ztraffer

Do you remeber Internet Time ? It was intended to eliminate the hassle of time zones, as real time interactions across time zones started to raise dramatically. No matter where you are, or what time scheme is in place, everyone shares the same exact time. Under Internet Time, the day was divided into 1000 units (beats), starting at midnight European Central Time. It came out right after the internet boom, and it seemed like an awesome idea (at least to me) -if you've ever tried to coordinate an activity with someone in a different part of the world, you've surely gone through something like this: A: OK, how does tomorrow at 10 AM work for you? B: 10 AM your time or my time? A: My time B: You are US Pacific, right? A: Yes. B: OK, you're 8 hrs behind me so that's 18:00 my time A: Is that military time? I'm not sure... B: Right, sorry -that's 6pm. A: Are you sure, we're on daylight savings time here B: All right, why don't we set up the meeting on Outlook, ...

Today , the life of Netscape Navigator oficially comes to an end. This posting is my tribute to this icon of the internet's dawn. Though its real death came about in the late 90s, after loosing the browser wars to Microsoft's IE, it was given a new lease in life when it was acquired by AOL, though its market share continued to decline, and faded into irrelevance at the turn of the millenium. While Netscape was a better browser in the beginning, IE's eventual superiority became irrelevant in the face of its strategic advantage: IE was pre-installed on all new Windows PCs. In the early years of the web, Netscape soon attained dominance over Mosaic, and was the first browser for most people back then. For those of us who lived immersed in the emerging web, it was like exploring a new world. There were no commercial websites, just individual pages with all kinds of weird content. Forget about media-rich pages, with neatly laid-out content designed by web-design firms. Back the...

I could not let today pass without a posting to mark the event. Happy February 29th, world!