The Internet: Its history and the WWW

The internet is a very complicated thing. It includes servers, data centres, real life sensors and over 2 billion computers within its network. The history of the internet is also extremely complicated and is sumerised inthis video below:






History of the Internet from Melih Bilgil on Vimeo.


Now, you might have been asking yourself this for a while now: What exactly is the difference between the Internet and the WWW (thats World Wide Web)? Are they the same thing? Well, I can now tell you that they are not. 


The Internet is a massive network of networks. It connects millions of computers together globally, forming a network in which any computer can communicate with any other computer as long as they are both connected to the Internet. 


The World Wide Web is a way of accessing information over the Internet. The Web uses the HTTP protocol, only one of the languages spoken over the Internet, to transmit data. The World Wide Web also uses browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Firefox to access web pages that are linked to each other via hyperlinks. Web pages/documents also contain graphics, sounds, text and video.


So, overall, the internet is just the network of computers and the WWW is the website you love, or Google, or Facebook. Its a way of accessing information over the Internet.

Just how Irrelevant is Flash Becoming?

I was looking through the internet, when I found some perplexing news: I, in 2 years of owning this macbook, have never installed Flash. Now, I considered this for a moment, then I looked through my applications folder to see if I had actually initialled Flash previously, which I was sure I had. I had installed Adobe Air, a similar product but different in some way. This surprised me as I had heard a lot about flash content here and there, but to be honest, most of the websites with effects like Sony's 3D World site are already using HTML5.

So, what does this mean for Adobe? Well, Flash was one of their most successful products for a while now, but, as we move away from the desktops and laptops, the mobile industry is becoming predominant with carriers offering a free smartphone every year. I believe products like Adobe CS5 will continue to be one of Adobe's better products, but Flash, Adobe Air, Microsoft Silverlight [Microsofts earlier attempt to combat adobe] and Sockwave will all become redundant as we move to mobile friendly platforms such as HTML5, JavaScript and a few others.