KeepTheInternetFun.org was created on 17 August 02000 when the NASDAQ closed at 3,940.87. I didn't know it at the time, but KeepTheInternetFun.org was created five months into the dot-com correction (it was not a bust). Five months earlier, on 10 March 02000, the NASDAQ hit its all-time high of 5,132.52. I think the NASDAQ bottomed out on 13 February 02003 when it hit 1,261.79.

Today, 17 August 02008, the NASDAQ is at 2,452.52 and the KeepTheInternetFun.org domain name has been set free.

Speaking of the Internet...

The Internet is more fun today than it has ever been and--although it might change form--it's going to get more and more fun as our cyber-infrastructure continues to expand.

By the way... RFC 3271 proclaims: The Internet is for Everyone

Reuters reported: "The lawsuit seeks payments from the sale of some of the U.S. Southern rock group's songs recorded for its first label, Capricorn Records, from 1969 to 1980."

It appears as though the Allman Brothers want UMG Recordings to be "tied to a whipping post."

CNET.com::'Digital exploitation' in play in Allman-UMG suit

In 02002, porno company pulled Napster from the grave and today it is a LA-based publicly traded company that provides online music services.

Last month (i.e. July 02008), Napster announced a partnership with Walt Disney Records that includes an "exclusive commercial-free 'Best of Disney' radio station." I could never buy Disney stock directly, so I'm hoping Napster is an indirect way to make money off of Hannah Montana addicts.

Many Wall Streeters think Napster is dying for a second time--death by competition. Wall Street might be right, but then again it is often wrong.

Napster appears to be holding its head above water when it comes to doing business in today's music world.

I like to look at the PSR (Price Sales Ratio) when investing in high-tech stocks. The ratio relates a company's market value with its annual sales. Napster has a PSR of 0.58, which is low for high-tech companies. For example, Napster's industry as a whole has an average PSR of 1.88. [source: Finance.Yahoo.com]

Napster reported 1st-quarter 02009 results yesterday (02008.08.11). For the fifth quarter in a row Napster was cash flow positive, but they aren't making any money and revenues were flat.

The company, however, has an attractive balance sheet. Debt-free Napster ended 1st-quarter 2009 with a total of $70.3 million of cash, cash equivalents and investments. There are approximately 48 million NAPS shares; therefore, the company has approximately $1.46 in cash per share. Yesterday (02008.08.11), NAPS closed at $1.50. In other words, Wall Street has placed a $0 value on Napster's business.

Napster (NAPS)... Here today, but will it be gone tomorrow?

There have been reports that Google is going to establish operations in Brazil to support their Latin American operations. Brazil is the 'B' in BRICA.

Here in the U.S., MySpace and Facebook rule, but Latin American's like Google's social networking service Orkut, which in turn makes Google's gmail a popular email application. As of April 2008, Orkut has approximately 120 million users with 54% in Brazil, 17% in India and 15% in the U.S.

[side-bar] Just less than 3% of Orkut users are over 50, while 61% are in the 18-25 age bracket. Orkut can be used for business networking, but 64% of users are into social networking.

Orkut was created by a googler as part of Google's 70-20-10 work rule. Googlers spend 70% of their time on core business; 20% on adjacent businesses; and 10% on inventing the future.

Twitter is a powerful tool primarily because it's simple and text-based. Text is king when it comes to interfacing with Simple Messaging Systems (SMS), Instant Messaging (IM) services, and dot-mobi websites.

Twitter, in a nutshell, enables users to post text "updates" via Twitter.com, SMS, IM, email, and 3rd-party applications. The "updates," which are called tweets, are used to inform people as to what you're doing at a specific instance of time. Each tweet is limited to at most 140 characters. Tweets are read by friends and enemies (i.e. followers), family, co-workers, perverts, etc.

This morning I logged into my Twitter account and tweeted the following: "Writing a Twitter posting for my Internet Observer blog (which turned 10 on 08.08.08) and my AzFoo blog at AzCentral.com." I'll probably tweet again once I get this message posted. [And I did.]

It will be interesting to see if Twitosphere evolves. There are some web gurus (e.g. Marc Andreesseen) who are bullish on Twitter's future.

[side-bar] According to M-W.com, a twit is a "silly annoying person" and I suspect today's Twitosphere is a twit haven.

I created a Twitter account at 12:30pm MST on 18 October 2007.

Twitter.com::nanofoo@twitter.com

The Internet Observer was created on 8 August 1998. This posting is the 52nd posting in 2008 and the 591st posting overall. There are currently ten Internet Observer archives with the 1998 archive being the oldest.

   # of Internet Observer posting by year:
   ==========================================================
   2007  2006  2005  2004  2003  2002  2001  2000  1999  1998
   ==========================================================
    69    94    51    49    52    45    48    45    53    33

Observe... this year's Internet Observer will at least be the 2nd most active year (i.e. it will exceed 69 postings). It needs another 43 postings to best 2006, but that is highly unlikely.

Hmmm... I wonder... Will the Internet Observer make it to decade two (i.e. 8 August 2018)?

   "Nielsen Norman Group was founded August 8, 1998. Whether or 
    not you believe the Chinese superstition that '8' is the 
    luckiest number, our company has certainly done well, and 
    I don't think it all stems from its launch on 8/8/98."
    --Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox on 8 August 2008

The list of Nielsen Norman Group's accomplishments is impressive.

The following Nielsen quote has been added to GDT::Quotes.

   "One of the few benefits of being a low-paid university 
    professor is that you're strongly motivated to get 
    real-world industry experience on the side."

Jakob ended his 8 August 2008 Alertbox with the following.

   "The basics might be well established, but most companies 
    still get them wrong, so we must keep pushing to make everyday 
    user experience more suited for humans. That's what Nielsen 
    Norman Group is all about."

That last time I taught CSC285 (Intermediate Internet) was during the Fall of 1999 and on day two of class I introduced students to Jakob Nielsen. The lecture note for day two contains the following Nielsen quote.

   "Users don't need machines to be friendly to them, they just 
    need machines that will not stand in their way when they try 
    to get their work done."

Useit.com::Alertbox::Nielsen Norman Group: The First Decade

[Extra] Purely by coincidence, the birth date for the Internet Observer is 8 August 1998.

   "Friendster is growing at an enormous rate in Asia Pacific 
    and is clearly leading the competition."
    --Richard Kimber, CEO of Friendster

As of 5 August 2008, Friendster had "more than 75 million members world-wide" and it claims to the "7th largest web property" in the world.

Friendster appears to be hiring...

Friendster.com::Developer Program Evangelist

If you're a senior web developer, then Friendster is looking for a B.S. in CS or CSE, LAMP experience, six plus years of experience, MySQL (or related) experience, Linux knowledge, and development experience with at least one compiled language such as C/C++/Java.

I don't think "search" when I think Yahoo!, but Jerry Yang was quoted saying: "We think search is an important part of Yahoo and we are going to invest in it. There are some very important, serious, infrastructure and systems being built right now at Yahoo that we think allows us to compete over time."

I saw the following blurb on My.Yahoo.com homepage.

   "According to reports from Bloomberg, Alibaba.com, China's 
    largest e-commerce website whose biggest shareholder is 
    Yahoo! Inc., is willing to exchange Yahoo!'s 39% stake 
    in Alibaba Group for cash."

On 1 August 2008, YHOO closed at $19.80, just a few cents above its 52-week low.

   "What we have is not very much competition, and at best two 
    competitors.  Two competitors don't produce the pressure 
    of true competition."

   "'All of this is telling me that we didn't get it right' 
     when the Telecommunication Act of 1996 was adopted, 
     Cerf said. 'When we wrote it, the Internet was barely 
     visible to the public, and probably completely invisible 
     to Congress.' The Web itself had just started becoming 
     popular two years earlier, Cerf said. 'Maybe we should 
     step back and ask ourselves how to do this better,' he 
     said."

InformationWeek.com::Vint Cerf Says Government Needs To Encourage Internet Competition

Google had total revenue was $5.37 billion for the 2nd-quarter. From which it paid $1.47 billion in commissions to ad partners. In a nutshell, if Google does well, so do the partners.

Despite operating in supposedly "the sky is falling" recession-like economic conditions, Google's net income over the span of three months (April, May, June) was $1.25 billion. During this period Google spent $682 million on research and development, and $698 million on expanding its massive computing infrastructure.

Google's balance sheet at the end of the 2nd-quarter had current ratio of 8.5. The company ended the 2nd-quarter with almost $12.7 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities, and it was $0 in debt.

The numbers indicate Google had a decent 2nd-quarter in 2008; none the less, Wall Street spanked the company by decreasing its market value by $16 billion.

It appears as though some investors believe it is a bad omen that over the last three months Google expanded its workforce by "only" 448 employees. Google now employs 19,604 googlers. Note: One googler is often the equivalent of three or four employees at other companies. Employees are an expense (especially if they're googlers); therefore, a slower hiring growth rate should help increase the bottom-line.

After examining the Form 8-K, I took a peek at Google's 2004 annual report...

Google started its 2004 annual report with the following: "Google was born in 1998. If it were a person, it would have started elementary school late last summer (around August 19), and today it would have just about finished first grade."

Google ended its 2004 annual report with the following: "If Google were a person, it would graduate high school in 2016. Given a typical life span, it would expect to be around for another century--or more, thanks to continual innovations in healthcare technology. Today, it would only have seen a glimmer of its full potential. We're just getting started."

Fast forward four years to today...

If Google were a person, it would become a young 6th-grader next month. $5.37 billion in revenue, $1.25 billion in net income, $12.7 billion in the bank, $0 in debt, 19,604 employees, and a market value of $151.18 billion even after a one-day decline of $16 billion -- not bad for a tween who turns ten on 27 September 2008.

   "CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian woman renowned as the 
    world's oldest blogger has died at the age of 108, with 
    her last posting talking about her ailing health but also 
    how she still sings a happy song every day."

Olive Riley started blogging during February of 2007 and she called her blog a "blob."

Olive's 74th blob posting was her last.

An Olive quote: "You 21st century people live a different life than the one I lived as a youngster in the early 1900s." [from blog posting #72 on 13 June 2008]

• AllAboutOlive.com.au::The Life of Riley
• Blogspot.com::World's Oldest Blogger

Olive's passing resulted in a posting to Groups.Google.com::alt.obituaries Usenet group.

I wonder who the oldest blogger is now...

Wow... It had been a few years since I had heard the term "netnews." NETNEWS was software created at the University of Pennsylvania to enable BITNET users to access USENET and other discussion groups."

[side-bar] While surfing the Internet looking for information about NETNEWs, I decided to peek at the Hobbes' Internet Timeline and found that in 1992 Jean Polly was the first to use the phrase "Surfing the Internet."

Speaking of the iPhone...

   "Larry Page said Google sees 'tremendous' revenue from the Apple 
    Inc. iPhone because it is the only mobile phone that offers full 
    Web browser capabilities."

[side-bar] Eric Schmidt, Google's CEO, is on Apple's board of directors.

Anyway... Kudos to SourceForge for keeping the term NetNews alive.

   "Thanks to the support of the always amazing Mozilla community, 
    we now hold a Guinness World Record for the most software 
    downloaded in 24 hours. From 18:16 UTC on June 17, 2008 to 
    18:16 UTC on June 18, 2008, 8,002,530 people downloaded 
    Firefox 3 and are now enjoying a safer, smarter and 
    better Web."

As of 3 July 2008 at 3:41pm MST, there had been 29,428,818 total downloads of Firefox 3.

Kudos to the Mozilla Foundation and all Firefox users.

   "Andreessen has experience that is relevant to Facebook in 
    so many ways: scaling companies that are experiencing 
    extraordinary growth, creating successful technology 
    platforms and building strong engineering organizations."

Ning was co-founded by Andreessen. On 1 July 2008, the Wikipedia entry for Ning contained the following.

   "Ning hopes to compete with large social sites like MySpace 
    and Facebook, by appealing to users who want to create networks 
    around specific interests or have limited technical skills."

The AP reported that Zuckerberg, however, thinks Ning is Facebook as "complementary."

   "In September, Seth MacFarlane, creator of 'Family Guy' on 
    television, will unveil a carefully guarded new project 
    called "Seth MacFarlane’s Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy." 
    Unlike 'Family Guy,' which is broadcast on Fox, this 
    animation series will appear exclusively on the Internet."

The NYTimes.com article contained the following quote by Seth MacFarlane: "I just felt I could be a lot more honest on the Internet."

   "Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits.  
           It says, 'Oooooo.'
   "Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios."

SearchEngineWorld.com::Google AdSense To Expand With Original Video Series From "Family Guy" Creator

   "10. Thou shalt make content king."

   "Though the slogan is old, it still stands. Aesthetic 
    design can only go so far in making a site successful. 
    Beautiful can't make up for empty."

BusinessWeek.com::The 10 Commandments of Web Design

Forbes.com posting "The Fragile State Of Internet Freedom" ends with the following.

   "But, the Internet plays host to congeries of illegal activities, 
    from terrorist Web sites to exhibition of private documents to 
    libelous statements to seemingly ubiquitous pornography. The great 
    Judge Learned Hand wrote of 'freedom for the ideas we hate.'"

   "Hardly seems like freedom to those who are hurt. But, if there 
    is a line to be drawn online, where will that line be?

With 20th century dinosaured politicians still in power, Forbes.com is asking a critically important question.

Forbes.com::The Fragile State Of Internet Freedom [2008.02.28]

Kudos to AP for taking the following position.

   "We don't want to cast a pall over the blogosphere by being 
    heavy-handed, so we have to figure out a better and more 
    positive way to do this."--Jim Kennedy, the AP's vice 
                                president and strategy director

NewsFactor.com::AP Backs Down on Blog-Posting Crackdown

For example, there has been zero discussion about what's happening with respect to Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google. For me, the AZIPA YahooGroup is about 99.999% noise, but I stay on the mailing-list because I consider myself a member of Arizona's Internet community.

   posted by Gerald9588  on Jun 12, 2008 at 06:19 AM

   Great quote... "When it comes to cash flow, love it like your mama."  
   But I'd insert the word "positive" in front of "cash."

   I had to go to a meeting the other day and it cost me almost 
   $4 to drive plus my total commute time was almost one hour.

   I'm going to add the stock my watch-list.  Thanks for the posting.

I was surprised to learn that ILC trades on the AMEX. On 11 June 2008, ILC closed at $0.28--a true penny stock.

   "I believe corporate democracy in this country is for 
    the most part a myth. The purpose of this blog is to 
    help make shareholders, the true owners of companies, 
    realize that something can be done."--Carl Ichan

I posted the following to my AzCentral.com blog on 21 June 2008.

   Carl Ichan (age 72) has joined the blogosphere.  Wow! 

   Let's see... the WWW (World Wide Web) was created by 
   Sir Tim Berners-Lee around 1990-91. But a Windows-based 
   Graphical-User-Interface (GUI) browser didn't come along  
   until 1994-95. The GUI-browser made the WWW surfable by 
   anybody who knew how to use a Windows-based computer.  
   In other words, the WWW exploded into popularity.

   It took him 14 years, but Ichan sees there's still lots 
   of money to be made in the Internet world.

LinkedIn's motto is: "Relationships Matter."

The following was copied from LinkedIn.com's "About" webpage.

   "Your professional relationships are key to your 
    professional success.  Our mission is to help you 
    be more effective in your daily work and open doors 
    to opportunities using the professional relationships 
    you already have."

Jean-Luc Vaillant is LinkedIn co-founder and its CTO. According to his profile on LinkedIn.com, Vaillant's "specialties" are: "Team creation and organization, scalable server systems, web consumer sites, operations and software management, Java, UNIX, C++, Oracle."

LinkedIn's VP of Technical Operations is Lloyd Taylor. Taylor is a former Googler where he was the company's Director of Global Operations.

Marc Andreessen was one of LinkedIn's angel investors.

Just for fun, I created a LinkedIn profile...

[Update::2008.06.19] PCWorld.com reported the following: "Firefox 3 was downloaded 8,349,074 times between 2:16 p.m. ET Tuesday and 2:16 p.m. ET Wednesday."

At 7:40am on Thursday, 19 June 2008, the download counter at SpreadFirefox.com was at 11,433,350.

Blog.Mozilla.com::Over 8 million -- way to go!

Carr has an article in the July issue of The Atlantic titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" Carr probably used "Google" due to the popularity of the brand, but the question could have been "Is the Internet making us stupid?"

   "The result is to scatter our attention and 
    diffuse our concentration."--Nick Carr

Don't blame the Internet, don't blame the WWW, don't blame Google--instead blame Alexander Graham Bell.

News.CNet.com::Is Google making us stupid?

   "Eighty-five percent of people between the ages of 12 and 17 
    communicate electronically through texts, instant messaging, 
    e-mail, and posts on social networking sites, but 60% of them 
    don't think of their electronic text as 'writing'."

Electronic text is a form of writing. Writing is a tool for communicating. Electronic text is a form of communication.

   "Twenty-five percent said they used emoticons in school writing 
    and 38% said they used text shortcuts or abbreviations like 'LOL.'"

I was surprised as to how little emoticon usage leaks into "school writing." I thought it would be higher.

Kudos to Grace and Kudos to Google for doing the "What if...?" Doodle 4 Google competition.

Jerry Yang and David Filo started Yahoo! in 1994.

Jerry Yang and David Filo are Chief Yahoo!s.

Yahoo! president, Susan Decker (along with Bill Gates), were in Omaha, Nebraska, attending Warren Buffet's Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting.

   "Filo's presence at this pivotal meeting has puzzled some 
    investors and analysts because he isn't on the company's 
    board. Filo is a major shareholder, though, with a 5.8 
    percent stake in the company."

More importantly... Filo is a Chief Yahoo!

   "Activist shareholder Eric Jackson thinks it was a bad idea 
    to entrust a pivotal round of negotiations to two people 
    with deep emotional ties to Yahoo." 

More importantly... Yang and Filo are Chief Yahoo!'s.

   "The board's decision to let Yang and Filo handle the May 3 
    talks made them look like 'a couple of kids who had been sent 
    along with bad advice from their parents.' said Jackson, who 
    is trying to organize an effort to oust Yahoo's board."

More importantly... they are smart kids.

Unhappy Birthday to Spam!

SPAM (written in all upper-case) is the food product; spam (written in all lower-case) is email spam (and visual spam and answering machine spam and P.O. Box spam and so on).

Templetons.com:: Reaction of the DEC Spam of 1978

I wrote the following in the lecture for day 17 of CSC285 during the fall 1999 semester.

   Craig Newmark, a hard core Java and Web programmer, started his 
   website to help "establish a community of people helping each 
   other out with everyday, real world stuff, via the Internet." 
   It is a non-profit operation and does not subject visitors to 
   banner advertisements. The website receives money by charging 
   people who post "for sale" ads. There are numerous VC who want 
   to give Craig money because they want to place banner ads on 
   his popular webpages.

Craigslist was found by Craig Newmark in 1995. In 2008, Craigslist is worth "several billion dollars."

According to BusinessWeek.com, eBay owns approximately 25% of Craigslist, which was news to me.

BusinessWeek.com::Inside eBay's Quest for Craigslist

30 April 1993... the WWW went public. And 15 years later, Tim Berners-Lee claims the web is still an infant.

BBC.co.uk::The World Wide Web turns 15 (again)

Here are couple of quotes from the interview.

   "And, of course, at Google everything is a try. 
    We try this, we try that, we see what works."

Schmidt on Yahoo! and Microsoft.

   "Oh, well, we actually enjoyed working with Yahoo!. We also
    compete with them. They're a well run and, I think, impressive 
    company.  We've primarily been concerned about the possibility 
    of a Microsoft acquisition of Yahoo! because of Microsoft's 
    history and because of the assets that Yahoo! has are quite 
    valuable. And we actually think that in the wrong hands, they 
    could be used in the wrong way."

CNBC.com::Interview with Google's Eric Schmidt

March started her posting with the following--"One of my students brought up an interesting question in class yesterday: Does YouTube promote violence?"

   posted by Gerald9588  on Apr 18, 2008 at 04:17 PM

   YouTube doesn't "create," "promote," or "cause" anything because 
   all it does is serve up bits (i.e. binary digits). And as it should 
   be, YouTube doesn't know anything  about violence, porn, humor, 
   politics, mother nature, religion, stupid teens, etc. -- it only 
   sees zeros and ones.

Note: Chris used the phrase "stupid teens." In addition, Chris believes YouTube was the "catalyst" for teens to do stupid things.

YouTube is nothing more than an Internet-based website and the Internet is nothing more than an efficient transmitter of bits.

Note: The Internet Observer is a shareholder in both Yahoo! and Google and we like the sound of goohoo. We also like the sound of biogoohoo and nanobiogoohoo. Will nanobiogoohoobots hels up augment human intelligence?

Kevin Maney, the Tech Observer, at Portfolio.com wrote the following.

   "The American Journal of Psychiatry puts texting in the 
    category of 'compulsive-impulsive spectrum disorder.'"

Portfolio.com:: Texting Addiction: An Actual Sickness?

AprilFoolsDayOnTheWeb.com:: 2008

And off course Google likes to play...

• Google.com::Virgle: The Adventure fo Many Lifetimes
• Mail.Google.com::Gmail: Google's approach to email
• Google.com.au::gDay with MATE

Earth Hour invited people around the world to turn off their lights for one hour -- from 8:00pm to 9:00pm in their local time zone. We walked around our neighborhood during Earth Hour and there were only a handful of dark homes.

YouTube.com::Earth Hour 2008

InformationWeek.com posted the following.

   "U.S. visits to question-and-answer Web sites increased 
    by 889% in the past two years and 118% in the past year, 
    according to Hitwise."

InformationWeek.com:: U.S. Internet Users Spend More Time Seeking Answers

   "Identity-theft charges against "spam king" Robert Alan Soloway 
    were dropped in exchange for a guilty plea to federal charges 
    of fraud and failure to file a tax return. Soloway sent millions 
    of unwanted e-mails and faces up to 26 years in prison and 
    $625,000 in fines. Prosecutors said Soloway gave false promises 
    and balked at refunds."

Spammers are criminals and Soloway needs to be locked up for long, long time.

NewsFactor.com:: 'Spam King' Could Get 26 Years, $625,000 in Fines

   "The creator of the web has said consumers need to be protected 
   against systems which can track their activity on the internet."

Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should see one and only one thing: a stream of bits.

   Sir Tim added: "I myself feel that it is very important that my 
   ISP supplies internet to my house like the water company supplies 
   water to my house. It supplies connectivity with no strings attached. 
   My ISP doesn't control which websites I go to, it doesn't monitor 
   which websites I go to."

The BBC posting ended with a great quote from Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

   "But he promised that what web scientists would produce 
    over the coming years 'will blow our minds'."

BBC.co.uk:: Web creator rejects net tracking

Bangalore is India's equivalent to Silicon Valley.

Thomas L. Friedman authored the book "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century." Friedman wrote that on a visit to Bangalore, India, he saw a Pizza Hut billboard that said "Gigabites of Taste!"

   "Google's stock is on its steepest decline ever, a sign that 
    investors who once believed in the search giant's story of 
    perpetual growth have started to lose faith."

Some investors would consider this a buying opportunity.

I'm a Google shareholder and I would welcome an opportunity to buy a couple of GOOG shares for under $400 per share.

It is impossible to predict what will happen within the next nanosecond, but I'll make the following prediction: If Google runs of gas, then the Internet is dead.

   "Construction underway to build 10,000 km linear cable system with 
    a capacity of up to 7.68 Tbps to enhance Trans-Pacific connectivity."

Google's press release indicated "Trans-Pacific bandwidth demand has grown at a compounded annual growth rate (CAGR) of 63.7 percent between 2002 and 2007. It is expected to continue to grow strongly from 2008 to 2013, with total demand for capacity doubling roughly every two years."

More bandwidth please...

   "The new five fiber pair cable system can be expanded up to 
    eight fiber pairs, with each fiber pair capable of carrying 
    up to 960 Gigabits per second (Gbps)."

Google.com:: Global Consortium to Construct New Cable System Linking US and Japan to Meet Increasing Bandwidth Demands

   "Pakistan has ordered all Internet service providers to block 
    the YouTube website for containing 'blasphemous' content and 
    material considered offensive to Islam."

Sticks and stones might break some bones, but in some parts of the world words can kill you.

News.Yahoo.com:: Pakistan blocks YouTube for 'blasphemous' content: officials

[Update] Pakistan stopped blocking YouTube on 2/26/2008.

Harpers.org:: Keyword: Evil (Google's addiction to cheap electricity)

   "On January 31st, 2008, the NY Times, BBC, The Guardian, CNN 
    and many others reported undersea cable cuts in the Mediterranean. 
    One was damaged near Alexandria, Egypt, and another in the waters 
    off Marseille, France. The two cables were damaged within hours 
    of each other on Wednesday morning of January 30th 2008. Operators 
    believe the damage was caused by ship's anchors during a heavy 
    storm at sea.  One of the cables, SEAMEWE4, is owned by 16 
    telecommunications companies along its route. The second cable, 
    known as the Flag (for Fiber-optic Link Around the Globe) System, 
    runs from Britain to Japan. The cables are separately managed and 
    operated. The outages mainly affected the Middle East and Asia. 
    Most disrupted communications were quickly rerouted through the 
    remaining SEAMEW3 cable or fibres taking the other way around 
    the globe."

Stanford.edu:: Effects of Fibre Outage through Mediterranean

The reported said "an exabyte is equal to one billion gigabytes, or approximately 50,000 times the contents of the U.S. Library of Congress. By the end of 2006, U.S. Internet traffic was approaching one exabyte per month."

The report also estimated that by "2015 annual U.S. Internet and IP traffic will reach 1,000 exabytes, or one zettabyte, which is one million million billion bytes of data. A zettabyte is roughly equivalent to 50 million Libraries of Congress."

Discovery.org:: U.S. Internet Traffic Projected to Grow 50-Fold by 2015

InformationWeek.com reported that "about 100,000 people have signed a petition asking Wikipedia 'to respect the religion' and taking aim at the images with the Muhammad entry."

To date (2008.02.08 at 7:02 MST), Wikimedia has restricted who can edit the Muhammad webpage, but they have refused to remove the images.

   "Noncensorship is an important tenet of the user community 
    and the edit community."--Jay Walsh, Wikimedia Foundation

InformationWeek.com:: Wikipedia Refuses To Delete Picture Of Muhammad

[Extra] Here is the offensive image.

   "Bob Cichon, president of Phoenix-based CrystalTech Web Hosting Inc., 
    said he was unaware of the site's content when his company posted it 
    earlier this week."

Cichon is an ISP, not an Internet filter.

   "A Web site used by al-Qaida to recruit car bombers, encourage war 
    on the West and provide a forum for Islamic militants went online 
    from Phoenix this week."

   "It moved from Tampa just a week ago to Arizona.  Let's see where 
    it will pop up next. We'll know tomorrow."--Eli Alshech, director 
    of the Middle East Media Research Institute's Jihad and Terrorism 
    Studies Project

Wow... look how quickly the website was discovered.

Bill Warner, a Sarasota, Fla., private investigator "blames Web-hosting companies for failing to monitor content. Instead, he said, they wait until the site is brought to their attention to take action."

ISPs (Internet Service Providers) process bits and only bits; and bits are neither good nor bad nor ugly nor evil.

I posted the following to the "Innovators Circle" blog on 1 February 2008 at 07:37am. Andrew Johnson's "Innovators Circle" blog offers "news, resources and advice for fledgling and seasoned entrepreneurs." Johnson's "hello, world" posting started with "The Internet's made it incredibly easy to keep tabs on your friends and keep your friends updated on your life - right down to the most intimate details." Johnson mentioned twitter in his blog posting.

   I like the title of your posting.  Tradition is that when you 
   are learning a new programming language, the first program you 
   write is one that prints the phrase "hello, world."

   Speaking of Twitter, Marc Andreessen is an angel investor and he 
   believes it has a great future.  Andreessen, by the way, created 
   the first Windows-based graphical web browser (Mosaic, which morphed 
   into Netscape, which spawned Firefox.  Firefox is a sound alternative 
   to Microsoft's defective Internet Explorer browser).  These days 
   Andreessen is doing Ning.com, which allows you and I to create 
   our own "social networks."

   My hope is that the Internet will enable us to kill Hollywood.

   The "last mile bandwidth" problem needs to be resolved before 
   we are fully up and running with respect video on the Internet.  
   Note:  Society at large is grossly unprepared for the technology 
   boom that is awaiting us; therefore, we are fortunate that the 
   digital divide is still a huge problem that needs to be resolved.

Microsoft's offer basically indicates that Yahoo! is worth more (and probably a lot more) than $44.6 billion.

On Friday, 1 February 2008, YHOO stock closed up 47.97% at $28.28 per share. Trading volume was 438.2 million versus a trailing-three-month average of 37.9 milion shares.

41% of 5876 reponses said they would leave their current job "in a heartbeat" to work for Google. 25% said they didn't have the necessary skills.

Money.CNN.com:: Magazine Poll

MySpace.com is working to help parents block their kids from MySpace. I agree with the reporter in that I'm not sure how they're going to implement this, but politicians want MySpace to help protect young people from the perverts of the world.

NYTimes.com reported that "MySpace also promises to hire a contractor to identify and delete pornographic images on the site." Sounds like an interesting job.

NYTimes.com:: MySpace to Let Parents Block Their Kids From Joining

   "More than half of Americans visited a library in the past year 
    with many of them drawn in by the computers rather than the books, 
    according to a survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project."

   "Of the 53 percent of U.S. adults who said they visited a 
    library in 2007, the biggest users were young adults aged 
    18 to 30 in the tech-loving group known as Generation Y."

Libraries should continue to live as long as we have the "digital divide."

PewInternet.org:: Information Searches That Solve Problems

It is no surprise that some of Ning's social networks are porn related. And, also of no surprise, Andresseen isn't "pro-porn," but he is "pro-freedom." It is clear Marc understands the Internet when he writes "let people fundamentally do what they want."

Blog.pMarcA.com:: Porn, Ning, and the Internet

AOL announced it is killing the Netscape browser.

   "While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal 
    of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, 
    these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share 
    from Microsoft's Internet Explorer." 
    --Tom Drapeau, AOL's Director of Development

AOL purchased Netscape in 1999 for $4.2 billion.

Also in 1999, an open-source version of Netscape called Mozilla was created from which the Firefox browser evolved. America Online deserves a "Thank You" for helping Mozilla become a successful open-source entity.

   "AOL was a major source of support for the Mozilla Foundation 
    and the company continued to develop versions of the Netscape 
    browser based on the work of the foundation."

AOL is telling Netscape users that they should switch to Firefox.

Wikipedia.org:: Netscape

Because of the constant evolution of the Internet this document could be updated every minute of every day, but that would result in too information overflow. The primary objective of the Internet Observer it to open our eyes to just how powerful the Internet is and to help us realize that the Internet is here to stay. We are becoming a "networked" society and if you use the Internet, then you are a member of the cyber-community. If users of the Internet are Internet-literate, then the Internet will be a better place for all of us to work and live.

The Internet Observer was started August of 1998 and as of 01 January 2008 it contained 539 postings. Reviewing archived Internet Observer postings is an one way to get an Internet related history lesson.

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