Internet Explorer joins 10 past tech crazes
Bye-bye Internet Explorer. Hello Project Spartan.
Microsoft sentthe Explorer brand to the graveyard to focus on a flashier browser. The rise and fall of tech leaders is common. Here are 10 products that at one time defined our tech interactions.
Some are one-time digital age darlings that, yes, are still around (think dial-up pioneer AOL, early social media power Myspace), while others are gone, gone, gone — part of the scrapheap of great ideas that once were.
1. Netscape. Netscape was the first commercial Web browser. In the 1990s Microsoft's Internet Explorer caught up to Netscape as the two duked it out over what browser would rule the World Wide Web.
The Web browser ushered in a new era of accessible e-mail and browsing in the mid-1990s that allowed users to search and e-mail, a lot like Google today. When Mozilla's Firefox came on board, Netscape fell further into the backdrop. Netscape sold itself to AOL in 1999 and by 2007 was no longer used.
2. Myspace. Remember creating your Myspace page? We don't either. The early social media power launched in 2003 eventually yielded its crown to Facebook, which rapidly developed into a global phenomenon.
3. AOL. "You've got mail!" The Internet service, America Online or AOL, was so prominent in the 1990s that an entire Meg Ryan movie was based off of the slogan people heard when they got an e-mail through AOL.
The Internet provider sent millions of CD-ROMS to households across the country offering 1,000 free hours of Internet service and hoping people would buy in to the provider. In the '90s the company spent over $300 million on the disks, Jan Brandt, AOL's former chief marketing officer told TechCrunch. AOL was hit hard when the economy went into a recession in the early 2000s and lost subscribers and advertising.
Surprisingly, people are still using dial-up services. AOL still relies on 2.3 million dial-up subscription customers, the Washington Post reported in August.
4. Blackberry. Long before the iPhone or Samsung Galaxy, the Blackberry was every executive, tech guru and teenager's choice of cellphone. The phone was first known for allowing people to access e-mail securely and as the price dropped, became more attractive to masses of young people.
The phone even had its own form of text messaging called BBM or BlackBerry Messenger that allowed groups of "Crackberry" users to talk. RIM, the company that owns Blackberry, acknowledged that people have had a hard time overcoming the Blackberry as a "work phone," the Washington Post reported in 2011.
Blackberry is still trying to get back to the glory days. On Oct. 29, 2014, Blackberry CEO John Chen wrote an open letter to users that Blackberry was committed to enhancing their products and "earning your business – or earning it back." Chen said the company had lost sight of what the consumers wanted.
5. Walkman. Long before portable music became a part of every day life, Sony's portable cassette player and accompanying, minimalist earphones were a great way to take your favorite music with you wherever you went. Walkman is still around but not in the bulky style you might remember. The newest version of Sony's Walkman touts a superior "high-resolution music" experience, but it'll cost you. The NW-ZX2 digital media player is on sale for $1199.99.
6. Palm Pilot or Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). In 1996, Palm Pilots were introduced to the masses. Pre-smartphones, the Palm Pilot was a product that straddled the line between a small computer and a cellphone that people could hold in their hand. The PDA s allowed people to access a digital calendar and keep track of appointments, reminders and notes.
7. Napster. Napster was originally created as a peer-to-peer file-sharing service that was typically used to share music files in MP3 format. Two teenagers developed the program in the late '90s and Napster ushered in an era of illegal music downloading.
The music industry was not impressed and Napster's quick rise to fame slowly fizzled after a legal battle with the Recording Industry Association of America in 2002. For the music industry, things were never the same and downloading music certainly upended the business of buying CDs in stores.
8. Polaroids. Remember going to the drug store, getting pictures developed and putting them in albums? Yeah, those days are gone, but when people saved pictures and looked through them, the instant-developing Polaroid was king. Photographers of all skill levels could snap a picture with a Polaroid and it would develop the film and print it out immediately. Amazing.
9. Prodigy. Before the Internet as we know it even existed, there was Prodigy. The online service allowed people to e-mail, see news and weather, and access bulletin boards.
10. CompuServ. Remember the sound of dial-up screeching while you waited to log onto the Internet? CompuServ was one of the first online retailers. Poynter even credits the service with ushering in the age of online newspapers. By 1980, people could read newspapers online.
Contributing: Ed Brackett and Jessica Guynn, USA TODAY
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