Greetings and welcome to an LGR thing!
Got a rather special topic today.
Today we're going to be discovering how to find
anything on the internet...
At least according to this CD-ROM from the year 2000.
From CareerTrack.
Communicate with the world.
Quick and Easy.
Access to unlimited information and so on.
We're apparently gonna learn how to use a web browser,
navigate the web, find what you want.
I really don't know what we're going to discover
on this disc because I have not tried it yet.
I found it in an episode of LGR Thrifts at a local
Goodwill Store and well...
Anything like this, I am instantly intrigued by.
Not only does it look ridiculously low budget,
I don't know if this was even sold or if was just
like handed out or what.
There's no UPC. Maybe it was part of a larger
product of some kind or offered through their
website or who knows what but yeah.
It's got little FMV sequences it looks like
and I'm down.
I don't even know if this booklet has anything in there.
I haven't looked at it yet.
Yeah wow. (laughs)
Instructions on installation, insert the CD into the drive
it will automatically boot.
Yeah, I don't anticipate this will be anything too
complicated considering I saw the Macromedia thingy
right there on the back so this is probably a Macromedia
Director....yeah, right there.
Pondview productions, yeah okay, enough rambling.
Let's dive into How to Find Anything on the Internet
in the year 2000 on Windows 98.
Okay, well I am ready to find out how to find
anything on the internet.
Welcome to CareerTrack, How to Find Anything
on the Internet.
Let's install it.
Well, that wasn't much.
I'm assuming it's all pretty much gonna be loading
off of the CD cause there were some Quicktime things
there so it's probably just a bunch of .mov files
if I had to guess.
Alright, nice little interface here,
well yeah, nice for the time.
Just curious about those files though.
Oh, it's a bunch of .avi files.
Pretty much just Quicktime and Macromedia Director.
Alright, let's get started.
[dramatic mouse click]
- [Terri] Welcome to Pryor Resources How to Find Anything
on the Internet. I am Terri Parker Brown.
- [LGR] Hi Terri.
- [Terri] And I'll show you how to get the most
out of the internet with information, entertainment,
products and services, that are easily available
at any time, the internet is continually becoming
more of a part of the way we live
and the way we do business.
In this course you'll see what the internet has to offer.
As you learn how to use a web browser to view web pages...
- [LGR] Oh is that what you do with a web browser?
- [Terri] And we'll be working with the most commonly used
web browers: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Netscape
Navigator, and the America Online Browser.
- [LGR] I mean, that sums up the year 2000 pretty well.
Alright so she just sort of faded into the Earth there,
sort of a ghostly apparition left over.
And it looks like we are left with whatever else
the rest of this is.
So we've got a text transcript where you can print things
out, don't have a printer installed. (laughs)
And there's an index.
Oh man, look at all the topics.
Wow, a lot of topics.
Mmm. Frames.
So yeah, it's really, I guess, just a bunch of videos.
That's uh, hmm, well let's just look around at a few
more of these I mean, cause why not.
There might be some fascinating stuff in here.
At least the videos are pretty decent quality.
- [Terri] Before you get started with this course, we'll
take a moment to show you how to use it.
The screen is divided into three areas.
- [LGR] Oh dear.
I figured it out, it's basically a glorified
Quicktime player.
It's okay. It's okay, Terri. I understand.
We've got an interface within an interface here.
I have gotten the interface.
- [Terri] The web lets you view and interact
with pages that...
- [LGR] (laughs) Classic New York Times website.
You man, you can see a lot of this stuff still on
archive.org but you know, ads and a lot of the
images aren't on there, they didn't get backed up
or they're just hard to reach sometimes because
I don't know, archiving is a thing, but yeah, it's
nice. I mean, look at that, it's really clear imagery here.
These are well made videos, I've gotta say.
- [Terri] Our computer is already online.
- [LGR] What is this desktop? (laughs)
It's...what is all this? Like some of these are
default icons they just left but the Recycle Bin is full,
this Quick Start menu is just going off to the wherever,
and look at this, you got the task manager, got some display
options, what is this some sort of sound thing?
I don't know, it just strikes me as odd that a tutorial
here would go with a computer that has some stuff that
is very obviously geared towards their specific PC.
Like, why wouldn't they just turn off these icons and
make it as clear as possible? Anyway, whatever.
Oh my, let me just pause it right here.
Look at these headlines.
Alaska airplane turned upside down, yeah the black box.
Euro comforted after ECB raises rates.
- [Terri] Below that is the menu bar.
We click a menu heading to open that menu.
- [LGR] Alright, well this is computer stuff.
Good things to learn.
- [Terri] To get back to the previous page using
the keyboard, we hold the ALT key and press
the right arrow key.
- [LGR] Wait, really?
- [Terri] ALT left arrow would move us forward.
- [LGR] What the heck, I just learned something.
ALT left and right will take you back and forward through
web pages.
(laughs)
I've never done that. (laughs)
Well, look at me the caveman pressing the back and
forward buttons.
- [Terri] When you start typing an address that matches
one of these, the browser completes the address for you.
- [LGR] Hmm. Auto Complete. The bane of many a
challenging relationship. (laughs)
"I swear, I've never been to that site before."
Alright well, we've graduated the getting started lessons.
Let's move on to getting around.
- [Terri] Once you know how to get to webpages using
addresses and hyperlinks you can start exploring the web.
This time we'll work with....
- [LGR] Oooooh.
Ooh, classic AOL. Oh, dude.
Dude, I just gotta, I gotta stop right there.
Look at it. Look at the username too.
TerriPB2000.
(laughs)
That's just a perfect little slice of time right here.
Oh man, year 2000 AOL, holy crap.
This is great.
I like how this was all apparently captured
on the same day, February 3, 2000.
Ahh but anyway, old AOL. Sorry, I just get a little...
I get a little wistful, misty eyed seeing this.
- [Terri] AOL is similar to Netscape Navigator but AOL is
different in that it's an online service that includes
a browser for viewing content from both AOL and
from the internet.
- [LGR] Dang right it's different.
That's what made AOL so friggin' neat, you know.
Keywords man and little, they had dedicated things
and pages and stuff to go to only within AOL.
The channels. Yeah, that's what they were called.
- [Terri] And this time, the browser we'll use is
Microsoft Internet Explorer.
- [LGR] Man just hopping around, man.
Netscape, AOL, Internet Explorer.
Oh dude dude dude.
There we go.
Oh yeah, "Amazon.com. Top 100 CDs, shop now and save."
Look at that weak little Amazon link, it's just a
you know, whatever.
I also love how like click bait is exactly the same.
"Pilots last words." "22 romantic gifts." "Common interview
goofs." "Top 10 car features." (laughs)
Like, my god we're in an endless loop of garbage.
- [Terri] Yahoo is the type of site known as a portal
cause it gives you access to lots of other web
locations and features.
- [LGR] You know, I never really used Yahoo that much
because by the time I get into really searching
the internet deeply, I had already figured out what
Google was, it was 1998, so whatever, it was
still like friggin' new.
Yeah, I think I used Ask Jeeves and AltaVista a little
bit more than Yahoo for whatever reason, I don't know.
I was more inclined to just type in stuff and like,
Yahoo's lists of things were, you know, kinda useful or
whatever but...
I don't know just never super got into the Yahoo thing.
Oh okay, let's see. Let's pause here, what are these others?
I just like looking at these different stories.
"Carolina Panthers running back Fred Lane arrested."
Yep, the year 2000.
Derek Jeter, the Yankees, 10 million dollar deal.
American Psycho loses NC-17 battle?
I didn't know there was a battle for that. I love that movie.
- [Terri] Click the my AOL button and select preferences.
- [LGR] Ooh, the preferences.
I always liked this preferences menu with the little,
with the uh, the squares.
The icons. Like, it looked so nice compared to, you know,
the drab interface of Internet Explorer.
I mean, look at this. Would you rather have this or
this? I know which one I would rather have in
the year 2000.
- [Terri] Your favorites menu include this one,
called Net Lingo, which is a handy guide to internet
terms and jargon.
- [LGR] (laughs) "Internet terms and jargon."
Now that would just be memes.
You know, oh yeah like emoticons and acronyms and LOL.
Oh, that old school Google, there we go.
Add free web search to your site and I did.
My Angelfire site had a little Google box.
Odd to be like, nostalgic about Google but you know,
the late 90s Google was a little different, or well year
2000 in this case, whatever same thing.
- [Terri] A search engine searches the web for sites that
contain a word or words that you're looking for.
- [LGR] Man, that was just like a revolution when
that happened, it was like, search engines,
yeah not just a bunch of stuff listed in a
catalog like Yahoo.
It's like holy crap, you can find things by word.
Do boolean searches and all that good stuff.
- [Terri] Let's say you're in the binocular business,
specializing in binoculars for bird watching.
- [LGR] (laughs) Okay.
Let's say that I am.
- [Terri] To look through all these pages for references to
bird watching or Seattle and Tacoma would be ridiculous.
- [LGR] Yeah, ridiculous.
Holy crap, holy crap the memories are coming back again
for something else that's completely unrelated to what
she's talking about.
Callwave. The internet answering machine.
Yeah, you know, you had dial up and you're on the internet
or whatever and somebody's trying to call, somebody could
like leave a message or whatever that way.
I don't even remember how it worked but I remember that.
You'd like get a .wav file and it's like holy crap,
there's somebody that's left a message for you while
you're online. It was super neat.
- [Terri] Other features called boolean operators...
- [LGR] Oh here we go, boolean and logical operators.
I learned how to use these at the local library.
Alright we've figured out how to get around, now
let's get some value.
Whatever that means.
- [Terri] Whenever you find useful information on the web,
you often want to do more with it than just read it on the
webpage. You can print a webpage or save it on your
computer to refer to it later.
- [LGR] That was definitely a thing, especially if you
had limited hours or dial up or whatever, it's like yeah,
I gotta print this website out and take it to somebody
and show it to them in person. Man, I did that a lot.
- [Terri] Keep in mind that companies on the web often ask
for personal information and they often make it
available to other businesses as well.
Sometimes this information is used to track your web usage.
- [LGR] Oh, crazy. Oh man. Companies doing stuff with
your information on the internet, what will ever
come of that?
- [Terri] When we use webpage forms like this one...
- [LGR] Oh man, forms. Like just such basic ones.
I used to put these on my own website and they went no where
but I just liked having them on there because I thought
that they were cool, like the fact that you could input
information to a website and be like whoa. I don't know.
It just felt like kinda weirdly magical in the late 90s.
And uh yeah, anyway.
- [Terri] A type of file that we often download is called a plug in.
- [LGR] Oooh yeah. Let's get into some plugins baby!
- [Terri] Shockwave allows us to get high quality graphics
and interactive multimedia and
RealPlayer lets us run realtime audio and video.
- [LGR] Flash, Shockwave, and RealPlayer.
That's like the holy trinity of early 2000s internet,
like, multimedia right there. (laughs)
Hey, downloads are free. Yeah, yeah most all of them
are free if you know where to look. Are they gonna tell us how to that?
How to find anything on the internet.
Ooh, watch out for viruses, yeah stay away from
Bonzi Buddy, be careful where you get your virtual girls.
What is this computer? We got a WeBase K6-2.
These specs aren't particularly great, well I mean,
I guess it is an affordable home PC. $499.
Yeah but 400 MHz K6-2, 32 MB of RAM, 6.4 GB hard drive,
that's what I had in 1997.
- [Terri] When we see an item we're interested in,
we can add it to our shopping cart or we can
click to get more information about it.
- [LGR] Yeah I guess I started doing online
shopping in '99. No, '98 I guess.
Cause I think I signed up for Ebay in 1999.
I was doing Amazon stuff in '98, just books.
You know, it was just books at that point but still.
- [Terri] We'll go to the Ebay site which offers
millions of items in a wide variety of categories.
- [LGR] I honestly miss this version of Ebay.
Like, honestly, it was just so straight forward.
I mean, it's still pretty darn straight forward and
old school in a lot of ways but you know, it gets gunked
up with a bunch of garbage too but like look how simple
this is. For some reason I just prefer a way simpler
interface like very straight forward. Just hyperlinks.
Whoa, what the crap was she looking at?
What is this? 10 CD-ROM software liquidation?
These CD-ROMS sold for $9.95 each. You can get
10 for $100. Okay. Gamewurx 1.
Dude, I have this disc!
Well, okay, that's it for getting value.
I got lots of value from that. Let me tell you.
Favorite websites though, I'm super curious Terri.
What are your favorites?
- [Terri] This course includes listings of some of
our favorite websites, which you can view by
clicking the websites button below.
- [LGR] Oh my, here we go.
Anywho. There's another one that I completely forgot about
that. This was a little creepy at the time. It was kinda
bizarre to be able to like, type in stuff and get a bunch of
information about someone or somewhere and then, yeah.
It was just something about it being on the internet
and accessible through such easy searches that for,
like freaked out certain friends and family.
I don't want to be on them internets.
And there you are, it's public information. Too bad.
- [Terri] You can even do a reverse lookup if you
know a phone number.
- [LGR] Yeah, the reverse look up especially.
Typing in a phone number and then figuring out who it was,
cause you'd get like crank calls or just weird calls
and if you had caller ID you could look it up that way,
it was just like, oh it's that jerk.
What the heck is this?
Which punishment would your recommend for John Rocker
to ensure he keeps his mouth shut?
Sunflower seed diet only, tour guide at Ellis Island,
bouncer at The Connection...man, there must have
been some drama there I missed.
- [Terri] The internet is also a good source of government
information at federal, state, and local levels.
- [LGR] IRS.gov looked like a crappy tabloid.
What is that design?
Oh, man 1999 tax products on CD-ROM. Order now!
Well, with How to Find Anything on the Internet, I
gotta say it sort of oversold its title. I guess we
also still have the website listings that they were talking
about. All these different websites.
Hotjobs. Monster.
Oh, finance things.
This is the basic, like most basic website list I think
I've ever seen. Nothing really out of the ordinary,
it's just like oh, here we go.
This is kinda fun though to look back at all the different
search sites, homepages, and portals.
AltaVista, AOL, Anywho, AskJeeves, Dogpile, Excite,
Google, Infoseek, Lycos, Metacrawler, MSN, Northern Light,
I mean, man.
Lot of stuff that has been consolidated in like a
couple sites or they're just gone or irrelevant
at this point.
Alright, well that was
How to Find Anything on the Internet.
I'm not quite sure what I was expecting but I mean,
that wasn't too far off from it.
I was hoping for a little bit more of like, internet
on a CD, like archived websites you could sort of
interact with or something.
I've seen some discs, in fact I have a couple, that
do that. That would be kind of interesting to go into
at some point. Maybe a little more interactive. This
was pretty much just watching videos and if you'd
like to take a look at it yourself,
I've supplied an archive of the disc over on archive.org.
There is link in the description below this video
so check it out if you'd like.
And check out some of my other videos if you'd like.
This was a bit of simpler episode but this era of computing
is very much the kind of thing I'm into so if you like
this, you'll probably like other stuff I do.
And as always, thank you very much for watching!