It turns out that Google’s Usenet archive is pretty useful for tracking the lifecycles of Internet fads.

August 25, 2004: At Nelson’s request, the data has been updated to July 2004.

Continue reading “Tracking the All Your Base Meme with Usenet” →

In a Usenet post written in July 1981, over ten years before Berners-Lee announced the World Wide Web project, K. Richard Magill suggested that combining Ted Nelson’s work in hypertext with “windowing capability, a pointing mouse, and auxiliary 5-key keyset” would make a powerful tool. “Now if only it came packaged in a briefcase-sized personal DEC-10…”

Okay, so five-key keysets never took off, but it’s still an accurate prediction of the modern web-enabled desktop. It’s also the first known reference to the terms “hypertext” and “Ted Nelson” in the Usenet archive. The rest of the short thread is worth reading, too. (On a side note, does anyone know what happened to K. Richard Magill? I wanted to ask him about his prediction, but can’t find any references to him after he sold all his audio gear in 1990.)

The winning performances for last year’s Meow Mix Jingle All The Way To L.A. contest are online, and in an unprotected directory (Windows Media format). These videos are just about as strange as you would think they’d be. Meow meow meow meow!

By the way, today’s my 25th birthday. While my mom was in labor, Julie M. Fidler got some stuff from the Donny & the Osmonds fan club and stayed home sick from school, students rallied in opposition to Henry Kissinger’s planned appointment to Columbia, and Josh Brown enjoyed the most beautiful trip of his life.

And I was born at 12 noon. A pretty quiet day, I guess.

I created this in response to Mat Honan hassling me about not wanting a storTrooper avatar. If you haven’t seen the original, this probably won’t make much sense.