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I was going to submit this earlier today, but I thought "nah, nobody else on HN is going to be old enough to remember Encarta" :) I remember when our family fi
by GordonS 7y ago
I was going to submit this earlier today, but I thought "nah, nobody else on HN is going to be old enough to remember Encarta" :)
I remember when our family first got Encarta, and I spent hour after hour reading and marvelling about how all this information could be so easily accessible! I think we had a 14k dial-up Internet connection at the time, and the web was barely getting started - I really had no idea how things would turn out!
- throwaway156503 7y agoConsider sharing this sort of content anyway! Even for younger audiences, it's really cool to be exposed to new-to-you things.
- curiousgal 7y agoI am 24 and very much remember it! Simpler days!
- jszymborski 7y ago26 here... I think Encarta was one of the first CD-ROMS we owned (Compton was later, er, acquired surreptitiously). I still remember the joy I had researching the Stegosaurus and the Platypus between my local library and my copy of Encarta for a school project <3.
- WorldMaker 7y agoI remember a period where Compton's was coming bundled with a lot of CD-ROM drives, but Encarta felt so much better. We'd have multiple copies of Compton's floating around and would have to struggle to find that valuable Encarta CD.
- asdfman123 7y agoAre you kidding me? Encarta was the bomb. As a kid, in the days before the computer was an endless source of information and distraction, I would just browse Encarta and learn random stuff. Once some kid in my third grade class asked why race cars made noise they do when they passed, the teacher didn't give a satisfactory answer, and I was able to explain the Doppler effect to them based on animation I watched on Encarta. Good stuff.
- NikolaNovak 7y agoOh no, I've been looking for "modern Encarta" for years, in particular something that would easily show me different regions coloured by statistics and criteria - the ability to pick part of the earth, and then colour selected regions by economy, or productivity, or politics, or whatever, was phenomenal. Tablets _should_ be such a natural device for an educational geography product; but with free Google Maps + Wikipedia, nobody seems to be trying (at least I cannot find anything useful in my once-yearly attempts).
- mikeyouse 7y agoCIA World Factbook is fairly close from a data perspective but not super user friendly or polished: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world-factbook/ https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/resources/the-world... (Enable Flash to make it slightly less cumbersome)
- tasogare 7y agoThis is something I plan to work on after getting my PhD in a few years. It's technically challenging, but there is so much things to do pedagogically around historical & linguistics maps on the globe.
- tripzilch 7y agoIsn't GapMinder sort of what you're looking for? https://www.gapminder.org/tools/ https://www.gapminder.org/tools/
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 52-6F-62 7y agoOh I remember it well and fondly! There was all of one or two internet providers in our county where I grew up at that time. Maybe one. We couldn’t afford it yet but my parents bought Encarta because it seemed like a wholesome tract for computer use. I spent countless hours on there and used it for a ton of homework. IIRC my parents used it all the time as well. They likely still have the disks kicking around someplace.
- vanderZwan 7y agoAre you kidding me? The only way hearing the opening screen again[0] could evoke more warm fuzzy nostalgia with me is if at the end it would crossfade into Baba Yetu from Civ IV's main menu screen[1]. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fRX4R6MY4A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fRX4R6MY4A [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e0Qelqp-Cc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e0Qelqp-Cc
- mxfh 7y agoThough Encarta evokes a bit more of Civ VI Sogno di Volare to me, but I share the sentiment. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQYN2P3E06s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQYN2P3E06s Besides Encarta, the mid 90s where also the time where I was first able to buy satellite imagery on CR-ROM for all of Germany from my collected lunch money and years before Microsoft's TerraServer changed the world, which itself was long before Google Maps took over. https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q89q4/microsofts-terraserver-was-google-earth-before-there-was-google-earth https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/8q89q4/microsofts-terrase...
- vanderZwan 7y agoEither way, Microsoft should bring back Encarta and hire Christopher Tin to compose something for the occasion ;)
- somebodythere 7y agoThe MindMaze[1] music takes me back. I spent three-digits hours on that game as a little kid. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT-VbFcck6A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hT-VbFcck6A
- jcranmer 7y agoIt shouldn't be that hard to build MindMaze on top of Wikipedia. I wonder if anyone's done it? Although I do remember the hard geography questions very frequently just being "What is the county seat of (insert random US county)?"
- dtech 7y agoGiven that Encarta was the bomb in the late 90's and early 00's and the 25-35 age group is well represented on HN I'd say Encarta i prime HN nostalgia material.
- gnulinux 7y ago22 here and I remember Encarta very fondly. I did not use it very often as back then paperback encyclopedias were still a "thing" and Wikipedia was pretty ok too; but I definitely reading about random physicists in Encarta. It was fun!
- GordonS 7y agoHuh, I'm almost 40, really didn't realise Encarta had still a thing for people who are now in their early 20's!