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So I woke up this morning to find an email with this note in the body:
"Haloscan is being shut down on: Feb 11, 2010
The Haloscan hardware and software is physically failing and we have no choice but to discontinue the service."
It then goes on to talk about the options that Haloscan users have, but for those of us who can remember the old days, this is a sad passage of a technology that got us, well, kind of here.
As someone who co-runs a blog that used to use it, they had actually changed it roughly 1.5 years ago to a template with smilies and all sorts of stuff - it was terrible. The customer support for it was nil, and they started having outages. This is what prompted us to actually make our own little system that looks...exactly like old Haloscan.
And you have to understand, chitown doesn't do "smiles". He might refrain from scowling and punching you in the face, though, if you make sure to leave the mayo off his sandwich.
with White_Pony_Rocks. He left the mayo (or put on something else in its place) off Chitown's sandwich.
Where would we have been during the coaching search without Haloscan. I am going to miss it.
I loved logging on to Haloscan when there was some kind of breaking news and watching the explosion ... the number of users would skyrocket. Pure chaos! And constantly hitting reload, reload, reload. Yeah, good times.
It didn't get old. Chris Saad of JS-Kit killed it intentionally to foster a pay for feature comment system on everybody. They used to let you pay to get the same level of functionality as Haloscan, then they phased it out. I wish I could find the email chain dex and chitown had with the guy about Haloscan/JS-Kit and its features.
Also, Haloscan didn't die, but lives on in the form of UniScorn, the WLA commenting system custom built by BJ.
Uniscorn FTW
I originally thought "Haloscan" was just the name Brian had made up for his comment section, as a loving homage to the temporary look atop the stadium a decade ago.
As a big fan of Haloscan and someone who is scared of this new commenting system, this is sad. The haloscan days during the coaching search were absolutely the best.
Still in Virginia? How's the family?
Still in VA. Family's great. The little man is now takling up a storm, and can already say "Go Blue!" How are things on your end?
Yeah, you couldn't negbang someone for yelling "FIRST!", man that annoyed the crap out of me.
Yeah, I agree. It seems...sad- like finding out something about an ex or something. I, too, remember the halcyon days of the coaching search. I thought that was when this blog really exploded- with Brian breaking the LC retirement story, etc. Back then I just lurked. Haloscan was an awesome free-for-all.
As much fun as the coaching search on Haloscan was (and believe me, there will never be another "moment" like that for both Michigan or MGoBlog/the community there in), I always enjoyed the insanity of the Haloscan proto-liveblog, where, you would refresh after a particularly egregious moment and have 27 new comments all using some level of profanity or foul oath. That was fun too, and amazingly, not cursed as I understand it.
but how does software "physically" fail? I can understand hardware, but how does lines of computer code physically fail? Is this some sort of acknowledgement that Tron was real? That the haloscan software was actually some sort of Jeff Bridges look alike in blue glowing clothing that eventually got his lightcycle f'd up?
"It didn't get old. Chris Saad of JS-Kit killed it intentionally to foster a pay for feature comment system on everybody. They used to let you pay to get the same level of functionality as Haloscan, then they phased it out."
Planned obsolescence.
Sorry but what was haloscan?
I would call this meta.
Haloscan is where legends were born, Dex, Magnus, Jim Harbaugh Scramble, Henne for Heisman, Chitownblue2, etc. It was great fun watching the friendly banter on everything from how the team played to who had the best pizza in Ann Arbor.
There was that period of handle-jacking. Lawlessness on the interwebs!
