Birth and evolution of the Internet

For some reason, in 2005, I set October 29 in iCal as an annually repeating event commemorating the birth of the Internet. Perhaps that was because I had been reading up on it at the time. Below are some updated notes that I'd made about references collected, and left in the calendar entry, which I opened today because it reminded me of a website review that I'd done recently: NSF and the Birth of the Internet (2008.09.09).

In a report on the evolution of the internet, Rainie and Horrigan (2005) describe Internet use during the preceding decade, and explain "[h]ow the internet has woven itself into American life." They also provide a suite of "Other Internet Evolution References."

Elsewhere, in what may be a case in point, Lutus used to argue that Internet users' profiles, privileges, and preferences had changed, and included preferences for "Internet free zones" dedicated to "the free exchange of information, programs and content." For such sites Lutus had even prepared special logos indicating that site owners and developers forswore commercial advertising, selling, and spamming. Now a note heading the Internet Free Zone Home Page says the author keeps it as a reminder of previous idealism (Lutus, 1997).

References

Lutus, P. (1997). Internet Free Zone Home Page. Retrieved October 29, 2008, from http://vps.arachnoid.com/freezone/

Rainie, Lee; & Horrigan, John. (2005). Pew Internet and American Life Project: Internet Adoption. Retrieved October 29, 2008, from http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/148/report_display.asp

Potpourri's first K visitors

A free NeoCounter Visitor Tracker tucked in the sidebar suggests that pab's potpourri has recently had its 1000th visitor. Though that's hardly indicative of a huge presence in any blogspheres, here's what visitor and country of origin numbers look like, over the past eight months:


The image above is an export from a Google Spreadsheet, based on a chart quickly generated in the spreadsheet; it includes no data from September.

SearchCrystal

This is an experimental post in which I'm embedding a searchCrystal widget. Thanks to MaryH for pointing it out, and providing a concrete example of its use.

I discovered this interesting visualization tool on the IES Book and Literature Circle Blog, in The Little Prince Literature Circles Week Two post (2008.05.28), through a Learning with Computers network connection in a Shelfari Group: Book, Short Stories Suggestions for the Classrooms and Activities (2008.09.04).

According to the page where I got the widget embedding code for this post (seachCrystal: Widgets), "The searchCrystal Widget visualizes the overlap between the result sets of five major search engines," for example, images on Ask, Flickr, Google, MSN, and Yahoo! (searchCrystal: Home). In order to fit the current template for this blog, I reduced the size of the display (below) from a default 600 pixels square to 400 pixels.