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The first website went online 25 years ago today
If the web were a person, it wouldn't have trouble renting a car from now on: the world's first website, Tim Berners-Lee's World Wide Web, went online 25 years ago today. The inaugural page wasn't truly public when it went live at CERN on December 20th, 1990 (that wouldn't happen until August 1991), and it wasn't much more than an explanation of how the hypertext-based project worked. However, it's safe to say that this plain page laid the groundwork for much of the internet as you know it -- even now, you probably know one or two people who still think the web is the internet.
Daily Roundup: Fire TV review, our first time on the web and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours -- all handpicked by the editors here at the site. Click on through the break, and enjoy.
My First Time on the World Wide Web
The World Wide Web. It sounds like such a silly thing when you actually spell out those consecutive W's. Nowadays, we just say "the internet," but once upon a time the web was a new and exciting thing. It was a massive communications breakthrough that captivated minds both young and old with the promise of an "information superhighway," and forced us to endure achingly slow dial-up connections. Last month, the web turned 25 years old. Yes, Tim Berners-Lee's simple creation has gone on to spawn this digitally connected world we live in: the social networks, mega e-tailers and search engines we all know and depend on today. Things were simpler when the web started out, but we assure you, our early experiences were no less weird.
This list is brought to you by 25 years of the world wide web
When Tim Berners-Lee penned a memo to his boss at CERN in March 1989, he was looking for a better way to manage information about complex evolving systems. He proposed an interconnected network of information that would improve communication at the facility, but there was no way of knowing what a tangled web we would weave. That memo would eventually spawn the world wide web and the various memes, crowdfunded gadgets and user-generated porn sites that it made possible. Hell, you wouldn't be reading Engadget if it weren't for Sir Berners-Lee. In homage to that great network of information that we all know and surf today, we present you with 25 things made possible by the big ole' W3.
CERN celebrates 20 years of a free, open web by restoring world's first website
The web as we know it was famously invented by Tim Berners-Lee while working at CERN, but it wasn't until a few years later -- 1993 to be precise -- that it'd truly be set free. On April 30 of that year, Berners-Lee's then employer would make the technology behind the WWW available license free, bundling a basic browser and some key chunks of code into the deal. To commemorate the 20th anniversary of this event CERN has recreated the first ever website, complete with its original URL. The preservation doesn't stop at copying over some old files, either, with CERN also looking to preserve the first servers used, restoring as much as possible to its original state. Beyond a little geeky nostalgia, the project hopes to safeguard the web's earliest days, before it became the ubiquitous phenomenon it is now, so that future generations can enjoy (and scoff) at the web's origins. Best of all, no drawn-out field trip is required to enjoy the spectacle, you can see it just as nature intended by heading to the source.
IPv6 lands today, do you copy?
June 6th has arrived, which means that participating ISPs, hardware manufacturers and search engines must stick to their word and permanently enable the IPv6 address system -- not least as an encouragement for others to do the same. The ultimate purpose? To allow trillions of users to have their own IP address, instead of just a paltry few billion permitted by the IPv4 standard that continues to run in parallel. The risk? That the Internet collapses and we all get the day off work. Evidently that hasn't happened, no doubt thanks to Google and others having tested the system during pilot programs, and indeed Vint Cerf's explanatory video seems to be working fine after the break.
Visualized: an interactive timeline of the web
Ever wondered what the World Wide Web's illustrious history would look like if plotted in timeline form? Well, thanks to Google's "Evolution of the web," you won't have to. The delectable chart traces the evolution of HTML, the web technologies that came alongside it and the browsers that've held it all together -- all in a seriously meta HTML5 package. Ready for a trip down memory lane? Hit the source, friend, and revel at how far we've come.
World Wide Web turns 20, finally shakes that acne problem
Happy birthday, World Wide Web! Hard to believe you're turning 20 already. It seems like just yesterday we were hearing the pitter patter of little dial-up, delighting at the words "you got mail," and getting frustrated when calling our friends and receiving that dreaded busy signal. You're all grown up now, helping people learn how to farm and become overnight pop sensations. What, we wonder, will the next 20 years bring? At the very least, you'll eventually have to move out of your parents' basement, get a real job, and settle down. It's hard to pay attention to that kind of stuff, though, when you've got another year of sneaking beers ahead of you. So go ahead, World Wide Web, enjoy yourself tonight -- just make sure to be home by midnight.
Tim Berners-Lee entreats us to keep the net neutral, standards open, and speech free
We've always thought pretty highly of this Tim Berners-Lee fella, and now we've got a whole essay penned by him to show you why that is. In a six-page treatise on the current state of the web, Tim discusses why universality of access is so important to our freedom of speech and other democratic liberties, why open standards will always prevail over closed ecosystems (with a special critique of Apple's iTunes and concordant appification of the web), and also why it's necessary to distinguish between the web and the internet. Oh, and he also manages to squeeze in one of the most succinct explanations of net neutrality and its growing importance in our massively interconnected world. Hit the source for the full shot of enlightenment. [Image courtesy of Paul Clarke]
Statistics shocker: nine million Brits say they've never been online, seven million claim they don't know what a 'boffin' is
Nine million British citizens -- many of them senior citizens -- have never been online, according to a recent study conducted by the Office for National Statistics in London. Several factors increase the likelihood that one doesn't regularly log on to the web, they say, including a lack of education, low income, widowhood, and advanced age. While 38 million British citizens now regularly use the internet, the rest -- nearly 19 percent -- remain offline, missing out on the ability to purchase tons of awesome stuff at "discounted" prices, check out their class reunions on Facebook, flame on Engadget, and Tweet suggestive pics at Chace Crawford. Just kidding: the internet is a wonderland and we can't wait to get those 'silver surfers' in on the action.
World Wide Web creator sorry for the '//' and other things that don't matter
Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with creating the World Wide Web, recently said that his only real regret about the whole shebang is forcing people to type out the (essentially unnecessary) double slash after the 'http:' in URLs. Speaking at a symposium on the future of technology, he noted (in reference to the dreaded marks) the paper, trees and human labor that could have been spared without them. Hey Tim: don't sweat it! You've done us enough good turns that we're willing to overlook it.
The Web turns 20, FidoNet suffers abandonment issues
Today marks the twentieth anniversary of Sir Tim Berners-Lee's submission to CERN titled "Information Management: A proposal." Over roughly the next year and a half he had built HTTP, HTML, WorldWideWeb (the first web browser), CERN httpd (the first server software), and the first web server (http://info.cern.ch), paving the way for an unprecedented era of human communication and interconnectivity. We're not entirely sure how 4chan, Bert Is Evil, or Tila Tequila fit into all of this, but we'd sure miss them if they weren't here (well, not Tila Tequila -- definitely not Tila Tequila). The visionary chats about cyberspace past, present, and future after the break. [Via Daily Wireless]
