There have been a lot of tech sites that came about in the late ninteties and early 2000s. These sites emerged shortly after the Internet became a household word, and the technology to run them was fairly primitive compared to today (there were no such things as Content Management Systems… the horror!). Many of the sites started the whole “blog” concept even before the term became popular, and some tech sites helped influence the hardware and gaming industries.
I have fond memories of many different tech websites. For me, they were not just a place to get information or look at the latest case mods; they were a virtual hangout where I felt like a part of a community. This is what started me writing, and eventually led to running a site of my own.
Below are some of the tech sites that have left us with fond memories, but are no longer with us.
To start off our countdown are noteworthy tech sites, but we just couldn’t gather any information on them for this article. Those sites are Mikhailtech, Hi-Tech Reviews, Tekbunker, HardwareZoom, ReviewNation, FuriousTech, BonaFideReviews, The Tech Lounge, Iceteks, Club Overclocker, and XYZ Computing.
Now on to the countdown!
12. Monkey Review
This was one of the short-lived tech websites there was. It was a lot harder to come up with a good site design back then, and Monkey Review really didn’t have much visual flair. It may have started in late 2001, but by 2004 it was completely dead. Too bad, because they had some decent articles.
11. Techseekers.net
This tech site is one of the only ones I know of run from Ireland. It was also short-lived and ran from 2002 til about early 2006.
Techseekers.net is an independent irish technology based, news, Hardware reviews and information website with a wide audience. Techseekers.net is designed to inform and create a community of people with similar interests in the high tech or “geek” scene. Although mainly a PC / Windows related news site it does provide coverage of all aspects of technology .
The domain is still active, but it has a “hello world” WordPress default. Like many tech sites, they are using off-the-shelf content management system, but looks like the site might come back one day.
10. Cool Tech Zone
CoolTechZone started in around 2004 and had a good following until about 2007. While researching the site errored out 2007 but emerged a year or so later with a different layout. It looks like their last article was in August of 2010, and the site is now serving up the creamy white-screen filling.
9. Fast Lane HW
The site ran from 2004 and stopped producing articles in 2009, and in 2011 it went dark. Before it was turned off, it had this messge:
FastLaneHW.com had a great run, but is now closed. Thanks to all the loyal visitors throughout the years.
8. Viper Lair
Viper Lair had a lot of good articles on PC hardware and video cards, but it looks like their last article was in February of 2011. The site soon went dark after that without explanation.
7. Mod The Box
It’s possible that they may make a comeback. Let me get a prediction from my Magic 8-ball…. Signs point to “No”.
6. Voided Warranty
5. Techniz.co.uk
This site stopped producing articles around August of 2009, and completely stopped doing the tech site in 2012. Here’s a quote from Jon about the site’s end on January 19, 2012
If you haven’t already notice – we have changed!
After many years of doing a computer review site I had to admit defeat. Keeping the site up-to-date with reviews & news etc had almost become a full-time job, which meant other parts of my life suffered. Being married means I have to give my wife some ‘quality’ time so I had to knock the site on the head.
4. The Tech Zone
One of the bigger players in the early tech site scene was The Tech Zone. The site was (and still is) run by John Chow, who was able to achieve success because of his Marketing background. John started making more money with the site, which propelled it from a hobby site to a true commercial entity.
John then started his own personal blog telling people how to make money online. Now John’s personal blog is his big focus, whose content is mostly about “making money online” programs and flaunting his “dot com lifestyle” in an attempt to get hungry webmasters to give him money for some magic secret to wealth and happiness.
As such, The Tech Zone has died as a tech site and is no longer relevant.
3. GruntvillE
Gruntville was another tech site that had a good design for the time and focused on PC hardware.
GruntvillE.com staff is dedicated to providing our readers with a professional look at what the the latest products are comprised of including: features, specifications, appearance, build quality, performance, ease of use and our overall opinion of them.
Nobody really knows what happened, but the site went dark in 2009 and there weren’t many updates for a while before then.
2. Overclocker Café
Again, another influential tech site that focused on PC hardware. Dean Barker officially said his goodbyes on December 14th, 2011 after 11 years with this quote:
After eleven fun and fulfilling years, it’s time to close the Overclocker Cafe’ chapter of my life. As many of you have noticed, our daily news posts and weekly reviews have dwindled to a weekly news post and occasional review. With ever increasing family needs which are very important to me, I have to make the time come from somewhere. I’ve put this off as long as I could but the time has come.
Do look in from time to time, as I’ll continue to put up miscellaneous ramblings. Thanks for a great eleven years everyone!
Fortunately, the site’s archives are still up, so you can still take a trip down memory lane.
1. Voodoo Extreme
Voodoo Extreme’s name was derived from one of the first 3d accelerators for the PC at the time: 3DFX’s “Voodoo Graphics”. The site was one of the first and coolest sites about PC gaming and gaming culture.
The main thing that made Voodoo Extreme one of the best places on the internet at the time was the personality of Billy “Wicked” Wilson. Some call his style journalistic honesty, and others call it unprofessional, but Billy just called everything like he saw it, and put it in such a colorful way. Billy is the originator of “honey-roasted gaming news” and common acronyms like “PYAITK”.
At the end of each news day, Billy would leave his loyal readers with a snippet of wisdom, much like a virtual Yoda for our proverbial Luke. Here’s a few snippets of the wit and wisdom of Billy:
Welp, another one bites the dust. AGN has shut down, a site which, at one time, was headed up by our good buddy Jeremy “Binky Dinkums” Alford. Dammit, that alias is a keeper too…Binky, drop us a line, just so that I can say “Binky let us know”…he’s good people, it’s too bad to see AGN go down, but these things happen in the web biz. Good luck to the others that were working at AGN! And speaking of Binky (ok, this has nothing to do with that, I just like rolling all of the shit into one paragraph <grin>), on the topic of Sweet Dick thinking that everybody and their grandmother attempts to race him on the streets of Salt Lake City, I must admit, there are times when some cricket dick pulls up next to me in his Honda Civic with a 15” inch tip (which, no doubt, adds 5 horsepower to his 38 horsepower car…ok, maybe a tad more stock, but not much) — sounding like a f’n lawnmower on steroids, where I feel that it’s my obligation to put the smack down and let the Gremlin’s 8 cylinder spank him like Pee Wee Herman polishing his love dragon at an adult film festival. It’s just, I doubt that, at what seems like EVERY stoplight, another new person is looking to race, which is basically how a day in the life of Sweet Dick sounds (“yeah, I raced a Mustang, Corvette, and a Supercharged 4Runner today”)…yeah, yeah, tell it to the judge. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about Sweet Dick hiding under his girlfriend’s bed, when her husband came home at night (she’s now divorced, but oh boy, some of the stories). Ahhhh, crazy kids.
I’m not sure how I overlooked it before, but our new guy Ryan (“TheMystic”) is from the Chicago area…chances are he’s nailed Sweet Dick’s woman at least once before (because, as I’m under the impression, it’s a requirement if you live in the Chicago area…plus, it’s a tax write-off or something). I heard a rumor that it’s windy or breezy there in Chicago, or something like that (joke, dammit). Of course, Sweet Dick also told me that it really isn’t that windy, so I would say “yeah, you think they’d give it a nick name like ‘the breezy town’ or something if it really was windy there” (as he knows that I like to bitch about anything weather related, and that he’s been trying to get me to head over there sometime with him — of course I know this isn’t the REAL reason behind the cities name, at least historically, but it def. wits it these days). To be honest, he has probably the only long distance relationship that I can think of that actually works, hell, he’s been with his little hooker for like 7 years now. They have the type of relationship though that, if they lived together, I doubt they’d be together for more than a couple of months (I’m sure you know the type). Next time he goes out of town to visit her (as I know he doesn’t check the site much when he’s out of town) I’ll tell you the story about how he had to hide under her bed a few times when her husband came home early (yeah, she was married, but hey, that’s how good relationships start). In all honesty, she’s a great girl — I hated her way back when, for obvious reasons, but she turned out to be very cool (um, once she got divorced, which wasn’t a huge shocker). She was a real bitch though until her mom died, which sparked the joke “now if her dad died, she’d be ever more cool”…that went over like a lead balloon. I have no idea what sparked this long ass blah about Sweet Dick’s hired help, so please just excuse me.
Billy did have some personal problems and eventually left VoodooExtreme. The site just wasn’t the same after Billy left, but was big enough to get the attention of IGN, who purchased the site and rebranded it VE3D.
Billy passed away on March 15, 2005, but remains in many people’s minds the father of the modern gaming blog. The original format that made the site famous has been dead for nearly 10 years, but it was the fire that influenced many tech writers (including myself), and thus the current tone of the internet.
So, you thought you’d skip right to the end and find out what the number 1 spot was in our countdown? Are you the type of person that consistently received teacher comments like this: “Joe pays attention in class, but doesn’t follow directions“? Well you can just go to the back of the line and start over, ya freakin’ shortcut-monkey.
Seriously, if you have fond memories of any of the old tech websites then you’ll want to read the entire list.