PCWorld.com - The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

PCWorld.com - The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time

Okay - now I'm ticked off - I understand that AOL may not be for 'everybody' anymore - but I think there's a bit of revisionism and a bit of schadenfreunde. I think my favorite bit is "--which AOL subscribers were finally able to access in 1995--" Let's see 1995, people were running AOL 2.5? On Windows 3.1? The options for browsers were what? IE (2.0?) for Windows 3.x or Netscape (which required Win32s I seem to recall). --- Wonder "which" internet we were denied to our members in 1993 and 1994? Mosaic --- 1993, Mozilla -- 1994. And then then there is content. AOL in 1995 had a very rich amount of content- support forums for different companies, etc - it wasn't unusual at the time for a company to have an AOL keyword - but NO web address. And don't even get me started about getting winsock configurations and the tcp/ip stacks working right on Windows 3.1.

Wish I had some back issues of PCWorld from 1995 - I suspect we'd see a different story.

From the Warm and Fuzzy Dept

Jacksonville.com: Business

This was cited by by the 'feel good' department here -- makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. The article might be true - I just think it's funny that we're getting this note, perhaps as a way to feel good about those who lost their jobs?

(just bugmenot.com to log in -- if you want to read the actual article)

Despite the closing, AOL was good for Jacksonville"Despite its abrupt closing, America Online was a road well taken in Jacksonville. It was a winding, sometimes bumpy road, but worth it. The 820 people who lost their jobs Tuesday might not agree, but let me explain...."

It's Working Great Beav'

Bloomberg.com: U.S.: "Sales at Dulles, Virginia-based AOL fell 7.1 percent to $1.98 billion last quarter and profit slumped 17 percent. A 26 percent jump in revenue from online advertising failed to make up for the loss of 835,000 U.S. Web-access subscribers in the quarter.

AOL, which has lost 8 million U.S. access customers in less than four years, is adding more services to its free Web site to attract users and advertisers."

We'll make it up in Volume

Catch22 - Free Software, Sourcecode and Tutorials

Catch22 - Free Software, Sourcecode and Tutorials

In case you've missed this treasure of a website - James Brown has tutorials & source code for all sort of interesting tasks. His WinSpy++ is a must have utility.