Internet History Podcast

Summary:Chris Wilson has been working on browser technology for the better part of two decades. A member of the original Mosaic team, he went on to work first at Spry (producing Internet in a Box) and then later at Microsoft, where he was a major developer of Internet Explorer for almost 15 years.Chris tells us about developing the first Windows port of Mosaic, describes how he was one of the original champions of CSS as a technology, gives us more background about the evolution and life cycle of Internet Explorer, and even described his brief tenure working on Microsoft's first foray into search engine technology!The quora thread I mention briefly can be found here.  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Summary:Lou Montulli is a web pioneer. In 1991 and 1992 he co-authored a text web browser called Lynx with Michael Grobe and Charles Rezac while he was at the University of Kansas. This web browser was one of the first available and is still in use today.In 1994 he became a founding engineer of Netscape Communications (employee number 9) and programmed the networking code for the first versions of the Netscape web browser.He is also responsible for several browser innovations, such as HTTP cookies, the blink tag, server push and client pull, HTTP proxying, and the implementation of animated GIFs into the browser. While at Netscape, he also was a founding member of the HTML working group at the W3C and was a contributing author of the HTML 3.2 specification. He is a member of the World Wide Web Hall of Fame.Lou was also a co-founder of Epinions.com. He was the CEO of Memory Matrix, and when that company was purchased by Shutterfly, he served as Shutterfly’s Vice President of Engineering. He is c

Summary:Netscape has set the standard and taken the lead. But how long will it last? We take a step backwards in this episode and examine why Microsoft was so dominant at the beginning of the Internet Era. We ask the questions: Did Bill Gates really miss the Internet? And: Was the Information Superhighway and the Internet one and the same thing? And we look back on all the things that were distracting Microsoft at the dawn of the Internet Era.Bibliography: Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft; Bank, David, Free Press, 2007 How the Web Was Won: How Bill Gates and His Internet Idealists Transformed the Microsoft Empire; Andrews, Paul; Broadway, 2000 http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/22/business/judge-clears-antitrust-pact-for-microsoft.html The New New Thing : A Silicon Valley Story; Lewis, Michael; W.W. Norton & Company, 1999 http://www.csmonitor.com/layout/set/r14/1994/0113/13021.html How America Got On-Line: Politics, Markets, and the Revol

Summary:Netscape launches and is a smashing success. Jim Barksdale officially comes on as CEO. Netscape fights off legal threats from the NCSA and the University of Illinois. Despite it’s young age and lack of profits, Netscape files to go public in THE historic IPO of the era. Flush with cash, flush with fame, Netscape girds for battle with a new foe: Microsoft.Bibliography: http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/newsrelease1.html http://www.businessweek.com/stories/1994-10-23/from-the-man-who-brought-you-silicon-graphics-dot-dot-dot http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/07/25/8266639/ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Layout_engine_usage_share-2009-01-07.svg Speeding the Net: The Inside Story of Netscape and How It Challenged Microsoft; Quittner, Joshua; Michelle Slatalla; Atlantic Monthly Press, 1998 http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,984131,00.html http://books.google.com/books?id=fzoEAAAAMBAJ&q=mundane+collection+of+not+entirely+debugged+

Summary:Marc Andreessen heads out to Silicon Valley. He hooks up with startup legend Jim Clark. They decide to form a company, Netscape, to build upon Mosaic’s previous success. They “get the band back together” by recruiting most of the original Mosaic development team. Netscape Navigator is developed. The company hustles to establish itself before other, larger competitors catch on to the opportunity that is the web browser market.Bibliography: Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business; Reid, Robert H.; Wiley, 2nd Edition, 1999 The Silicon Boys: And Their Valley of Dreams; Kaplan, David A.; William Morrow, 1999 Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft; Clark, Jim; Edwards, Own; St. Martin’s Press, 1999 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/07/25/8266639/ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/ik5mk/iama_coauthor_of_the_first_widely_used_web/ http://www.jwz.org/gruntle/nscpdorm.html Speedi

Summary:Ayoung Marc Andreessen and a team of programmers at the NCSA on the campus of the University of Illinois create and publish the Mosaic browser, thereby creating the world wide web’s first killer app. Mosaic enjoys meteoric, overnight discuss. But the higher ups at the NCSA take the project away from the “kids” who created it. Examining Mosaic as the “trial run” for the product that would eventually be called Netscape Navigator.Bibliography: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2005/07/25/8266639/ Architects of the Web: 1,000 Days that Built the Future of Business; Reid, Robert H.; Wiley, 2nd Edition, 1999 http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1995/09/04/205894/index.htm http://www.nytimes.com/1995/08/14/business/6-tips-on-how-to-earn-52-million-by-age-24.html http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1994/12/12/80043/index.htm http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-c8iWUh3Sv4 https://vimeo.com/7053726 http://www.thocp.net