Web

A Look at Internet’s Growth in the Past Decade

Royal Pingdom has a post on the Growth of the Internet in the past decade. From the post: "There were only 361 million Internet users in 2000, in the entire world. For perspective, that's barely two-thirds of the size of Facebook today. The chart really says it all. There are more than five times as many Internet users now as there were in 2000. And as has been noted elsewhere, the number of Internet users in the world is now close to passing two billion and may do so before the end of this year." more

DOTZON Study: Digital City Brands 2021

DOTZON presents the fifth edition of the Digital City Brands study. After introducing the study in early 2017, DOTZON expanded further and enhanced the data to display how cities successfully use their Digital City Brands. The Digital City Brand is the digital dimension of the City Brand and mirrors the "Digitalness" of a city. However, the Digital City Brand is much more than a mere extension of the City Brand. more

Infrastructure for a Connected World

Connected devices need a free-to-use infrastructure that allows for innovation beyond the needs of a provider or other intermediary. An interface is best when it disappears and the user can focus the problem at hand. In the same way infrastructure, is best when it can simply be assumed and becomes invisible. With an invisible infrastructure as with an invisible interface a user can concentrate on their tasks and not think about the computer. Dan Bricklin and I chose to implement VisiCalc on personal computers that people could just purchase. more

The Mobile App Trap

The Apple App Store was seven years old as of Friday, 10 July, marking a key -- and possibly critical -- evolution in how we use the Internet. First, the numbers, which are truly astounding -- there are now more than 1.4 million apps available, which have been downloaded more than 100 billion times. And that's just Apple. Add in Android and the other platforms, and we start talking about a new app economy, generating billions in revenues for developers from around the world. more

China Sets Up Internet Oversight Body, Has Authority to Investigate and Punish

Caixin reports that the State Council, China's cabinet, has set up an office to regulate internet activity, according to an announcement released on May 4 via an official website. The new department, called the State Internet Information Office, will supervise online content management and process approvals of businesses involved in online news reporting, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua. The new agency is reported to have the authority to investigate and punish online content-providers if necessary. more

Google Set to Launch Chrome Browser Today

Google announced on Monday that it has been working on an open-source browser known as Chrome and that it is going to release a beta version today in 100 countries. News about the launch of Google Chrome (originally planned for announcement after the holiday weekend) was accidentally emailed to outside sources according to reports. The new browser features include "isolated" tabs designed to prevent browser crashes and a more powerful JavaScript engine. Chrome is based on the open-source software Webkit which is also used to build Google's mobile software Android. more

Coronavirus Online Threats Going Viral, Part 1: Domain Names

As news of the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) continues to emerge, CSC has undertaken the first in a series of studies looking at how the development of the crisis has affected online content. This first article looks at the numbers of registered domains with names containing coronavirus-related strings - "coronavirus" or "covid(-)19" (optional hyphen) - and analyzes the types of content present on the associated websites. more

Internet Archive Loses Their CDL Appeal

The Internet Archive's Controlled Digital Lending (CDL) lends out scans of physical books, ensuring that each scan is lent to one person at a time. Publishers sued, and the Archive lost thoroughly in April 2023. The Archive appealed the decision to the Second Circuit court in New York. As I said at the time, the appeal seemed like a long shot since that is the same court that said that Google Books was OK, mostly because it didn't provide full copies of the books. more

Renewed Internet.nl Website: Modern Standards Need to be Used for a Free, Open and Secure Internet

Modern Internet Standards provide for more reliability and further growth of the Internet. But are you using them? You can test this on the Dutch website www.internet.nl (also available in English and Polish). Recently the website was renewed. Not only the style has been adapted, but also the way the tests are performed and the test results are shown. A lot of additional information has been added, so that even the tech savvy internet users can find an explanation underpinning the test results. more

Is Technology the Problem?

We do live in turbulent times. There is such a lot happening, with many people feeling overwhelmed and lost. One of the reasons given why we do have these problems is technology. I would argue against that. In all reality, technology is a tool that we can use, and yes, we all know that we can use it for the wrong reasons (cars kill people, atom bombs, killer robots, chemical and biological warfare and so on). However, we have learned to live with it, and in general, the outcome from science, innovation and technology has been positive. more

Digital in 2021 – Five Predictions for Brand Protection

While smartphones were an integral part of our lives before 2020, now, as a result of the changes associated with COVID, our mobile devices are virtually "super-glued" to our hands. The worldwide pandemic has heavily influenced our lives. Based on our past experiences with digital brand protection and the trends we're currently seeing, we've made five predictions regarding the future of internet usage in 2021. more

Group Announces Certificate Authority to Encrypt the Entire Web, Lunching in 2015

EFF, Mozilla, Cisco, Akamai, Identrust, and researchers at the University of Michigan today announced a new certificate authority (CA) initiative called "Let's Encrypt". more

Gordon E. Moore, Co-Founder of Intel and Father of Moore’s Law, Passes Away at 94

Gordon E. Moore, the co-founder and former chairman of Intel Corporation, passed away on Friday at his home in Hawaii. He was 94. Moore was widely known for his 1965 prediction, which became known as Moore's Law. more

Are We Facing the Splinternet?

One of the consequences of the war between Russia and Ukraine is that Russia has largely stopped participating in many large worldwide web applications. Russia has blocked Facebook and Twitter. Other applications like Apple, Microsoft, TikTok, Netflix, and others have withdrawn from Russia. The European Union is in the process of trying to block Russian-generated content, such as the state-owned news outlets of RT (formerly Russia Today) and Sputnik. more

Study Indicates Nearly Half A Million Jobs Created from “App Economy” in US

A new study reveals close to 466,000 jobs have been created in the "App Economy" in United States -- up from zero in 2007. The total number of Apps Economy jobs includes jobs at 'pure' app firms such as Zynga as well as app-related jobs at large companies such as Electronic Arts, Amazon, and AT&T, as well as app 'infrastructure' jobs at core firms such as Google, Apple, and Facebook. In addition, the App Economy total includes employment spillovers to the rest of the economy. more