AS TOLD BY JUSTIN GELLER:Back in the days of blazing fast 19.2 Kbps dial up modems, before Amazon, before Google, two guys named Nick had a dream. How can we get a really fast T-1 connection dropped to our West Philly house without paying for it? Start an internet company of course! So in 1996, [...]

AS TOLD BY DAVE PAK: I guess we started soundway.com as a means to promote Sorted. This was around June or July of 1998 and at the time the www seemed relatively new and totally exciting. Back then, you could just go into chat rooms and randomly make friends with tons of like-minded people which [...]

A reader writes:
This website brings back fond memories of the late 90’s when I first discovered there was more than porno on the world wide web, www.virtualcrack.com. You can send your friends and family virtual crack cocaine for those special occasions such as birthdays, new jobs, baby showers.
It’s a site that has long been [...]

It is, perhaps, one of the quickest tales of obsolesence ever told: The Cybercafe. Once, when web access required things like sitting in one place the entire time to get a signal, a subscription to AOL or Prodigy, and so on, there was a moment when cybercafes — coffee shops outfitted with desks full of [...]

AS TOLD BY LIRON K. ANDERSON-BELL: This is more of a 6 Degrees of Digital Philadelphia situation. Back in 2000, when I was a new hire at CDNOW — I think I was Senior Manager of Marketing Marvelousness or some such blather — I, along with my boss Joe Bilman (now Chief Product Officer at [...]

AS TOLD BY ADAM FELDMAN: At least since 1993, Philadelphians and others in our metropol have had access to free dial up internet via the Critical Path Project . Although the internet has perhaps outgrown the screeching whistles and pops of the telephone modem, thousands of low income people at least have access to [...]

When we decided last week, in some kind of fit of pique, that this week would be Philly Internet History Week on Philebrity, we did so half-jokingly. Would there even be enough to fill up a whole week? Turns out, there’s more than enough. What started as a list of 10 or so posts has [...]

Media Bureau. CPCN. Phillymusic.com. Dummytown. Brainsoap. CDNow. Maybe these words and phrases mean something to you. Or perhaps, ten years ago (or more), you were in Philadelphia, embarking on your own journey through this bold and new thing called The Internet. Got a story to tell? A long-forgotten favorite site? Or perhaps your own [...]