Web at 25

[Buck]

Pew report, interesting:

http://www.pewinternet.org/files/2014/02/PIP_25th-anniversary-of-the-Web_022714_pdf.pdf

 

[Football_Bat]

The World Wide Web turns 25 on March 12, 2014. It is one of the most important and heavily-
used parts of the network of computer networks that make up the internet. Indeed, the invention
of the Web by Sir Tim Berners-Lee was instrumental in turning the internet from a geeky data-
transfer system embraced by specialists and a small number of enthusiasts into a mass-adopted
technology easily used by hundreds of millions around the world.

I never knew Al Gore fancied himself a knight with a pseudonym.

 

[Mizzougrad96]

Not to threadjack, but when did the people here use the Internet for the first time?

I used email as a freshman in college in 1992. When I was a junior in college I was sent a floppy disc with ESPN SportsZone on it and when I loaded it, I think that was the first time I had an Internet Browser on my computer. AOL was a year later and that was the first time I "surfed" regularly.

It makes me feel old just to think about. :D

 

[Riptide]

Not until 1996 for me. And then I was fast-tracked because I got an Internet job. So at first I was feeding content to the Internet before I knew anything about it.

 

[Vombatus]

1983 for me. Before www and before Al Gore carbon-farted.

 

[bigpern23]

I started in 1994, basically just using chat rooms to talk sports on the library computers at school. Just your basic green text on black background sort of thing. Soon we were playing chess online, checking sports scores and trying to decide if Alta Vista or Yahoo! had the better search engine for the, um, finer things on the internet.

 

[Songbird]

'97. First email was on Excite.

 

[John]

I'd guess 1994 or 95. I didn't get my first computer (Gateway, piece of poo) until 1996.

 

[exmediahack]

Late 1995 - during an NFL game. Amazed that ESPN SportsZone was updating scores in real time.

Then I tried to find pictures of Kari Wuhrer...and away we went.

 

[Batman]

Probably 1995 or '96, when I was in college. I remember being part of some online, text-based web community thing on the library computers -- and, of course, discovering the magic of internet porn. There was a computer lab that had a terminal that sat in a corner where your back was to the wall. I'm amazed the keys weren't all stuck together.

It's weird to think I was part of the last generation of kids that grew up without the internet being a part of their lives. Today's kids know how to run a smartphone by the time they're in first grade.
I also kick myself for not getting in on the ground floor. I don't think I have the mind to be a computer engineer or programmer, but there's probably plenty of programs I could've started working with in their infancy that would've made things a hell of a lot easier to grasp -- and myself more marketable -- if I'd mastered their 1.0 versions.

 

[Shoeless Joe]

My first exposure was sometime in 94, and I got hooked up at home late that year or early 95. I remember thinking Web Crawler was the bomb.

 

[Monday Morning Sportswriter]

Email in 1993 during my freshman year of college, which is also when I found this place, which some of you may have also been:

whip.isca.uiowa.edu

The www was the next year when the computer labs got actual PCs. I bought AOL for the computer I bought at home. It was a long-distance number.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

Can't remember using it in college. I graduated in 1991. Probably '92 or '93 when I had my own computer and would modem in via Prodigy and mostly use their message boards to talk about MacGyver. Yes, I was using the WWW for practical things from the beginning.

 

[forever_town]

Not to threadjack, but when did the people here use the Internet for the first time?

For me, it was 1995. I started searching stuff pre-Google and used Netscape.

Hard to believe it's been so much a part of my life for the past 19 years.

 

[Vombatus]

I remember the first mpg that I watched online - the Zapruder film. Played it several times. Still convinced of a shot from the front.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

In '93, one of my professors was putting all of our assignments on email, and told each of us to get an account. We were all pissed because it meant we had to go to the computer labs to get the assignment, and we wondered why the hell he just didn't print out the sheets and hand them to us in class.

And in '94, I was on a library computer, and had been set up with a chat room. I talked to a couple of people in the room on the computer, then kept talking with this one person. Finally, I asked them where they were from, and they answered a country in South America (can't recall which one). That stunned me.

 

[Frank_Ridgeway]

Now-wife made us get a computer in 1996; I was immediately hooked. There was a gossip site about newspapers called Newsmait that was even more brutal than Sportspages.com. People just being ripped to shreds on there, with trade mags speculating about libel.

 

[Riptide]

Newsmait was awesome.
It was brutal, but it was great reading. Inside stuff from papers everywhere.

Wasn't it run by a Florida guy in the Melbourne area? Sad day when he announced that he was giving it up. Forget the reason, but I think it was either A) he didn't have time for it anymore, or B) it was getting too brutal every day.

 

[Baron Scicluna]

Newsmait was awesome.
It was brutal, but it was great reading. Inside stuff from papers everywhere.

Wasn't it run by a Florida guy in the Melbourne area? Sad day when he announced that he was giving it up. Forget the reason, but I think it was either A) he didn't have time for it anymore, or B) it was getting too brutal every day.

I loved Newsmait. He gave it up partially for the reasons you listed, and also, I think he was getting some pressure from his bosses because they were getting heat from the other newspaper execs.

I still remember one poster kept calling his boss, Little Hitler.

 

[Riptide]

A quick Google search turned up this:

Read all about it at News Mait Writers’ Cooperative, a Web site managed by Melbourne, Fla.-based Florida Today reporter Maurice Tamman and loaded with the dirt on newspapers across the country.

News Mait — “Mait” stands for “My Aim is True,” the title of a 1976 Elvis Costello album, Tamman’s favorite as a youth — is more than command central for curmudgeons. It also provides links to dozens of sites with listings for journalistic jobs, as well as a forum for writers to make their pitches for work and for newsmen to debate topics of interest to them. The latest addition to the site, just posted this week, is a salary survey of newspapers across the country.

But the section that draws the most attention is the one slugged “newspaper intelligence,” which provides anonymous insights from the newsroom. (Oh, the irony of journalists overly fond of anonymous sources being burned by their own creation!) “Part of looking for a job,” Tamman says in explaining the genesis of News Mait, “is deciding what kind of place you want to work at.” And what better way to learn than from the oft-disgruntled reporters who work at a given newspaper.

http://kdanielglover.wordpress.com/1998/10/08/the-scoop-on-newspaper-life/#more-353