first ever website If there was one site that would change the world for ever, it would be the , created by internet pioneer Tim Berners-Lee.
Itwent online on 6 August 1991 offering people help with using the brandnew 'World Wide Web', rather modestly described as a "wide-areahypermedia information retrieval initiative aiming to give universalaccess to a large universe of documents". It's now archived atwww.tinyurl.com/3apuu.
If Berners-Lee had known what was to come, he might have added: "This is going to be awesome!" 2. GeoCities
Fascinatingas it was back then, the web wasn't a whole lot of fun and after fouryears of pages created by scientists and academics, David Bohnett andJohn Rezner, who ran a web directory called Beverly Hills Internet,turned their company into GeoCities, giving anyone the ability tocreate their own site for free.
"There was a time when half theinternet seemed to be on GeoCities and I don't think that this can beunderestimated," says Rob 'CmdrTaco' Malda, founder of Slashdot."GeoCities made it possible for anyone to put something online fornothing. This was a huge deal." 3. Blogger
GeoCitiesmade it easy for anyone to build their own site, but in August 1999,Blogger made it even easier. Now anyone could post a diary of what theyhad for dinner or why they hated their parents. Acquired by Google in2003, Blogger continues to enable everyone to document their liveswithout needing to get their hands dirty with HTML. As does WordPress,TypePad, Tumblr and a million other services that have since appeared.GeoCities was purchased by Yahoo! in 1999 and lives on as Yahoo!GeoCities, though we've never heard anyone say "Check out my Yahoo!GeoCities page." 4. Yahoo!
Onething that Yahoo! will be remembered for, though, is its searchdirectory, without which most of us would never have found GeoCities inthe first place. Founded by Stanford University graduate students JerryYang and David Filo in January 1994, Yahoo! was a manually compileddirectory of sites. "Remember when you bookmarked Yahoo! indexesbecause they were actually comprehensive sources on a subject?" saysRob Malda. "Good times."
But those good times weren't to last.Computer-compiled search listings from AltaVista and, later, Google,were to rise in popularity, leaving Yahoo! behind, perhaps distractedwith building its community features such as chat rooms, email andmessage boards. "They were an early leader but went down a path ofbeing more marketing- oriented than technology-oriented," saysWikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales. "I hope they recapture the idea ofpushing the forefront of technology." 5. The internet-connected coffee machine
Whenyou're chatting with friends on your webcam, who'd have thought you oweall that to a coffee pot? The internet-connected coffee machine fromCambridge University went online in November 1993, so university staffcould check on whether there was coffee in the pot before walking downseveral flights of stairs.
A year later, student Jennifer Ringleyinstalled a webcam in her dorm, giving viewers a regularly updatedwindow into her life on the JenniCam. Usually mundane, but not shyingaway from appearing nude or having sex, Ringley attracted an estimatedthree to four million viewers, some of whom were paid subscribers. Buton 31 December 2003 Ringley shut her site down to lead a quieter life,out of the public eye.
Cambridge University's coffee machine isalso living a more private life these days, but you can read more onits history at www.cl.cam.ac.uk/coffee/coffee.html. 6. Danni's Hard Drive
Sothe early 90s were an innocent time, but that all changed when, in thespring of 1995, model Danni Ashe created Danni's Hard Drive. Ashestarted out in newsgroups after hearing her pictures were being postedthere and soon after that she hired some programmers to build her site.
Notsatisfied with the result, Ashe studied HTML and built her own site,which she ran single-handedly for over a year before bringing in extrastaff. Ashe went on to become the Guinness World Record holder of thetitle 'Most downloaded woman on the Internet', in December 2000, whenit was confirmed that her image had been downloaded over a billiontimes. 7. MP3.com
Itwasn't just photos that we'd be downloading, though. In 1998, alongcame MP3.com, without which there would have been no Napster, and noiTunes. MP3.com was to popularise the MP3 format of digital music,offering downloads of unsigned bands, which people would havedownloaded and transferred to their iPods, had the iPod actually beenaround at the time.
"I remember downloading my first few MP3sfrom MP3.com while ripping my own CDs. It took something like eighthours to rip and encode a single CD," says Slashdot's Rob Malda. "Ayear or two later, tiny devices like the Rio paved the way for theiPod. I can't tell you how powerful it felt to browse what felt like aninfinite number of songs." 8. eBay
InSeptember 1995, programmer Pierre Omidyar founded AuctionWeb, laterrenamed eBay. It's been responsible for turning stay-at-home mums intosuccessful businesswoman, and lists Damon Albarn, Gordon Ramsay and MegMatthews among its sellers. It's also known for a decommissionednuclear bunker and the image of the Virgin Mary in a decade-old toastedcheese sandwich.
Brian Groth, product manager for Windows Live atMicrosoft is a fan: "Not many sites can claim to have created andridden their own zeitgeist, but eBay did – and it still is! Itssimplicity is its genius and the feedback system is a shining exampleof how seamlessly self-regulating internet communities can work. Afurther testament to its success is that it's the only website on thislist that's created a viable new career choice – the professional eBaytrader." eBay was ahead of its time, adds Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales. "Itreally was Web 2.0 before Web 2.0 was cool. eBay is all about havingordinary people contributing the vast majority of what's going on atthe website." 9. Amazon
Anothercompany that was Web 2.0 before the term was coined is Amazon, foundedby Jeff Bezos in 1994. Bezos had originally planned to call the siteCadabra, until in a moment of clarity he realised it sounded uncannilyclose to 'cadaver'. And so Amazon was born, initially offering booksbut now selling everything from watches to lawnmowers. Not only did itpopularise online shopping but its focus on user reviews paved the wayfor sites such as TripAdvisor and Epinions.
Match.com's JasonStockwood says of Amazon: "Many people had huge reservations aboutusing the internet, and even more about ecommerce. Amazon led thecharge, and continues to play a crucial role in encouraging a widerdemographic to feel comfortable surfing." 10. Boo.com
Notevery site was as successful. Boo.com was set up at the end of 1999selling branded fashion clothes, but went into receivership just sixmonths later, after burning through more than £100 million. The sitewas big on Flash, with its 3D views of clothes and virtual shopassistant Miss Boo. 56k modems weren't ready for it and shoppers stayedaway in their droves. But perhaps Boo was just before its time: does a3D view of the product you're browsing really sound so ridiculous now? 11. Wikipedia
IfAmazon championed user reviews, Wikipedia was to take user-generatedcontent to another level, with an online encyclopedia anyone couldedit. Sounds like a recipe for disaster, but where errors or downrightlies appear, they're quick to be corrected by the site's users. "Yes,the information is imperfect," says Jason Stockwood, "but the rigidlydemocratic nature of the site means that Wikipedia is a true embodimentof what the internet revolution originally promised." 12. Slashdot
Ifyou'd rather comment than review, then you owe a debt to Slashdot, asite where people submit news stories for discussion. Created inSeptember 1997 by Rob Malder, it continues to be a must-readdestination for anyone interested in technology. Drew Curtis followedup with FARK.com, and Kevin Rose with digg.com. Commenting on storieshas become so widespread that it now seems odd to arrive at a sitewhere there are no comments. 13. The Drudge Report
It'shard to believe now, but it used to be that the mainstream media waswhere you went for serious, trusted news and the web didn't get a lookin. But on 17 January 1998 The Drudge Report was to change that, whenit broke the Monica Lewinsky scandal to the public after Newsweekdecided not to publish the story.
Reporting on the event on 25January 1998, BBC News said, in what sounds obvious and naive all theseyears later, "In the future, academics, politicians and journalistsaren't likely to dismiss the internet so quickly."
Now news isregularly broken by specialist blogs before you read about it in themorning paper. That's assuming you even buy a morning paper any more. 14. YouTube
Andwhere do you watch your TV? Started in a garage by three former PayPalemployees, one site went on to shake up the TV industry, and wasacquired by Google for $1.6 billion. All that for a company that's lessthan four years old. You've probably heard of it: it's called YouTube.
"Youused to find a text search result for every keyword you could thinkof," says Torsten Schuppe, marketing director at eBay. "Now you find avideo for every keyword you can think of! I've been told people upload10 hours of video content every minute – that's huge!" 15. Gabocorp
UntilFlash came along in 1996, the web was much like Ceefax, with a fewanimated GIFs and PC-crashing Java applets thrown in. But the arrivalof Flash was to herald a new era in web design. The sign of things tocome appeared in 1997 in the form of Gabocorp (archived atthefwa.com/flash10/gabo. html). Suddenly the web was no longer static.
"Thiswas the equivalent of TV going colour," says Rob Ford, founder andprincipal of Favourite Website Awards. "Gabocorp made us realise wecould now make things move, add sound and generally be far morecreative than the days of blue hypertext links that turned purpleon-click. Animated GIFs took a body blow while lake applets took theknockout punch. Gabo Medoza, for me, is a true web pioneer: we all owehis creativity and vision for where we are today." 16. Legal & General
Onthe accessibility front, an encouraging early example of accessible webdesign produced by a commercial company was that of Legal & General.
JulieHowell, director of accessibility at digital agency Fortune Cookieexplains: "Legal & General were concerned that their website wasneedlessly excluding disabled people, so undertook a site refresh thattook into account the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative Web ContentAccessibility Guidelines 1.0 (WCAG 1.0). While the company's mainintention was to make the site easier for disabled people to use, thebusiness returns were quite astonishing and proved that accessibledesign can be good for everyone: conversion increased by 300 per cent,maintenance costs reduced by 66 per cent, natural search listingsimproved by 50 per cent and page load time reduced by 75 per cent. IfLegal & General can do this, what excuse do other companies havefor not doing it?" 17. Hotmail
Freeemail for all, accessible anywhere – that was the promise of Hotmail.Founded by Jack Smith and Sabeer Bhatia, it was launched in 1996 andsold to Microsoft in 1997 for around $400 million. 18. Classmates.com
Hotmailhelped us keep in touch with people we knew, but Classmates.com,launched in 1995, helped us get back in touch with people we hated atschool and never kept in contact with. Four years later, the UKfollowed suit with Friends Reunited, which made the mistake of charginga fee to get in touch with old school pals. Then Facebook stepped in,offering the same service for free – and now we can all see that theperson we fancied at school isn't quite so hot any more. 19. Match.com
Havingexhausted old school friends for potential mates, where to turn?Match.com opened the entire internet community up for grabs. Going livein 1995, it was the first popular online dating site, and is alsonotable for being one of the first sites to persuade internet users topart with their cash for a subscription. Today, online dating israpidly becoming the new, natural way to meet and (hopefully) fall inlove. 20. HotWired
Andfinally, if you haven't fallen in love, how about something to hate? In1994, web magazine HotWired pioneered banner ads. Bastards.作者: coredump 时间: 11-10-2008 18:57
no google.com ?作者: xblues 时间: 11-10-2008 21:18
提示: 作者被禁止或删除, 无法发言标题: 回复 #2 coredump 的帖子 google不yahoo后尘呀，yahoo才是第一个搜索引擎。作者: zycbob 时间: 13-10-2008 19:10
没中国的？
