Hyperlinkomatic History

The Short Version

Hyperlinkomatic has evolved and grown over the last 6 years. We built it because we needed it. We opened it up to a bunch of friends because they needed it. It seemed a bit unfair to stop there.

The Long Version

Hyperlinkomatic started life as something called the Link Machine a long time ago (circa 1998). We'd just got ourselves hooked up to the first UK DSL trial and bookmark lists were very obviously doomed. We built the simple Link Machine database to run on a local network. Interaction between the Link Machine and your web browser happened in slow motion via a language called Applescript. This set up was less than ideal. It meant that you had to be using one specified browser on one specific computer. Which had to be Apple Mac. And you had to have patience.

A bunch of kind souls helped us beta test it, we wrote the documentation and promptly abandoned it. The reason for the sudden change in heart was that we'd become entangled in developing websites that interacted with mySQL database servers. Runtime shareware was so last century, the future was online. Especially for something like the Link Machine which was, after all, only useful when you were online.

The new, improved, subtly renamed, and online Linkmachine took over from the original in 2001. Again, a few people helped us test it, and again we got distracted by other projects and the need to earn a living. Linkmachine was almost finished for another 2 years. A small, select group of elite surfers had become completely dependent on it. But it wasn't quite finished enough to release.

In 2003 we made another big push to get the project complete. Armed with new skills and languages, equipped with the root password to our own Linux server, we started again on the all new, faster, better, bigger, redesigned Hyperlinkomatic. This time, with six years of evolution and user-testing behind us, we actually got it finished...

So, huge thanks to all those people who've helped us test the various incarnations of this thing...

And sorry about the wait...