In the 10 years since Internet Explorer was first released as an add-on for Windows 95, the Internet landscape has changed in many ways — maturing from an environment populated mainly by the military, academia and professional research groups into a world open to everybody in which sound, movement, and dynamic content is the norm.
It is difficult to underestimate the change that easy and widespread access to the Internet has made to our way of life. "The Web" is now so popular it has permeated our everyday life, changing how we stay in touch, share information, complete chores, and even earn an income. A whole new industry has sprung up dedicated to providing new ways to improve productivity, in the process changing how we communicate and allowing us to fit ever more into our ever busier lives.
When we think of the Internet, and how it has changed our lives, the first things that come to mind for many are e-mail, Internet banking, and online shopping. But there is so much more than that. As part of preparing for this column, I had a look at all of computers in my home, old and new, to see what we had installed over time.
Over the years my family and I have used an amazing array of programs as part of our day to day life including flight trackers when any of us are traveling, scrolling stock tickers to monitor our investments, online news and weather alerts and e-mail subscriptions. I also found quite a few instant messenger programs including ICQ, Microsoft MSN, AOL, Trillian, Yahoo Messenger, and Google Talk.
An amazing variety of technology has been inspired by, and is dependent upon, the Internet
Sharing and finding information
The popularity and accessibility of the Internet has been the driving force behind many improvements and new technologies. Even technologies that were around for a long time before the Net went mainstream have benefited from its explosion in popularity.
Take RSS (Really Simple Syndication) for example. This technology has been around since 1999 but has only become popular over the past few years. RSS is a way of subscribing to a special type of Web page. Using an intermediary called an Aggregator, these special Web pages can be automatically scanned for updates. Whereas once it was primarily popular amongst Web Bloggers, RSS is now seen on all sorts of Web sites. RSS is especially useful with high content Web sites such as news sites allowing us to quickly scan all articles, downloading only that which is of interest.
RSS makes it easy to wade through a lot of information very quickly
Another technology that has become popular in very recent times is podcasting, which is a way for users to subscribe to audio syndications on the net. An early adopter of this way of distributing audio content was Web radio. If you would like to check out this technology, Podcast.net provides a comprehensive list of podcasters. A good example of user friendly podcasting is http://www.cbc.ca/podcasting/.
Blogging is a global phenomenon. It has been around since the mid-1990s, but again didn't become popular until the Internet expanded its reach and influence. Blogging is an individual's online public commentary on whatever takes their interest on a particular day. The features that make a Blog different to a standard Web page are that it is possible to comment on a particular entry; Blogs can be subscribed to (most often using RSS) and Blogs can cross-reference each other using trackbacks.
Microsoft, and its employees, lead the way when it comes to blogging
Staying in touch
We used to write letters to stay in touch with those far away, and if our correspondent was very special, we would use our trusty film camera to take some photos before taking the resultant film to the camera shop for developing — waiting anywhere from an hour to a week to get the prints. We'd then hand over the cash, go home, put everything in the envelope, stick a stamp on it and post it off.
Nowadays, we grab our digital camera, take as many shots as we want, upload them directly on to our PCs, attach a copy to an e-mail and send it off into the ether. No more developing charges, no more postage. A whole industry has sprung up around digital cameras and the Internet which encompasses services as diverse as the online Kodak EasyShare Gallery, Google's Picassa, and the Photo Gallery on MSN Spaces, all of which are accessed through a Web browser. As digital cameras have become more popular online printing services have come to be. We can store, share, and order prints for our photographs from the same service.
I remember when I was still in Primary School, my father was lucky enough to spend a year working on an island near Antarctica. Back then, the only contact that was possible with loved ones was an occasional letter or very limited telex, limited radio phone time, or the exchange of cassette recordings that traveled back and forth by ship. Thanks to Satellite Internet access and other new technologies, current residents on the island have Web cams so that their families can see them, and the island on which they are living. That is very different to my father's day. When he stepped off the ship in Melbourne on his return, the only person that recognized him was my younger sister.
The popularity of the Internet and Web browsing led to a pre-existent service known as IRC (Internet Relay Chat), which first came into being back in 1998, being reinvented and extended into an easier to use instant messaging client.
Unlike IRC, instant messaging clients are not plain text only. One of the forerunners of this new style of service was ICQ, released in 1996. ICQ was later joined by AOL's AIM chat client in 1997, Yahoo Messenger in June 1999, MSN Messenger a month later, and Trillian in 2000. Over time, these services have matured, adding new features and abilities such as voice chat and video. Some of the chat services are also accessible via our Web browser (for example MSN Messenger and AIM both have online access services that duplicate their chat clients in a browser window).
In recent years, VOIP (Voice over IP) has started to gain a foothold. This service allows us to make telephone calls over the Internet, often at significant cost saving. Computers fitted with a microphone and speaker have been the traditional way to use VOIP. Nowadays we have VOIP desktop telephones and entire business communication networks using the VOIP protocol Programme such as Skype, and Google Talk (which combines email, chat and a Jabber based VOIP into one program) are making VOIP easily accessible to anyone with a computer, microphone and speakers.
Doing business
The Internet and Web browsers have become an essential tool for business. For example, on a daily basis I use Outlook Web Access to remotely access my e-mail and calendar. When I am at home, I use a browser-based Web console to remotely manage anti-spyware and anti-virus protection on my networked PCs. Then, I may fire up Groove Virtual Office or access a SharePoint server for some remote collaboration. For live, interactive meetings I may use hosted Web conferencing such as Live Meeting. As an IT Pro, I can use Windows XP's Remote Desktop or NetMeeting to access other PCs in the office without having to run from floor to floor.
It was only natural that as the Internet became more widespread, and businesses became more dependent upon it, that a need would arise for road warriors to find new ways to stay in touch. So started the era of the PDA then the Smart Phone. Internet Cafés began to appear as well as wireless hotspots.
I realized just how far we have progressed when I traveled to Seattle recently. I was able to sit in the middle of an airport in Australia that has no public Internet access, plug a matchbox sized USB wireless broadband modem into the side of my laptop and surf the net just like at home. Alternatively, I can access a wireless hotspot simply by entering my mobile phone number into a log in screen in my Web browser, wait for an SMS message with my authorization code and then start surfing the Web. I've never liked using Internet Cafés because of the risk of keyloggers or other nasties, so the ever growing hotspot network is a welcome change.
I wonder what the future holds for us and the Internet, and where we will be in another five years time. If services like Google Earth are anything to go by, the future is going to be pretty amazing stuff.
Source:http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/community/columns/technologyinternet.mspx
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