The unveiling of the iPhone, the debut of Twitter, and the growth of Craigslist are just three of the decade's most influential Internet moments, as judged by the Webby Awards.
The folks behind the Webby Awards, presented each year for excellence on the Internet, dove into the top 10 craze this week, laying out their picks for the Internet developments of the past 10 years that have had the greatest reverberations. (And no, they're not a year ahead of schedule, despite the tendency of list makers to rally in years that end in '10. The decade technically runs from 2000 to 2009, with 2010 being the start of the next decade.)
The Webby Awards rundown of the decade in chronological order:
- Craigslist moving outside San Francisco in 2000 to revamp the whole notion of classified ads, striking fear in the hearts of newspapers everywhere.
- The launch of Google AdWords in 2000, opening up a new world of advertising for businesses both large and small.
- The start of Wikipedia in 2001 showing off the Internet's ability to let online strangers collaborate, leading to more than 14 million articles in 271 different languages.
- The takedown of Napster in 2001, triggering a revolution in the way we now grab our music and videos.
- Google's IPO in 2004, creating a massive, dominant, and far-reaching force on the Internet.
- The online video revolution in 2006 triggered by beefy bandwidth, cheap camcorders, and YouTube, flooding cyberspace with an array of professional and not-so-professional videos.
- The expansion of Facebook and the debut of Twitter in 2006, creating a fresh way for us to interact and communicate with friends and family.
- The launch of the iPhone in 2007, helping us hop onto the Internet anywhere, anytime through a cell phone.
- The U.S. presidential campaign in 2008 tapping into the Internet with videos like "Obama Girl," social networking use among voters, and online fundraising.
- The Iranian election protesters in 2009 using Twitter to spread their word, a movement that prompted the U.S. State Department to ask Twitter to keep the site up and running.
That's a pretty good list, but of course it immediately started us thinking about the influential Internet-related moments and developments from 2000 to 2009 that got short shrift or that got left off entirely.
Our list, in no particular order:
- The debut and growth of Firefox: The first browser to challenge the IE monopoly, Firefox now holds a 25 percent market share, paving the way for other players like Google Chrome.
- The arrival of blogging: Started as simple online diaries, blogs have grown to become a valid and valued source of news, opinion, and information. As a corollary, there's the rise of RSS, which lets the latest information come to us instead of our having to go out and find it.
- The surge in broadband: The availability of DSL, cable, satellite, and now Fios put a nail in the coffin for dial-up access, letting us download files in seconds, watch each other on webcams, and stream high-res videos.
- The allure of torrents: Whether used for legal or illegal file sharing, technologies like BitTorrent let us share and download all types of content across the Web from movies and TV shows to software. And speaking of movies and TV--the popularity of sites like Hulu and Netflix demonstrated that you no longer need a costly cable TV subscription to indulge your viewing inclinations.
- The reinvention of the telephone. On the one hand, there were VoIP services such as Skype, which saved us from expensive long-distance bills. On the other was 3G technology and mobile broadband, which let us jump into cyberspace from our phones, Netbooks, and a host of other portable gadgets.
- The rise of home workers: Thanks to the Internet, you can now run a full-fledged business or work for your employer without having to leave the house. There's also online education--with many accredited schools now online, today you can attend college or graduate school and get a full degree from your own computer.
- The ascent of Salesforce and cloud computing: With the success of cloud-computing providers like Salesforce, companies can now run much of their business online without the hassle of maintaining their own internal resources.
- The looming menace of cyberwarfare: On the downside, the Internet showed signs of becoming a new virtual battleground between countries, as in the purported cyberattacks against Estonia and Georgia.
- The lessons of the dot-com crash: The decade was barely under way when that bubble burst hard; wildly inflated stocks were tanking and Wall Street was reeling, frenetically hyped Web companies were imploding, and our retirement plans took a beating. That seem so long ago now, what with the current miserable state of the economy, post-housing bubble crash.
Do you agree or disagree with those picks? Sound off in the comments section below.
Although technology and the Internet have taken a beating in the past for potentially limiting people's social interaction, a new study from the Pew Research Center has found that the opposite might be true.
According to a Pew Internet Personal Networks and Community survey, which polled 2,512 adults, the dawn of new technology and the Internet has not caused people to withdraw from society. In fact, the study found that "the extent of social isolation has hardly changed since 1985, contrary to concerns that the prevalence of severe isolation has tripled since then." Pew said that 6 percent of the entire U.S. adult population currently has "no one with whom they can discuss important matters or who they consider to be 'especially significant' in their life."
That said, Pew did find that Americans' "discussion networks"--a measure of people's "most important social ties"--have shrunk "by about a third since 1985" from three people to two. However, Pew found no evidence to suggest that it had anything to do with mobile phones or the Internet. In fact, the organization's study found that mobile-phone use and active Web participation yields "larger and more diverse core discussion networks."
Social media is also helping people expand their social interaction. According to Pew, those who use the Internet frequently "are much more likely to confide in someone who is of another race." Users who share photos online are more likely to discuss political topics with someone of a different party, the organization found.
Do you know your neighbor?
Frequent Web users are more likely to communicate with neighbors in person than those who don't use the Web as often, Pew found. In fact, 61 percent of respondents said that they talk to a neighbor at least once per month. The study also found that bloggers are 72 percent "more likely to belong to a local voluntary association" than those who don't blog.
Perhaps most important, Pew found that just because someone is a heavy Web user, that doesn't mean they remove themselves from traditional social activities like visiting a restaurant or hanging out at a bar on a Friday night. According to the study, Web users are "45 percent more likely to visit a cafe, 52 percent more likely to visit a library, 34 percent more likely to visit a fast-food restaurant, 69 percent more likely to visit other restaurants, and 42 percent more likely to visit a public park." Later on, the study reported that social-networking users "are 40 percent more likely to visit a bar, but 36 percent less likely to visit a religious institution."
So, next time your grandmother tells you that the Web is ruining the world, you might want to tell her to check out Pew's study. For more on these figures and many more, click here.
Helped by cost cuts and by growth in Internet and phone subscribers, Comcast on Wednesday reported a 22 percent jump in earnings for its third quarter.
The cable provider saw net income of $944 million, or 33 cents per share, for the quarter ended Sept. 30, compared with $771 million (26 cents per share) in the year-ago quarter. Sales also rose, hitting $8.8 billion, up from $8.5 billion in 2008's third quarter, though revenue was slightly below analysts' estimates.
For the quarter, the number of TV subscribers dropped 2.7 percent to 23.7 million from 24.4 million a year ago. But the loss was more than offset by gains in Internet and voice, two services that Comcast has marketed heavily, especially as part of its Triple-Play service.
The number of Internet subscribers rose 6.4 percent to 15.6 million, while Comcast phone customers jumped 20 percent to 7.3 million. Overall, the company saw a quarterly increase in customers of 3.4 percent to 46.8 million. Subscriber growth helped boost third-quarter sales for the cable segment by 2.8 percent to $8.4 billion.
With a focus on trimming costs, capital expenses declined 6.1 percent to $1.2 billion, due in large part to lower spending at the company's cable divison.
"The strength and resilience of our businesses combined with our continued emphasis on expenses and prudent capital management helped us achieve healthy operating and financial results in the third quarter," Brian Roberts, chairman and chief executive officer, said in a statement.
Comcast revealed no new details over its intent to acquire a leading stake in GE-owned NBC Universal. Early last month, reports surfaced that the company wanted to buy a 51 percent chunk of NBCU, with GE owning the rest, to create a new joint venture. If it goes through, the deal could transform Comcast into a major media powerhouse, with control of NBC as well as variety of TV networks and cable stations.
The organization responsible for managing the assignment of domain names and IP addresses has approved a new plan to allow non-Latin characters in Web extensions.
Known as Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), the system is designed to globalize the Net so regions around the world can use their own local alphabet characters to surf in cyberspace, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, said Friday.
Calling IDNs the "biggest technical change" to the Internet since its birth 40 years ago, ICANN unanimously approved the plan on the final day of its six-day conference in Seoul.
IDNs will allow domain names to be to be written in native character sets, such as Chinese, Arabic, and Greek. In charge of managing domain names, ICANN has argued that IDNs are necessary to expand use of the Web in regions where people don't understand English. Since its inception, the Internet has been limited to the Latin character set used by the U.S. and many other nations.
"The coming introduction of non-Latin characters represents the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago," said ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush in a statement. "Right now Internet address endings are limited to Latin characters--A to Z. But the Fast Track Process is the first step in bringing the 100,000 characters of the languages of the world online for domain names."
To expedite the new plan, ICANN will launch a Fast Track process on November 16. At that time, the organization will begin accepting applications from countries for new top level domains, or Internet extensions, based on each nation's character set.
Initially, the change will apply only to local country codes, such as .kr for Korea and .ru for Russia. Major top level domains (TLDs) such as .com, .net., and .org won't see non-Latin editions just yet. But ICANN is pushing to make progress on these major TLDs and hopes to include them in the IDN system before long.
ICANN had discussed and debated IDNs for years, during which time much testing, development, and global cooperation were needed to jump start the new system.
"This is a culmination of years of work, tests, study and discussion by the ICANN community," said Thrush. "To see this finally start to unfold is to see the beginning of an historic change in the Internet and who uses it."
The Internet may be getting friendlier for a significant chunk of the world. A proposal is up for a vote to let Web addresses use non-English characters.
The proposed change (PDF), known as Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs), will allow the use of non-Latin characters in the entire address. Currently, such characters are allowed only in part of the address. IDNs will let people who write in Chinese, Korean, or Arabic use their own languages to surf the Web, and is expected to jump-start Internet use in many regions across the globe.
ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which is responsible for managing domain names on the Net, will review the historic, hot-button proposal on Friday at its six-day 36th International Public Meeting in Seoul. If approved, IDNs could kick in as early as mid-2010.
"This is an extremely important meeting for ICANN, since the IDN program is moving one step closer to reshaping the global Internet landscape," ICANN CEO Rod Beckstrom said in a statement. "In Seoul, we plan to move forward to the next step in the internationalization of the Internet, which means that eventually people from every corner of the globe will be able to navigate much of the online world using their native language scripts."
IDNs are not a new concept. They've been debated for at least a decade. Some doubted whether such a system could work. But countries like China have taken the lead in pushing for this change.
Of the 1.6 billion Internet users worldwide, more than half use languages with character sets other than Latin. Beckstrom sees the change as necessary, not just now, but for the future as Internet use continues to grow.
One of the challenges behind IDNs has been the use of translation technology to convert one character set to another to deliver the right address. But ICANN seems to have covered that base.
"We're confident that it works because we've been testing it now for a couple of years," Peter Dengate Thrush, chairman of ICANN's board, said in a statement. "And so we're really ready to start rolling it out."
Jelli.net, a Total Request Live-esq Internet radio station, is coming out of beta on Monday night and is expected to announce that it's inked a syndication deal with Triton Digital Media that will get it played in actual terrestrial FM radio stations across the U.S. beginning next year.
The service revolves entirely around a playlist of songs that's managed by users in real time. Users can vote songs up or down before they ever hit the air, as well as when they're playing. If enough people downvote a song while it's in the middle of playing, it's pulled before it even finishes, something that can be either deeply satisfying or disappointing to those listening.
Jelli let susers vote on tracks to be played next, and are able to yay or nay a video out of playing live on air.
(Credit: Screenshot by Josh Lowensohn/CNET)Up until about four months ago this music had existed only on the Web, where Jelli streams as a 24/7 radio station. This changed in June when Jelli nabbed a two-hour spot Sunday nights on Live 105 KITS, a local San Francisco FM radio station. The company says the trial run has been such a success it made it much easier to sell the idea to other stations. And sold it has.
Jelli's deal with Triton will put Jelli's user-picked station on FM radio, twice a day on around 4,500 stations across the U.S. This won't start until early next year though. In the meantime, the company has done a deal with Australian media broadcasting company Austereo to get Jelli played as a daily show, both in FM and digital radio beginning next month in five Australian cities.
One very important detail here is that with all of these affiliate stations across the world, the playlist will continue to be controlled by Jelli users at large. This means the playlist can change drastically based on who's awake and where they're from.
Also worth noting is that Jelli users are not going to be working off the same catalog they do when it's streaming versus when it's on a real radio station. About 10 minutes before Jelli makes the FM switchover, the catalog changes to broadcast-friendly songs, which include things like the shortened and/or censored version of the tracks. It also cleans the slate for users to start up or downvoting the tracks.
As part of the beta, Jelli is introducing multiple stations that will let subsets of users control the content.
(Credit: Josh Lowensohn/CNET)As part of the beta, there will also be multiple stations, so users can continue to control the streaming Web version without having to worry about the aforementioned catalog changeover. This also gives a minority of users a better chance of controlling what's played.
Speaking of which, Jelli continues to work on are countermeasures to keep a group of users from completely dominating the listening experience. For instance, each user is given a limited number of "rockets" and "bombs" each day. Rockets let you jump your song, or someone else's to the head of the queue to give it a chance at playing next. To even those out, bombs (which are given out a little more sparingly) are able to wipe the score of any queued track to zero, which can keep it from making it on air if users don't vote it back up.
That's not the end of the game-like experience though. In a call with CNET News on Monday, Jelli CEO and co-founder Mike Dougherty (who was previously TellMe's VP of biz dev) told me that the bombs and rockets were just the tip of the iceberg and that other gaming "power ups" and ways to earn them were coming shortly but could not give specifics on what they would do.
The company is also working on more ways to keep listeners engaged and feeding the station with recommendations. For instance, Jelli gives the person who originally suggested a track and who successfully got it played a personalized call out right before it begins playing. Because the service has no real DJs, this is all done with a text-to-speech robot. Jelli will also be giving highly active users their own short audio signature, which will get played right before their chosen song starts.
A little farther down the line, Dougherty hopes to get hardware besides PCs involved, including a way to manage the song queue and recommendations from mobile phones. There also isn't currently a way to purchase any of the music that's playing from Jelli's site, which means users have to go off and do a search for each track on their own. This too is something that will be changing in the very near future.
Jelli's streaming service is definitely a fun experiment in controlling radio--both Web and now terrestrial. You can listen to it in any streaming audio player with this link, or sign up on Jelli's site to vote on the queue and get more information about what's playing--something that can be quite useful if you're trying to get the name of that song you loved that just got bombed off the air.
The Internet Advertising Bureau has come out against new guidelines proposed by the Federal Trade Commission that would require bloggers to disclose their affiliations with sponsors, marketers, and free giveaways. The reason? The IAB claims that the rules unfairly regulate online media more than offline.
"What concerns us the most in these revisions is that the Internet, the cheapest, most widely accessible communications medium ever invented, would have less freedom than other media," IAB president and CEO Randall Rothenberg wrote in an open letter to FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz. "These revisions are punitive to the online world and unfairly distinguish between the same speech, based on the medium in which it is delivered. The practices have long been afforded strong First Amendment protections in traditional media outlets, but the Commission is saying that the same speech deserves fewer Constitutional protections online."
He illustrated it with a personal example:
So there I was last Saturday, about to send out on my Twitter feed--which automatically updates my Facebook page and links to my personal blog--a photograph of this wonderful baked halibut dish I'd just made as a surprise for my wife. I was in the middle of typing a rave review of the recipe, which I'd pulled from my favorite cookbook, "Delicioso! The Regional Cooking of Spain" by Penelope Casas. But before I could press the 'post' button, I stopped and canceled the whole thing.I remembered that the book was a freebie, sent to me by an editor at the Alfred A. Knopf publishing house 13 years ago. And I didn't want you guys to haul me into court and fine me for violating the rules you've just promulgated to muzzle social media.
The FTC has said that the rules, which stipulate that violations may face up to $11,000 in fines, are designed for education rather than punishment. But Rothenberg isn't buying it.
"The Guides do allow you to pursue bloggers," he insisted. "They do hold individuals more liable than larger corporations. They do explicitly say online social media have less protection than offline corporate media. They do obstruct online companies' opportunities to drive cultural conversation more than offline companies'. They do threaten with prosecution book publishers, movie producers, and other companies that supply products to individual social media conversationalists."
The bigger problem is that offline media isn't subject to the same restrictions, he explained. And, according to the letter, clamping down on one medium but not another constitutes a First Amendment violation.
The FTC has not yet responded publicly.
Renowned horror filmmaker Roger Corman is going "boo" on the Internet this Halloween.
Corman and online rental company Netflix are joining forces to frighten online audiences with a trilogy of Internet Webisodes charmingly titled "Splatter."
The first episode rises from the grave on October 29, the second appears on November 6, and the third closes the bloody chapter later in November on, of course, Friday the 13th.
But the trilogy is more than just an online scarefest. Using the interactive power of the Net, viewers will be able to vote on the fate of the characters in each of the three "Splatter" stories.
(Credit:
Netflix)
The episodes will be free for everyone to watch on their computers; no Netflix membership is required. But Netflix members on an unlimited plan will be able to check out "Splatter" on other devices, including Netflix-ready Blu-ray players, Microsoft's Xbox 360, and TiVo DVRs
"Splatter" tells the tale of rock 'n' roller Johnny Splatter, whose sudden death has drawn together his professional hangers-on, eager to see what the star has left them in his will. But Johnny's unexpected return to the living may bring his "friends" more than they bargained for.
Known for such classic '60s horror films as "Little Shop of Horrors," "Pit and the Pendulum," and "The Raven," Corman jumped at the chance to scare up a story that would let the audience join in on the fun.
"When Netflix approached me with this unique idea, I was truly intrigued about creating something that left the ending up to the audience," said Corman in a statement. "Making content for the Web is a natural progression for me, but 'Splatter' is a rare opportunity to involve my horror fans who really love being a part of the process."
To create the Webisodes, Corman recruited other horror film veterans. Filmmaker Joe Dante ("Gremlins," "Twilight Zone: The Move") applied his directing talents to each Webisode, while actor Corey Feldman ("The Goonies," "The Lost Boys") plays the lead role of Johnny Splatter.
"Netflix is delighted to be working with such film luminaries as Roger Corman and Joe Dante to bring our instant streaming capabilities to life in a unique and creative way for horror fans across the country," said Leslie Kilgore, chief marketing officer for Netflix, in a statement. "'Splatter' is a celebration of classic horror movies and it gives fans of the genre an exciting way to sample watching instantly at Netflix."
Starting October 29, the Webisodes can be seen at www.netflix.com/splatter.
The Pirate Bay was down across the U.S. for at least three hours on Friday, an outage that comes as the site's latest bandwidth provider comes under pressure from entertainment companies.
CNET noted that the site was down at 1:22 p.m. PDT but appeared to come back up at 4:50 p.m. PDT. The cause for the blackout was unclear. Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, one of The Pirate Bay's co-founders did not respond to interview requests.
The Pirate Bay founders: Peter Sunde Kolmisoppi, Fredrik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm
(Credit: The Pirate Bay)The Pirate Bay, the BitTorrent search engine loved by file sharers but loathed by many copyright owners, has had trouble in the past few months with its Internet service providers. The most recent example came on Thursday night when a Ukrainian ISP cut off service to the site after receiving legal threats from copyright owners, according to the blog TorrentFreak.
The Pirate Bay was operational Friday morning so Enigmax from TorrentFreak speculated the search engine likely had a substitute provider ready to go. It's possible there were technical issues involved with the switchover.
The Pirate Bay was forced to look for a new ISP after a Swedish court, at the request of the trade groups representing the music and film industries, threatened The Pirate Bay's former ISP provider with fines unless it stopped servicing the site.
Earlier on Friday, Google stopped indexing The Pirate Bay but later acknowledged it booted the site from its search results by mistake.
Could Intel's new Moblin 2.1 OS make a dent against Windows in the mobile and desktop markets?
At this week's Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, the chipmaker debuted a beta version of its Moblin 2.1 open-source operating system targeted to run on a variety of devices, including smartphones, Netbooks, nettops, Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs), and in-car systems.
Moblin 2.1 will compete with other open-source operating systems like Google's Android and bump up against Microsoft in the burgeoning nettop arena.
Originally developed for Netbooks, Moblin 2.1 (short for mobile Linux) will come in three flavors--one for handhelds, another for Netbooks, and a third for nettops.
In the market for handheld gadgets such as smartphones and MIDs, Moblin 2.1 will run on Atom chip-based devices. The beta demoed by Intel at IDF showed off capabilities for touch-screen and gesture input. The new interface will also let users switch among different open applications and will provide shortcuts to social-networking apps.
The Moblin 2.1 Web browser will also support Flash and Microsoft's Silverlight 3 technology to run interactive Web-based apps.
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