Faded internet trends

The internet has come a long way since the time of dial-up access through scratch cards or subscription.

Internet has come a long way since the time of dial-up only access through scratch cards or subscription.

Many of the trends of yester years are now only part of nostalgic memories of those who have witnessed the arrival of Internet in Pakistan in 90s.

Today, let's sit back and recall good old days and see how the once hip trends gave way to new ones, and what lies ahead.

First, accessing Internet was difficult with a modem starting at speeds as low as 14.4 Kbps, and downloading speeds of 2 Kbps was considered good enough. There was also a trend of external modems. Now we have broadband - particularly WiMax which has even pushed away DSL and with introduction of mobile hotspot devices, Pakistan has taken a long stride in offering means of wireless communication. Globally, the need for reaching out to offline people has remained a key research area where experiments such as mesh networks are underway for enabling community networking. One such interesting project is 'TV white space technology' that aims to deliver Internet via unused spectrums of traditional TV broadcast.

Second, let's see what has changed on the Internet and Web itself.  Gone are the days when information on the Internet was scattered over a number of protocols such as FTP and Gopher. There used to be separate clients or applications to access content over FTP and Gopher servers such as applications and documents, much like Web browsers of today. But as HTML developed for Web, browser plug-ins appeared without a need of separate application.

Gradually, these protocols faded away from end-user perspective and today, Web has emerged as single platform accessed through an Internet browser to fetch practically any and every source of information. More or less, same happened with Usenet Newsgroups which used to be an essential part of topic-based discussion groups accessed globally. In nearly all email applications such variants of Outlook and Netscape, there used to be a Newsgroup reader. Officially shutdown in May 2010 at Duke University, Usenet served the purpose of what is today micro blogging (Twitter) and blogs back in 80s and beyond having more than 120,000 dedicated groups. The advent of emoticons and acronyms like LOL (laughing out loud) are attributed to a great extent to Usenet discussions.

Next application of gone by years whose genre still exists today is ICQ. Considered to be the first instant messenger introducing peer to peer communication for the first time, ICQ took the Internet world by storm in 1996 as it was launched by a company named Mirabilis. This was also a success story of entrepreneurs much like today's Facebook and Google creators. Sold to AOL and then to a Russian company, ICQ virtually reigned the Instant Messaging world and introduced  concepts of offline messaging, SMS integration, audio and video chat, file transfers and even spam messaging. Over the period of time, ICQ became bloated and heavy as an application whereas rivals continued to pace and race with messengers like Yahoo and MSN, and lately Google Talk which were simpler, leaner and even web-based.

Around the same era of early 90s, same was the case with ultra popular chatting platform IRC or Internet Relay Chat with mIRC client application. This was popular with youngsters who literally wasted hours and hours on chat channels finding friends, hacks and passing time when there wasn't much to do otherwise. The popular a/s/l (age, sex, location) opening query to break ice with strangers, searching for scripts and other tools to automate and flood chat servers with loops of messages and getting kicked out by channel administration was all real fun for those who loved IRC.

Though, both ICQ and mIRC applications are still alive and have their latest versions available over Internet and ICQ even supports Facebook chatting - the fan following is much lesser.

Apart from application usage, much has changed over Web itself as well. Gone are the days when electronic greeting sites were a hit. No one seems to be interested anymore in exchanging e-greeting as social networking birthday reminders are norm these days. Also, the much touted Java applets have gave in to trendy Flash that too has undergone quite a journey itself from Macromedia to Adobe. Java Applets were the most 'in' thing of mid 90s when it provided interactivity and 3D graphics in a traditional web browser. It also allowed programmers to put into place desktop like mini applications embedded within a browser screens providing enhanced functionality. This was followed by more recent cross platform JavaFX. At the time of Java Applet hey days, a similar technology was ActiveX from Microsoft which attempted to get into the interactivity world of Web but failed to catch on as standard. Even Microsoft media player embedded videos are rare today which made use of ActiveX player. Today, Flash is what many of the developers are using and rest are relying on ever increasing capabilities of Java Script and HTML 5 to deliver interactivity of a desktop-like application. This fading away of Java Applets and Active X, and rise of Java Script with HTML 5 and CSS3 (style sheets) can now create amazing rich applications with embedded videos as well with a simple HTML tag without having to worry about video players. Even special effects such as mouse hover, context menus and animations are a breeze in HTML 5 as users do not have to download anything new - no plug-ins, no add-ins - just an updated internet browser and that's it. This is one area where standardization has simplified life of web developers to a great degree.

Lastly, what has changed the most includes email as well. No more reliance on ISP, no setting up of SMTP and POP3 servers in email clients. Gmail has literally changed the game and snatched the web based email market from Hotmail and Yahoo - the giants that once ruled the scene.

Also, gone are the days of organizing information in hierarchies such as category listings over search engines and folder creation in web mail services. Search engines no longer maintain a list of recommended websites and tags have replaced functionality and requirement of creating groups in email folders. With all these changes, it's apparent that social network has proved to be a paradigm shift on the Internet as the activities of yester years -from blogging to chatting - have all somehow culminated and manifested in social networking sites of today.

Let's see what comes over as the next big thing in years to come!

Published in @Internet Magazine, September 2011