Are Social Networking sites making us 'Less Humans'

A friend of mine looked directly into my eyes and said: "I have more online friends compared to those in my real life".

"What do you expect? Internet is the new world." I couldn't wait to reply.

But then there was this silence and I started to digest what I had just said. In real sense, I also have so many online friends that I can't even think about comparing the number with my real friends. They are just incomparable.


But what, really, is the impact of this? I am not alone here.

Is the new technology, under the illusion of allowing us to communicate better, actually isolating us from real human interactions?

Is it dominating our lives by making us 'less humans'?

It is not Facebook, MySpace, Tagged, Twitter, Digg... it's great opportunity... we are everywhere... it's fun!

On the contrary, there is also a great risk of depersonalization, alienation, self-indulgence, and the dangers of having more virtual friends than real ones.

Let's not forget to ask ourselves: "Who is my neighbor?"

Alt text for Web Accessibility

I was once given a traffic tip that I should always include an alternative text, or let me call it an alt attribute, in the HTML for my images. As a result, I have been doing this ever since.


What they Hardly Say
But there is something the guru didn't tell me, something that I had to learn on my own. The alt attribute is used in HTML and XHTML documents to specify alternative text that is to be rendered when the element to which it is applied cannot be rendered. It is specified for several non-textual elements including img, area, applet and input, where it must be specified for the first two and optional for the last two.

Why you should Provide for alt text
Specifying alt text assist different users. Just to mention a few, alt text assists:

1. Users without graphic display terminals.


2. Users whose browsers don't support forms.


3. Visually impaired users.


4. Users who use speech synthesizers.


5. Users who have configured their graphical user agents not to display images.

This means that when alt text is provided for, the elements can be accessible to everyone including:

• The disabled, for instance, the blind.


• People in rural areas with low bandwidth who turned the images off to speed download.


• People who turned off images on their mobile phones to lower bandwidth charges.


• And equally important, accessible to technologies that cannot see images such as the search engines.

A common misconception : Alt attribute is not supposed to literally describe contents of the element; it is supposed to be an alternative for the element.

Internet For the Disabled

Have you ever wondered how people with disabilities, let's say the blind, access the Internet? Have you ever asked yourself whether they access the Internet at all?

We all need the Internet
The Internet is currently a crucial part of our lives and it's imperative that no culture or element of the society be left out. "The disabled are no exception", says the W3C.

According to the consortium, the web is fundamentally designed to work for all people. This is irrespective of their hardware, software, language, culture, location, physical or mental ability.

As a consequence, Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI) brings together industry, disability organizations, government and research labs from around the world to develop guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities including auditory, cognitive, neurological, physical, speech and visual disabilities.

Understanding Web Accessibility
Web accessibility means that people with disabilities can perceive, understand, navigate and interact with the web. It means that they can also contribute to the web.

How are we going to achieve this?
WAI works with these organizations around the world to develop strategies, guidelines and resources to help make the web accessible to people with disabilities.
The guidelines and techniques include:

Web Content Accessibility Guideline (WCAG)
Accessible Rich Internet Application (WAI-ARIA)
Authoring Tool Accessibility Guideline (ATAG)
User Agent Accessibility Guideline (UAAG)
Evaluation and Report Language (EARL)

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"Let's bring awareness to the general audience of what issues exits for the people with disabilities and why access to the Internet is so important to them."

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Goo.gl under attack on Twitter

This has been the case ever since December, 14th 2009. As a routine, we publish a post, quickly ping Feedburner and we get our feed items automatically published in our Twitter accounts using the Google URL shortener at goo.gl.



The Breaking News
"A new worm is posting links on Twitter user accounts that lead to a fake antivirus site." Online security and Sophos and Kaspersky report.

The Bad News
The worm is using Google URL shortener goo.gl to spread this link :(

"If you follow the link, you will land on a site that advertises a rouge antivirus solution called 'Security Shield'. This 'antivirus is in fact malware which should fortunately be detected (Sophos detects it as Troj/FakeAV-CMG) as such by popular antivirus solution."

What has Twitter done in reaction
The Twitter Safety account is on the move. An update claims:

"Twitter is working to remove the malware links and reset passwords on compromised accounts."

My question
Do you think this is going to affect our Feedburner feed updates to our respective Twitter accounts?

Blogging Tip of the Day - A Post that is Easy to Read

My experience online has taught me one very crucial lesson: it's hard to read from an electronic output display than a printed one. In other words, it's simply hard to read online.

One consequence brought by the difficulty of reading online, for Bloggers, is that our blog visitors don't stay for long. Typically, suffers scan blog pages and determine within a few seconds whether the pages are worth staying on, or whether they should click away.

So for bloggers, there is a need to write posts that are rich, relevant and easy to read.

A Post that is Easy to Read

• Make sure that your post titles are clear and concise.


• Use mini-heading in your posts to describe the structure of your content.


• Use lists: bullets and numbers.


• Use varying text formats, for instance, italicize conversations, and make key points bold.


• Add relevant links.


• Use images.


• Write short posts and paragraphs.

However, too much of anything is poisonous - too much links, images, videos, text formatting... will none other than scare your visitors away.

The phony bugger compensates the activating follower.

True Success Online

Do you know that the mobile phones were first designed to access the Internet in 1999? But the targeted effect of this innovation began to be fully experienced just a few years back. Right now mobile phones are widely being used to access the net and its accessibility graph is approximately 50% of the total.

The News
China's online population grew to 457 million in 2010 as the use of mobile phones to surf the net spread rapidly. This was a 73 million increase over the year of 2009.

The online population growth is not only in surfing the net, but also in the appetite for online shopping - hello online marketers!

To quench the thirst of their increasing customer base, China's largest e-commerce firm, Alibaba Group, and its financing partners are planning to spend $4.5 billion (30 billion Yuan) setting up a network of warehouse across the country.

In a report by Reuters:

"This investment will help give clients reassurance that the things they buy will not be damaged by a third party along the way, and will help client stickiness to Alibaba platform." said Victor Yip, an analyst at UOB Kay Hian in Hong Kong.

Keep it up China!

The DOS And DON'T When Using Facebook

The first thing you, or anyone, should put into consideration when using Facebook whether you want your account to be personal or professional. Alternatively, you aught to feel free to set up more than one account in order to keep the people and the messages separate.

Here are some of the DOs and DON'Ts:

DO: Be reasonably selective. You don't want to add your boss to your social account, do you?

DON'T: You don't have to confirm all the requests. Feel free to abandon the burdening ones and not 'poke' back. The good news is that it is not considered rude anymore.

DO: Consider whether your profile is private or public. Private is just for your friends while public for everyone.

DON'T: Don't use offensive profile photos, or put up an album with tasteless or pornographic images. You never know who is checking out your site don't risk upsetting anyone. Your profile is a reflection of your personality.

DO: Use the "report as spam" button to avoid junk mail. This is especially when you find an application is automatically sending you spam notifications.

DON'T: Don't send multi-recipient messages. What you don't know is that Facebook defaults the option "Reply to all".

Finally, about the wall-to-wall thing. If your conversation gets personal, please go to inbox. Not everyone is worth seeing you naked.

Homour - User Friendly!

The term user friendly is quite common these days. To depict it, a user friendly appliance is one which is easy to use and which, often, keep giving you tips on ways to use it at every stage. This is very common with almost each and every computing device we purchase today. But this, also, was not the case some years ago. In short, early computers were not quite user friendly and some of the feed back they gave to their users were sometimes provocative.

There was a quick tempered scientist working at an early version of a PC in his laboratory. He kept keying in data and commanding the computer to give him feed back. "GIGO" was the first bit of reply the computer gave,, meaning, " Garbage In, Garbage Out". In other words, the PC was saying, "If you give me nonsense, I give you nonsense back".

The answer to the scientist's second query was, "That's dumb".

The computer's third message was a little longer but no more friendly. "How can you ask such a stupid question?"

But the last straw came when the computer answered one query with the feedback, "IDIOT!". The scientist jumped to his feet, lifted high the stool on which he had been sitting and brought it crashing smack on top of the computer!

I think we should, really, consider user friendliness when purchasing computers. Just a penny of my thought, what do you think?

They Control the Internet

Have you ever asked yourself: who really controls the Internet?

I am talking about a body, or agency, that exercises authority, controls and administers Internet public policy, and directs and controls the actions of its subjects...I'm talking about Internet governance.

Policies and mechanisms for Internet governance have been topics of debate between many different Internet stakeholders, but the ultimate response is that no single body can control the Internet.

Individual Governments can control and promote the utilization of the International network, but only in their jurisdiction. In as a whole, they can only have a say on the Internet, but their control is diminished. Check out the US Senate Internet services usage rules and policies.

All in all, there must be some Internet governance. The Internet is a system and there has to be some sot of administration and regulations.

Esther Dyson, a journalist and commentator on emerging digital technology, an entrepreneur and a philanthropist, described Internet governance as the control put in place to manage the growth of the Internet and its usage. In her words below...

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"Now with the advent of the Net, we are privatizing government in a new way - not only in the traditional sense of selling things off to the private sector, but by allowing organizations independent of the traditional government to take on certain 'government' regulatory roles. These new international regulatory agencies will perform former government functions in counterpoint to increasingly large companies and also to individuals and smaller private organizations that can operate globally over the Net."

Esther Dyson, 1998

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So, once again, who controls the Internet?

There are 5 supra-governmental organizations that control different aspects of the Internet, these include:

1. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). This is a non profit body formed for domain names an IP allocation and management. It is perhaps the most public of the Internet control organizations since domain names or web addresses are one of the most tangible aspect of the Internet.


2. The Internet Society (ISOC). This is a professional membership society, formed in 1992, and that focuses on technical issues of standards and protocols. Similarly, the organization is conscious of how these will affect the global society.
   


3. The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). This is an International community of network designers, operators, vendors and researchers, concerned with the development of the Internet Architecture and its transport protocols such as IP. It is one of the main technical bodies.
   


4. The World Wide Web Consortium (w3c). This is an organization that is responsible for web standards. It focuses on improving publishing standards such as HTML and XML.
   


5. Telecommunications Information Networking Architecture Consortium (TINA-C). This is a consortium that takes a higher-level view of how applications communicate over communication networks. This approach makes it somewhat different from the others mentioned above. It does not define detailed standards.
   

Internet Development Time-line

We have always been provided with brief histories of the Internet, stories of the Internet...all trying to explain how the Internet came about. But my focus is a different one.

I am simply talking about a summary that lists the Internet development time-line, and since I have just mentioned the word 'summary', I'll go direct to the point.

The Internet is the latest in the series of developments of how the human race has used technology to disseminate information. It is evident that many of the major advances, in the use of information, have happened within the last hundred years. This, I'm afraid, may prospect the difficulties in managing technological changes. But as far as the Internet is concerned, the likely or appropriate administrations are in place - so there is totally nothing to worry about.

Here goes the time-line:

• 1958 - US responds with ARPA when USSR launches Sputnik 1.


• 1961 - First paper on packet network switching theory.


• 1966 - First ARPAnet plan.


• 1969 - Node 1: UCLA (30th Aug, hocked up 2nd Sept), 4 nodes by December.


• 1973 - First International connections: University college, London and Royal Establishment (Norway). First e-mail.


• 1976 - Elizabeth II, Queen of the UK sends an e-mail.


• 1982 - TCP/IP protocol adopted, first definition of the Internet.


• 1984 - Domain Name System (DNS) introduced.


• 1985 - Symbolics.com becomes the first registered dot-com.


• 1987 - NFSNet backbone developed, upgraded to TI in 1988.


• 1988 - Early worm virus affects 6,000 of the 60,000 nodes, IRC developed.


• 1989 - Countries connected to NFSNet include: Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Chile, Greece, India, Ireland, Korea, Spain, and Switzerland.


• 1991 - WWW released by CERN.


• 1992 - Surfing the Internet term coined.


• 1993 - WWW proliferates at 341, 634% annual growth rate of service traffic.


• 1994 - First malls, virtual bank, online pizza and SPAM.


• 1995 - Netscape floats and browser war ensues.


• 1997 - Web sites pass 1 million.


• 2002 - 2 billion indexed web pages on over 20 million websites.


• 2006 - Wide spread use of Blogs, RSS and Podcast.

What do you think?

Qn: This is just up to 2006, what about 2007 -2010?

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"We may find that the more we succeed in removing barriers to the Internet Communications, the more we may help reduce those other, far more important obstructions to human communications - the one that divide nations and estrange demographic groups."

Vint Cerf

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Too Little Too Late!

Let me give you a brief description.

The T-shirt was black, high quality, with a Blogger 'B' barge on the chest and three vertical thick stripes at the back. The number at the back was 11 with the word 'Blogger' on top of it. Do you get the picture?

Let me explain how I came across the T-shirt.

As a Blogger user, I obviously follow Blogger Buzz. But I must confess that I'm not quite good, especially when regular follow-ups are concerned. So I ended up stumbling upon the post about a survey that was to be taken by Blogger user and the award would be the T-shirt. Since I know Blogger in-side-out, do I have to explain how I felt?

But the straw came when I clicked the link to download the electronic form. "Oops!" the survey was closed.

How many of you won the T-shirt?

Why are Existing Organizations Hesitating to Use E-Commerce Strategy?

It wasn't long before I realized that the guy I was siting next to was a Marketer in one of the local popular organizations. With confidence I managed greetings. The social mood led to introductions, and we were talking.

The little conversation seemed to interesting to both of us, even though, mostly, I was playing the passive role. The man was just talkative. He enjoyed explaining the details of his work while I was happy to get answers to some of my curious questions.

Contrary to my expectations, the anti-climax came when I brought up the issue of E-Commerce.
"Are you using E-Commerce?" I asked.
"No" He had nothing to add further.
"But what do you think about the strategy?" I tried again.
"I find it complicated in a way that doesn't make sense." He managed carelessly.

The immediate change in his mood was surprising. I looked at him and I remember sighing. I simply knew that I was going no where. Before I could say anything else, he looked at me back cautiously, and said: "Listen, E-Marketing has a lot of disadvantages than advantages." And that was period.

The Internet era is moving fast. The short-spaced developments in the Technology have profound effects. This is especially in E-Business where it is really stretching and widening the available opportunities for all. For instance, the W3C is currently working on two relevant principles:

1. Web For All - which focuses on removing all the barriers to Internet accessibility by users, irrespective of disability, language, etc. This project has drastically increased online population, the existing and potential customer base.
2. Web On Everything - which focuses on enabling Internet accessibility on a wide range of devices. The development has awoken M-Commerce, where business people negotiate and carry out transactions worth millions using their handset devices.

The fact that a good number of sound business organizations, both in developed and developing countries, are still hesitating to implement the E-Business strategy, is sad. Thorough research reveals that there is a remarkable opportunity online. One effective barrier to this open opportunity it the individual and collective negative attitude of the business people.

Do you want to hear my view point? I anticipate a future when all forms of businesses will be forced to fully computerize their systems, and to grab a place in the online market. Or, they simply won't be able to compete!

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The first Internet company to reach 10 million customers: Amazon, 1999

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What they Hardly Tell You About Running Ads On your Blog

There is nothing as fulfiling as signing up with a new advertising program, accessing your paying account, scrolling down through the dashboard, checking the payments report, and, the dolar sign '$', is always 'thats it'. As a consequence, we end up joining dozens of these programs.
You know what I'm talking about, right?

The next step is always as much interesting. It is always more of integrating ad widgets... Oh! I meant to say cool ad widgets, onto our Blogs. This is always either on the sidebar, below the header, at the footer, and there is an argument that a traditional ad link within a post, that is relevant to it, gets more clicks than a micro media flash widget on either the sidebar, below the header, or at the footer.

Since the integration practice is always from the many individual ad programs that we would have joined, we end up with shopping malls. A shopping mall on the sidebar. A hypermarket below the header. A mall at the footer. And the posts are more likely to be victims.

But, let me ask you a question: Do you know the immensity of the harm overrunning ads may do to your Blog?

Well, let me say it like it is:

• Your Blog loses its initially intended focus. Confirming your current Blog activities with your initial Blog description would be a wise first step here.


• You lose your focus. Imagine having more than 20 paying accounts to manage. And, there is always something new that you should match up with.


• You scare your existing and potential readers away.


• The excessive widgets integrated would weigh down your Blog and really affect its loading speed. AS a result, your FeedBurner feed account would have stats reading: hundreds of 'clicks' and zero 'reach'
  

I know that making money with ads, for most Blogs, is a necessity. But lets be cautioned at the same time!

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"Your readers will feel like they are not a priority to you if ads take center stage"

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It Has Been Said on the Facebook Blog

As I was taking my usual excursion through the facebook blog, I met one post that my eyes couldn't help but single it out. Let me make the picture clear first. The facebook blog is a community blog with approximately over 30 bloggers and about 20 blogging categories. The blog gives its readers total freedom to browse the frequently published posts by providing its archives either by date of post, category or blogger. In short, it's a Blog worth it!

The post that I have just mentioned, was short, simple, straight to the point and well intended. But what I found strange, in an amusing way, was the opinion that was communicated. The blogger suggested that people on facebook should consider using the 'page' as a means to share photos, videos, music, and all that can be shared.
In other words, the suggestion is that everyone on facebook should have a page, and this conclusion is simply because everyone on facebook shares.

Suppose this would be the case, what would facebook be like?
Let's mull over some of the side effects:

• How many facebook friends do you have? Imagine getting an invitation from everyone of them asking you to be a fan of their pages. Don't forget that thia would be compulsory because that's the place they would be sharing.


• What would happen to the wall? This is just too hard to imagine!


• Would you be ready to take up the whole responsibility of web-mastering a page? And since the main purpose of your page would be to share, it would have to be fully interractive. That is, dynamic, not static. Are you getting the picture? micro-media flash... down loadable widgets... frequently updated sections...

It is creative, innovative and enterprising to have a facebook page, but, only when it is relevant.

5 Facts that went down the History of E-mail

Today, there are more individual e-mail messages sent on the Internet more than data of any other kind.

But, do you know:

That

"The first e-mail ever to be sent was in 1972 and on the first Computer Network ever to be created"

That
"Ray Tomlinson is the person crowned with 'inventing e-mail'. First, he invented a simple program for sending files between computers. The software opened a connection, sent a file to another computer and then sent a message back to say that the file had arrived safely at its destination. Since e-mail boxes in computers are really just files, the next step was simple. Tomlinson changed his program so that it carried a mail message from one computer and added it to a mail box of another computer. This is how the era began."

That
"Ray Tomlinson was the person who chose the @ sign, which means at, in e-mail addresses."

That
"In 1976, Elizabeth II, the Queen of UK sent her first e-mail."

That
"The US postal service delivered 101 billion pieces of paper mail in 1998. Estimates for e-mail messages in the same year range from 618 billion to 4 trillion."

The Origin of the World Wide Web

The Internet, today, is a fun place for everyone. The newbie who is learning to use computers is no exception. Unfortunately, this was not the case back before 1989.

Back then, one had to be a professional, like a computer engineer, a software engineer... to be able to use the Internet. During then, one had to mingle with the back Command-line interface to enter source codes to issue instructions commanding the various Internet Protocols to perform a task.
Proudly, this is not the case today as we all know. Thanks to the WWW.

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Story of the Internet
Part 1: A Fact that Provoked the Idea of the Internet.
Part 2: The First Computer Network to be Created.
Part 3: How the First Computer Network changed the World.
Part 4: The Creation of the Internet.
Part 5: The Origin of the World Wide Web (current post).

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The World Wide Web (WWW), in definition, is a system of internet servers that support hypertext to access several internet protocols (IPs) on a single interface. This definition takes us back to Tim Berner's Lee first creativity: Hypertext.


Hypertext
Tim Berner's Lee is an English engineer and I'm glad to say that we have one thing in common - we both have computers in our blood.

In, 1980, Tim had a contract to work at CERN for 6 months. This is where and when he created a program called 'Enquire Within'. Enquire Within was new and unique. It had electronic connections within a document and between different documents on different computers. It could organize information according to the content of document, not where they could be found, and... Enquire Within was Hypertext.

Hypertext is a special kind of text that is intended to give more freedom to the reader and the writer. It contains links that lead to other places: documents, text, pictures, programs, webpage, audio and video recordings. In simple terms, the power of hypertext is that it can lead to anything.

A New Invention
Nine years later, in 1989, Tim was back working again at CERN. This time he felt that he ahd a new responsibility. But this was a responsibility that was not part of his day-to-day work schedule. It was a responsibility that was deeply motivated by who Tim is, a man who just can't help but improve everything. In short, Tim wanted to improve communication between scientists and engineers at CERN. He wanted to make communication easier and more efficient. So, one morning he approached the person in charge and explained his idea:
" But Tim, that's computing, an area that does not concern us." The man incharge replied.
Tim tried harder to explain the benefits of his new idea but the final answer he received was not assuring:
"Ok, I'll think about it."

Plan 'B'
Mr. Lee saw that it wasn't going to be easy to get his way through and create a new program. But then he thought of this place where the computer men, engineers and scientists often meet during the breaks. He thought of the coffee room and he smiled at the wits of his second plan.

This was simply to face his colleagues and use them to pursue the creation of his new program. So he decided to meet the one by one:
"Would you like to have links to all the information you need at work?" He would ask.
"That would be great Tim, I have to travel all the way to CERN to get some information." Most of them answered.

Consequently, the pressure was not only coming from Tim, but all directions, and the ultimate response was the administration giving way.

The New Program
Immediately, Tim started creating the new program and he called it the World Wide Web.
This program used a new invention, a system of addresses. In this system, anything, anywhere on the internet could have its own special address called URL - Uniform Resource Locator.

Tim's browser program could allow writers to create links to anything they liked, and readers had the freedom to follow their interests from link to link. Tim also invented a set of rules for sending texts and pictures over the internet. The rules allowed documents to appear almost exactly the same, whatever the computer system was being used.
For web authors, Tim created a new scripting language called HTML (Hypertext Markup language).

Over the years to today, the WWW has constantly been in a continued development. It is improved everyday to cope up with the current trends in technology.

As you are reading this, Mr. Tim berner's Lee is the President of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

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"We may find that the more we succeed in removing barriers to internet communications, the more we may help reduce those other, far more important obstructions to human communications - the ones that divide nations and estrange demographic groups."

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Why Search Engines Don't use Meta-tags to Crawle Site Anymore

Once upon a time, search such as Google, Yahoo, MSN, Alta Vista... ranked documents higher in their listings which had meta-keywords that corresponded to the queries typed into the search engines by their users. But the unexpected happened. The unexpected always happen. Competing Companies chuckled secretly at their wits; they started including the names of their competitors, or repeating keywords several times, in their meta-tags (standard HTML codes used to specify the content and characteristics of the document). This is a process known as 'search engine spamming'.



But this practice was not very genius, altogether.

Initially setting up their businesses, the search engine organizations had keenly taken calculated risks. Calculated in the nature that the unforeseeable uncertainties were bore both in mind and by a flexible procedural policy. Their security systems had to, in one way or another, reveal the threats. They, similarly, had to make the necessary adjustments. As a consequence, most search engines now attach limited importance to the keyword meta-tags. In fact, I have just realized that Google does not use them at all!

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"One of the biggest changes brought about by electronic communications is how approaches to transmitting and transforming Information can be used for competitive advantage."

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Ethics on Facebook - Watch out your updates!

One thing that confronts you when you log on to your Facebook account is this question: "What's on your mind?" What follows is a blank text area and a blue button with the label 'share' that is always aligned right below the text area.
You know what you do next, don't you? Of course. You update your status.

This share service is the most actively used in Facebook. Through the wall, we share our status; the joke we have just secretly laughed at; a photo we have uploaded; a video we have downloaded from You Tube ; and some people even use this same wall to market and earn revenue. But, this well thought of and developed service happens to be the most abused too.

How Do People Abuse the Wall?
Some people just share too much. They share irrelevantly.
Have you ever heard of the story where two guys ended up jobless because of their shared updates? Well, the story is a little out dated, and right now everyone is cautioned. People don't talk shit about others anymore. People talk shit about themselves these days.

For instance, last week a friend of mine updated his status claiming to be naturally attracted to older women. I am very sure his girlfriend, who happens not to be 'older women' read this. But that was not all. A few minutes later, he came back with another update. This time he claimed to be addicted to pornography.

I read this update. Rubbed my eyes. Read it once again. The second time straining to correct any blurred vision. But it was still the same words. This was not because I have never read shit. No. In fact this was polite. This was because I know him, and this was just not him!

I wonder what can motivate such an ego. Is it the fact that we type those words privately? It is always a private mobile handset, a personal computer in your room, or a privately secured desktop in a cyber cafe. But the whole world reads them.

Pals, let's watch out our updates.

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"The Internet describes censorship as damage, but routes around it"

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4 Secretes you would like to know about a Webpage

There are so many interesting mechanisms behind a dynamic web page. I am talking about a web page view that varies according to user preferences or environment constraints. I mean a site that is just interactive. One that can accept an input and respond to the request with the appropriate feedback. Are you getting the picture?

Let's take a little excursion to the back stage.

1. An Authoring Language.
First, there is always a Markup Language. The most commonly known is HTML, with its latest version, HTML 5. This is usually used to display unstructured web content, while XML is preferred for the display of structured text and data.

2. The Scripting.
Second, a standard software that provides a set of instructions to perform a particular task - a scripting language, is always embedded. These include: JavaScript, which was originally developed by Netscape, but is now widely used in web development, and is supported by all browsers; VB Script; Perl; etc
We also have Active Server Pages (ASPs), which is often related to database query and retrieval; .NET, which uses a different programming model if offer improvements in performance, scalability, reliability and security; and, Common Gateway Interfaces (CGI), which provides extensions to the web server allowing server-side scripts to be run which process information submitted through web-based forms.

3. Programming Languages.
Third, programming languages are not left behind. Java and its rival Microsoft Active X, are used to permit complex and graphical customer applications to be written and then accessed from a web browser.
These languages bring about a range of competing methods which can be used to enable users to interact with a website, e.g. by selecting menu options and entering data.

4. Micro-media.
Plug-ins from Micro-media such as Flash and Shock-wave are widely used these days. Have you ever tried to load a web page just for your browser to prompt you: "Plug-ins missing", and giving you a button option labeled: "click to install"?
The possibilities here are... wow! The plug-ins allow you to add new and powerful abilities to your web page and to dazzle your visitors with multimedia sounds, graphics, animation, etc.

These are just but to mention a few. Besides, I have been very brief not to post a whole novel and lose my intended focus. Right now, Microsoft might have just released the latest version of .NET, Active X...

Let me help you out. I'm providing you with a search box below at the footer. Why don't you just type in a query like: "Micro-media", and see wonders?

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"When I took office, only high Physicists had ever heard of what is now called the World Wide Web... Now even my cat has its own page."

Bill Clinton, 1996.

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The Creation of the Internet

It is interesting, very interesting, how the Internet we know today just came from an idea. The idea provoked the creation of the first Computer Network ever - ARPAnet, which was full positive effects benefiting everyone that was involved. But this same Internet, an International network of networks, was yet to be implemented by 1972.

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Story of the Internet:
Part 1: A Fact that Provoked the idea of the Internet.
Part 2: The first Computer Network to be created.
Part 3: How the first computer network changed the world.
Part 4: The Creation of the Internet (current post).

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By 1972, ARPAnet included dozens of integrated sites. But still hardly anyone, outside, knew about the network. So the ARPAnet team, together with the BBN (Bolt, Beranek & Newman), organized a public show.

Showing ARPAnet to the World
The Internet Conference on Computer Communications was carefully picked as where to show the network to the world. This was held at the Hilton Hotel, in Washington at the end of October, 1972.
The public show was meant for the real test of the network. For instance, a computer in the conference, in Washington, contacted another computer in UCLA commanding it to execute (run) a program. The results were then confirmed as the output was printed from a printer that was in the conference, which was also in the system.

Even though everything in the show never went smoothly, nothing stopped it from being a success. Finally, the ARPAnet team had convinced and proved to the world that a computer network was areal fact, not just a dream. The guest appreciated and accepted that a computer network could be built and that it could be useful. Universities, government departments and other organizations saw that networking could increase the power of their computers, the people who used them, and... Other networks began to appear.

A New Problem
But these new networks created their own rules. A system that was best for ARPAnet did not necessarily suit other organizations with different needs, different style of work and different hardware.
For instance, Alohanet in Hawaii used radiowaves to deal with the problem of communicating over mountains and between different islands. And, Atlantic Packet Satelite Network used a different system sending messages up to the satelite in space to communicate across half the world.

So then, once again, there were many different computer systems that could not communicate to each other. Just a few years after ARPAnet was invented, the appearance of the new networks had once again created the problem that caused Bob Taylor to imagine the world's first computer network.

Solving The Puzzle
This time it was not Bob Taylor's problem to solve again, but Bob Khan - the man who was now in charge of ARPAnet's projects. Khan was familiar with the new problem. He had worked on some of the newer networks that were designed to deal with different circumstances. This gave him a first hand experience to the problem in hand, and, in a college at Stanford, he asked Vent Cerf - an engineer, to work with him on a new project.

"I need to find a way to connect these networks", said Khan. "They are not like the ARPAnet. They all use their own software and hardware, its a mess!"
"They are not going to change over to the ARPAnet system now", responded Cerf. "They have spent too much money, and their systems work".
"I know, but I still need a way to join them together. Its worser than before the ARPAnet. At least then we didn't know what a network could do." Bob argued in return.
"So what do you want to do?" Asked Cerf.
"I don't know. How do we make a network of networks?"

It was generally challenging. But after Bob convinced Cerf, the two managed to begin to write a software that would allow networks to communicate.

Programming The Internet
Their aim was to come up with a kind of gate to each network. The gate was not to affect the architecture or the technical functioning of any network, but to facilitate communication by translating between the different networks to reduce the number of differences between them.

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In a set of rules they invented in 1973, they used the word 'Internet' for the first time. It meant: ' a network of networks'.

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The new software wrapped messages inside Internet 'envelopes' from each different network. The message could leave home network and travel from one gate to another. There, they would be taken from the envelopes and sent into the destination network.
Consequently, data lose risk, in this new software, was much higher compared to the individual computer networks.
Nevertheless, Khan and Cerf's rules are still the glue that holds the Internet together today, more than a quarter a century after they wrote them.

Bob Khan and Vent Cerf thought that the demand of the Internet would grow. But. they never imagined the size of this growth!

How the First Computer Network Changed the World

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Story of the Internet
Part 1: A Fact that Provoked the Idea of the Internet
Part 2: The First Computer Network to be Created
Part 3: How the First Computer Network Changed the World ( Current post)

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The first Network ever to be created was called ARPAnet. It was ARPA's project and the man incharge was Bob Taylor.
Bolt, Beranek and Newman (BBN) was the highest bidding team, and the effects of ARPAnet began to be fully experienced immediately the Network became a living reality. The fear of losing computer power that enveloped the hosts during the busy discussions, when ARPAnet was still a plan, was confirmed otherwise. Contrary to the Initial worries, the hosts gained from the communication network. They could work together on projects and not repeat each others work. And this saved as well as earned ARPA money just as Bob Taylor had contempleted.

Furthermore, it was not long when an engineer at BBN, Cambridge, Massachusetts, could contact the telephone companies and...

"Your line between Santa Barbara and Utah ain't working properly"
"At which end are you?" The telephone companies could ask curiously.
"Neither, I'm in Cambridge"
"But how can you..." The telephone crew were confused.

This was because the IMPs (small mainframe computers that that were connecting two host computers facilitating their communication) were designed to make constant checks on the condition of the network, making its engineers at a position that they would know more about the performance of the telephone lines than the telephone companies that owned and operated them.

So were there new possibilities, for instance, BBN was able to send new a software to the IMPs, immediately, as soon as they were coded. The BBN could also fix an IMP problem from Cambridge, Massachusetts - many hundreds of Kilometers away. But the biggest surprise was that the network was soon being used mostly for something that was never part of Bob Taylor's plan - chat. Technically, the network worked exactly as it was designed to. Yet by 1973, three-quarters of all the traffic on ARPAnet was nothing to do woth sharing data or programs or logging onto distance computers. It was electronic mail - e-mail.

Ray Tomlinson was the first peson to send an e-mail on ARPAnet. Ray, an engineer and in 1972, invented a simple program for sending files between computers. The software opened a connection, sent a file to another computer and then sent a message back to say that the file had arrived safely at its destination. Since e-mail boxes in computers are really just files, the next step was simple. Tomlinson changed his program so that it carried a mail message from one computer and added it to a mail box file of another computer. This is how the era began.

But the speed at which e-mail spread was surprising. Almost as soon as it was introduced, it took over the network. Today, there are more individual messages sent on the Internet more than data of any other kind. And, being the person who chose the '@' sign, which means at in e-mail address, Ray Tomlinson has left his mark on every single one of the billions of e-mails that have been sent ever since 1972.

Part 4: The Creation of the Internet.

The First Computer Network to be Created

The creation of the first computer network in 1969, proved the fact that computers are machines that could be linked to form an effective communication network.

This post makes part 2 of the story of the Internet. You don't want to miss part 1, do you? Part 1: A Fact that Provoked the Idea of the Internet.

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Story of the Internet
Part 1: A Fact that Provoked the Idea of the Internet
Part 2: The First Computer Network to be Created (the current post)

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The tender that was announced to build the first computer network ever, was clear and straight to the point. This was sent to about 140 technology companies, and it was received well. But after critical analysis, a huge percentage of the replies was pessimistic. Most said the job was impossible. The leading companies, during then, IBM (International Business Machines) and Control Data Corporation, were no exception. Similar were the telephone companies with the AT&T controlling the long-distance phone calls in US then. "It's openly impossible".

The Bright Side
On the other hand, there were companies with great plans about this same project, and there was nothing to distract them. Later, the incoming bids proved very competitive that Bob Taylor, the man incharge of ARPA computer projects, had a lot of work to come to a decision. His profound intentions in the judgment was broadly directed towards ARPA's success, and so did he want to be diplomatic. All in all, there is always a winning side.

The Winner
BBN (Bolt, Beranek & Newman) finally won the bid. This was slitely after beating Raytheon - a much bigger company, which was a tough competitor. The BBN of Cambridge, Massachusetts, came up with a programme that the network could run even under heavy loads and this was to be ten times faster that the ARPA was asking.

The Techology
The project start time was the beginning of 1969. The deadline, 1st September the same year: 1969. The technology employed was Packet Switching - an efficient way to send data electronically. The message is broken down into pieces called packets and sent out to communication network. Each packet is free to find the best route to its destination. This means that there is no need for the data to travel together, or in a particular order. Packet Switching was to take advantage of the digital technology, where the digital signals (binary digits) are easy to break and put back together again without losing any data {Check out for Modulation and Demodulation}.

The Architecture
The network architecture was specific. An IMP was to be built and connected between each mainframe computer. This was because the ARPA's four machines were speaking different languages hence couldn't communicate directly. The IMP was to learn one more language, its host's language, in order to facilitate communication between the computers in the network.

Frank Heart, the man incharge of the BBN team, based the IMP's hardware on the Honeywell's DDP-516 (a computer that could work even after being crashed by a hammer). This was to avoid the IMPs breaking down crisis since they were the heart of the network.

The software that the BBN team designed was one that could work even when the hardware didn't. And, this is just the way the Internet works today. This was to have the ability to understand how to avoid a broken hardware; to be able to detect if a packet hasn't been sent; and to resend the packet using a different route.

But, nobody understands why the BBN team was given so little time for the project. The thing that is Universally approved is that Frank Heart led a great team. By 27th August 1969, the first IMP was delivered to UCLA (University of California at Los Angeles), and the second one to Stanford Research Institute on 1st October 1969. The IMPs for the two more hosts at Utah and Santa Barbara were completed and connected to the ARPAnet before the end of 1969. This made Bob Taylor's dream of a four computer network a living great success for both the hosts and the ARPA.

Part 3: How the First Computer Network Changed the World

A Fact That Provoked The Creation Of The Internet

The Internet today has surpassed the expectations of the world yesterday by far. Interestingly, the giant network of networks only came from an idea. And, my curious question to you is:

What provoked the idea of the Internet?

This is actually the beginning of the remarkable story of the Internet...

In the Beginning
The time was during the end of the second world war and the year 1957. The United States of America was the world's greatest nation, super-power, the richest nation and it was growing richer all the time. But then there was a breaking news, a news that arrived shocking America's belief in itself: "The Russians are in space!".

Sputnik 1
This was the evening of 4th October the same year - 1957, and the US President during then, Dwight D. Eisenhower was very much disturbed. He did not like surprises, not to mention from the Russians.Until this moment America believed that their nation was the most powerful on Earth. But the Soviet Union had gone beyond the Earth. This was the time of the cold war. A war that was not just about armies and weapons. A war that was also of Technology and ideas. Each side presented its successes in Science and Technology as proof that its political system was better. And, here was the Soviet Union - the America's greatest enemy, with the first satelite ever: The Sputnik 1, in Space.

The Sputnik 1 had an electronic beep... beep... beep sound that could be heard over millions of radios all over the world. It measured only 58 cm across, but most importantly, every 96 minutes it crossed the skies of the US like a new moon, a Russian moon.

Although Sputnik 1 was a clear and existing fact precisely to the point that the Russians were making it, the US had no room to admit defeat.

"What are we going to do about this?" President Eisenhower asked his Secretary of Defense, Neil McElroy.
"There is no real reason to worry," McElroy replied. "Sputnik is not a danger for us. Our Scientists are better than their Scientists." He explained.
But that was not Mr. President's worry. He simply did not like surprises. He didn't want to be surprised like this again.
"In future we will make sure that we are ahead of the Russians in all important technologies."
"What are you suggesting Mr. President?" The Secretary of Defense asked.

ARPA
President Eisenhower was suggesting a new department that would direct all the high Technology work. He wanted all his best Scientists, in the world, to keep US ahead of the Russians. He was demanding more concentration and efforts in technological development which lead to the formation of ARPA.

ARPA (Advanced Research Project Agency) , was sooner than expected spending millions of dollars on research into new Science and Technology. In lonely laboratories deep in the desert and mountains of the US, brilliant men and women explored extraordinary new ideas. Scientists build bombs that could spread terrible diseases; Engineers made plans for war in space; and, Psychologists tried to train people to communicate through the power of thought alone. But, much effort in the earliest projects were aimed at winning the 'space race' the Sputnik had proudly started.

It was not long when NASA ( National Aeronautics and Space Administration) took over the space project. NASA captured Americas imagination all through the 1960s, especially after President Kennedy announced his plan to land man on the moon.

The New Focus
While NASA filled the news, ARPA on the other hand, worked quietly in computing: an area that would prove far much important than space travel.

Computers were still a very new technology at this time. They were less common than Rolls-Royce cars, and more expensive. They costed million of dollars and were the size of an apartment, mainly used for Mathematics. And, they were mostly owned by Universities, the government and large companies.

Luckily, ARPA had both time and space to continue with its projects at its own pace. On the contrary, there was still a problem. ARPA was using so much money to pay different people for doing the same work and, only one person had noticed this.

Solving the puzzle
Bob Taylor, the man incharge of ARPA's computer projects, realized that computers were not just machines that could calculate, they could communicate as well. And his solution for this problem he had discovered was ARPAnet. ARPAnet was to be a computer network - a collection of computers linked together using a transmission media with the objective of communication and resource sharing, the first computer network ever, by joining four mainframe computer which were at UCLA ( University of California in Los Angeles), Stanford Research Institute, Utah and Santa Barbara respectively.

ARPAnet
"A computer network?" Taylor's idea sounded insane during then, and the ready answer was: "Impossible". "How?" Everyone seemed to be asking, "this are different computers operating on different languages?" They argued. But Bob Taylor was convinced and optimistic. He managed to convince has senior and a new project was on: the construction of ARPAnet.

The matter was discussed, ideas noted and finally, the tender was announced.

Part 2: The First Computer Network ever to be Created