The Original Online Reviewers

Who needs any of those other tech blogs like Gizmodo or TechCrunch when you have ReviewsOnLine.com? Well, maybe everyone, considering this website was last posted to (according to the "News" page) on July 20th 2006, and the most recent review being posted on October 25th 2002.

This website design is actually quite good-looking for web 1.0 (though a little unoptimized, but that's expected), and it has quite an extensive list of reports about tech news along with product reviews (known as "Product Briefs"). It's honestly kinda sad seeing a website with such effort put into it being abandoned like this, but I guess it came down to adapt or die, and they didn't adapt.

Below is a list of all the main pages of the website:

Contents: The "Contents" page is just their name for the homepage, which you view upon going to their domain. It showcases the most recent news stories they covered, the most recent conventions they've attended, and (on the right side bar) the most recent product reviews.

Reviews: Despite referring to reviews as "Product Briefs" while on the page of a review, they I guess just decided to call the page itself "Reviews". For some reason the most recent review on this page was posted on January 8th 2001, over 1 and a half years before their last review , as mentioned earlier, posted on October 25th 2002 (seen at the top of the right side-bar on the "Contents" page).

News: The "News" page is actually home to the most recent reviews, along with a big list of companies (which leads to the most recent reviews or news articles about that company on the website) labeled "Companies in the News" at the top of the page. This list of companies seems to be the most recently updated elements of the website (besides the copyright date in a few select places), being last updated (as mentioned previously) on July 20th 2006.

Archives: A long list of links to various articles about conventions, products, and more general tech news. Not much more than that.

Index: An alphabetical list of products which the site has reviewed organized by company, people which the site has written about (also in alphabetical order), and events which staff of the site have attended.

Search: A way to search specific articles which seems to have since broken (it always sends me to this "Article has been moved" error page).

About: Standard about page containing info about the site and it's purpose/goal, what they do, etcetera.

Gallery:

The front page of the site.

The sites outdated "Review" page.

The slightly more up-to-date News page.

The archives of Reviews OnLine.

The index page of Reviews OnLine (I know I don't need to say their full name but it's just fun to type out in full).

The broken search page of Reviews OnLine.

All about the site.

Starting Off With A Bang On heartfall.com!

 Welcome to the blog everybody!

For the first post, we're starting off with a real gem of a website. What you see below is the wonderful place known as heartfall.com. This website is many things, including a webhosting and site design service, an ActiveWorlds resource (for avatars and world hosting), a graphic design gallery (of which I have used one of their free backgrounds), and a film production studio. It's truly a mecca of early internet content.

As you might be able to see in the screenshots below (just of the pages directly accessible through the homepage, trust me there's many more pages), Heartfall is a combination of every type of web 1.0 website, from the competently laid-out but still tacky sites to the "my first webpage" sites (no offense), and I love it.

Below is a run-down of all the main pages you'll find:

The Design Studio: Where you can pay for their hosting or design skills for your website (though you have to horizontally scroll for part of the page). I wonder it it still works.

3D Designs And Environments: Here they host images created in a 3D modeling program, avatars for ActiveWorlds (which you need to pay for), links to various 3D resources (also ActiveWorlds-related), and even a 3D ocean screensaver (which seems to still work). The link to download the screensaver on the website itself it broken, but here's an archive from another download link used by Heartfall at one point: oceanview.zip

Film Production: Here's where the age of the website truly becomes apparent. Heartfall has apparently produced what seems to be an informational series called "What If...?", a series called "Escape With Ease" (detailing martial arts techniques), and another series of martial arts videos by Jiu Joe Jitsu. I tried to order one of the videos and it sent me to a webpage I was supposed to copy, print out, and then mail to Heartfall. Like I said, it's truly here where the website starts to show how old it is. I wonder if I can still buy it.

ActiveWorlds Hosting Services: Along with website hosting, Heartfall seems to also have hosting for ActiveWorlds... uh- worlds, I guess. Apparently it's also pretty pricey.

Object Yard: This seemed to be a website owned by Heartfall which was their main storefront for ActiveWorlds assets. It's since shuttered (according to the Internet Archive that happened around December 2011 to early 2012). There was some free stuff too, some of which has been archived and you can still download by going to the page on the Internet Archive.

Wildlife Spirits: A website hosting images of animal and/or nature with a website that was designed and being hosted by Heartfall. The website itself isn't that bad, although it's design is outdated and some of it's features are broken, it's still a cool place for pictures of wild animals. Unlike Object Yard, Wildlife Spirits seems to have been created independently of Heartfall, but the original owner paid Heartfall for... basically everything else (at the bottom of the "Credits" page it says the site was "designed & hosted by heartfall.com", so who knows if Heartfall owns it or not). Although, I didn't look into it that much, so maybe some connection I'm missing.

The Site Map: From what I can tell the site map has existed since at least 2001 but was never finished.

The Contact Page: Just contact information about the website. You could try emailing I guess but who knows if anybody still checks the info email. Hell, who knows if they even still exist as a company, let alone still have the address listed. Guess there's one way to find out, though. Maybe it's my ticket to getting some of those videos.

Free Stuff: And finally, we're at the last link listed on the main page. This is a link directory for all the free goodies you can download from their website.

Gallery:

Hearfall's logo.

The Heartfall homepage.

The Heartfall Design Studio (without the missing chunck.

The Heartfall 3D Page (screenshot extra wide so you can appreciate the background).

The Film Production page of Heartfall.

The webpage for Heartfall's ActiveWorlds World hosting services.

The most recent archive or objectyard.com (from December 2011).

The front page of wildlifespirits.com.

The only things on the "Site Map".

Heartfall's contact information.

Heartfall: IT'S FREEEEEEEEEEEEEE!