OneWebDay Stories

If I had to pick one thing above all to describe how the Internet has changed my life on One Web Day 2008 (September 22), I would say that above all it allows me to Be in Touch with the World.

Beyond all the trivial and silly, it means a world of ideas, a big pot with many hands stirring the soup.
Most of the threads I follow on Serge the Concierge from Monday Work Etiquette and Green Day to Tokyo Thursdays and Consumed to Thrifty were inspired by voices I discovered on the web in places near and far away.

Happy One Web Day 2008!

Originally written on Serge the Concierge

Serge

‘The French Guy from New Jersey’

Related: One Wish for One Web Day 2008 (September 22nd)

Working on a 2 mbps connection at home, I was thinking about MY OneWebDay, the day I dreamt of having a good bandwidth. Surprisingly that day has passed and I did not seem to notice… Confused ? Read the chronology of my experiences on the Internet and you will know

1. 1995 – My first internet experience at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. I was browsing at the speed of 10 to 20 bytes per second, network was ERNET. I was surprised to see the website of IISc was loading much faster, understood Intranet and Internet thouroughly

I was using Netscape Navigator and I also learnt the menaing of a one word – STALLED, which I would never forget as you keep seeing that in the status bar of the browser always.

2. 1995 – Wanted to work on internet desparately. Found that VSNL is the only service provider in India. There were 2 types of accounts, TCP/IP account for INR 5000  per month [ a little over US $ 160 by the exchange rate that prevailed in 1995] for 500 hours and Student (Shell) account for Rs. 500 (100 hours). I was earning a salary of INR 6000 per month [ the equivallent of US $ 200 going by the exchange rate of those days] , however managed to save the amount and applied for a TCP/IP account (In fact I did not know the difference between TCP/IP and Shell account, however thought that more the money, better the experience. I was informed by VSNL that they have stopped issuing as they have exhausted the bandwidth available and I can get only a shell account, however I have to produce a student Id card for  the same.

I got my friend’s sister’s Id card and got an account, the username of the account is divya@md2.vsnl.net.in, the username will only be in the name of the student

I started using the shell account, found out that shell account is a text only account, meaning that one cannot use a GUI browser, can only use text browser like Lynx, chat programs like IRC etc. In fact I was happy to get a username like divya as I used to get a lot of chat requests from men in India )

The connection speed was in the range of approximately 300 to 400 bytes per second.

3. 1996 – Got my first TCP/IP connection, thanks to the company I was working for. Got the connection from the Managing Director, convincing him that I would create a website for the company. Got my first web based mail id, tcmohan@hotmail.com registered by my late friend CSK from the USA. I remember registering will all the mail service providers, tcmohan@yahoo.com. tcmohan@usa.net, etc.

Designed my first personal website, used paintshop pro and animation to create images. I was one of the very few among our peers, group to have a website and I used to flaunt it like one hell of a thing.

Connection speed was in the range of 1 to 2 KB per second.

4. 1997 – Started Bharatmail.com, a service for the Non-Resident Indians to send and receive letters to and from India. Relatives of the users will send the letter to our office in Chennai and we upload them to their user area. The letters, post cards were scanned, optimized for a smaller image size (approximately 50 KB) for a page and we have to upload approximately 200,300 images a day.

OH WHAT A TASK.. First connecting to the internet using a dial-up connection. Again our service provider stopped issuing accounts, so we have to get one in the bacl market for double the rate. The sound at which it gets connected, I will be able to say the speed. And it disconnects often, doesnt work for days. My dreams on those days will have the sound of my PC getting connected to Internet. I used to sit the whole night to upload all the images

Connection speed – 24 to 56 kbps, file uploads at the speed of 2 to 4 KB ps

4. 1999 – Got our Venture capital fund. First thing to do was to get a decent internet connection. The only choice was a radio tower. Our Country’s first private ISP, Sify was our choice. We were one of their first customers. Tower was laid at the cost of Rs. 200,000 with a monthly cost of s. 40,000. Even then there were some problems, however we were able to work at the speed of approximately 10 KB per second.

5. 2001 – Internet Revolution in India, Lots of private ISPs came into the market. We were able to use 256 and 512 kbps

6. 2006 – BSNL launched 2 mbps connection for common people.

7. 2007 – I started using GPRS at the speed of 50 kbps and people are talking about 3G services which will have a speed of 2mbps on mobile.

Hmmmmm just think of browsing at  1 byte per second on Netscape navigator, haven’t I crossed my dream day of browsing at decent speed ????

I am blessed, I can say our age group has been blessed with the exposure of the worst and the best times of the Internet and the Web

Happy One Web Day

Chandramohan

http://www.chandramohan.com

(Chandramohan is an entrepreneur based at Chennai, India and is Director – Communications with ISOC India Chennai)

Susan Crawford

Susan Crawford and Kevin Werbach have been named today as Obama-Biden FCC Transition Team Leads.

Susan Crawford, is now a professor at the University of Michigan Law School and has recently ended her term as a member of the Board of Directors of ICANN and is the founder of OneWebDay. Kevin Werbach, is an Assistant Professor of Legal Studies at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He is also the founder of the Supernova Group and the organizer of Supernova, a leading executive technology conference.

Susan Crawford founded the One Web Day and here is her story of One Web Day. The content above is reproduced from CircleID.

Congratulations, Susan Crawford. And Congratulations, Kevin Werbach.

I have found “the one.” The only things separating us from a life of bliss are nine hours, 529 miles, five states and two full tanks of gas… all on a college student’s budget. Without an online connection to the Internet, our connection to each other for the next two years that I’m away at school would be on the line.

Of course we send each other emails, pictures and videos to share our experiences, but the Internet provides so much more for nurturing our unconventional relationship.

As an actor working in New York, he can send me the link to see his role in a new music video; we can vote for the video on a music countdown site and then buy the single off iTunes. Meanwhile I, in North Carolina, can send him links to the videos I create for my journalism classes, keep him updated on my working blog and buy my plane ticket home to see him, all conveniently online.

Also, the Internet helps cut the cost of a long distance relationship. Though we don’t spend money on dates, my phone bills for the first few months I was away made my mom and dad cry. The Internet has helped us connect during the day through email, and then we can use the phone at night when we both have free minutes.

People tend to view the Internet as an organizational tool; as something that can speed up our already busy lives, but I see it quite differently. For me, it is more personal, and instead I can slow down, relax and connect with the one I love through an email with, “Baaaaaaabbeee! I miss you!” written on the subject line.

Meredith Larkin of the Elon School of Communications

On July 25, 2008, Google search discovered 1 trillion unique URLs or web addresses.

It is remarkable when you stop to consider the vastness of the Internet and how it is still continuing to grow. It links people worldwide and allows for the sharing of news and opinions. As a college student, I certainly use the internet for research but how else do I utilize this wealth of information? This is an example of a typical day for me as it relates to the internet.

9:30 am- Wake up, roll over to computer to check the local weather and my email.
10:30 am- Walk to class a few minutes early so I can browse news and sports sites. Check my email.
10:55 am- Check my online blog that I’m keeping for class. Update the site with new material.
11:30 am- Search my online college site for special events and functions.
12:30 pm- “Surf” the internet for about an hour looking at Facebook, Wikipedia, Collegehumor and various sports sites. Check email.
3:30 pm- Visit MapQuest for directions to bank in Greensboro. Simultaneously check the bank’s site to check my current balance.
5:15 pm- Find local TV listings on the net to determine if there is anything worth watching tonight.
5:30 pm- Check local weather for tonight as well as email.
6:30 pm- Use internet for homework. Online time could be as long as several hours.
9:45 pm- Search local movie theater show times for the weekend.
10:15 pm- Browse Facebook a final time. Check email for the night.

The internet makes us capable of doing just about anything. From financial trading to Christmas shopping, the internet has changed the way I function as a person. So what would happen if the internet suddenly disappeared? What would I do if such a disaster ever occurred? First thing is I would try to log on and search MSNBC.com to see what was going on.

Daniel Temple of the Elon School of Communications

A few years ago, right after the Internet really took off, my cleaning lady Jeane was planning an excursion with her family to Walt Disney Word. Jeane, who had been coming to my house since before I was born, had been saving her money for several years specifically for this trip. Her husband had recently died, her son was in a wheelchair and most of her family worked minimum-wage jobs to keep afloat. But no one worked harder than Jeane. She always prioritized her family, and she wanted this trip more than anything.

One week my father overhead her speaking on the phone about how she was having trouble finding hotels that would accommodate her situation. He knew she wasn’t familiar with online bookinga, so he discretely asked me to investigate some hotels. I began searching, but soon realized that with Jeane’s circumstances several hotel rooms would be pricy and difficult to secure.

But I soon stumbled upon a house that would fit her family of 16 and was stocked with multiple bedrooms, bathrooms and a pool. And it was a fraction of what the hotel rooms would charge.

When I told her of my discovery, and that it was available, her eyes welled with tears. The price cut would allow her to spend more time there, with the people she loved.

My quick key swipes meant absolutely nothing in terms of the hours of labor she logged so she could take her family on a trip they would remember forever. Because of the ease of the Internet, I viewed what I did as literally nothing. It was a few moments of my day. But to her it was a vacation with the ones she loved. It was seeing her grandchildren laugh with Mickey Mouse. It was everything.

Story by Andie Diemer, from Elon University’s School of Communications

My mother graduated from Irvington High School in 1971. At this time, there was no Facebook, MySpace or Classmates.com. She kept in touch with friends by calling or writing them.

She was skeptical of the Internet when it first came out. My mother continued to call and write her former classmates. She waited until the class reunion to see who her friends had become.

After 15 years, the Internet has developed into a monumental source of information. Younger generations rely on the Internet to purchase clothes, furniture and other items. They have become so loyal to the Internet that many of their daily tasks revolve around the computer.

My mother’s computer literacy has grown tremendously in the past 15 years. She now checks her email every day and has an account on Classmates.com. She would have accounts on MySpace and Facebook if she could figure out how to do it. Thankfully, she has not reached that point…yet.

While browsing the web, my mother stumbled across a website titled, “Irvington Remembered.” The site, created by one of her old friends, features a variety of photos from the 1970s. She even saw pictures of herself.

The lengthy website includes photos, newspaper clippings and programs. My mother scrolled for days recalling old names, faces and memories.

She contacted her friend and volunteered to contribute some of her old photos. This required digging through years of photo albums, scanning the appropriate pictures, and sending the files as attachments. Of course, my mother enlisted my help.

We spent hours laughing at the clothing styles and the doodlings on the photos. Ultimately, I ended up burning the photos to a CD and asking my mother to mail them to her friend. We are currently waiting for the site administrator to add our pictures to the page.

Story by Lesley Cowie of Elon School of Communications

Spending a semester abroad, studying in Copenhagen, Denmark, and traveling Europe by myself, for the first time, could have been completely overwhelming. Could have been, but wasn’t. I brought along my trusty companion: my laptop. Equipped with an Internet connection, I knew it could do practically anything.

Research assistant. Collaboration manager. Submissions service. Regardless of the stereotypes, I did STUDY abroad. I even collaborated with my mentor, Elon University Professor Brooke Barnett, to apply for a Lumen Prize, which enables me to research media rhetoric in terrorism coverage over the next two years. Without the Internet, I wouldn’t have had the information to complete my proposal, nor the resources to submit my application (at 6 a.m. in Dublin) and win one of the prizes. My Lumen work is now underway, thanks to the Internet.

Travel agent. Tour guide. Trip advisor. Five months in Europe is not a long time, especially for a girl determined to experience as much of the great continent as possible. Searching online, I was able to make arrangements to travel by plane, train and automobile to 11 countries. Thanks to other travelers’ tips and online city guides, I toured the Cliffs of Moor in Ireland, Loch Ness in Scotland and the Swiss Alps. Weather.com helped me assess what to pack. Thanks to the Internet, I had an umbrella in Krakow.

Communicator. Photo album. Friend. Six time zones may have separated us for over five months, but I never lost touch with my friends and family. We exchanged stories, complained about homework and shared photos. We weren’t charged any international calling fees or any international postage. My best friend shared her wedding plans via AOL Instant Messenger. My uncles emailed me photos of my newly adopted cousins. I assured my parents that I was alive by posting on my blog. I scheduled virtual face-to-face time with friends via Skype. No lag time, no waiting. Six hours difference, halfway around the world and I had my friends at my fingertips. Literally. All thanks to the Internet.

Story by Hannah Williams of the Elon School of Communictions

Four years of college simply does not allow enough time to research the variety of subjects that interest me. Had I the time, I would probably take classes in every discipline. Unfortunately, we have to pick a focus. This was difficult for me, and even as a junior I question if I’ve made the right decision by dedicating my time to the study of journalism. While journalism is my major, I’ve chosen to minor in both French and creative writing, though I doubt that double minors are common.

The Internet is a tool I use constantly for the purposes of entertainment, communication and education. Since coming to college, I’ve taken advantage of the access I have to databases of journal articles and online books. Most recently, I’ve been studying the science of linguistics in my spare time. While Elon University’s library has books on the subject, it’s much more convenient for me to use the Internet for study. I can access hundreds of scientific articles and reports via online databases while I’m sitting in my bedroom. I may never have the opportunity to take the linguistics class that Elon offers, but because I have so much access to information on the Internet, I feel less like I’m missing out.

Story by Rebecca Wetherbee of Elon School of Communications

Congratulations to celebrants of OneWebDay!

Depending on how you count, Internet has been around operationally since at least January 1983 and for Bob Kahn since early 1973 and for me a bit later when he asked me to help figure out what open networking might look like.

September is a significant month for the Internet. The first paper on the idea was presented in September 1973 at the University of Sussex and a more refined version published in May 1974. Thanks to the invention of the WWW, the net has become a major nexus for about 20% of the world’s population.

Susan Crawford asked for anecdotes. Here’s mine.

Last year, my wife and I went on a brief vacation that included houseboating on Lake Powell near Page, Arizona. As we approached Page, we and our friends began to discuss what meals we should plan while on the lake. Since there are no grocery stores on the lake, we needed to purchase all the food we would need before departing from the marina. Someone asked if we could make paella. I love paella but I thought “Gee, that needs saffron. Where are we going to find saffron in Page, Arizona?” So I hauled out my trusty BlackBerry and found I had a good GPRS signal so went to the Google home page and typed in “saffron, page arizona, grocery store.”

Several choices came up so I picked one and called the telephone number. A voice answered and I asked “May I speak to the spice department please?” This was probably the owner on the line, “This is the spice department,” he said. ”Do you have any saffron?” I asked. “I dunno but I’ll check” he replied and soon came back to confirm that he had the spice on the shelf. We followed the map on the web page to the store and I dashed in to purchase $12.99 worth of saffron (.06 ounces).

What struck me later was that this was a perfect example of the value of geographically indexed information. In real time, my browser on my mobile was my window into knowledge about the local area. I got information when I needed it about what I needed. It reinforced my appreciation for being able to get useful information as required. Someone had taken the trouble to share this information and I took advantage of it. So it goes as the world shares its knowledge and the search companies help us all to find it.

Vint Cerf is known as the Father of the Internet and I wrote to him to write a story for One Web Day, a story to be featured on Sep 22, on the day of One Web Day. He quietly sent his entry which went in as a comment in another story!! That is a story within a story on what interesting things happen on the Web… Thank you, Dr Cerf