See also Net Moguls and Wendy's Technoprophet
 

 

Important People | Important Dates in Internet History |
Important Dates in the History of Commerce on the Internet

 

Emerging Technologies

mp3

|What is mp3?| mp3.com

MP3 is an abbreviation for MPEG-1 Layer 3, an open standard for music compression defined in 1991 by the Moving Picture Experts Group, a working group of the International Standards Organization (www.iso.ch/) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (www.iec.ch/). 
MPEG-1 is a collection of complex standards. According to the MPEG site (www.cselt.it/mpeg/), MPEG-1 is for "coding of moving pictures and associated audio for digital storage media at up to about 1.5M bit/sec."  MP3 compresses music data by a factor of up to 15-to-1, while attempting to minimize perceived (not actual) quality loss. In other words, despite the radical compression ratio and bits being tossed out, Metallica still sounds like Metallica (Gearhead suspects the loss of most bits would leave a Metallica ditty intact as far as the ear could tell; preserving the nuances of Brahms or Bach is an entirely different matter).

Extracted from Sound tricks for digital music by Mark Gibbs

 

 

Bluetooth

|What is Bluetooth?| The Bluetooth story| Bluetooth usage models

Bluetooth wireless will enable users to connect a wide range of computing and telecommunications devices easily and simply, without the need to buy, carry, or connect cables. It delivers opportunities for rapid ad hoc connections, and the possibility of automatic, unconscious, connections between devices. 

Bluetooth wireless technology is a de facto standard, as well as a specification for small-form factor low-cost, short range radio links between mobile PCs, mobile phones and other portable devices. 

 

Napster is the world's leading file-sharing community. Napster's software application enables users to locate and share music files from one convenient, easy-to-use interface. It also provides community members with a vehicle to identify new artists and a forum to communicate their interests and tastes with one another via instant messaging, chat rooms, and Hot List user bookmarks. Napster was founded in 1999 by eighteen-year-old Shawn Fanning, then a freshman at Boston's Northeastern University. 

 

 

Gnutella| Promote Gnutella

Gnutella's peer-to-peer model uses no servers. Each person is an individual node in a network of computers.

 

 

 

 

 

Important People: Principal Figures in the Development of the Internet and the World Wide Web

With brief career sketches, this section profiles the principal figures in the development of the Internet and WWW. The following list is in no way exhaustive, and if anyone is left out of this list, the author regretfully acknowledges it as an oversight. The author is working on a comprehensive list and any additions or suggestions are welcome.

 

Marc Andreessen  John Perry Barlow  Tim Berners-Lee  Jeff Bezos 
Vannevar Bush  Steve Case  Vinton G. Cerf  James H. Clark 
Steve Crocker  Doug Engelbart  David Filo and Jerry Yang
(external link)
Bill Gates 
Rob Glaser  Al Gore  James Gosling  Robert E. Kahn 
Mitchell David Kapor  Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider  Carl Malamud  Bob Metcalfe 
Nicholas Negroponte  Ted H. Nelson Mark Pesce Jonathan B. Postel
Linus Torvalds Larry Wall Phil Zimmerman Other pioneers
(external link)

Important People | Important Dates in Internet History |
Important Dates in the History of Commerce on the Internet
 

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Last modified: September 2000
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