Vanity Fair has a typically excellent article out -- "How the Web Was Won," an oral history of the Web. Even if you're familiar with ARPANet, Metcalfe's Law, Pearl Harbor Day, the VC rush, whatever -- the story told by the often-animated people at the center of the whirlwind is an enlightening and entertaining experience. And for those of you don't know the history of the Internet, learn it! This is part of your heritage now.
posted on Jun 4, 2008 - View this thread

Welcome to Mosaic Communications Corporation! It was 1994, and the World Wide Web as we know it today was about to be born.
posted on Mar 31, 2008 - View this thread

Dapper: The Data Mapper
A recently launched service that allows users to extract data from any website into XML, and transform or build applications and mashups with that data. Described by it's creators as a way to, "easily build an API for any website... through a visual and intuitive process". Plagiarism Today, meanwhile, has cause for concern, "Dapper is a scraper. Nothing more... now the technologically impaired can scrape content from any site... the potential danger [is] very, very real".
posted on Sep 5, 2006 - View this thread

Frog Review - Talking frogs review websites.
posted on Apr 15, 2006 - View this thread

2006 Webby Award finallists announced. So, if your favorite home/welcome page My Yahoo or Wonderbra? Two nominations for Metacritic. Other Meta-related sites, not so much... Best of the web?!
posted on Apr 11, 2006 - View this thread

The Future of the Web
A fascinating, breathless hour-long talk (+Q&A) recently given by Sir Tim (mp3 & mp4, no transcript available). For the lazy, this recent interview covers much the same ground. [more inside]
posted on Apr 2, 2006 - View this thread

The End of the Internet? "The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online."
posted on Feb 4, 2006 - View this thread

All your semantic web are belong to google? The implications of Google Base on the fabled semantic web.
posted on Nov 20, 2005 - View this thread

A literal cornucopia of online web design resources to help you keep on top of specifications and sites related to CSS, accessibility, graphic design (color tables and theory), DOM, typography, and much, much more...
posted on Oct 29, 2005 - View this thread

Can't Find On Google . Com While many people seem to think that Google can find anything (and knows everything), experienced web surfers know the results are often a bit lacking. So this site allows you to post what you are really looking for and what you punched in to the "Big G" to try to find it. The owner claims to know someone who works at Google that is "always interested in what people can't find on Google" - doubtful IMHO if they will really change anything based on this site. But semi-interesting stuff that highlights the inadaquacy of search engine technology.
posted on Jul 10, 2005 - View this thread

Microsoft has unleashed their internet search engine to the world. It currently isn't working, at least for me. Is it wrong of me to wish it stays that way?
posted on Nov 11, 2004 - View this thread

.www deprecated? A quest to get rid off the "WWW" cruft in urls. Is it a good idea or a bad idea?
posted on Nov 17, 2003 - View this thread

So you know all those worms that have been circulating recently? Well, turns out that they mean that the Internet has failed. (via the Obscure Store)
posted on Aug 27, 2003 - View this thread

One Dollar Cuts So many times so many of us have said we would buy music online if the price were right. It looks like that opportunity is now here. Are we going to put up or shut up? Is this article going to end up as a piece of PR or as an online social shift? (via /.)
posted on Oct 24, 2002 - View this thread

Man hijacks al-Qaida Web site. He offers it to the FBI to use for intelligence gathering, but the FBI stumbles around for a week trying to find somebody with the technical abilities to take advantage of the site. By then, the site's militant Islamic visitors had discovered the ruse. Go figure.
posted on Jul 30, 2002 - View this thread

Verisign (aka Satan) is set to relinquish the management of the .org domain pool this week, after agreeing to drop both the .org and .net registries to keep the .com one until 2007. ICANN is meeting on it this week (webcast). The list of all interested parties with competing applications is here, but personally I'm pulling for Carl from media.org's proposal for a public trust. For anyone that owns a .org domain, this is one to watch.
posted on Jun 26, 2002 - View this thread

Google Labs is a public beta testing area for some pretty cool things they are currently working on: an amazing glossary, voice search by telephone, search results navigated without the mouse and finding additional items to sets defined by words you enter.
With every new feature, they seem to be getting even further beyond the competition. Even though Google is very likable company: is a monopoly on web search a good thing?
posted on May 21, 2002 - View this thread

Somebody is going to link to this Wired article about blogging, so lets get it over and done with.
posted on Feb 18, 2002 - View this thread

Newspapers lose the web war. While newspapers recognized the risk the web posed to their core business, they often erred by forcing their new online ventures into the mold set by their pre-existing business model. A look at what made newspapers succeed or fail online from a Harvard Business School professor. (Warning: business-speak; via CNet.) Has your local newspaper done a good job on the web?
posted on Feb 1, 2002 - View this thread

An analysis of some of the web's limitations as a medium for publishing newspapers' content. It focuses on NewsStand, the service offering the NYTimes, the International Herald Tribune and others in PDF format, and says some interesting things about the respective formats' ease of use and ability to guide readers to what they're looking for. (It has me thinking, is HTML/CSS just too limited to do certain things well?)
posted on Jan 8, 2002 - View this thread

An inventive way to get cybersquatter off your domain. [page 3 & 4] Anyone have any great domain theft/squatting stories? My office just won a domain battle, and was served papers for another soon after. Life Goes on...[also tidbits on the motivations of congress in passing domain-use laws.]
posted on Aug 1, 2001 - View this thread

Spreading the word without filling a single person's pocket. Nice!

INDEPENDENTS DAY is a worldwide event celebrating independent content and design on the web. It's supported by an informal network of designers, artists, writers, editors, developers, and producers who create content primarily to enrich the web rather than their bank accounts.

posted on May 17, 2001 - View this thread

Eco-celebri-conscious cybersquatting?
Elizabeth-Taylor.com, anybody?
PopeJohnPaulI.com? [dead, alas]
JonasSalk.com? Sure, we got that…
Margaret Mead, Jerry Brown, Noam Chomsky? No problem.
Danny Thomas??Jerry Lewis???
…and don't miss the popups. (Warning: annoying and pointless.)
posted on Jan 21, 2001 - View this thread

www.excite@home.com Anyone know how they got that domain? Which NICs are allowing "unusual" characters, and how widespread is the standard?
posted on Jul 3, 2000 - View this thread

Under Construction Signs Tell More Than You Might Think. Fun analysis of those goofy "Under Construction" signs.
posted on May 18, 2000 - View this thread

A Federal Judge OKs deep linking to commercial websites. I'm very happy to see this, since hypertext and hyperlinks are the basis of the web. Hell yeah!
posted on Mar 29, 2000 - View this thread

This is too good to keep to myself. It's MetaFilter, after you've gone through the portal into Malkovich's mind, as Malkovich. (thanks Lake Effect)
posted on Jan 24, 2000 - View this thread