Architects of the Web 1,000 days that Built the Future of Business Written by Robert Reid Reviewed by Derek Elmstrom.

Architects of the Web1,000 days that Built the Future of Business

Written by Robert Reid Reviewed by Derek Elmstrom

Robert H. Reid

Stanford Graduate Silicon Graphics Twenty-First Century Internet ???....

Marc Andreessen

NCSA – National Center for Supercomputing Applications

With Eric Bina, and three day benders of programming for months create, Mosaic

In Late 1993 What were the new

innovations of it?...

Mosaic

New from Mosaic

Back Button Hyperlinks, not footnote

reference numbers

Who else was working? Marc and Eric - Unix Jon Mittlehauser – PC Aleks Totic – Macintosh

w/ Mike and Rob McCool Winter 1993 Unix on NCSA’s servers

10 thousand people get it in a week 100 thousand within a month

Protocols

Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP)

FTP: File Transfer Protocol “FTP it” becomes a verb

IRC: Internet Relay Chat NNTP: Network News Transfer

Protocol

Mosaic Communication Corporation

Created with Jim Clark in Mountain View, CA

Marc “VP of making stuff up” Mascot: Paper Lizard “Mozilla” play off of

Godzilla. Coin “Free but not Free” Rev Goal $50 million for 1995 Due to lawsuit from NCSA change name to

Netspace Communication Corporation

Netscape Communication Corporation

Netscape 2.0 in Summer 1995 Revenue $80 million!

Microsoft…

Huge competition Internet Explorer Not nearly as good as Netscape Advantage: Came with OS,

which means it was “Free but Free”

Netscape v. IE

Netscape 42% faster, as compared to 1000% to Mosaic.

Marc Reaction “In a fight between a bear and an alligator, what determines the victor is the terrain”

Jim Barksdale “Allah-u-akbar!” IE still Free, only real advantage

Luckily!

70% of Netscape Comm.Corp’s profits were coming from Intranet sales not browsers.

LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) Make this the standard, so there is more

competition Very anti-Microsoft

Internet Explorer 4.0

Essentially the same as Netscape, so Microsoft seems to win this battle.

But Netscape moves on with Intranet sales.

Rob Glaser

Progressive Networks Worked for Microsoft for 10

years. Works with multimedia systems Creates - Progressive

RealAudio

Problems

14.4 kbps modems Meant that CD quality had to be

compressed 176:1 Created very echoey, squally

sound.

2.0 and 3.0

October 1995, RealAudio 2.0 18 kbps, twice as fast Couldn’t be used by the 14.4 kbps modems, but

by this point 39 percent were at 28.8 kbps. Fall 1996, RealAudio 3.0

KING –FM test FM quality audio

ABC, NPR adopt RealAudio 3.0

What this technology means

Dxing KING –FM is played in Indonesia and

Europe

Kim Polese

Java UW graduate, boo! Founding member of Marimba

How Java came to be

*7 Game Boy Speakers Sony Walkman Connections Sun workstation innards Batteries from “hell” Military spectrum radio Emceed by a cartoon Duke

Pointed things out

Renamed Oak for ITV (also first person)

Well ITV didn’t work

Switch to the PC Was not animations, but instead it was

“physics calculations going on inside the web”

Microsoft again… Microsoft Creates OLE (Object Linking and

Embedding) Called ActiveX Documents and Spreadsheets can work together Direct competition with Java

Due to what language it had to be written on Could lead to “Microsoft Web” Gates “Embrace and Extend” Gosling “Swallow you Whole”

Problems with Java

Way slower than C++ Had to due with translation

programs OS Companies create pre-

translators to solve this problem.

Marimba

Name from the dance and instrument. Want to add to Java Make it an Intranet Could be a Microsoft Killer

Mark Pesce

VRML (Virtual Reality Modeling Language)

Used “The Community” to create much of this product.

Silicon Graphics

Special Effects in Jurassic Park Flight Simulator for Boeing 777 Nintendo 64

VRML v. Microsoft

VRML Creates VRML Architecture Group Sends out RFP to work on VRML

Microsoft creates ActiveVRML Formed from TBAG Created MUDs (multi-user

domains)

From VRML’s RFP

Osmose Company Uses $280,000 supercomputer Breathe in --- up Breath out --- down Lean back --- back etc

Ariel Poler

Job Titles before I/Pro Construction in Japan Disco DJ in Home country of

Venezuela I/Pro

Neilson like

I/Pro

I/Count I/Code

Multi-site membership I/Audit

For the company

Jerry Yang

Yahoo! Works with Dave Filo 4 hour shifts for months No “spiders” Categorized Search In 1996 Jerry said

“Yahoo might have 200-300 employees” They now have 13,500

Andrew Anker

Use to be Investment Banker Hotwired.com From Wired the Magazine

Anti-Shovelware Suck.com

Halsey Minor

CNET TV shows Connection to the Web Pre Advertising between

mediums

What about now?

Netscape – Mozilla RealAudio – Itunes Java – Still around VRML – Video Games Yahoo – Still around

Google CNET – Still Around

G4 TV

Review

Pros: Great book! Tons of information! Doesn’t seem too outdated

Cons: Maybe TOO much information Long read