MetaFilter posts tagged with www

This Is For Everyone

Wordshore — Tue, 25 Dec 2012 03:13:32 -0800

Twenty two years ago today, a British physicist, former trainspotter, science fiction fan and computer builder, with the help of Robert Cailliau and other colleagues at CERN, executed the first successful communication between a HTTP client and server on the Internet. The web was devised in France (not Switzerland), and built on decades of hypertext and internet protocol developments. The first browser was called WorldWideWeb and ran on the NeXT computer. The first website was info.cern.ch. Despite promotion of the system within CERN, take-up was low for the first year or two. By the end of 1993, there were 623 websites. In May 1994, the First International Conference on the World-Wide Web was held (at which the first Best of the Web award winners were announced), attracting 380 participants; the preliminary proceedings are downloadable. In 1995, Matt Haughey designed his first website; in June of that year, there were 23,500 websites - or less than 20,000. However, within 18 months (by the end of 1996), there were over 600,000 websites. In 1998 the first Google index recognized 26 million pages, and by 2000 the number of pages in the "surface" web was measurable in the billions. Estimates of how many websites there are varies as years progress, as does the number of web pages. Some more well-known earlier websites. The author of the software participated in the opening ceremony of this summer's Olympic Games, during which he tweeted. Not everyone knew who he was. This didn't bother him and he won't tell you what he had for breakfast. Family fact: his father worked in the team which developed the world's first commercially available general-purpose electronic computer, followed by text compression techniques and some of the earliest applications of computers in medicine.

The Library of Babel in 140 characters (or fewer)

0bvious — Sat, 27 Oct 2012 08:15:36 -0800

The universe (which others call The Twitter) is composed of every word in the English language; Shakespeare's folios, line-by-line-by-line; the Exegesis of Philip K. Dick, exploded; Constantine XI, in 140 character chunks; Sun Tzu's Art of War, in its entirety; the chapter headings of JG Ballard, in abundance; and definitive discographies of Every. Artist. Ever... All this, I repeat, is true, but one hundred forty characters of inalterable wwwtext cannot correspond to any language, no matter how dialectical or rudimentary it may be. [previously]

The Slow Web Movement

Foci for Analysis — Thu, 06 Sep 2012 08:31:57 -0800

Timely not real-time. Rhythm not random. Moderation not excess. Knowledge not information. These are a few of the many characteristics of The Slow Web.

Eat The Strawberry

shoesfullofdust — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 18:16:49 -0800

How Much Does The Internet Weigh? (SLYT)

That's all there is. There is no more.

Smart Dalek — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 05:57:12 -0800

About:Blank can be considered an inevitability of one's online journeys, though many a virtual traveler can spend their time without ever encountering the phenomenon. Part of a vast family (but not to be confused with any other similarily named personages, aliases, objects, paraphenalia, bound published texts, functions or any imitations thereof), it has not been without its share of jealous detractors. Its very reputation was nearly besmirched, yet remained largely benign compared to more terrifying finds. Indeed, it continues to persevere, even in analog form.

Icons of the Web

Joe Beese — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 21:47:22 -0800

The area of each icon is proportional to the sum of the reach of all sites using that icon. ... The largest icon (Google) is 11,936 x 11,936 pixels, and the whole diagram is 37,440 x 37,440.

Digital Revolution

netbros — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:11:56 -0800

This is the introduction to The Virtual Revolution , an open source documentary, due for transmission on BBC Two next week, that will take stock of 20 years of change brought about by the World Wide Web. Only about 25% of the world population uses the Web today, however more than 70% of people have access to mobile or fixed communication devices capable of displaying Web content. The World Wide Web Foundation [prev] exists to bridge the 'digital divide' in Internet usage.

It's not exactly Babelfish

Pope Guilty — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 08:42:04 -0800

Regender reverses gendered words and names on websites.

Because Firefox is just too darn white.

zardoz — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:48:21 -0800

Blackbird. Are you reading this page on Firefox, Opera, or IE? More importantly, are you black? Then you might want to check out Blackbird: "a web browser designed for the African-American community."

VF: How the Web Was Won

spiderwire — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 21:02:34 -0800

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. I just like this quote because it sums up my experience with all hackers-as-CEOs:

Jeff Bezos: When we started out, we were packing on our hands and knees on these cement floors. One of the software engineers that I was packing next to was saying, You know, this is really killing my knees and my back. And I said to this person, I just had a great idea. We should get kneepads. And he looked at me like I was from Mars. And he said, Jeff, we should get packing tables. We got packing tables the next day, and it doubled our productivity.

about:mozilla

ardgedee — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 15:29:21 -0800

Welcome to Mosaic Communications Corporation! It was 1994, and the World Wide Web as we know it today was about to be born. Mosaic Communications didn't invent the web and didn't even invent the graphical browser. The Netscape browser and Netscape server were instrumental in commercializing the internet. mcom.com was one of the standard starting points for anybody on the Web, and this little slice of history can help the young'uns understand what the Web used to be like. Reconstructed from archived files for your benefit by one jwz, a task epic in the telling.

Dapper: an API for any website

MetaMonkey — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 20:59:03 -0800

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".

Usability frogs

carter — Sat, 15 Apr 2006 09:26:15 -0800

Frog Review - Talking frogs review websites.

Not necessarily the best of the web.

insomnia_lj — Tue, 11 Apr 2006 13:17:55 -0800

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?!

It's Semantic

MetaMonkey — Sun, 02 Apr 2006 12:01:29 -0800

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]

The End of the Internet?

allkindsoftime — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 12:57:49 -0800

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."

All your semantic web are belong to google

MetaMonkey — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 06:20:41 -0800

All your semantic web are belong to google? The implications of Google Base on the fabled semantic web.

Wicked Web 2.0 resource!!!!11!1!

Rothko — Sat, 29 Oct 2005 07:28:08 -0800

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...

Can't Find On Google . Com

RonZ — Sun, 10 Jul 2005 20:46:26 -0800

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.

How many fingers in how many pies?

ashbury — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 05:23:28 -0800

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?

Just say no to cruft!

riffola — Mon, 17 Nov 2003 21:38:33 -0800

.www deprecated? A quest to get rid off the "WWW" cruft in urls. Is it a good idea or a bad idea?

Columnist predicts the Imminent Death of the Internet

Johnny Assay — Wed, 27 Aug 2003 09:24:20 -0800

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)

One Dollar Cuts

Tystnaden — Thu, 24 Oct 2002 17:50:02 -0800

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 /.)

Man hijacks al-Qaida Web site.

TBoneMcCool — Tue, 30 Jul 2002 11:28:52 -0800

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.

mathowie — Wed, 26 Jun 2002 16:06:49 -0800

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.