Week 2 Board Discussions

Author: Gwyneth Peaty
Date: Monday, September 7, 2009 11:33:50 PM WST
Subject: RE: Official “What is the Internet?” Discussion Thread

I like your comment about the change that has occurred in online communities. Technological evolution has certainly been accompanied by social evolution.

Looking at 1990′s webpages, they seem quite ‘flat’ without the interconnected web of applications and links that characterise websites today. Their structure still resembles the pages of a book, where you can only flick forward or back, with different sites being clearly separate from one another. It’s more “here is the page where THIS happens, and here is the page where THAT happens.” They lack that sense of flow from being within a ‘cyber-space’ that one might explore ‘free-form’ with unexpected results.

My reply

“interconnected web of applications and links” is very true for today’s websites. However, I feel that many sites back in the early 90’s, especially those aimed at money making were a mass of links all aimed at sending a surfer towards payed advertising. Circle Jerking is the name given to this and I am sure we all got caught in its web at some stage. I feel that today’s sites are not much different in this regard as you stated, but modern sites are much more subtle with the use of nested advertising. Basically I feel there was ‘free-form’ websites back in the olden days however, they were not script driven, and a lot of coding went into creating the web.

Author: Matthew Shine
Date: Wednesday, September 9, 2009 9:18:46 AM WST
Subject: RE: Official “What is the Internet?” Discussion Thread

Interesting point regarding popups and newer forms of advertising online.

At the end of the day it all comes down to the viewer though, you have the power to click the back button and visit another website, in which case the website and the owner of the advertisement are both missing out.

As a website owner, it’s in my best interests to serve up advertising that is  not obtrusive, relevant and the product/service being advertised provides a genuine benefit to my viewers. If I were to serve up 4 popup ads chances are the majority of my viewers would leave my website.

Hi Matthew

I agree with you that as a website owner that simple design that does not annoy the surfer is the best way to retain customers and keep their satisfaction levels high. However, there is a reason why websites use consoles…they work, people buy from consoles.

Cross marketing via a console is very effective. If everyone ignored consoles you would see them

Week 2 -What is the Internet?

Week 2 Topic 1.1: What is the Internet?

For me some of my earliest memories of the internet were the sound of a modem handshaking with the ISP’s server. Visually I recall many cheesy animated gifs, such as under construction banners, buttons and arrows, bars and lines and many different welcome gifs. This page brings back some fond and sad memories. http://www.animatedgif.net/

Today I still see the web as a graphic intense delivery system which is now more sophisticated. The days of animated gifs has been replaced by flash and movies. No more do we see the personal homepage on an ISP’s free hosting or Geocites, Web 2.0 has taken over, the online community has changed.

I found bbc.co.uk is hosted in the UK and was 19hops from my machine.

Domain name:

bbc.co.uk

Registrant:

British Broadcasting Corporation

Registrant type:

UK Limited Company, (Company number: 000057)

Registrant's address:

Research & Development

Kingswood Warren

Tadworth

Surrey

KT20 6NP

United Kingdom

Registrar:

British Broadcasting Corporation [Tag = BBC]

Relevant dates:

Registered on: before Aug-1996

Renewal date: 13-Dec-2010

Last updated: 11-Nov-2008

Registration status:

Registered until renewal date.

Name servers:

ns1.bbc.co.uk 132.185.132.21

ns1.rbsov.bbc.co.uk 212.58.227.48

ns1.thdo.bbc.co.uk 212.58.224.21

ns1.thls.bbc.co.uk 132.185.240.21

WHOIS lookup made at 08:22:56 07-Sep-2009

Domain name speculation in the late 90’s and early 2000’s was very much like the Victorian gold rush. Many people spent large amounts of money buying domains and parking them for sale. There are plenty of companies out there that engage in deleted domain sales. It is also worth companies to buy the misspelling of their names, especially single transposition error spelling.

Notes

• The Internet is a giant network of computers
• The foundations of the Internet were to withstand a nuclear attack
• packet switching and TCP/IP is how data moves around the Internet
• SMTP – Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
• FTP -  File Transfer Protocol
• NNTP – News Network Transfer Protocol
• IRC – Internet Relay Chat
• Vint Cerf -  The man behind TCP/IP
• A few places were involved in creating the Internet, mainly ARPANet

Currently we use IPv4 that has 2³² address soon they are going to implement IPv6 which has 2¹²⁸ addresses which makes it a 128 bit address.