ResearchBuzz: FirehoseTechCrunch: Digg lays off staff and shuts down app as company retools. “The startup had set out to offer an alternative to existing community forums, where people could post and share links, media, and text, and engage in topical discussions. But while Digg had clever ideas on how to better moderate content and verify that users were who they claimed to be, the company admits it was overwhelmed […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/03/15/techcrunch-digg-lays-off-staff-and-shuts-down-app-as-company-retools/
Spotted on LinkedIn: public.monster. It’s a 1990s-style Web host. From the About page: “Back in the 90s, you could just drop some HTML files in your ~/public_html folder and BAM — your site was live for the whole world to see. No build steps. No frameworks. No deployment pipelines. Just pure, unfiltered creativity. We want that feeling back.”
Alex Plescan: Just for fun: animating a mosaic of 90s GIFs. “…let’s go behind the scenes of how the GIF mosaic came together. We’ll look at sourcing the GIFs, cleaning them up so they’re safe for public display, and animating them.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/09/17/just-for-fun-animating-a-mosaic-of-90s-gifs-alex-plescan/
Geeks Are Sexy: From 300 bps to 56K: The Glorious Noise of Getting Online. “Remember when the internet screamed at you before letting you online? Youtuber Retrocet has preserved the full symphony of dial-up modems in a compilation that takes us on a journey from the snail-paced 300 bps connections to the lightning-fast (at the time) 56K. Each shriek, screech, and static hiss is historically […]
Tom’s Hardware: AOL will end dial-up internet service in September, 34 years after its debut — AOL Shield Browser and AOL Dialer software will be shuttered on the same day. “AOL, now a Yahoo! property, will end its dial-up internet service, the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN)-based internet connectivity service, on September 30, 2025. Its dial-up service has been publicly available […]
Spotted on Reddit: MP3.com Archive Search. “There are a few different archives of the audio files from MP3.com but I don’t think any of them are as complete as this one. Artist and song links go to mp3-2003.computer-legacy.com which hosts a copy of the skeleton (some song pages seem to be missing). This website and the skeleton it is based on do not include any audio, instead I embedded the […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/08/08/spotted-on-reddit-mp3-com-archive-search/
Boing Boing: Wondering how to waste time online like a champion? Try the Bored Button. “The Bored Button is a fun way to explore the internet randomly. The bored button will take you to an entertaining website, many of which remind me of the earlier days of the web in their simplicity. I’ve spent way too long clicking away at the bored button, getting distracted by the novelty sites it takes […]
Andy Bell: I think I need to change my attitude towards webrings. “I’ve always been a bit meh about webrings but I’ve noticed they’ve evolved a bit, like this one. I clicked through to Ariel’s site because I knew she would have nailed the UI for that typically, footer-based nav. Imagine my surprise when I found this interesting alternative instead.”
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/04/25/andy-bell-i-think-i-need-to-change-my-attitude-towards-webrings/
Found in my RSS feeds: GeoCities.live. Turn any Web pages into a 1990s GeoCities blink fest. Lots of fun.
Indieseek: OMG Look at All the Linkblogs!. “A year or two ago, the linkblog category of the directory was pretty dead. There were one or two active and a couple of legacy linkblogs, but not much had changed since blogs fell out of favor. Well there has been a blog revival, and a few other things happening and it seems like a whole bunch of quality linkblogs have come across my desk in the […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2025/03/30/indieseek-omg-look-at-all-the-linkblogs/