back to article Before Bitcoin, digital cash was called Beenz – all that's left is a T-shirt

A couple of weeks back we wrote about the plan to have Oracle's NetBeans Java IDE become an Apache project and in an attempt to get some perspective on the move asked friend of the Regand former OpenStack board member Tristan Goode what he thought. Tristan's response? “The last NetBeans I remember was these in my old industry …

  1. Gordon 10

    Ppshaw

    The first digital cash in the UK at least was called Mondex.

    1. Simon Sharwood, Reg APAC Editor (Written by Reg staff)

      Re: Ppshaw

      Stored value ≠ digital cash.

      I sat next to a Mondex chap on a long flight once. I told him I was a tech journo. He was quite pleased. Over the next hour he tried to explain why Mondex mattered. I just didn't get it. The rest of the flight was frosty.

      1. Paul 25

        Re: Ppshaw

        We had Mondex on our ID/library card at York university when I was a student. In theory, at the time, it was an interesting idea, you could load your card at cash machines or pay phones on campus, societies could take payment from them with a little calculator style transfer machine, and you could pay for anything on campus (including the payphones and a few local shops) with it.

        But it was so, so, sooooo slow. I don't think anyone ever tried to use Mondex at a busy college bar more than once.

        Had it been remotely as fast as contactless credit card payments it could have found a niche somewhere, but petty much everyone fell back to using cash.

        Nowadays of course it's been made utterly irrelevant by contactless payments. In a world where we have almost ubiquitous internet connections this kind of digital cash solves a problem that doesn't really exist any more.

        1. ThomH

          Re: Ppshaw

          Being a York undergraduate that just caught the tail end of Mondex, I'd describe it as this: an additional step, involving an additional machine, in getting your laundry done. An early lesson that extra technology does not always help.

    2. phuzz Silver badge

      Re: Ppshaw

      If Mondex was digital cash, then so is a credit card. In reality it was basically a warm up for chip and PIN.

      They had it at Exter uni as well, and it was pretty much only used for the library and some photocopy machines by the time I got there.

  2. Linker3000
    Headmaster

    Flooz

    Flooz

    That is all

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Flooz

      Ah, Flooz - the I remember that from the first and only time (to my knowledge) that my card details got stolen to buy some. An early lesson in why it's not a good idea to use a debit card online but (fortunately?) I was still an impoverished student at the time so didn't have much to steal.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So you're saying

    They can now be considered Has-beenz?

  4. 0laf
    Paris Hilton

    I have a toy whale from the Whale SSL VPN people that I picked up form their stall the day they were bought by Microsoft.

    Funnily enough the chap was very happy since he's just made a stonking great wodge of cash.

    Paris because it's the closest thing to an icon for filthy lucre.

  5. oomwat

    JavaFX

    I have a Sun Microsystems Java FX tee somewhere ... although I did hear that FX is still inexplicably doing the rounds.

  6. PassiveSmoking

    When moving house I found a cardboard box with the jungle.com logo on it. I have no memory of ever using jungle.com

  7. Calum Morrison

    Wish I'd kept it.

    I'm no Apple fan but even I wasn't taken in by the Blackberry tote bag (stuffed with a load of leaflets but alas, nothing useful) at the launch of their tablet, whatever it was called. Remember - the one that didn't actually have email on it?

    On the side the slogan was something along the lines of "Yeah, you should have waited" or "Bet you wish you waited". It hung around the office for long enough but was victim to a tat clear-out last year. Probably lasted longer than any of the actual devices. I wonder what happened to BlackBerry?

    1. Daniel B.

      Re: Wish I'd kept it.

      The PlayBook. One of my coworkers bought one... only to get played when BB10 was announced, and the playbook was not given an upgrade to it.

  8. Missing Semicolon Silver badge
    Happy

    Sun Microsystems

    Massive hold-all in green with purple writing. Propoer Sun logo and everything. It's been used for all sorts over the years.

    I occasionally wonder if I ought to have looked after it.

    1. Daniel B.

      Re: Sun Microsystems

      I have a couple of Sun freebies, and now I fiercely guard them. Those who were working there when they were gobbled up by Oracle went on a mad quest to grab everything available.

  9. Calum Morrison

    Just remembered...

    There was a fleece I got from emusic.com back in 2001 or so for signing up and paying actual money for real mp3s.

    I'm still with them on the same grandfathered account; what was originally $9.99 for unlimited downloads (try that on a 128k ISDN) became $9.99 for 40 tracks a month which became £16.80 credit per month for a payment of $9.99 (~£6ish) at a price of £0.42 per track. Still good value - all the indie and classical I want and I've still got the fleece!

  10. Doctor Huh?

    CueCat anyone?

    I think I still have one gathering dust in the Bin of Old Technology.

    The notion was that one would read a magazine, become so impressed by an ad that one had to go to the nearest computer, pick up the CueCat, scan a barcode, and order the product. It was the '90's :^)

    1. Gene Cash Silver badge

      Re: CueCat anyone?

      I remember CueCats used to phone home, and there was a way to easily stop it, and the CueCat company threatened to sue all these "hackers that were depriving it of a living"

      Big 'ol storm on Slashdot, back when Slashdot was actually relevant.

      I also remember Radio Shack pushing them REALLY REALLY hard. Almost as hard as they pushed batteries.

      Edit: Fired up a few more sleeping neurons and remembered also there was a method to convert them into plain 'ol standalone barcode readers.

      1. What? Me worry?

        Re: CueCat anyone?

        CueCat - Wired spammed them to every subscriber one month. Used it for about ten minutes to show off at the office and then it went to the bottom of the drawer.

  11. Scoured Frisbee

    I found a copy of _The Dilbert Principle_ with "Compliments of Compaq" on the cover at a thrift store.

  12. Little Mouse

    OGC

    The ill-thought-out OGC logo of six or so years ago gets my vote every time.

    I'm smiling just thinking about it.

  13. Gene Cash Silver badge
    Go

    "Beenz denies it's about to be canned"

    Second best headline next to "Man removes penis from Ebay"

  14. Sloppy Crapmonster

    I wore my Novell baseball cap a couple of times this summer. I still don't miss Novell.

  15. JustNiz

    ..So now its just another haz beenz.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Solid brass desktop pen holder with Compaq on the side.

    Truevision t-shirts

    and a Microsoft Windows 2000 OEM builder t-shirt

  17. Mark 85

    Cabletron T-Shirt

    I still have the Cabletron shirt when we upgraded from Token Ring to Ethernet. Not sure why I still have it. I had a few others from long gone switch companies also but I think they finally gave up the ghost in days of laundry past.

  18. David Roberts
    Windows

    Soft Switch

    Still have some branded items of clothing.

    An all singing all dancing email gateway back in the days of ccMail and MSmail before Microsoft Exchange developed the capability to act as a gateway and wiped out the oposition.

    People with a downer on Exchange probably don't remember quite how dire email was before it was available.

    Unfortunately they no longer fit because I seem to have shrunk. Still, happy days.

  19. What? Me worry?

    X.com

    I still have the plastic credit card somewhere.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like