It was the first commercial web magazine, if you're reading internet history - a brave mid-90s pioneer displaying the first banner advertisements. But if you remember those early days, you also remember the crazy cachet - and a wildly unpredictible passel of San Francisco geeks. See the fluorescent yellow, and it's 1995.

My memory's a little hazy, but it seems like there weren't many online magazines back then - at least, not ones that published daily. But the web was so young, every idea was amplified by a rush of future euphoria. And somewhere behind HotWired was a hive of techno-heads, churning out a steady stream of new...

The what-could-be lent significance to their precious pet projects, spawning geek triumphs like the Apache web server and Suck.com. (Not to mention Josh Quittner's famous prank on McDonalds.) It bestowed brief moments of internet fame on way-new pundits like Brock Meeks, Jon Katz, and Dr. Weil. Even a decade later, we've still got Wired News and HotBot...

The mystique provoked a backlash - the web was never supposed to be "cool" in any consumerizable way. And the hotbed of experimentation proved less than cost effective. But just for being there - for being such a big part of the early web - I'll never forget HotWired.

Nine years later, I still remember the image they ran when WebMonkey premiered.