Portal:Internet


The Internet Portal

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The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that consists of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information resources and services, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, internet telephony, and file sharing.

The origins of the Internet date back to research that enabled the time-sharing of computer resources, the development of packet switching in the 1960s and the design of computer networks for data communication. The set of rules (communication protocols) to enable internetworking on the Internet arose from research and development commissioned in the 1970s by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) of the United States Department of Defense in collaboration with universities and researchers across the United States and in the United Kingdom and France. The ARPANET initially served as a backbone for the interconnection of regional academic and military networks in the United States to enable resource sharing. The funding of the National Science Foundation Network as a new backbone in the 1980s, as well as private funding for other commercial extensions, encouraged worldwide participation in the development of new networking technologies and the merger of many networks using DARPA's Internet protocol suite. The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s, as well as the advent of the World Wide Web, marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, and generated sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the internetwork. Although the Internet was widely used by academia in the 1980s, the subsequent commercialization of the Internet in the 1990s and beyond incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life. (Full article...)

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X homepage visited while logged out in January 2025

Twitter, officially known as X since 2023, is a social networking service. It is one of the world's largest social media platforms and one of the most-visited websites. Users can share short text messages, images, and videos in short posts commonly known as "tweets" (officially "posts") and like other users' content. The platform also includes direct messaging, video and audio calling, bookmarks, lists, communities, a chatbot (Grok), job search, and Spaces, a social audio feature. Users can vote on context added by approved users using the Community Notes feature.

Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams, and was launched in July of that year. Twitter grew quickly; by 2012 more than 100 million users produced 340 million daily tweets. Twitter, Inc., was based in San Francisco, California, and had more than 25 offices around the world. A signature characteristic of the service initially was that posts were required to be brief. Posts were initially limited to 140 characters, which was changed to 280 characters in 2017. The limitation was removed for subscribed accounts in 2023. 10% of users produce over 80% of tweets. In 2020, it was estimated that approximately 48 million accounts (15% of all accounts) were run by internet bots rather than humans. (Full article...)

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Partial map of the Internet.
Partial map of the Internet.
Credit: Matt Britt
A partial map of the internet, rendered based on ping delay.

Hightail, formerly YouSendIt, is a cloud service that lets users send, receive, digitally sign, and synchronize files. YouSendIt.com and YouSendIt Inc. were founded in 2004; the company renamed itself Hightail in 2013.

The company's early focus was on helping users send files that were too large for email; it started adding features and plug-ins for businesses in 2007. The service grew quickly, and the firm raised $49 million in funding between 2005 and 2010. The service can now be used via the web, a desktop client, mobile devices, or from within business applications using a Hightail plugin.

In May 2015, the company launched Hightail Spaces, designed to encourage creative professionals from conception of an idea to delivery.

In 2018, Hightail was acquired by OpenText. (Full article...)

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Did you know (auto-generated) - load new batch

  • ... that Luigi Mangione was described as "somewhat of an online sex symbol" following his December 2024 arrest?
  • ... that the University of Memphis football team posthumously retired Danton Barto's number following an online petition?
  • ... that the Brazilian social media page Tupinizando is dedicated to the promotion of Old Tupi, a dead language?
  • ... that Amie Parnes allegedly first heard about her employer, The Messenger, ceasing operations from a New York Times article?
  • ... that the release of the EP Spitfire crashed the servers of the online music store Beatport?
  • ... that Ecco2K created a fashion brand when he was 16 years old by talking online to Chinese factory managers who did not know his age?

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Danah Boyd at the Web 2.0 Conference, 2005
Danah Michele Boyd (or danah boyd, born Danah Michele Mattas in 1977), is an American academic, researcher, and blogger best known for media appearances where she speaks about social networking sites such as Friendster and MySpace. Since 2003, she and her research have been quoted on the subject of social networking in dozens of different articles in media sources such as NPR, Wired, MSNBC, USA Today, Newsweek and The O'Reilly Factor. She was also the subject of a major profile in The New York Times in 2003 and the Financial Times in 2006. She initially studied computer science at Brown University where she worked with Andy van Dam, and then pursued her Master's Degree in sociable media with Judith Donath at the MIT Media Lab. She advanced to Ph.D. candidacy in the UC Berkeley School of Information in 2006, and will be a non-resident fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society for the 2007-2008 academic year.

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The following are images from various internet-related articles on Wikipedia.

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If the Internet teaches us anything, it is that great value comes from leaving core resources in a commons, where they're free for people to build upon as they see fit.
Lawrence Lessig, 2001

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