1994, Couric, Gumbel

[Tiz]

Amazing this was just 16 years ago.

http://www.businessinsider.com/nbc-fires-guy-who-posted-video-of-katie-couric-bryant-gumbel-2011-2

[magayle]

wow! sure is amazing:jawdrop:thanks for that strange reminder....feels like it's been around much longer

[BlaiseGlaze]

Look how orange his face was!

[Remali]

lol.... even the cabinets in the background are orange.

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

Amazing this was just 16 years ago.


LOL... The orange has to be some sort of video artifact. They were never that orange...

Reminds me of the old days. I think it was about that time, perhaps a year or so before (my memory is crumbling) that I first proposed an "e-mail" system to the President of my company. We had only barely gotten used to having our computers networked with Novell Netware. I was facing a lot of resistance from the senior management. They were very concerned that this "e-mail" thing was going to distract people from actually getting work done. My pitch to the President was that "in a couple of years from now, you won't know how you ever did business without it. I promise." I also promised do it on a shoestring budget. For a company with five offices at the time, about 250 people, I proposed a budget of $10,000. All inclusive. He bought it. :-)


Here's what I did:

Built five servers (one for each office). These were just generic tower PC's built from parts, seriously on the cheap, about $1000/each. And five Hayes 9600bps external modems.
On the home office server (NT 3.51) set up a freeware mailserver app called "NTMail". All mail for our domain name came here first, then NTMail distributed mail to the offices based on subdomain (like "soandso@boston.mycompany.com"). Everybody's e-mail address had to have a subdomain for this thing to work.
Got local "dedicated" dial-up internet accounts for each office, with fixed IP addresses. Set up auto-reconnect routines for each server that kept them dialed in 24/7/365.
Installed the freeware "Pegasus Mail" on each computer, which would talk to each of the local servers.
In the space of one week... I flew around to all the other four offices (Portland, Boulder, Boston and DC) and set up their servers and computers. I would arrive O-dark early in the morning, do all their computers that day, and catch the red-eye to the next office.
Got new business cards issued for everybody, with e-mail addresses.
Admittedly... it was a bare-bones system, intended to only be a proof-of-concept, and it had serious limitations. But it took off like gangbusters. In fact... it *really* took off. I think it was only a year or so later that I got budgeted for over $100K to build a more robust Wide-area network and mail system.

[WashingtonBay]

I remember having a debate with you, around this time, where I just didn't see the point in the internet... Why would I want to go look at a company brochure on my computer?

[Ragnar Danneskjold]

LOL... Yes, I remember that.

I remember arguing with a buddy of mine, about the same time, that I thought color monitors were pointless, because it just wasn't possible to print in color.

[Tatesgram]

And here we are. Who'd a thunk it back then ;)

[gabhainn]

Well apparently Al Gore he invented the internet ya know ?;)..Kevin