"It’s strange to think that streaming a song in stereo was so revolutionary back then, but that was the state of the art in online media circa 1996."

https://cybercultural.com/p/state-of-online-music-1996/

"Most often, I tend to locate the web’s significance in something that feels concrete: in pirate libraries, censorship circumvention, collective knowledge projects, and open data. One thing I think the web does very well [...] is to collapse a lot of things — people, times, places, images, writing — into one place, together."

https://www.are.na/editorial/what-can-an-image-do

"As the internet became more interactive over 1995, it became a more attractive place for musicians to set up a web presence. David Bowie was one of the first to do this."

https://cybercultural.com/p/david-bowie-website-1995-1997/

"At the beginning of 1995, the internet was still largely the domain of academic-minded geeks and Silicon Valley hippies. But the culture at large was increasingly taking notice of cyberspace.

Throughout 1995, millions more people went online and thousands of companies bought “dot com” domain names.

The web was now open for business."

https://cybercultural.com/p/internet-1995/

It was on this day 36 years ago when @timbl submitted his proposal to CERN for an "information management system", precursor to the World Wide Web.

"In the proposal, Berners-Lee modestly spoke of wanting to use hypertext, a.k.a. links, to help CERN deal with information storage issues.

[...]

His boss’s response?

“Vague, but exciting.”"

https://www.vox.com/2019/3/12/18260709/30th-anniversary-world-wide-web-google-doodle-history

So apparently bit.ly links created under the free plan will now show a "destination preview" which is an "interstitial page that includes a preview of the link destination and an ad".

https://support.bitly.com/hc/en-us/articles/32874287800333-Why-are-there-ads-on-my-links

"This is, after all, the ephemeral truth of the Internet: if you don’t save it, even if it seems like it’s everywhere momentarily, it will just as quickly disappear."

https://blog.archive.org/2025/02/05/vanishing-culture-what-early-internet-era-gifs-show-us-about-preserving-digital-culture/

I probably already mentioned it, but https://www.deadweb.club is a pretty interesting project that aims to connect people interested in exploring "defunct social media platforms, abandoned 3D worlds, and forgotten blogs".

Their newsletter hasn't been very active, but they just announced a new member joining the team, so definitely worth (re-)subscribing.

Love this! A 22-page DIY web archiving zine that "shows you why everyone should participate in preserving the things on the web they care about, and how anyone can do so (no special expertise required!)".

https://zinebakery.com/homemade-zines/bakeshop-2-diywebarchiving

#internet #TheWeb #archiving #WebArchiving

Made by @quinnanya, @Literature_Geek, and bunch of other awesome folks, found via @lavaeolus https://fedihum.org/@lavaeolus/113873744698219704

We should be making more internet forums. Like with Discourse. Or more old school ones.

We need to invest in our communities and build new ones. That's how we get through the difficult times. Together.

Happy birthday, CSS!

"The first CSS specification to become an official W3C Recommendation is CSS level 1, published on 17 December 1996."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSS

"CSS stood out because it was simple, especially compared to some of its earliest competitors."

https://thehistoryoftheweb.com/look-back-history-css/

Following up on the last boost, and I don't really want to get into the whole Bluesky vs fedi thing, but I am curious about how folks feel about the different approaches to handles/usernames.

Personally, I like the "X of Y" style. I can see who you are, and where you reside.

Not a fan of long, confusing usernames that are possible on BS.

https://tech.lgbt/@ShadowJonathan/111721371108533882