We are a wired world. We check how coke prices are moving in Australia in an analyst’s blog. See what my cousin had for dinner in Arizona last evening on her facebook wall. We order gadgets and goodies online. Search the web for information, goods and services at the drop of a hat, browsing, checking mails, networking, connecting, being “us”. But how many of these, “must have” apps that we simply can’t do without were there in the not so distant past? Where did they come from? When did they make their first appearance? Would it not be interesting to know? Join me, as I find out:
1st computer virus –The Creeper virus was first detected on ARPANET, the forerunner of the Internet, in the early 1970’s. It was an experimental self-replicating program written by Bob Thomas at BBN Technologies in 1971.Creeper copied itself to the remote system where the message, “I’m the creeper, catch me if you can!” was displayed. The Reaper program was created to delete Creeper.
Wikipedia -Wikipedia is a multilingual, web-based, free-content encyclopedia project based on an openly editable model. The name “Wikipedia” is a portmanteau of the words wiki (meaning “quick”) and encyclopedia. Wikipedia’s articles provide links to guide the user to related pages with additional information. Since its creation in 2001, Wikipedia has grown rapidly into one of the largest reference websites, attracting nearly 78 million visitors monthly as of January 2010.
Facebook – I guess everybody knows this.Facebook is a social networking service and website launched in February 2004, operated and privately owned by Facebook, Inc. The name of the service stems from the colloquial name for the book given to students at the start of the academic year by university administrations in the United States to help students get to know each other better. Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg with his college roommates and fellow computer science students Eduardo Saverin, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes. The rest, like they say, is history.
1st search engine -The very first tool used for searching on the Internet was Archie. The name stands for “archive” without the “v”. It was created in 1990 by Alan Emtage, Bill Heelan and J. Peter Deutsch, computer science students at McGill University in Montreal. The program downloaded the directory listings of all the files located on public anonymous FTP sites, creating a searchable database of file names; however, Archie did not index the contents of these sites since the amount of data was so limited it could be readily searched manually.
Hotmail – Windows Live Hotmail, formerly known as MSN Hotmail and commonly referred to simply as Hotmail, is a free web-based email service operated by Microsoft as part of its Windows Live group. It was founded by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith and launched in July 1996 as “HoTMaiL”. It was also one of the first free email providers. It was subsequently acquired by Microsoft in 1997 for an estimated $400 million, and shortly after it was rebranded as “MSN Hotmail”. The current version, “Windows Live Hotmail”, was officially announced in 2005 and released worldwide in 2007.
Icq – ICQ is an instant messaging computer program, which was first developed and popularized by the Israeli company Mirabilis, then bought by America Online, and since April 2010 owned by Mail.ru Group. The name ICQ is a homophone for the phrase “I seek you”. This is an adaptation of the Morse code callout “CQ”, which means “calling any station”.
Domain name – On 15 March 1985, the first commercial Internet domain name (.com) was registered under the name Symbolics.com by Symbolics Inc., a computer systems firm in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Blog – The term “weblog” was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, “blog,” was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May 1999. Shortly thereafter, Evan Williams at Pyra Labs used “blog” as both a noun and verb (“to blog,” meaning “to edit one’s weblog or to post to one’s weblog”) and devised the term “blogger” in connection with Pyra Labs’ Blogger product, leading to the popularization of the terms.
You tube – YouTube is a video-sharing website on which users can upload, share, and view videos, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005.
Online store – In 1990 Tim Berners-Lee created the first World Wide Web server and browser. It opened for commercial use in 1991. In 1994 other advances took place, such as online banking and the opening of an online pizza shop by Pizza Hut. During that same year, Netscape introduced SSL encryption of data transferred online, which has become essential for secure online shopping. Also in 1994 the German company Intershop introduced its first online shopping system. In 1995 Amazon launched its online shopping site, and in 1996 eBay appeared.
Do let me know if you want more … its pieces like these that makes one feel ancient. Even relatively recent developments, in terms of time, seems so damn distant, going by the way the wired world is evolving, isn’t it?
– Chawm Ganguly