ever on that list. (There's now a transplanted Australian who lives in ChCh, but of course he doesn't count.)

My husband-to-be was very funny and celebrity gossip-obsessed (I still dine out on the first story he ever told…

Kyle Matthews

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:03:57 +1200

Can words be copyrighted?
Yes they can.
I'm pretty sure they can't. Brand names can be trademarked, though, along with the logos.

Ah yup. Trademark I should have said.

Mark Harris

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:00:38 +1200

First? Computer club at school, c.1975, punching out chads from Portapunch Fortran cards which would then be sent to Databank for processing. If you'd been careful with the paperclip and lucky with your syntax, you'd get a printout in about a week's time.

10 years later, bought my first Commodore…

Amy Gale

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 10:00:11 +1200

Costello-l. The Elvis Costello discussion listserv.
You just can't get a nerdier starting place than that for a long-term relationship. I'm sorry. You can all try, but you will not top it. It is totally ludicrous.

Oh, lightweight city. I'll see your "we were discussing actual music, by a someone…

giovanni tiso

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:55:07 +1200

You get people like me only interested in the human condition, not the language of the Web, nor it's technological intricacies.

That's one of the marvels, isn't it? Net historians point out that the thing has deep roots going back quite a few years, but as far as most of…

FletcherB

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:52:57 +1200

No story... just relating that I too was a member of the Costello Mailing List back in 96, and remember reading Simon Griggs comments (among others) at the time... (I may have just been a lurker, cant remember if I posted?, certainly not frequently)

It's actually that list that opened…

Jackie Clark

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:39:45 +1200

See, that's what I love about human beings. Every experience is shared, yet resonates with each of us in a completely different way. As do phenomena. The Internet is, I believe, an ongoing phenomena, and it has affected us all in very different, and yet similar, ways. You have the…

Amy Gale

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 09:23:15 +1200

I know the internet industry is typically male-dominated, and back in the day it was even more male-dominated than it is now, but it was never that male-dominated.

Yeah, what does a girl have to do to get on that list, anyway? Tell off Trevor Rogers at a public meeting?…

Russell Brown

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:43:48 +1200

I still have this 2000 news story on my hard drive. Tyler had been hand-picked by Rod Deane to to launch Xtra in 1996. He was extremely intense and, it appeared, mildly crazy. He was also the source of lawsuit I mentioned upthread.

Towards the end of his time with…

giovanni tiso

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:27:53 +1200

You can't trademark a dictionary word.

You mean to say we can band together, form a computer company and send turtleneck boy to the poorhouse? I'm in!

Ach, no, Apple and the Apple logo are trademarks of Apple Computer, Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries.

You can trademark…

Russell Brown

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 08:25:39 +1200

BTW. I just looked at the list of people in the book. Why the hell are Chris Thorpe (Toph!), Jeremy Clyma, and John Clarke not mentioned?

They are, they're just not listed in the index. That seems to be the case for a lot of people, including me. I've just…

Kimberley Alford

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 06:59:06 +1200

One day in the heady summer of 1990, driving from Hamilton to Auckland in a fine Ford Cortina MK1 I picked up an interesting looking hitchhiker. Turns out he was an American student living on a houseboat somewhere on the banks of the Mississippi. We exchanged names, I told him…

grumpykiwi

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 02:15:36 +1200

I got involved with the Net around late 1993 I think. A good friend and work mate had just left the comforting embrace of ANZ to work for some company called ICONZ.

Soon after, another friend of mine from ANZ went and joined him. I was still at ANZ, but…

Robyn Gallagher

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 23:42:06 +1200

Why do they do it?
Can words be copyrighted?

It's not about copyright. It's a trademark issue.

You can't trademark a dictionary word. If I want to trademark my product called Heater, I couldn't. But if I fleshed it out into several words (Robyn's Nice Heater) or made it a…

Michael Carney

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:51:37 +1200

I bowed low before my first mainframe computer at Otago University in 1972. This was a voracious beast, feasting in the middle of the night on punchcards offered up by acolytes who all belonged to the mysterious "Operator" clan. As a novice Computer Sciences student I did try my very…

nic.wise

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:55:43 +1200

First up, I really hope that the book is on sale in mid-september, as thats when we are coming back to NZ for two weeks, and I'd love to get a copy!

My main problem with this is how to string it all together, and where to start. My memory…

Ian Llewellyn

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:43:16 +1200

Not quite an internet experience, but my first with computers. My father is a genius and back in the 1970s he built a machine that played Pong.

It saved me socially, kids flocked to be my friend

He took me to the old DSIR computer room which was capable of…

Islander

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 21:12:56 +1200

1992. The year a good friend died, and I stupidly broke my pelvis. The year I bought a PC via American Express. The year I could actually afford to do such a crazy thing. It arrived in 3 large boxes. There was a heap of instruction manuals, all in...notquiteEnglish. It…

nigel h

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 19:42:16 +1200

Very early 90s I was hunting music by a then obscure New York jazz player. Visiting NY, I tried possible record shops but could only get the one recording I already had. I couldn't find his details from the phone book.
Back home in suburban Auckland, I posted a message…

giovanni tiso

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:45:18 +1200

Can words be copyrighted?
Yes they can.

I'm pretty sure they can't. Brand names can be trademarked, though, along with the logos.

Kyle Matthews

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:35:51 +1200

Can words be copyrighted?

Yes they can.

It's also (I understand) the primary reason that PC chips changed from 286, 386 etc, to 'pentium'. You can't legally protect a number, you can protect a name.

Steve Barnes

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:49:27 +1200

Xtra: with an 'e', how else?

Snap, only I was with Woosh, not Whoosh. Why do they do it?

Paul Dowden

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:32:48 +1200

'Wow, this is going to be big" moment:
Signing up for Hotmail and finding out fifty thousand other people had it too.

Dumbest moment :
Hours of frustration setting up my first account with Telecom. I was on the phone for ages before the surprisingly patient chap asked me how…

Ray Gilbert

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 15:18:50 +1200

Am I the only one round here who used Internet in the 'eighties? When I went up to Nottingham University in 1983, I met Janet – the Joint Academic Network.

I'd forgotten all about Janet, it was still being used when I started working in the Universities in the early…

Richard Irvine

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:59:18 +1200

My university job was commercial cleaning in the Waikato University computer labs. Being a keen student of fucking around when I should be working (hey, it's what I'm doing right now), I soon discovered I could logon to the VAX computers and browse newsgroups. The first to truly grab my…

Paul Litterick

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:27:10 +1200

The first website to hold my attention was Fat Chicks in Party Hats

B Jones

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:21:34 +1200

Got my PC with modem on my student loan in 98 (back when you paid interest on it, but before they stopped you taking lump sums). The first few months were pretty dull, with a bit of faffing round on email and the alt newsgroups, although I was taken aback…

Russell Brown

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:20:34 +1200

One Saturday in 1997, I joined my friend Andrew Black and several others at his corporate reserve seating for a test match at Eden Park. Until recently, the corporate reserve seats were the blocks in the middle of the South Stand, with a fridge at the end of each.

As…

Peter Darlington

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:20:28 +1200

First: 1991 at National Library as part of TuiaNet planning

Worst: Heh, so many. Using any Netscape browser from v4 onwards. Pointcast News anyone? The Iridium satellite network, pretty cool actually, just burn that money in a great big bonfire...

Actually, the thing I remember best was bringing Internet into…

Robyn Gallagher

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:10:42 +1200

Am I the only one round here who used Internet in the 'eighties?

I used Pacnet in the late '80s. I don't remember much about it though. I do remember being able to access the vehicle registration database thing back then, and looking up the license plates of the cars…

giovanni tiso

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:03:23 +1200

Am I also the only person alive who uses an apostrophe for truncated words like 'eighties or 'cello?

I know at least one person who uses it for 'phone.

Kyle Matthews

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 14:01:31 +1200

I think we can say confidently that cello has become a word in itself.

And eighties is already a word in itself, the reference to the decade is only one possible use.

Paul Litterick

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:36:48 +1200

Am I the only one round here who used Internet in the 'eighties? When I went up to Nottingham University in 1983, I met Janet – the Joint Academic Network. Strictly speaking, she wasn't Internet but a private network of universities which plugged their Crays into one another.

And so…

Robyn Gallagher

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 13:20:31 +1200

I was thinking back, trying to remember what my "wow" moment was when I thought, "Hey! This interweb this is amazing!!!!" But I couldn't think of such a moment.

Then I realised – the internet has never been an amazing new technological innovation for me. As soon as I first…

Anne M

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:47:11 +1200

In 1993 or 1994 when I was finishing my PhD I discovered the .alt newsgroups. I have NO idea how, the only interwebby access we were meant to have was for molecular biologists checking their DNA sequences on BLAST. And I wasn't one of them. But no matter, I was…

Gareth Ward

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:32:26 +1200

I completely forget the first time I stumbled across the intertubes (wouldn't even know what year, possibly 1998 or so?).
I have no idea what HTML/Java/Silverlight is (although am regularly astounded by the beauty my brother can conjur with the technical pixies).
RSS STILL confuses me (I signed in to…

Geoff Lealand

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:28:49 +1200

My first encounters with computers were a matter of fear and trembling. I had started a PhD in the American Culture PhD Program at Bowling Green State University (25 miles down I-25 from Toledo, Ohio), living on a teaching fellowship which kept me quite well in bagels, onion rings and…

Simon Grigg

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 12:20:42 +1200

You just can't get a nerdier starting place than that for a long-term relationship. I'm sorry. You can all try, but you will not top it. It is totally ludicrous

Ahh the post I was waiting for in this thread.....

To be honest, I didn't know Costello-l was still trucking…

Adrian Wills

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:52:59 +1200

My first time... who could forget:
It was using Netscape Navigator on our brand new family Apple PowerPC circa 1997, at the ripe age of about 14. In front of me sat what seemed like (and still does) an endless stream of free information, far superior to that of the…

giovanni tiso

Mon, 25 Aug 2008 11:46:20 +1200

I met my husband in 1997, in what may be *the* nerdiest place on the internet:
Costello-l. The Elvis Costello discussion listserv.
You just can't get a nerdier starting place than that for a long-term relationship. I'm sorry. You can all try, but you will not top it. It is…

Jackie Clark

Sun, 24 Aug 2008 16:40:02 +1200

I met my husband in 1997, in what may be *the* nerdiest place on the internet:

I think that just may be one of the sweetest things I've ever heard. See, that's what I love about the Internet as social tool. It brings people together who may not have otherwise…

Kyle Matthews

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 15:28:45 +1200

One of them used to be a lecturer of mine.

Is it a gallery of people influential on the internet in some way, or just strange looking?

Steve Barnes

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 14:59:55 +1200

And. On second look, I'm sure some of those pix are of the same person, or do they "All look the same to me" ;-)

Steve Barnes

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 13:02:03 +1200

OMG, here they are The men of the Internet

And 29 out of the 39 wear glasses. Is there a conclusion to be drawn there?
I wonder.

Anypoo. For all those of you that have lost stuff on the interweb and wonder where it went, have a look at [[http://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/mobp/…

Isabel Hitchings

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:43:29 +1200

I spent 1998 sick with glandular fever. I remember very little of that year but one thing I do recall is creeping into my flatmate's bedroom while she was at work and 'borrowing' her computer and internet connection. I really don't know what I was looking at back then but…

Danielle

Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:27:22 +1200

I may not know one end of usenet from the other; I may have taken an embarrassingly long time to work out what an RSS feed was; I may get thoroughly confused by pretty much every technical aspect of the tubes. But there is one internetty thing I have on…

Russell Brown

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:37:46 +1200

Only 17 of those names are women, and six of those are politicians

No Lin_Nah?

Kumara Republic

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:00:25 +1200

In the pre-broadband era, taking advantage of Freenet and ZFree to the max until the loopholes were closed. Including all-nighter sessions of Camper-Strike and the earliest P2P programs. And I haven't yet mentioned when Otago Uni IT dept started relaxing its Internet access policy...

Robyn Gallagher

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 16:48:31 +1200

I had a look at this page about Connecting the Clouds. It has a (non-exhaustive) list of 191 people who appear in the book. Only 17 of those names are women, and six of those are politicians.

I know the internet industry is typically male-dominated, and back in the day…

Ray Gilbert

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:54:35 +1200

1993 I think. With the help of the IT guy at work on our new SG workstation.

I got access to various .alt newsgroups and archives which contained access to all sorts of information in the days before there was any sort of regulation.

Some of the stuff (all non…

pacap

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 15:32:35 +1200

the internet....
early 90's using x-modem to sending 2mb dev files to Australia over 9k6 circuit at 2am cause it'd only take a few hours. The pain of it all

.... then Bulletin boards...with these strange gateway options to other bulletin boards

driving into Mayoral drive to get the disk…

Bart Janssen

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:57:33 +1200

You know I’m bit unsure of the actual dates, but looking back at the test match records it must have been the summer of ‘93/94. I was a newly minted scientist and I was already pretty familiar with the internet. We did things like download DNA sequences and of course…

Ladymink

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:37:25 +1200

I think we got our first modem sometime back in 1994 or 5, it took up to ten minutes to download our first current affrairs webpage- much quicker to just read a newspaper back then. I seem to recall our ISP was a small outfit called ICONZ or something similar.…

Rus Holland

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 13:39:24 +1200

The Grok Parties under the Civic in Auckland
(went to both – still got the smart card somewhere)

Patrick O'Brian and DomaiNZ sueing Alan Brown
(following the discussions and cross postings (sic) on usenet)

Rex at Waikato issueing domain names within an hour (or two) if he wasn't busy -…

Kyle Matthews

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:57:39 +1200

Should I get run over by a truck, there's a list of people I've never met that my partner has to tell.

I was having this same discussion with an ex-girlfriend who I met via the internet, and who lives overseas. I'm now going to add a page to my…

Emma Hart

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:38:39 +1200

So last year I got her a new machine and now all she has to do is sit down and turn it on; within a few seconds the grandchildren appear thanks to the magic of Skype. And it still seems almost unfair, that it should be so easy, that it…

giovanni tiso

Fri, 22 Aug 2008 12:12:03 +1200

I’ve never been a cellphone sort of guy. I freely admitted from the outset that I would eventually own one, but I’ve never felt liberated or otherwise blessed with the idea of being able to ping my friends and foes on the move. But there was something truly quite exhilarating…

Jackie Clark

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 19:38:52 +1200

I've been online for about 13 years I think. It started with discovering chat rooms – one was a pagan one that I just wandered into, and enjoyed their company so much, I was a regular for a few months. I once was a member of a NZ chat room.…

Russell Brown

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 15:05:39 +1200

Your first time, your worst time, and every moment in between. To mark the publication of Connecting the Clouds, Keith Newman's new history of the New Zealand Internet, we're offering five copies of the book, heaps of Eden coffee and an internet-capable Nokia mobile phone for the best stories about…