Internet History Podcast

SummaryCraig Kanarick was one of the people responsible for the first ever banner ad, which appeared on Oct. 27, 1994 on Hotwired.com. As mentioned in the podcast, there’s no “first” ad, as several were launched in a rotation at the same time. But as mentioned on the podcast, a lot of people like to think of the first ad as this one, for AT&T, which you can see here:And for more information about the “You Will” AT&T campaign, read about it here, or dig this.Craig went on to found Razorfish, along with his childhood friend Jeff Dachis. Razorfish was a pioneering design, technology and advertising studio that brought many large brands and corporations onto the web for the first time. Razorfish was also a pioneer of the web-tech scene in New York City, which has come to be called “Silicon Alley.” Craig is currently the founder of Mouth.com, headquartered in the DUMBO neighborhood in Brooklyn, as is this podcast (thus, the DUMBO-ish picture I chose above). In our conversation, I mention some contentious media coverage that Razorfish received back in the day, in my opinion, painting them as poster-boys for dotcom-era excess. I offer some of those articles for context:New York MagazineWired60 Minutes II Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:America Online survives the inevitable run-in with Microsoft, only to come out the other side stronger. The company has to endure major PR fiascos and network capacity issues, but eventually sees itself firmly established as one of the major players of the dot com era.Bibliography: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/aol.html?pg=6&topic= http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/4.12/ffaol.html?pg=3&topic=&topic_set= http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-04-14/the-online-world-of-steve-case http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-08-25/has-the-net-finally-reached-the-wall Swisher, Kara; AOL.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

www.InternetHistoryPodcast.com@brianmcc@nethistorypodSummary:We take a step back to look at the early online services: CompuServe, Delphi, GEine, the WELL and especially, early AOL. Why? Well, because online services very much served as “training wheels” for the Internet. Online services were NOT the Internet, exactly; at least not at first. But they very much helped get people used to living life in an online environment. AOL especially would grow and enjoy success to the point that it became one of the most powerful companies in technology. We take a look at how America Online grew to dominate the online services market before the inevitable showdown with (who else?) Microsoft.Bibliography: Banks, Michael; On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/happy-30th-birthday-compuserve/24853 Stryker, Cole; Epic Win for Anonymous: How 4chan?s Army Conquered the Web http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.06/prodigy.html?pg=2&topic=&topic_set= http://www.nytimes.com/1993/11/08/business/at-age-9-prodigy-on-line-reboots.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1995-02-12/prodigy-is-in-that-awkward-stage http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.09/aol.html?pg=4&topic= http://www.quora.com/AOL-History/How-much-did-it-cost-AOL-to-distribute-all-those-CDs-back-in-the-1990s Swisher, Kara; AOL.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

www.InternetHistoryPodcast.com@nethistorypod @brianmccSummary:Rob McCool is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Unlike a lot of the others we have spoken to, he worked more on the server side of the equation for both projects. Rob was also the original author of the NCSA HTTPd web server, later known as the Apache HTTP Server, so we can think of him as the Godfather of Apache. He was a contributor to the initial specification of the Common Gateway Interface (CGI), and later what became known as the Netscape Enterprise Server. Rob went on to work at both Yahoo and Onlive. He is currently at Google, where he works on structured Knowledge Bases and semantics. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:Jon Mittelhauser is another of the core group of original Mosaic programmers who went on to found Netscape. Jon worked on the Windows versions of both Mosiac and Navigator eventually became the project manager for the Netscape Navigator project on the whole. He gives us great background and details about the development of browsers, the creation of features (he is the father of the hand icon, for example, and was instrumental in bringing image support to the web) and early web advancements in general. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:Aleks Totic was one of the original Mosaic engineers at the NCSA, responsible for the Mac version of Mosiac. They don’t call him “Mac Daddy” for nothing. He was then one of the 6 original programmers recruited by Marc Andreessen and Jim Clark to form Netscape. Aleks gives us some excellent behind the scenes anecdotes about both projects, and what it was like to head out to California to work on some crazy startup before doing something like that was “cool.”A few fun nuggets of history we mention in the conversation: Click to hear Marc Andreessen ask, “What is global hypermedia?” back in 1993.  The famous whiteboard. They packed up the truck and moved to Beverly Mountain View  Original Mozilla t-shirt designs. 20-year old photos of the NSCP team. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:Microsoft was on top of the world at the dawn of the Internet Era… but like Jack Dawson in Titanic? Microsoft would pivot, and pivot hard, once it realized that the Internet was The Next Big Thing. This episode outlines how younger Microsoft employees agitated for a greater focus on the Internet, and how Bill Gates “got” the Internet religion. Microsoft’s embrace of the Internet is truly one of the greatest acts of agility in corporate history. Windows 95 and Internet Explorer are launched, and the seeds are sewn for the great anti-trust battle to come.Bibliography: How the Web Was Won; Andrews, Paul; Broadway, 1999 https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CDEQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.microsoft.com%2Fabout%2Fcompanyinformation%2Ftimeline%2Ftimeline%2Fdocs%2Fdi_killerapp_InternetMemo.rtf&ei=ThtoUsvfDq234APWkICIDw&usg=AFQjCNHO04HZPALsUN9Rp4v1jKDYQ8eRpQ&sig2=_bymmx2MJUK8z9gzgACCTw&bvm=bv.55123115,d.dmg Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace; Wallace, James http://seattletimes.com/html/businesstechnology/2008020017_webgatesmemo275.html http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1996-07-14/inside-microsoft http://www.zdnet.com/news/browser-wars-high-price-huge-rewards/128738 The Microsoft File : The Secret Case Against Bill Gates; Rohm, Wendy http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,985115-2,00.html http://news.cnet.com/2009-1032-995681.html Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business; Reid, Robert Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:Chris Wilson has been working on browser technology for the better part of two decades. A member of the original Mosaic team, he went on to work first at Spry (producing Internet in a Box) and then later at Microsoft, where he was a major developer of Internet Explorer for almost 15 years.Chris tells us about developing the first Windows port of Mosaic, describes how he was one of the original champions of CSS as a technology, gives us more background about the evolution and life cycle of Internet Explorer, and even described his brief tenure working on Microsoft's first foray into search engine technology!The quora thread I mention briefly can be found here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:Lou Montulli is a web pioneer. In 1991 and 1992 he co-authored a text web browser called Lynx with Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac while he was at the University of Kansas. This web browser was one of the first available and is still in use today.In 1994 he became a founding engineer of Netscape Communications (employee number 9) and programmed the networking code for the first versions of the Netscape web browser.He is also responsible for several browser innovations, such as HTTP cookies, the blink tag, server push and client pull, HTTP proxying, and the implementation of animated GIFs into the browser. While at Netscape, he also was a founding member of the HTML working group at the W3C and was a contributing author of the HTML 3.2 specification. He is a member of the World Wide Web Hall of Fame.Lou was also a co-founder of Epinions.com. He was the CEO of Memory Matrix, and when that company was purchased by Shutterfly, he served as Shutterfly’s Vice President of Engineering. He is currently the co-founder and Chief Scientist at Zetta.net.More about Lynx here.Here is the famous fishcam!Here is the post we discuss where Lou lays out the reasoning behind the birth of the browser cookie.The birth of the tag. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Summary:Netscape has set the standard and taken the lead. But how long will it last? We take a step backwards in this episode and examine why Microsoft was so dominant at the beginning of the Internet Era. We ask the questions: Did Bill Gates really miss the Internet? And: Was the Information Superhighway and the Internet one and the same thing? And we look back on all the things that were distracting Microsoft at the dawn of the Internet Era.Bibliography: Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft; Bank, David, Free Press, 2007 How the Web Was Won: How Bill Gates and His Internet Idealists Transformed the Microsoft Empire; Andrews, Paul; Broadway, 2000 http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/22/business/judge-clears-antitrust-pact-for-microsoft.html The New New Thing : A Silicon Valley Story; Lewis, Michael; W.W. Norton & Company, 1999 http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/r14/1994/0113/13021.html How America Got On-Line: Politics, Markets, and the Revolution in Telecommunications; Stone, Alan; M E Sharp Inc., 1997 http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,978216,00.html http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/3.02/smith.html?pg=8&topic= http://www.nytimes.com/1994/12/12/business/time-warner-s-time-machine-for-future-video.html Overdrive: Bill Gates and the Race to Control Cyberspace; Wallace, James; Wiley, 1998 Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire; Wallace, James and Erickson, Jim; HarperBusiness, 1993 Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft; Clark, Jim and Edwards, Owen; St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000 The Billionaire Shell Game: How Cable Baron John Malone and Assorted Corporate Titans Invented a Future Nobody Wanted; Davis... Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.