Remembering CompuServe: The Online Experience Before The World Wide Web

September 25, 2024 by Maya Posch 29 Comments

July 1981 cover of CompuServe's magazine. — July 1981 cover of CompuServe’s magazine.

Long before the advent of the Internet and the World Wide Web, there were other ways to go online, with Ohio-based CompuServe being the first to offer a consumer-oriented service on September 24, 1979. In an article by [Michael De Bonis] a listener-submitted question to WOSU’s Curious Cbus is answered, interspersed with recollections of former users of the service. So what was CompuServe’s contribution to society that was so important that the state of Ohio gave historical status to the building that once housed this company?

The history of CompuServe and the consumer-facing services which it would develop started in 1969, when it was a timesharing and remote access service for businesses who wanted to buy some time on the PDP-10s that Golden United Life Insurance as the company’s subsidiary used. CompuServe divested in 1975 to become its own, NASDAQ-listed company. As noted in the article, while selling timeshares to businesses went well, after business hours they would have these big computer systems sitting mostly idly. This was developed by 1979 into a plan to give consumers with their newfangled microcomputers like the TRS-80 access.

Originally called MicroNet and marketed by Radio Shack, the service offered the CompuServe menu to users when they logged in, giving access to features like email, weather, stock quotes, online shipping and booking of airline tickets, as well as online forums and interactive text games.

Later renamed to CompuServe Information Service (CIS), it remained competitive with competitors like AOL and Prodigy until the mid-90s, even buying one competitor called The Source. Ultimately it was the rise of Internet and the WWW that would close the door on this chapter of computing history, even as for CompuServe users this new Internet age would have felt very familiar, indeed.

How Facebook Killed Online Chat

May 29, 2024 by Lewin Day 84 Comments

In the early days of the internet, online conversations were an event. The technology was novel, and it was suddenly possible to socialize with a whole bunch of friends at a distance, all at once. No more calling your friends one by one, you could talk to them all at the same time!

Many of us would spend hours on IRC, or pull all-nighters bantering on MSN Messenger or AIM. But then, something happened, and many of us found ourselves having shorter conversations online, if we were having any at all. Thinking back to my younger days, and comparing them with today, I think I’ve figured out what it is that’s changed.

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Turn On Sarcasm With The Flip Of A Switch

January 26, 2022 by Bryan Cockfield 43 Comments

Sarcasm is notoriously difficult to distinguish in online communities. So much, in fact, that a famous internet rule called Poe’s Law is named after the phenomenon. To adapt, users have adopted several methods for indicating implied sarcasm such as the /s tag, but more recently a more obvious sarcasm indicator has appeared that involves random capitalization througout the sarcastic phrase. While this looks much more satisfying than other methods, it is a little cumbersome to type unless you have this sarcasm converter for your keyboard.

The device, built by [Ben S], is based around two Raspberry Pi Pico development boards and sits between a computer and any standard USB keyboard. The first Pi accepts the USB connection from the keyboard and reads all of the inputs before sending what it reads to the second Pi over UART. If the “SaRcAsM” button is pressed, the input text stream is converted to sarcasm by toggling the caps lock key after every keystroke.

For communicating in today’s online world with rapidly changing memes, a device like this is almost necessary for making sure you aren’t misunderstood on whichever popular forum you like to frequent. We don’t know how long this trend will continue, either, but until something else replaces it to more concisely communicate sarcasm we expect it to remain relevant. The build is also a reminder of the various interesting ways that microcontrollers can be programmed to act as keyboards.

Thanks to [ted yapo] for the tip!

The Second Worst CAD Package Ever

December 17, 2021 by Dave Rowntree 28 Comments

A while back, [Heavydeck] remembered stumbling across the worst CAD package ever, which is a schematic editor whose existence was purely intended for use to make quick circuit sketches for documentation, presentations and the like. All good. But, being based on low quality JPEG graphics, which when blown up to projector size on a big screen, they look really rough. After deciding that the original nasty, clunky interface was just nasty and clunky enough, [Heavydeck] then proceeded to reimplement the idea over the course of an afternoon, and came up with Kludge (possibly the second worst CAD package ever) making an actually useful tool even more useful.

You see, whether you make website content, YouTube tutorials, or just need to write technical reports, if you’re in the electronics business, you’re going to need to make high-quality editable schematic images at some point, and Kludge might well solve some problems for you. Kludge lets you do so many things; you can save a schematic, you can load a schematic, you can even export it to an SVG file. Actually, that’s all you can do, but it is actually just enough. Once you’ve got an image as an SVG, you can whack that into Inkscape to add some more details and you’re done. We demonstrate this with the image above, which was not annoying at all to create.

So here’s to Kludging your way around a problem, and hoping that the somewhat limited symbol library may expand a little more in the future!

RadioShack To Be Reborn As Online-First Retailer

November 19, 2020 by Tom Nardi 103 Comments

The good news is that as of today RadioShack has officially been purchased by Retail Ecommerce Ventures (REV), giving the troubled company a new lease on life. The downside, at least for folks like us, is that there are no immediate plans to return the iconic electronics retailer to its brick-and-mortar roots. As the name implies, REV specializes in online retail, having previously revamped the Internet presence of other bankrupt businesses such as Pier 1 Imports and Dressbarn.

While the press release doesn’t outright preclude the possibility of new physical RadioShack locations, it’s clear that REV believes the future of retail isn’t to be found in your local strip mall. As the US mulls further lockdowns in response to the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, it’s hard to disagree. There will be millions of bored kids and adults looking for something to do during the long winter nights, and an electronic kit or two shipped to their door might be just the thing.

REV says they plan to relaunch the rather dated RadioShack website just in time for the company’s 100th anniversary in 2021. As of this writing the website currently says that sales have been temporarily halted to allow for inventory restructuring, though it’s unclear if this is directly related to the buyout or not. Getting an accurate count of how much merchandise the company still has on hand after shuttering the majority of their physical locations in 2017 certainly sounds like something the new owners would want to do.

Like most of you, we have fond memories of the Golden Age of RadioShack, back before they thought selling phones and TVs was somehow a good idea. To their credit, they did try and rekindle their relationship with hackers and makers by asking the community what they’d want to see in their stores. But we all know how that story ended. While it doesn’t look like this news will get us any closer to having a neighborhood store that stocks resistors, there’s a certain comfort in knowing that RadioShack kits and books will still be around for the next generation.

FxSolver Is A Math Notebook For Engineers

August 6, 2018 by Al Williams 12 Comments

If you like to rely on the web to do your electronics and computer math, you’ll want to bookmark FxSolver. It has a wide collection of formulae from disciplines ranging from electronics, computer science, physics, chemistry, and mechanics. There are also the classic math formulations, too.

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