4 ms·
An explanation for those who've never seen this before: A long long time ago on an Internet far from here a young man had an idea. His idea was simple but geni
by mixmax 13y ago
An explanation for those who've never seen this before:
A long long time ago on an Internet far from here a young man had an idea. His idea was simple but genius. He would make a homepage (as they were called back then) with a grid of 100 by 100 squares each ten pixels across. Each square could hold an image 10x10 pixels. One million pixels.
Back when we didn't have retina displays and Stallmann was still young designers thought 10x10 pixels was plenty to make a pretty picture. You could then buy a square for one hundred dollars; a dollar a pixel. And if people clicked on the pretty picture you had made in your square they would be taken to your homepage. If you had lots of money or worked for one of those new dot-com's you could buy more than one square so your designer could make a bigger picture.
Now, you can probably guess why it was called the million Dollar Homepage (Hint 1000 x 1000 = 1 million), and as you can see all the squares were sold so the architect reached his goal, won his bet and retreated back to the matrix to devise new ingenious devious ideas.
Edit: changed ten dollars to one hundred dollars - thanks for pointing it out jgrubb.
- yelnatz 13y agoI remember he did this to pay off his tuition fees.
- cliveowen 13y agoSeeing as we're talking of just 8 years ago, I don't think Stallmann was still young.
- mixmax 13y agoRemember this is Internet time (not to be confused with Swatch Internet time (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swatch_Internet_Time)) which is a whole different beast to normal time. I clearly remember both my dot-com coach and my advisory board telling me over champagne brunch that Internet time was at least 5 times normal time. This would make it 40 years ago, and not 8.
- D9u 13y agoStallman isn't a dog, or a computer, or a protocol, he's a human being, and 52 years of age does not equate to being "still a young man."
- petsos 13y ago(slow clap)
- pavs 13y agoWhat's a dot-com coach?
- ekianjo 13y agoProbabaly some snake oil guy who tells how where to put your money wisely after the dot-com crash.
- ekianjo 13y agowhat are you talking about. Since when time goes at a different speed on the internet? Your champagne brunch was BS.
- Jgrubb 13y agoThis has been here for 9 minutes and nobody has pointed out that a 10x10 square for $10 is not a dollar a pixel?!?
- user24 13y agoIt was $100 for a 10x10 square; http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/buy.php http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/buy.php
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kayoone 13y agoThis was 2005, so its not that long ago, we already had facebook for example ;) Still the idea was pretty novel and worked, many tried to copy the approach and failed. Even Alex Tew, the guy behind the site, came back later with a Photobook and some other pixel based business idea (pixelotto) but couldnt replicate the success.
- runn1ng 13y agoFacebook was a very different site back then. People still used MySpace. iPhone was still not introduced for 2 years. Apples computers were named iBook and PowerBook and run on PPC for one more year.
- andyhmltn 13y agoWhen you put it like that, things really have changed!
- jessriedel 13y agoFacebook was still an Ivy-league only site, right?
- elif 13y agoNo, it was .edu email address only, though. source: GT freshman in 2005 :)
- kayoone 13y agoSure, 8 years is a long time in IT but still. The same year we got the Xbox360 (which is still around) and buzzwords like Web 2.0 and Ajax were all over the place. Doesnt seem too distant in my memory atleast.
- runn1ng 13y agoIn 2005, mobile web meant WAP.
- return0 13y agoNotably, it was the media attention that made the idea work.
- Jgrubb 13y agoAttribution and everything. Who says HN etiquette is going down the tubes? Cheers mixmax.