5 Things You’d Forgotten About The Internet

Midphase takes a break from focusing on the future to take a walk along the virtual memory lane.

At Midphase, we strive to stay ahead of the game as far as the internet is concerned. Having said that, we think it’s important to remember your roots. So, here are our misty watercolour memories of the way the internet looked 10 years ago…
Chat Rooms
Remember the days of the chat room? Oh what a treat. Logging-on after school or on your lunch break at work could put you in contact with hundreds of strangers from anywhere. Once online, you could talk about everything. Suddenly, capital letters stopped being plain old punctuation and started being shouts. It was fun while it lasted. A/S/L anyone? That stands for age/sex/location if you need your memory jogged.
Early Social Networking
Remember MySpace and Friendster? These sites were the pioneers of social networking. A decade ago, the race to create personalised pages resembled the gold rush. It’s hard to remember a world without Facebook now, but ten short years ago, MySpace was the place to post your very best selfie.
Old-School Internet Providers
Do you recall the time when AOL ruled the world? You couldn’t stand in line at a grocery store or open your mailbox without the little yellow running man emblem offering you the company’s internet services. These days, the butter-coloured guy is a missing person. But we still have him to thank for many happy hours spent on AOL instant messenger.
Dial-Up
Anyone who has been using the internet for a good decade can tell you how, back in their day, you couldn’t log on without hearing the “eee-oooo-boo-skreeeech” of those lovely dial-up modems. You’d sit down to your box monitor and wait patiently for the dial-up process, only to have your mom get on the home phone and mess up your connection.
Cafés
Yesterday, you couldn’t just access the internet from anywhere. You had to dial-in from your desk at home or visit an internet café. Most of these places were more internet than café. You’d be lucky to get a latte, let alone a frappucino, but these hang-outs made it easy to send an email.
Back To The Future
As nostalgic as memories of the early internet are, we wouldn’t want to go back. We’ve launched a cache of exciting new projects recently, which would have seemed impossible 10 years ago. These include…
Our new improved website – It can be viewed on both desktops and mobile devices.
Our #Mpowered area – On this part of the website, you can experiment with new technologies and improve your own knowledge of site building.
Our server collection – We’ve recently added 25 new custom servers to our technological arsenal, which provide more RAM, disc space and IP addresses.