Tuesday 6 May 2008

A decade with Yahoo email

I noticed last week that my Yahoo email address would be 10 years old today. The "Welcome to Yahoo! Mail" was received Wednesday 6 May 1998 at 08:34am.

The greetings ends with

We'll keep you updated with all the newest features on Yahoo! Mail. Let us know if you have any questions or comments!

All the best,
The Yahoo! Mail Team.

P.S. If you're looking for help, click on our Help Desk

It has been a useful service, as other email addresses have changed as my ISP has changed, or employer has changed. The interface has changed slightly over the years, and the space made available has increased. But it is still the same system that I subscribed to 10 years ago. Long may it remain.

6 comments:

Lighthiker said...

Holy cow..you save these kind of mails, remind them and digg them out 10 years later?

And I thought I was organized ;-)

Baz said...

I kept an 'archive' of my Uni e-mail from 1990 in dot matrix form! Sadly, Ctrl-F on paper doesn't work too well, the print faded and I think my Mum may well have chucked it out (like all my degree notes - I still gag when I think of that). I must have a rummage around for it when I get back.

I was very seriously fortunate at the time, as e-mail had been blanket disallowed at Sheffield Uni following misuse (even then!). I was allowed as I argued that I had a research colleague (and friend) up in Aberdeen!

AktoMan said...

I didn't keep everything, as pace limitations meant that unimportant things had to be chucked. I accidentlaly noticed the first one last week when going through folders for some information.

AktoMan said...

Oh, I've older emails than this one Baz. I think 1985 at RGIT in Aberdeen may be the earliest. Dot matrix printouts of the weekly roundup of the AD&D session(s). Sometimes in the 'voice' of an NPC from their perspective.

IIRC, one time I wrote without the vowels, and addedd them in at the end. I'd heard of a poet doing that, so just knicked the idea.

We were quite advanced, having chat facilities in 84/85, and the problems that they brought in - chatting rather than working on the terminal. We also had MUD. Which is another story.

I laughed (probably cackled) when some student accused me of being a newb to virtual worlds. I think he was 17.

Baz said...

When I joined ICL in 1996, I was going around thinking M$ invented the gui... (I know - sorry!) until a colleague showed me a video of some guys running a gui in the late 1960s. Clunk! Eyes duly opened!

Anyway, we'll cut the reminiscences there, shall we?

:o)

AktoMan said...

I still remember seeing a "Tomorrows World" piece about computers and that they'd never take off in the office. Just look at all the disks you'd need to store data! And if someone phoned and asked for some info, you'd have to save and exit the program that you were running; start the required program, load the files and then give them the relevant information. It's just too long a procedure!

Even in the early-mid 90's, people were sure you didn't need more than 512MB of HD and certainly no CD drive on an office pc. people would just use it to play music on.