Depriving someone of internet access is essentially depriving them of a human right, according to a New Zealand government minister, Judith Tizard. The internet is now so much an essential part of life and commerce that access to it can be seen as "a human right", says Culture and Heritage Minister Judith Tizard. She made the remark on launching a book on the history of the internet in New ... Read full entry

An interesting snap shot of web surfing habits in the US from July 1998. The survey results, compiled using monitoring software called PC Meter, which was installed on the computers of thousands of survey participants, noted a 15 per cent, or half hour, increase in time spent surfing the net from home (as opposed to work) during the first month of the US summer. In other words surfing the net appeared ... Read full entry

Including, but not limited to, the creation of the Domain Name System on 23 June 1983. In perhaps, one of the greatest additions to IP addresses, DNS was created. Could you image typing 216.75.60.116 just to get to a website? One thing for sure is that the internet would not be what is today without DNS. No one would be fighting over three letter domains, or two letter for ... Read full entry

While browsing Vanity Fair earlier, I spotted this fascinating article on the history of the web, from the time of its inception in 1958, interestingly part of the US response to the launch of Soviet satellite Sputnik, right on through to user-generated content and social networks. Needless to say a lot ground is covered, taking in the browser wars, the advent of Google, and the rise of the iPod ... Read full entry

Shake out time is fast approaching, and the days of the Web 2.0 boom are drawing to a close says computer scientist, entrepreneur, and PayPal co-founder, Max Levchin. This is Levchin's reasoning. Members of the last crop of start-ups - many of them Web 2.0 companies created two-three years ago - are fast approaching their date with destiny. A slowing US economy and worsening financing environment will force those ... Read full entry

There is some sound logic to the Webless Wednesday idea... I thought it'd be fun to invite other people to go webless with me on Wednesday. Then, on Thursday, we could all share what we got done the day before. That works so long as you don't depend on the web to achieve what you'd ordinarily need to do a Wednesday. Which brings to mind my rather high dependence on the web ... Read full entry

A list of top social media commentators compiled by Sydney communications consultant Trevor Cook. If you keep up to speed with the ideas of the people in this list you are going to sound pretty impressive when social media gets discussed at your workplace.

The allure of the .com domain name The latest internet statistics from Domain Tools reveal the unrivaled popularity of the .com domain name, with over 76 million registrations. .net names come in a distant second with almost 11.5 million name registrations. As of May 2008, there were 76,007,285 active and registered .com domain names. This compares to 11,397,594 .net names, 6,772,308 .org names, 5,037,335 .info names, 1,968,760 .biz names, ... Read full entry

How Open Is the International Internet? The term "international internet" seems like until an oxymoron until you realise just how many "filters" there are blocking access to websites all over the world. Ok, we know certain countries block access to a lot of outside websites, but the web may not as world wide as we think it to be. What surprises me the most isn't that filtering exists, but how many ... Read full entry

10 Ways the Internet (As We Know It) Will Die Number 8: The lawyers get involved. Surprised that's not the number one factor that will bring about the demise of Net 1.0... The Internet has been an experiment in free speech. That may be coming to an end. Unable to go after the sites themselves, lawyers go after the hosters and registrars. That's how Swiss banking group Julius Baer took ... Read full entry