the first time

[plastic37]

First record
First gig
... fuck that. Your first google (pre google - prugoggle) might say more


First internet search?

And i remember this so well...
1997, in what was advertised as the cities first internet cafe.
After asking for help accessing the "search" function i typed in into the super highway: Lech Kowalski DOA
This is something that i had seen but was absolutely desperate for more information on.

Got nothing back that i remember. A couple of years later things started appearing. For a while, a long time before i had the internet at home it was always the first thing i searched for.

[runcible]

It was Chris Barrus' Spiritualized and Spacemen 3 site as someone told me I was mentioned on it, so that was the first thing I ever looked at on the web. Google didn't exist so it was all Yahoo. Can't remember when that was.

[mc]

I am happy to report that the first thing I ever searched online was Spiritualized. The year was early 1998, I was a callow 17-year-old, and the school library had just that week been hooked up to the ol' WWW. Me and a mate were on the computer to do research for some silly project (I can't even remember what!), but I was in control of the keyboard, so when Netscape loaded Alta Vista I typed in Spiritualized just to see what would happen. Oh, there were so many links, but my mate took over before I got to investigate further (there were 20 of us in the class wanting internet access, so idle surfing time wasn't really possible!) Then I went to university, and spent literally hours drooling over Chris Barrus' Spiritualized, Sp3 and Spectrum pages. Google came into being around this time, and I remember it being just one of many sites linked, searched and collated on dogpile.com, which was how the classy person searched in those days

Edit: just remembered! After losing my internet virginity as detailed above, I used another brief moment of school internet access to search for and iliicitly print out the tab to Radiohead's "Street Spirit (Fade Out)". Ah, happy days

[olan]

It would have been in the mid-1990s when I first went to Australia, and probably something work related, or the newspapers. I don't recall following any band sites but I still traded cassettes (and then CDRs) quite heavily until Sharing The Groove started up. That must have been about 1997/98, (but I could be wrong there). I remember being really impressed that I could download a full gig in under a day (as long as the phone didn't ring) when previously it had taken weeks and weeks to sort a trade out (sometimes by mail ). Now with broadband a 2 hour concert comes in in minutes.....

[semisynthetic]

One day I splurged and bought an IBM Computer with COLOR screen Monitor! WOW. I didn't have to program it, it was wonderful; but then there was the (new access) to the "Internet", c. 1989.

In the beginning of (Public) Internet Access, finding PRECISELY what you were looking for was difficult; the search methods were just terrible; I read about a "Molecular Orbital Modeling Program" I wanted; so I typed in the name of the Program, and the search yielded "Diamond and Gold Futures", along with photos of dozens of assorted Pornographic Models. (So I found the Flyer and just called in the order). I still spent late nights in the Chemistry and Physics Library to find data I wanted; no "type and find" for awhile anyway.

In a couple of years, it was much better, but still "hit and miss" on many searches.

Now, rarely do I have trouble finding even the most arcane of information; finally a very useful tool. To "check and see", I typed in "Norcaradienyl Intermediate Ions" and was surprised at the number and variety of papers I found; I was hoping to see their structures, but in fairness, I did not include that in my search.

[BzaInSpace]

1998, the Spiritualized Web ring (I think it was called - was this the Chris Barrus site?)
It was mentioned in that weeks Melody Maker with an accompanying Spz article.

Listed a full and lengthy web address which I just typed in - this was an angelfire site...

[ro]

I was late to the internet, 2002?
I searched for and bought a kazoo from eBay.

[davedecay]

I was using internet at least by the mid-1990s.

I can remember using HotBot as a search engine around that time.

[yangen]

I first used internet late 1997 or early 1998. My first search was either sport or music related but I don't remember quite well what it was... I used altavista search engine a lot back then.

[Dreamweapon]

My first search was also for Spacemen 3 using the Alta Vista search engine and brought up Chris Barrus' site.