Group items tagged

Fascinating article on grassroots alternatives to paying a company like Verizon for Internet access. If enough of these community-built networks come into being and link to each other, we'll have a brand-new Internet!

Okay, here's a picture that roughly approximates how people used to interact with the Internet before there was a Web. All through text, all through a CLI (command-line interface). I started grad school in 1992 and this is pretty much what we had. This too is what that 1988 Washington Post article is thinking of when it talks about Internet.

Oddly enough, today the Washington Post has chosen to reprint a 1988 article about the Internet; that article mentions Robert Tappan Morris, the first person prosecuted under the Computer Fraud Act, whom Brittney Douress told us about today. Nice timing, Brittney! :)

Note too that this article came out well before the World Wide Web was invented circa 1992 / 1993. There weren't any GUI web browsers yet; people just used text-only terminals (no pictures, no video) to access stuff. Mostly news groups -- I'll post a picture of what that looked like if I can find one.

An interesting article from the Fashion & Style section of the New York Times about how the internet has changed the concept and attitudes of R.S.V.P viewed by people. With the modern R.S.V.P, the ability for a host or event producer to painlessly publicize his or her event to many people has replaced the meaning of a social contract.

A list of some of some important people in the history of the Internet, just to give some ideas to anyone still thinking!

although this isn't a full on article, it does provide a snap shot of what many people think regarding sexism on the internet. It ranges from ignore it to yes this is a serious issue.

 The World Wide Web Consortium's definition of the difference between the Web and the Internet is understandably technical. It annoys me that there's a typo in which "TCP/IP" is misspelled "TPC/IP". Way to confuse people. 

Here is a good list of different people that are behind big sites on the internet.

People in 1994 discussing what the Internet is

AP Late this month, Google went "dark" in terms of providing publishers with free information on which words led people searching in Google to click on their sites. The move came as Google seeks to reassure users following the NSA/PRISM domestic surveillance scandal.

Wow, I hadn't even heard about that, Emily. Terrific story. That's a bummer, though -- I use Google Analytics on some of my sites, though I probably should make more use of it, and it was always interesting to see what keywords people were using to get to my site. Sometimes the keywords were weird.

This CNN article discusses research done to determine what young people do online. Concerned parents may not want to read this.

We all know the acronyms "lol" and "lmao" and sometimes just use "haha." This article explores how people from other countries express laughter over the Internet.

Great article of why there is a drastic statistical decline in people reading e-books

This link gives information on the difference between a directory and a folder. The reason I found this link so useful was because it outlines the difference between the two for Mac and PC users.

Congratulations, Gordon, on being the very first to post! :) I will say I'm not very impressed with the link, though -- it's a bit fuzzy on whether there is or is not a difference between a directory and a folder, except in a technical sense on Windows Vista. (I'd argue that in general there isn't, though I grant you there are special cases.) And you can't tell who wrote that piece, and it comes from the support database of a particular software company rather than from a site that's dedicated to explanations / teaching / learning / education. At least Wikipedia is deliberately trying to educate people, and it's better on this issue, I'd say, and provides a clearer argument that a directory is something structural in an OS whereas a folder is a visual "metaphor" for a collection of files, which may or may not be an actual directory: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directory_(computing)#Folder_metaphor

In addition to the content management systems we talked about today like wordpress, there are plenty of other great content management systems out there for people to use.

Although that article was written way back in 2009, I'd say it's still pretty accurate. All the CMSes I know of are in that list, plus some I hadn't heard of.

The idea of open access to scholarly journals seems to be a big debate and this article talks about how publishers make millions of dollars off of research and peer reviews that are done for free. It also talks about Aaron Swartz who led the movement for allowing access to journals by basically "stealing" them and sharing them.

The time has come and our loyal reader know already our traditional Advents Calendar. For the people who don't know, every year we had in December each day, until the 24th (Christmas Eve in Germany), a post with specials, tips, tricks, plugins, tutorials and so on. Since it is quite a lot work to accomplish 24 high quality posts, we asked some of the finest WordPress Experts in Germany if they would like to contribute some ideas and great posts to it every day. http://wpengineer.com/2652/every-day-a-post-of-wordpress-tipps-and-tricks-until-christmas/

Here is a list of people who are inductees for this year hall of fame, in case anyone still needs a person to do their project about.