Gadgets Blog » Internet

I remember the days before Google, when you went to Yahoo! if you wanted to find something on the Internet. Yahoo! was the go-to place for everything. You could get e-mail, news and more, all at a single site, and we loved it.

When Google came along, it became a battle between the two sites for supremacy, and after a few years, Yahoo! settled itself into second place and seemed content. Google came out with all their extras like documents, maps, etc., and Yahoo! tweaked its site, adding music videos and other extras, but it never could overtake Google.

Recently, Yahoo! felt the pinch of the tight economy and released 4 percent of its workforce in addition to dropping Buzz, Delicious and AltaVista. Buzz I can completely understand, because it never did take off and become what the developers wanted it to be. AltaVista, who even remembers AltaVista? The surprising cut was the social bookmarking site Delicious.

Delicious was created in 2003 as its own entity, but was acquired by Yahoo! in 2005. While still a favorite among bookmarkers, its traffic has seen a steady decline since 2005, as a number of social bookmarking sites began sprouting up, and the thrill of bookmarking began to wear off.

You’ve all been here: sitting patiently and politely while you slowly teach your parents, grandparents and older aunts and uncles about the ins and outs of technology, namely, computers. Whether they don’t know how to copy and paste, change their screen saver or even search something on the Internet, you’ve been the go-to tech support.

But honestly, it gets tiring. We all know this. While we’re amazed, shocked or even impressed that our parents decided to use the computer in the first place, we’d be more impressed if they could do it by themselves. Without our help. Forever.

That’s why Google employee Jason Toff decided to make his new Web site, TeachParentsTech.org, which is geared toward assisting those who need some help in the tech department. And by some, we mean a lot. According to Toff, he was hard-pressed to find anyone without that same torturous story about bringing Mom and Dad up to speed.

I know I’ve certainly been there. While at the airport with my sister one day, she realized her flight was delayed. Wanting to know more, we called home looking for our brother to check the flight status online. (We are but humble non-cellular-Internet-using folk.) But, unfortunately, brother failed us this day, and was out with some friends. Instead, Dad picked up, and he couldn’t discern a mouse from a Web page if his life depended on it. My sister and I just settled for not knowing.

Last night, Comcast customers in Illinois, Indiana and other states experienced an Internet outage. We have a triple package with the cable conglomerate, and last night, as I diligently worked on items for Monday morning, I discovered that my Internet was out.

As someone who makes a living working from home, I understand that much of my work involves using the Internet. I use it for researching articles, contacting clients via e-mail and sending my work from place to place. I was actually finishing up a project when the Internet went out.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. I called the cable company and wasn’t able to get through. I kept getting a busy signal. I assumed it must be a pretty widespread problem to knock out their phone lines, so I just hunkered down, watched some television and thought it would be up in an hour or two.

I was wrong. By 11 p.m., I was officially in panic mode. There was no way I was going to be getting the money for the project I was working on by the morning. If the Internet was still out in the morning, then there was no way for me contact anyone to let them know my articles would not be coming.

When DVR first came on the scene, networks and advertisers were livid at the idea that customers would be able to just fast forward through their ads after they had spent millions on them. As DVR became an increasingly larger part of television viewing, advertisers and networks begrudgingly softened their views and began to take DVR viewership into account.

The Internet has always been an advertiser’s dream. You have banner ads that never move an inch, you have videos that require you to watch the ad before it plays and you have pop-ups for everything from travel agencies to “male enhancement” pills.

There appears to be a change in how ads are being marketed these days to give people more of a choice in the ads they see and watch. In one of the biggest coups, YouTube has made ads optional for viewing after five seconds by clicking on a button. This move seems to be fine with advertisers, who seem to be more open to change in Internet ads.

This follows on the heels of Web sites like Hulu, which occasionally give people a choice of three options for advertisements, so viewers can pick the one that is most appealing to them. You may still have to watch it, but at least you get to pick the one that is most palatable.

I admit that I was a holdout on Netflix for a long time. I liked the immediate satisfaction of going to the video store and getting my comedy or action and adventure movies and not waiting a day or two for them to come in the mail.

When Netflix started streaming movies on the Internet, I decided to try out the system, but was relatively unimpressed. They had a decent amount of streaming movies, but all the new releases still had to come through the mail.

Now, not only are relatively new releases available by streaming, but a vast variety of little known and classic older movies are available as well. I don’t mind waiting a day or so for new releases, because there is always something new to watch on the streaming movies.

Apparently, that’s the problem. Netflix streaming accounts for about 20 percent of the total bandwidth use during peak hours of operation. That’s a lot of bandwidth, and people are beginning to notice. Recently, a company called Level 3 worked a deal with Netflix to deliver movies to the cable giant Comcast’s customers.

I don’t like shopping over the Internet for much. Sure, it’s easier than going to the store, but I am an instant gratification person. I don’t like waiting. I like to hold it in my hands as soon as I buy it, even if it’s not for me.

That’s why I have never been a big Cyber Monday shopper. Retailers would like you to think that I am in the minority and that today is the biggest online shopping day of the year, but it isn’t. According to CNN.com, the real big online shopping day is sometime in December.

It makes sense. Most people wait until the last minute and they order presents right when it gets close to the shipping deadlines. Cyber Monday was a term coined about five years ago by Shop.org and was at its heart a marketing gimmick.

One that has taken off considerably over the years and has become household name in shopping circles. I have no doubt that the Internet has revolutionized the way people shop, but coining a phrase for a specific day (when it’s not the biggest online shopping day of year) is a bit erroneous.

Believe it or not, the annoying Farmville game that has been plaguing the lives of millions has been dethroned as the number one app on Facebook. Woo hoo!

As a man who is addicted to Facebook games, even I hated the constant barrage of Farmville requests that filled my Facebook feeds every day. Phrases, an app that allows people to post quotes and quizzes on their feeds, recently passed the iconic Farmville with 8.1 million active users before stopping the app in the United States.

Last month, Phrases had 54.4 million users, beating out Farmville’s 53.9 million, but Farmville still dominates daily usage. Phrases had about 5.1 million users and there is no word on plans to reinstate the American version anytime soon. So how was Phrases able to beat down Farmville? Facebook changed its format.

At its height, Farmville, by Facebook game giant Zynga, had almost 84 million users, but recently, Facebook stopped posting Farmville and other game requests on people’s feeds, and its users dropped to the current 53 million status.

Fame in the world of the Internet can come quickly, burn brightly and fade back into obscurity in a matter of seconds. With the emergence of online culture, memes and other must-see images and videos have the potential to spread like wildfire across the Web, passed through social networks on and off the Internet. The same could very well be said for Internet success. If the dot-com bust of the late 1990s taught us anything, it’s that a company has to be quick to adapt to changing expectations and demands in order to stay relevant for long.

Such a phenomenon explains the dramatic rise and fall of MySpace. Before the leviathan that is currently Facebook, MySpace seemed to be the Internet darling of the 2000s. With millions of users picking up pages, only to abandon the site in favor of the more streamlined world of Twitter and Facebook, the Web site is currently home to countless abandoned profiles. This week, for the first time in a long while, MySpace redesigned its template altogether, an announcement that didn’t drastically change the world in the way it once might have.

The focus this time around? Music and other media.

Apple’s music empire just grew in an important way. Arguably the greatest band of all time, British quartet The Beatles has, for the longest time, been absent from Apple’s online distribution center, the iTunes store. All that came to an end late yesterday, as the complete works of the band finally made its way to the Internet for release. Apple and iTunes commemorated the event with a full-page spread of the band.

The move accompanied a press release from the surviving members of the band, Ringo Starr and Sir Paul McCartney. Due in part to record label constraints as well as personal feelings, the super-group had never made the transition over to Apple’s store. This was, in part, due to concerns about what online distribution was doing to the music industry as a whole. Today, individual songs outsell albums 16:1 through online channels, and companies like Apple keep a tidy overhead thanks to their distribution methods.

It will be interesting to see how this functions with the future of online distribution.

Say what you will about the effects of the Internet on our society as a whole. If for nothing else, the Web is responsible for the era of pretty ridiculous company names. Branding is a vital part of a successful business in the 21st century, as countless online firms take aim at success. What differentiates one company from another? A catchy name certainly doesn’t hurt. It’s an idea that has given us some peculiar catch-phrases in our computer lingo. We “google” to find a term we want — from Armani jeans to cool lizards — we “wiki” to look up information on a topic — like Victoria’s Secret or World War II — and we “tweet” what’s on our minds.

Soon, perhaps, we will also be “blekking” in the realm of the Internet? Blekko is a new search engine that hit the market this week, as a part of a media-blitz instigated by the small startup. Traffic is an integral part of search engine revenue, because advertising dollars provide the essential link between users and a successful business model. But a new search engine seems to be a questionable call in the world of the Internet. Titans like Google and Bing already dominate the market share with a whole host of features and established user bases. So what makes Blekko so different? The answer is actually in your hands.