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Given the increasing complexity of the web plus nostalgia, I'm seriously surprised that there's no actual distributed BBS/Minitel/BTX thing going on.

With API-driven backends (webapps, esp. SPA's, mobile apps), it would probably be easy enough to shoe-horn in some glorious ANSI interface...

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Telnet BBSes are still a thing, believe it or not. The first one I can think of off the top of my head is the home of a BBS software package.

Try telnetting to vert.synchro.net

Apparently they're still popular in Taiwan.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PTT_Bulletin_Board_System

Thats pretty impressive! I mean its a BBS with more than 1.5 million registered users, for gods sake. Also there is some creative ASCII art in there, go check it out.

Indeed, PTT has a lot of beautiful screens, and for those of us used to the CP437 character set, it looks quite exotic!

For those interested, here are some captures of some of the menus (there is a lot more posted in conferences) :

- Taiwanese BBSes and Unicode ANSi Art : http://www.cambus.net/taiwanese-bbses-and-unicode-ansi-art/ - Taiwanese BBSes and Unicode ANSi Art - Part II : http://www.cambus.net/taiwanese-bbses-and-unicode-ansi-art-p...

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