Remember Dial-Up?

Internet Firsts

The first image posted to the 'net:



From the website:

The first image in web history was... four women, all of whom now probably regret being part of the first image in web history.

A programmer named Silvano de Gennaro worked for CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research, located in Geneva, Switzerland... aka the birthplace of the World Wide Web).

In 1992, the non-ManBearPig-focused founder of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, had just built this new information system called the World Wide Web, and created the first website, http://info.cern.ch.

Berners-Lee asked Gennaro to scan some photos from a CERN party and post them on that page. Gennaro didn't really get what he was talking about but scanned in the photos, FTPed them to the server and linked them to a page. The picture of the four women, complete with their early '90s "Don't Tell Mom The Babysitter's Dead" fashion sense, was the first one ever viewed in a web browser.

Included in the list are the first e-mail, the first spam, the first banner ad, the first YouTube video and others.

11 Firsts In Internet History

Personas

How does the internet see YOU?

From the website:

Personas is a component of the Metropath(ologies) exhibit, currently on display at the MIT Museum by the Sociable Media Group from the MIT Media Lab. It uses sophisticated natural language processing and the Internet to create a data portrait of one's aggregated online identity. In short, Personas shows you how the Internet sees you.

Enter your name, and Personas scours the web for information and attempts to characterize the person - to fit them to a predetermined set of categories that an algorithmic process created from a massive corpus of data. The computational process is visualized with each stage of the analysis, finally resulting in the presentation of a seemingly authoritative personal profile.

In a world where fortunes are sought through data-mining vast information repositories, the computer is our indispensable but far from infallible assistant. Personas demonstrates the computer's uncanny insights and its inadvertent errors, such as the mischaracterizations caused by the inability to separate data from multiple owners of the same name. It is meant for the viewer to reflect on our current and future world, where digital histories are as important if not more important than oral histories, and computational methods of condensing our digital traces are opaque and socially ignorant.

This is my persona created with my name. Click for larger view.



The problem with "my" persona is that there was nothing about ME (that I could see) but instead it used mentions of other people with my name: an author, a police chief, etc.

Personas

Ask Jeeves is Back!

In the UK, but not here.



Ask Jeeves was the first search engine I ever used. It was before I had my own computer and was using the ones at the local library. I hadn't a clue as how to find anything, so I typed my query into the address bar and was directed to the AskJeeves website.

It didn't take me long to discover that the answers weren't what I really wanted and to find out that there were much better search engines. Still, I remember Jeeves with fondness because he was my "first".

As for the question posed in the above screenshot: No, there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Google "TANSTAAFL" if you don't believe me.

Too bad our Congress and President haven't Googled it.

My First LOL

The first time I literally laughed out loud after I got on the 'net was when I read this:

---

To be is to do- Socrates
To do is to be- Sartre
Do be do be do- Sinatra

The British Invasion

Noticed that this blog was getting quite a few hits in a short period of time, most from places in the U.K. Went and checked and sure 'nuff, the movie "Cast Away" was just on BBC 1 (think it was) A few have found this site via searches and others by a link I left at IMDB.

Welcome to ToTG!

Wonder if I could make money by selling authentic dirt from the intersection?

A Decade of Internet Superstars

From PC World:

A Decade of Internet Superstars: Where Are They Now?

Whatever happened to the Evolution of Dance guy or that kid who loved Britney Spears so much he cried for her under his sheet? We'll fill you in on what happened to them and other Web celebrities when their 15 minutes of fame ended.

I'm so happy they included the Numa Numa kid. How could they leave him out?

They could've left Chris Crocker out, though. That "guy" creeps me out.

My Fortune

From my Excite start page:



Wish they'd tell me something about myself I don't already know.

The Best and Worst Movies About the 'Net

The Best and Worst Movies about the Internet

From PC World

Besides revolutionizing communication for the masses, the Internet has inspired the imaginations of filmmakers worldwide--with wildly divergent results. Here's one film buff's list of the five best and five worst Net-related films.

I dunno, I kinda liked "The Net". I like Sandra Bullock, though.

As much as I like sci-fi, I never could get into "The Matrix". Maybe it was because of the fencepost that starred in it Keanu Reeves?

I'm So Glad

My name isn't on the list of outstanding warrants. (link is to PDF file)

My fellow Pampans owe fines of $991,777.74 on 2896 warrants.

I know several people on that list, but not the ones who have dozens of individual fines. I'm glad I don't know 'em or I might've been in trouble along with them.

The Wrong Appendage

Was just listening to Talking Cowboys, the daily online talk show on the Dallas Cowboys website, and one of the hosts compared the Dallas injury woes to a cartoon character, trying to stop leaks in a dam with his fingers and toes, hands and feet.

"Sometimes you just don't have enough appendages." quipped one of the show's hosts.

Uh, that's not it. It's just that sometimes, when the leaks are just beginning, that Dallas sticks the wrong appendage in the dam.

Not the fingers or toes, either.

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The Week I Was Born

The Weekly World News ran an article about my mother.



Just kidding, but in a political forum I frequent, some doofus is making all sorts of asinine accusations about John McCain, the likely Republican nominee for President. He's now saying he thinks McCain is an alien. One might think he was kidding unless having read his other nonsensical posts.

It made me go look for those infamous issues of Weekly World News. They're hilarious, and I wonder if anyone really thinks any of the lead stories are true.

Some might, I suppose... the same ones who think pro. wrestling is real.

My granddad really WAS featured in WWN, though.

Crazy Captcha Codes

If you've posted to most any forum lately, you'll be familiar with the "captcha" code that's used to weed out spambots. The above are some of the ones I've seen in this past week.

The frustrating thing about captcha codes is that they're sometimes hard to read; when it requires a case-sensitive input I often wonder- is that a lower case "L" or is it an uppercase "i"? Is it an O (oh) or is it a 0 (zero)? Sometimes, as you can see in the examples above, the letters are at all sorts of angles and it's hard to tell a "Z" from a "T" or an "S" from a "5".

I've had troubles deciphering them and used the "hear it!" feature only to have the code change after I've listened to the sequence. I've even input the code and then had my post vanish into the internet ozone. (thank goodness I've learned -- from my years in MSN Groups -- to copy any post before I send. I do it out of habit now, even with my emails)

My favorite captcha codes are those that use two or more random words. This one was especially "titillating".



They could've just used a photo, though.

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Internet Radio in Peril

Web radio faces its death knell

Small internet radio stations face being wiped out by a change in the way royalties are calculated. But stay tuned - the fight is far from over...

I was worried about this; I listen to my Yahoo Launchcast namely because it's great, esp. now that I'm on the fastest DSL offered in this area, but also because it was one of my options I chose when I signed up for this broadband plan.

(The Sounds of Silence - Simon and Garfunkel is playing as I type)

SPEEDTEST.NET

A great place to check your 'net connection and even supplies the code to paste the results in your webpage or blog.

I'm fairly happy with my DSL service; I've had SBC for a couple of years and have had little trouble or outages.

I get faster speeds than the local cable provides at a cheaper price, too.

Life is good.