I wrote last week about my first Internet search, and asked you for your own recollections. Here are a few:
Cindy writes:
“I am not a librarian but I work in a library so I found your comment about the library very interesting. One of the first things I remember searching for was a Kodak photo scanner. I worked in the communications office and someone came to our office wanting to scan a photo. We needed a new scanner and thought maybe Kodak was making a scanner. I typed Kodak.com into my browser (NCSA Mosaic) and, voila—the website came up. The other people in the room were quite amazed that I could find a website that quickly. It was before there were search engines that would help with finding sites. There were a few lists available but I would usually guess the site address just by using the corporation name. For a few years I collected lists of URLs and sent them out to a group of friends each month. Seems humorous now but back then I would get thank you notes from friends who were happy to learn about new sites.”
Martha writes:
“I do remember my first search on the internet, but not the engine I used. We were having a party at my house and trying out this new technology. It must have been after December of 1990, because that’s when we moved to the house where this occurred, but I don’t remember what year it was. Later than 1994, when we bought our first Mac, no doubt, an SE 30 for which we spent an extra $400 for one MB of RAM in addition to the one that was built in. I don’t remember what the question was that we were trying to resolve, but the terms searched for were “chicken sex.” An amazing number of hits were returned – I’m sure there would be many more today.
With not much to do here in northern Maine…,
Martha”
And Bruce wrote in praising a search engine called Dogpile.com:
“I read your recollection of the first time you used Google. That brings up my first time to search for a items or topic and I stumbled on the search engine called Dogpile. It was so useful I still use it. The aspect that is attractive is that it employs Google and about 10 other search engines at the same time. That way if Google does not have the item you are automatically using alternative methods. Furthermore, when I tell people the name of the search engine they always smile, but they do not forget it.”