Surfing the web like it's 1999

We're browsing screensavers, browser themes, eBay in the 90s, AIM away messages, 90s tech trends and Y2K prep.
Back in the 90s, surfing the web felt different. Browsing wasn’t influenced by algorithms. We stumbled across websites and topics that wouldn’t have been surfaced to us otherwise. And webpages had fewer ads with more content per square inch. It felt like the entire world was available to us for the first time. I’m taking a look at a few of my favorite websites from 1999. We’ll be using the Wayback Machine to browse the web. The Wayback Machine's archive was much more limited in the '90s than it is today, so some of these webpages were archived in the very early 2000s, but we'll get close enough.
00:00 Intro
00:26 Browsing screensavers for download
02:27 Do I already have MALWARE?!
02:27 Internet Explorer skins
03:38 eBay in 1999 feels the same as today
03:43 eBay laptops
04:01 eBay PDAs
04:48 eBay PC games
05:19 eBay "Internet games"
05:39 eBay Other Hardware was weird
06:19 eBay thoughts
06:30 Boing Boing
07:17 Quick stop at Amazon in 1999
07:35 AIM away messages
08:33 AIM tricks (no ads?)
08:59 AIM profiles were early social media
10:10 90s tech tends and predictions
10:17 Apple ditches the floppy
10:36 USB was still new
10:57 MP3s getting DRM?
11:23 Bands release albums on ZIP DISKS
11:39 Best tech of 1999: Games, Hardware, Consumer Tech, Apps
12:47 Y2K prep
13:43 Wrapping up
#retrocomputing #retrotech #earlyweb #oldweb #90s #internetexplorer #msie

[@sskento]

I bought Final Fantasy 7 for PC back in the early 2000s on eBay. It showed up in a plain box with burned CDs with the "ff7 disc 1" "ff7 disc 2" etc. written on the CD-Rs. None of it worked, haha. eBay did refund me and I bought a different one that worked great. But I think about it every time someone mentions ebay or ff7

[@RetroTechDreams]

Haha that sounds like an authentic early eBay buying experience. Glad you got a refund!

[@TherronKeen]

I'm curious if maybe they sent you a playable rip of the PS1 discs made to be played in an emulator! me and my friends had a lot of "backup" copies of PS1 games back in the day

[@hornick18]

My favorite one back when I was a kid was the screensaver that "melted" the screen.

[@MarioGoatse]

I remember back in the day looking at 66mhz CPUs thinking that no CPU would ever get to 1ghz. That's just insane! 1TB hard drives were even more of a dream. Then all of a sudden technology started blasting past at break neck speed. Your top of the line PC would be considered within a year or so.

[@seanc.5310]

Once Pentium chips dropped things just started taking off like crazy with clock speed

[@_xtel]

I remember sitting in class and calculating how many floppies I’d need to equal 1TB. My young brain couldn’t handle that at the time.

[@xryanxrulezx]

Man.. the Sony Aibo.. and RealPlayer!!! That was my main before Winamp!

[@CoolStory-Bro]

I had Voodoo 3 years before we got the internet. In 1999 the net ment nothing to me. Good times. Thanks man.

[@WyMustIGo]

1996 was when I first wrote code to stream video over the internet. It was a few years after the time we switched from porting Imagine 3D on the Amiga to the PC back when I worked at Impulse. The 70s-2000 was the real tech revolution... In the 70s our internet was mainly Usenet and also services such as Compuserve and Delphi, and of course the BBS scene.

[@RetroTechDreams]

Streaming video in 1996?! You were on the leading edge.

[@WyMustIGo]

@@RetroTechDreams Yep, streaming video in 1996 over the internet. Was done around the same time we made the non linear video editing system (The Edimator).

[@digl_live]

This channel is going to blow up soon. Ain't no way this is only 1k views worthy.

[@RetroTechDreams]

Thanks! Really appreciate it!

[@MacBack123]

I agree, i thought this was from a channel with around 100K subs! Turns out only 1K! This is very incredible production!

[@RetroTechDreams]

Thank you! It’s been a lot of fun putting these videos together. Lots more content on the way.

[@HvZ08]

Love this kind of look back at the past. Maybe it wasn't all bad

[@ImJCyo]

God this was an era for sure. I miss it, but I also don't miss how slow things were back then.

[@spungbopscarepans]

when a 40+ year old website about a screensaver looks more visually appealing than anything nowadays

[@RetroTechDreams]

Haha right?

[@email6743]

40?

[@DSOSCE]

downloading screensavers from unknown sources was the fastest way to get malware on your pc back in the day :D

[@RetroTechDreams]

And now I’m nostalgic for it 😄

[@philipmurphy2]

Good thing about them times is no social media as of yet, especially Facebook

[@Adam814cool-retro]

liked and subbed :D amazing editing! also, kewl channel icon. :P

[@RetroTechDreams]

Thank you!

[@rhyses_]

3:43 and on made me realize how, as a kid, I fell in love with computing so much. The crazy selection of interesting and unique devices all a page away was a spectacle to browse. I miss this era of computing so much

[@RetroTechDreams]

I still want to buy all of them!

[@_xtel]

Believe it or not, we use to buy/sell AOL/AIM accounts. This is how I got my handle now. 3 & 4 letter screen names were hard to come by. “xtel” is one I bought and never resold. Ahh, the good ole days.

[@xBINARYGODx]

those aim websites are the not early social media - AIM itself and your AOL profile were. I dont think most people even remember linking to a site unless it was for pictures that would be less easy for someone to steal in some way.

[@schwiftynintendonerd]

The science elf Did a realy cool setup where you just use the Internet like normal but its setup in the background with the wayback machine but you don't have the faff problem of using it if that makes sense I highly recommend the video

[@kevdogyt08ti]

Oh yeah, back when I was a teenager... Ah, memories...

[@RetroTechDreams]

Same

[@lahuk1194]

I don't think I was online in 1999 (I was kid) but went online a few years later and I do just about remember sites looking like these. Its nice to see the Internet like this; it looks more real, more fun, definitely more unique. I wish the Internet still looked and felt like this, just with the tech improvements we have now.

[@RetroTechDreams]

And with the high-speed, always online Internet access we have today

[@lahuk1194]

@@RetroTechDreams High speed yes, always online not quite. I'd prefer the internet was a bit less mobile, more than in 1999, but less than it is now.

[@homogenized]

This was great!

[@RetroTechDreams]

Thank you!

[@amadeusfuzz4320]

i spotted diablo! best game ever

[@mr.clorox]

Cool sauce

[@protophase]

Yesss make me feel old! Keep the videos coming.

[@RetroTechDreams]

Thanks!

[@itsrickyschannel.]

8:58 - Today I learned about 90's web tools that act similarly to the modern Cardd or LinkTree

[@RetroTechDreams]

Turns out all we wanted was just a simple way to post online

[@itsrickyschannel.]

@@RetroTechDreams So true.

[@ja2347]

Whats the title of the sound track you are using in the background?

[@RetroTechDreams]

It’s all music from Epidemic Sound

[@ja2347]

@@RetroTechDreams Thank you

[@xXBlueSheepXx]

KZbin algorithm working good today

[@RetroTechDreams]

Haha thanks!

[@kofteburger]

Hmm Neoplanet.

[@grapeswithcapes8314]

Subbed at 1.5k! I'm an early adopter

[@RetroTechDreams]

Thank you!

[@LeonardGr]

What about SITO, that art collab site? I'm trying to revive that site

[@RetroTechDreams]

I’ve never heard of it, thanks for the rec!

[@tenebrisity6170]

Great vid.

[@RetroTechDreams]

Thanks! Really appreciate it!

[@tenebrisity6170]

@@RetroTechDreams i have a recommendation for a video. I forget the sites name, however it is a random old website browser, it has something to do with finding non-html sites if i remember correctly? And it'll randomly put you on sites from the 90s to 2000s. I was saddened once because i found a blog of a cancer patient, he ended up dying... It was updated by his family to say so.

[@RetroTechDreams]

Was it Wiby.me with the “Surprise Me” button? I played with it at the beginning of this video: The best websites for retro fans kzbin.info/www/bejne/nHi5emeQqpZqiK8

[@tenebrisity6170]

@@RetroTechDreams THANK YOU! I HAD LOST IT!

[@RetroTechDreams]

Glad we could figure it out!

[@user-zw9gf6if8s]

damn, I miss that

[@RetroTechDreams]

Same

[@galaxycraft0075]

I badly want to see how to get something to make your windows 10 ui look like windows 95/98 without hacking stuff.

[@nmac101]

theres a program called retrobar that makes your taskbar look like the windows 9x one. you can also make it look like xp or vista

[@galaxycraft0075]

@@nmac101 Alright, thanks.

[@spootymaniacs]

as above comment said, retrobar is a program that does that, theres also: OpenShell, WindowBlinds, and Start11

[@sstrick500]

Who else had AOL bills of $300+ dollars? 5 hours for $9.99 and $3 each additional hour

[@RetroTechDreams]

The AOL hourly pricing was ridiculous

[@fallout4enjoyer]

You should do a CRT tv mod with led screen in stead of crt

[@RetroTechDreams]

Haha great idea

[@arthur-Ludwig]

Can I contact you through emails?

[@RetroTechDreams]

Feel free to contact me on Twitter

[@0dec0de]

very interesting content

[@RetroTechDreams]

Thanks!