Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Url Reviews — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:22:26 -0000

umm go take your emo medication

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Url Reviews — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 08:19:14 -0000

I always had a problem with this Internet birthday thing, The Internet was not born until it was publicly accessible, if you think about it, a baby is not starting to age until it is born into the public either, else we would all be 9 months old when we pop out of mommy's belly, it is the same with the Internet, I count the age from when it first went public and was available to people.

I first got the Internet with a one year free trial when I bought my buggy 60Mhz Pentium computer, remember that mishap? you know the chip with the calculation error in it lol, anyways my Internet was sitting on a shelf most of that year, I had no clue what to use it for, the David on Beverly Hills started blabbering about a "Internet in a Box" software suite, and my ears perked, and I guess for me that was the beginning of my downfall.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

KaCro — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 18:19:05 -0000

That's cool! I wonder if we ever chatted. I remember "meeting" people from Wethersfield.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Jnando — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 17:55:16 -0000

I lived in Wethersfield and around the same age, I was calling into Bruce's Bar and Grill too. It was the only BBS in the Hartford area of its kind. The guy had multiple modems so that more than one person could visit the site at one time. It was also the first site that I ever saw where you could chat with other people on-line. It was funny because unlike today everyone in the chat room was living within the local calling area.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Dee A — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 20:04:47 -0000

The party is at Al Gore's house...

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

JEBworks — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 12:52:00 -0000

Became first aware of it pretty much the same way. Found this thing developed by some geek named Marc Andreessen installed it on my Powerbook and started to explore the fascinating early world of the web.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

uditvanudas — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:26:17 -0000

i still remember when i first used the internet. it was back in 1996, an early age for computers in india. i was at my dad's office. i remember going to his secretary and telling her to take me to computer with 'internet explorer'. i had read about internet explorer in the papers a day earlier. and the first website i went to was, lego.starwars.com! :D i still remember the page loading...slowly..and the first images i saw was of the millenium falcon, made of lego!

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

adam om — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 05:32:06 -0000

hehehe...great stuff

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

anix — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 01:25:28 -0000

i used internet in 1999 (i was 13 then) when my dad bough a computer at our home, well in India it was still very new concept (internet), and people always had mixed opinion about it, like dont expose children to internet at so early age (i never under stood y at that time).
but really what ever i am 2day is all b'coz of internet, my online friends and lods of free user generated contents floating on this free web space...

but i can say, it has changes a lot in past 11 years with a speed with has no count and will continue...

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

vikkycab — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:03:16 -0000

Thank you for the piece on internet history, Stan. Brought me to nostalgia mode.

My first encounter with the intranet was in 1989, at a client's office. They needed to communicate between the huge steel-making plant in southern Philippines with the main office in Manila, a 1-1/2 hour plane (24-hrs by inter-island ship) ride away. It just made coordinating operations and exchanging documents between large corporation departments much easier.

Back then, we owned a PC with a 5.25" floppy drive, and used such wonderful user programs as Lotus, a word processing program (the name escapes me now), and created newsletters using a Xerox Publisher program. Prior to that, we owned an Atari gaming computer. My husband experimented with the programs and presented the first computer animated advertising storyboard to our client. While the animation was slow at 30 frames per minute (much like a slide show), we were able to impress them and bagged the account.

But my first personal link with the internet was only 5 years later, when my cousin introduced me to Usenet. Very very few homes had computers back then, but we were able to communicate with offices and non-governmental agencies to coordinate our social development work.

I too have not looked back, instead saw the potential of this new tool for personal business marketing to the world. Soon, I was surfing with Netscape, learning more and faster than reading books. I created my dance website on Geocities, using the Netscape Communicator, created my own graphics, experimented with columns, frames, tags, links, exchange links, and so many other features.

I was impressed by the results. In a week, people from the US were emailing me regarding dance lessons, when they came to visit the Philippines. I wasn't getting local clients from my website, because very few locals were connected to the net back then. But this changed at the turn of the century. By then, I had changed email addresses and forgot to inform Geocities in my account info. And I was locked out from my own website for failure to confirm my email address (how could I when they were sending the emails to my old deactivated email addy). But for almost 15 years, Geocities worked for me, until it finally closed shop on October 26 this year.

I've moved my dance site, and created several new ones on my own server, and continue to benefit from my online offices.

Some lessons learned from those 15 years include:
(1) always put yourself in the position of your site's visitors -- content and useful info vs hype, personal writing style which makes blogs valuable, valid links, simple layouts that can be viewed in various browsers
(2) good tags and keywords that people actually use to search for information. The tags I used to promote my site have not been changed since Yahoo/Geocities, yet I continued to receive 5 inquiries a day from my 10-year old non-updated website.
(3) make friends with your exchange link owners. Goes a long way, much like social networking, extends your reach to many more people.
(4) always update your account information with the critical sites. This is very important with Paypal and similar accounts, free web hosting if one prefers that, and a few others.

Happy 40th birthday, INTERNET.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Gina9223 — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:49:33 -0000

1973 at Sauk Trail Elementry School in Richton Park Ill. We were given class asignments, tests and IBM punch cards.
At first we had hole punches and had to punch out the little boxes to answer the test questions. Then we moved on to big blue ink pencils. The ink got every place and stained your hands. Then we moved on to red pencils but that was only for a week or two. Then NO. 1 pencils, but the graphite smeared. Then NO. 2 pencils. We would answer the tests and our teacher would gather up the tests and take them over to Governor State Univerity for processing. The next day he would hook up a telephone in to a clunky modem and a IBM Selectric typewriter with a box of accordian paper and print up our test results.

By 1977 Scantron testing had matured to the point that everyone was using it.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Bohol Blogger — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 21:32:17 -0000

I had it way back high school. That's about 16 years ago... wow! It was a funny experience in an inet cafe. I accidentally came to a site that I'd rather keep my eyes tainted... Was stunned for what I saw when I opened the browser and hurriedly closed it... Hahahaha It scared me off... LOL

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

mcastel — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:56:50 -0000

In the end of '80, making my thesis of astronomy, I was introduced to VAX and its email system. I started to get in touch with friends who worked in other scientifical institutes, connected with Decnet, the only available network at that time... It was only after some times, I think around 1993-94, while I was working for PhD at the Rome Astronomical Observatory (where I work now) that I got in contact with internet, with Mosaic, first, and Netscape, after some times. Netscape in particular was exciting in what it allowed you to view a webpage even if it was still uploading its elements. I remember that was fascinated by this new think of Internet. I remember how I was excited when I opened my very first simple page at Geocities..... Nobody still talked about it, or used it at home, no media was interested in it.. but it was just the beginning....

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

alans — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 19:12:04 -0000

Forty years ago I joined IBM at their workshops in South Ruislip, UK. At school, five years previously, a presenter waved an 80 column punch card at us and said it would be defunct by the time we were employed. As an engineer the card readers, punches and verifiers employed me, often frustrated me, well into the eighties. The IBM Virtual Machine Operating System (VM) continued the tradition of the 80 column, twelve row format.

In 1970 I managed to send data despite the reticence of 'Post Office, Telephones' (now British Telecom [BT]). Load the cards or tape, call the telephone exchange and ask for a data line. Wait for an eternity and, eventually, be granted the privilege of 200bps - yes bits per second!

The Bulletin Boards were run by enthusiasts. All credit to them but they were point-to-point connections, not an Internet. During WWII Post Office engineers created the first computers; in 1970 they could not provide a decent data link. They did, eventually, provide a 'Bulletin Board' of their own (what was it called?) but it was not a success.

The 'Internet' dates from the 1980s when Scientific and Commercial research establishments (NASA, CERNE, IBM etc.) had continuous links. BT could have been the world leader in computer networks but their ingrained resistance to change destroyed their business. Now they are set on destroying their postal business too.

Bury me face up twelve edge first!

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

firetown — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:48:20 -0000

cool since we didn't really go to the moon that year, at least we did something right ;)

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Name — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 18:16:33 -0000

I'm so grateful to Al Gore for creating the internet what an amazing thing he did all those years ago....

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

websiteknight — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:36:36 -0000

My mate, Jeff was in my flat in the very early 1990s excitedly babbling on about this 'internet' and how it was going to change the world... He said you could go on these things called 'chat rooms' and talk to people all over the world and, because they couldn't see you, you could pretend to be anyone you want!

Also - instead of posting letters you could now send electronic letters (e-mail for short) that would reach the other person, even if they were on the other side of the planet, in a matter of seconds!!!!

Yeah, right, Jeff....... You've had too much cider again haven't you.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Chris Seline — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:08:21 -0000

It was probably 1990 when I was first exposed to the actual internet. FTP was it's name, and downloading warez was the game. Though I had used BBS's before that, and I had seen email in action but never used it until college (93). We had net connections in our dorm then, but no web, just telnet and ftp. But despite all that, and dabbling in computer science in 94, I didn't use the web until probably late 95 or early 96. I was too busy making Doom levels.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Kandice Linwright — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 17:03:33 -0000

The first thing that I remember about the internet was the commercials for it. Remember that little girl in the desert or something. She would always say 'it's coming,' or something like that. I was always so interested in what 'it' was.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Nikki — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:16:23 -0000

Oh wow, most everyone can give a year for when they learned about the internet or at least a general time frame.

I can't remember when I learned about it at all. It's like I always knew it existed. Of course, I was born in '88, soo...

I got the internet at home when I was 12, though. And then I joined neopets and spent waaay too much time in their guild forum things.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

gwoodard — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 16:14:38 -0000

Perhaps I can use the Acoustic modem in the attic to talk to William Bell.
...its a Bell 104.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

KC — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:59:32 -0000

It was 1990, I was 13, and was permitted one hour on a local Hartford, CT, BBS called "Bruce's Bar and Grill." To a 13-yr-old girl, I had a whole sea of nerdy boys to chat with. Met my first few boyfriends there. After the scratchy sound of the 1200 baud modem connecting, and then getting the DOS prompt that I'd been permitted into BB&G, I'd be giddy as the school girl that I literally was. I even planned for cohosting a BBS.

When Prodigy came out, I thought email was the coolest thing. No more stamped letters! But, ah, other people needed to have Prodigy, too.

Then AOL and IMing for hours on end, but I think we had some sort of hourly plan, so I had to be mindful of that -- lest my parents deduct the extra from my allowance!

Good times...

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

malkat — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:49:01 -0000

I first went online in 95-96, in computer class in elementary school. The only site we were allowed on was Yahooligans.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

give4u team — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:45:59 -0000

NEW, NEW , NEW
Give4u is a social network that was built and designed for all citizens of the world.
Anyone in the world who sees contribution to society and to the community as a
higher value, a value which could bring him/her to a happier and more fulfilled life is
more than welcome to join our "Give4u" social network community.
Give4u believes that this kind of contribution can fit the needs of individuals, animals and the environment itself.

Re: Happy 40th Birthday, Internet!

Anthony Rossos — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:42:25 -0000

It was so long time ago, that I don't remember when I first discovered the Internet. But I remember my friend telling me that I can send emails to USA and they will be delivered the next second. I was thinking he is kidding and didn't believe him. After that I started to learn how to build web sites on the computer courses. It was about 8 years ago and I was involved in the Internet sphere ever since. :)