
Google BBS Terminal – What Google would have looked like in the 80s - xearl
http://www.masswerk.at/googleBBS/
======
wickedchicken
As an aside, both Twitter and Google+ are browsable from lynx. Facebook? not
so much:

<http://www.facebook.com/DunkinDonuts>

<https://plus.google.com/117936580045594333068/posts>

<https://twitter.com/dunkindonuts>

~~~
cydonian_monk
About a year ago the opposite was true - Facebook was almost fully functional
over lynx (or links2 in my case), while Twitter was... less so. (And obviously
G+ wasn't.)

~~~
dhimes
Interesting. A few years back it wouldn't work in Lynx at all- but they
returned an error explaining that and included the message "Keep it real."

~~~
cydonian_monk
I must've caught a window where it worked. I recall it was always the mobile
version of Facebook, and it couldn't detect the browser. May be one of the
differences between lynx and links2.

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cs702
This is not just a work of art, but also a labor of love. It deserves to
become a museum installation.

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sleighboy
That scroll speed needs to slow waaayyyy down. BBSing with a 14.4k modem was
rarely that fast. If it was in the 80's, that'd probably make the common speed
in the area of 2400 or 9600.

~~~
tallanvor
And how many people would have had a color monitor back then?

~~~
KC8ZKF
Many people had color monitors in the 1980s. For values of "monitors" that
include television sets. The Commodore 64 and Vic 20 were color, as was the
Tandy CoCo. Lots of others as well.

~~~
aidenn0
I opted for a hercules monochrome that was higher resolution than the color
alternatives.

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codezero
I'm pretty sure Google would have had some hot ANSI art by ACiD, not the
colorized ascii.

The API quota is exceeded for search but not for "L" I'm feeling lucky.

~~~
stevetursi
I Said the same thing to my friend. His response, "Yeah.. and Yahoo, trying to
be all hip, would have an iCE logo..."

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troels
It wouldn't make new connection sounds while searching though.

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mtkd
I could see RMS using that all the time.

~~~
chimeracoder
Actually, he apparently uses an email interface to wget:
<http://www.stallman.org/stallman-computing.html>

... I'm not sure if that supports or contradicts your point....

~~~
gpmcadam
That's not what he says.

    
    
        I have several free web browsers on my laptop,  
        but I generally do not look at web sites from  
        my own machine, aside from a few sites operated  
        for or by the GNU Project, FSF or me. I fetch  
        web pages from other sites by sending mail to a  
        program that fetches them, much like wget, and  
        then mails them back to me.
    

He's saying, much _like_ wget (in as much as it is used to fetch a page and
return the result as text) he sends an email asking for a web page which then
responds with the page contents.

Now, as to why he does this, I have no idea. Thoughts anyone?

~~~
jacquesm
My guess is that he has added a price to following a link in order to reduce
his information consumption because he realizes that without a cost there is
the risk of gorging on things that he actually doesn't have the time for.

By artificially increasing the amount of effort required for reading a page
(adding a resistance, such as a relatively complicated procedure for fetching
the page) the hidden cost becomes much more visible.

------
kleiba
Mandatory link to Jason Scott's awesome documentary on BBS's:
<http://www.bbsdocumentary.com/>

~~~
iamgoat
Thanks for the recommendation. I've been meaning to get the LAMP documentary,
but will get both now. Things were so simple, yet complex back then.

------
pooriaazimi
I like how it runs 'C:/DOS/BBS/GOOGLE/google.com'

:) _.COM_ was (on of?) DOS executable file extension(s) - before _.EXE_...

~~~
jspiral
Completely irrelevant of course, but iirc COM is a raw binary, smaller than
64k that can be loaded into memory and started by pointing execution at offset
100h.

EXE files were larger and had to be rebased by the OS on load.

Someone tell me if i got this wrong, it's been a while!

~~~
derleth
No, you got it right: COM files were raw binary dumps of code and data, a
legacy from CP/M, whereas EXE files had the MZ magic number (for Mark
Zbikowski) and enough data in the header to allow relocation.

Also, COM files in VMS are the equivalent of BAT files in MS-DOS and shell
scripts in Unix-like OSes.

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mixmastamyk
Yep, 5 minutes to download a very dithered .gif of Elle Macpherson in a wet
t-shirt. Good memories. Also noticable that computers back then were usable at
night with their black backgrounds.

------
jrsmith1279
What an awesome time in computing history. I sometimes find myself judging
other IT guys by whether or not they have ever used a BBS.

~~~
lurkinggrue
How about if they RAN a BBS.

~~~
dgabriel
My mom would not shell out for a second phone line. :(

~~~
evincarofautumn
There is such quintessential geek pathos in this little phrase.

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orbitingpluto
Anyone else type Ctrl-A H in an attempt to leave the page?

~~~
spydum
I was really hoping to see a response to +++ATH0 No dice.

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johngalt
Wow, good enough to give me flashbacks to my old days as SysOp. Needs more
door games. LORD and Tradewars anyone?

~~~
wazoox
You certainly should try "Digital, a love story":
<http://scoutshonour.com/digital/>

~~~
joeyh
An excellent game. Along with telehack (<http://telehack.com/>), oldusenet
(<http://olduse.net/>), and now this, semi-accurate emulation of the 80's
online really seems to be catching on lately.

(disclaimer: I did olduse.net)

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joshu
the modem wouldn't re-make the carrier noises after connection.

~~~
sopooneo
Why did modems bother to output those noises to the user anyway?

~~~
ranit8
Think what would happen if the number is wrong and other side of the line has
a phone, instead of a faxmodem. A human attends the call.

Or am I wrong and that is the noise you are sending to them? Now I'm curious.

~~~
joshu
This sounds right to me.

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rollypolly
The screeching sound gave me goosebumps! :)

~~~
shabble
My first thought was "It doesn't sound quite right", but then I remembered I
was expecting the v90/56K handshake[1] with the BU-BONG BONG BONG near the
end.

[1] <http://808hi.com/audio/conexantwm.mp3>

~~~
StCroix
Ah that brings back memories

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jaysonelliot
This really makes me want to fire up the Contiki browser on my Apple ][ -
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMzgp7xTp1k>

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Tipzntrix
This is a fine piece of work. I like all the ASCII art too!

~~~
jrsmith1279
The ASCII art caught my eye too. I can't help but think about all of the fun I
had with ANSI art using TheDraw. Ahh, the good 'ol days!

~~~
DanBC
Putting ANSI escape sequences for BLINK in the label of a floppy was fun, and
annoying.

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melipone
I love it. Why does it bring such warm and fuzzy feelings? The result of my
lucky feeling search brought up a wikipedia page. It was such a let down.

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gbvb
That is Beautiful!Now, can we get that on emacs..:)

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webnzi
Awesome! Brings back so many memories...

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tambourine_man
Unless you had a Mac.

~~~
feefie
Red Ryder / Red Ryder Host FTW -
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Ryder_%28software%29>

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mkramlich
What I like about this the most is that it reminds us just how much real work,
real information, real stuff can get done with such a simple UI paradigm. Text
characters can move mountains.

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thekungfuman
API quota exceeded!

~~~
drhodes
yep, they thought of everything.

