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   Thomas 🔭🕹️ (thomasfuchs@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 20-May-2026 10:12:45 JST Thomas 🔭🕹️

   RE: https://hachyderm.io/@thomasfuchs/116603070039160133

   Actually trying to find the source for this, it appears to be from one of those “1,000 things to do on the Web” books from the Y2K era.

   I have some books coming to see if it’s in any one of them.

   If you search online for this (in a real search engine, not Google) you will find a lot of random Reddit threads that all say it’s an “ad” despite it clearly not being an ad and all images of it are always this specific angled image, just with different crops.

   Trying to find the truth where it’s from so stay tuned.

   • Embed this notice
     Ian Z (soviut@hachyderm.io)'s status on Wednesday, 20-May-2026 16:00:26 JST Ian Z

     in reply to

     @thomasfuchs Yeah, definitely not an ad. This is one of those filler articles that publications always had ready if they needed to fill space. "Ten things you can do with your new CDROM drive", "Tips and tricks to get the most out of your SoundBlaster", etc.

     What kind of ad would say "Reward them with a visit"? LOL!

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     felix (grayscale) 🐺 (gray17@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 31-May-2026 12:10:49 JST felix (grayscale) 🐺

     in reply to

     @thomasfuchs I found a paper that quotes the "no portal litter" description, and attributes it to a book "Internet 101" by Wendy G Lehnert, but cites a 1999 printing of the book, which I can't find online. (it was originally printed 1997 and had several editions with different isbn numbers, but no edition indicator in the title)

     https://www.researchgate.net/publication/370115651_From_Web_Catalogs_to_Google_A_Retrospective_Study_of_Web_Search_Engines_Sustainable_Development

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     felix (grayscale) 🐺 (gray17@mastodon.social)'s status on Sunday, 31-May-2026 23:35:11 JST felix (grayscale) 🐺

     @thomasfuchs I thought that too, but I definitely found both a 1997 and 1998 edition of "Internet 101" that had the same title, no indication on the cover that they were different editions, but they did have different ISBN numbers and different info on the copyright page. so I suspect there was a 1999 edition, but it's not digitized because who would bother doing that to this weird historic artifact, when it already appears to be digitized.