Going WAAYYYYYY Back.

For our homework assignment, we were asked to use the Internet Archive Wayback machine to investigate a page's history.  My first inclination was to check out AOL, since I was on it the first few days it was released, back in the Delphi days. In 1996 I also became friends in a chat room called "The Nice People's Room" with a nice, polite young man who liked discussing Thomas Hardy.  After much in-depth conversation over a piece of cake and coffee one afternoon in Mystic, CT, we clicked.  Ten years later and that man became my husband.  So... nostalgia, sentimental musings, call it what you will... let's journey now, shall we? Wayyyy back... to 1997 which is the first time that a true snapshot of AOL is taken.  I think that is also when wayback machine was established.

 (I cannot provide a screenshot, so y'all will have to go lookin'.  Click HERE)

What I love about this is that I remember first off, before anything else, the frustration with having to wait for the freaking dial up to load the page.  First would come text, then slowly, like molasses, came the icon, and sometimes, it wouldn't connect.  And I would cry tears of bitter rage.  Ah, internet addiction back in the days when call waiting could really screw up a conversation.

Nowadays, it has changed a lot.  See HERE.  It comes up in a flash, contains images, video, sparkly things.  But I have to admit, I no longer use AOL.  


The next part of our assignment was to check out the top ten sites on the top 500 list on Alexa.com.  They are all Web 2.0 sites.  They clearly rank in order of usage. 

Alexa's top ten sites, according to traffic rank:
1. Google
2. Facebook
3. Youtube
4. Yahoo
5. Live
6. Baidu
7. Wikipedia
8. Blogger
9. MSN
10. Tencent

Now we have to find a list of popular Web 2.0 applications, and select one we like.  What web 2.0 features does it incorporate?

I chose Prezi, because I don't have Powerpoint on this computer ( and you know, I'm too cheap to buy Office).  This is a great little application.  Web 2.0 features include user presentations created with Prezi and posted in the spirit of Open Source.  Also, one is able to log in using facebook.  So it's connected.  Very cool.

Our next challenge (boy, isn't this exciting???) is to set up and exchange emails through gmail.com.  Since we did this as part of our class in the beginning, and since at work we use Google Apps for Education, I id not set up a new email for this assignment.  But, I can tell you, in answer to the burning question, "Identify two different ways that Gmail uses AJAX to provide a rich experience as you send, reply to, delete, or manage your email messages" :

1.  Instant updates, meaning, no waiting for the email to come back up after you've gone out of it.
2.  Auto-complete.  When I type the beginning of a friend's name, it types in the rest based on my contacts list.  It also auto-completes search items in the search box.

Okay, the last thing we had to do was to go on to Viddler.com and make a video.  I'm a little shy about this.  Call me old school, but all these public out-there app sites kinda freak me out, privacy wise.  But not enough to keep me from making a silly video with my pups, Charlie and Coco.

I am sure you are asking, why didn't you post this all big and proud right here embedded and all? Well, because when I went to download it from viddler, it didn't do anything.  I checked my download box.  Not there.  So you'll have to live with the link.

And that's all for homework this week.  Ta!