This week on Cybercultural, I look back on Steve Jobs' January 2001 keynote at Macworld SF, when he announced iTunes and Apple's new "digital hub" concept. This was pre-iPod and of course pre-iPhone. The new strategy set the company up for a renaissance in the 21st century, when *everything* became digital.
Cybercultural
2001: Steve Jobs Launches iTunes and Apple’s Digital Hub
With the announcement of iTunes in January 2001, Apple CEO Steve Jobs ushers in the legal digital music era. It also marks the beginning of Apple's...
 #InternetHistory #ClassicApple
Let's take a trip back to the year 2000, 25 long internet years ago. A year in which Flash websites proliferate, blogging expands, social news sites like Slashdot gain influence β€” all of this while the dot-com bubble slowly deflates and Napster dominates headlines.
Cybercultural
What the Internet Was Like in 2000
In 2000, Flash websites proliferate, blogging expands, social news sites like Slashdot gain influence β€” all of this while the dot-com bubble slow...
 #InternetHistory (special thanks to @npub1uaxy...25kn & @npub18dr9...hhph for suggesting Homestar Runner, the perfect Flash website suggestion for that year!)
Starter packs coming to Mastodon πŸ‘€
Mastodon Blog
Our ideas about Packs
Sharing our thoughts and plans behind sharing collections of accounts in the Fediverse.
This week on Cybercultural, let's re-live the Year of Napster: Shawn Fanning wearing a Metallica shirt to the 2000 MTV Awards, Lars Ulrich testifying to Senate and whining to the media (but in retrospect, was he right after all?!), Judge Patel calling Napster a monster, the media dreaming of a "heavenly jukebox", and β€” amid it all β€” a new legal alternative quietly emerges: SoundJam (soon to be known as iTunes).
Cybercultural
2000: The Napster Monster and Apple’s Heavenly Jukebox
Napster's legal woes intensify in 2000, even as creator Shawn Fanning is celebrated on MTV and on magazine covers. Meanwhile, Apple acquires a star...
 #InternetHistory #Napster #iTunes
In this week's Web Technology News, I discuss my interview with Evan You β€” the creator of Vite and (I'm suggesting) one of the new rock stars of web development.
Web Technology News
WTN #8: The New Rock Stars of Web Development
I got to talk to one of the rock stars of frontend development this week. No, not DHH! I mean a young man named Evan You, whose Vite build tool is ...
 As usual, you'll also find other news in these 3 categories: Web Platform, Open Social Web, Web + AI. Fedi folk featured in this week's newsletter: @npub15z3w...0xrp, @npub1ufhq...mjqv, [@_elena](
Mastodon
Elena Rossini ⁂ (@_elena@mastodon.social)
661 Posts, 449 Following, 10.4K Followers · Italian filmmaker, photographer and writer based in Paris, France who ❀️ #FOSS 🎬 Director of...
 ), @npub1dgjj...m5xf, @npub1j2m3...ngt0, @npub1trrk...wc45 You can sign up to WTN via email and/or follow [@feed](
Web Technology News
Web Technology News
Insights on the Web’s future β€” infrastructure, open networks, and AI. By Richard MacManus, pioneering tech blogger and founder of ReadWriteWeb.
 ) here on Mastodon.
For my 'one more thing' on WTN this week ( [@feed](
Web Technology News
Web Technology News
Insights on the Web’s future β€” infrastructure, open networks, and AI. By Richard MacManus, pioneering tech blogger and founder of ReadWriteWeb.
 ) ) I highlighted some lovely web community action from 2000. The image attached is from Anita Rowland's weblog that year, describing a meetup with fellow Seattle bloggers (2 legendary bloggers, @npub1prsj...eh8y and @npub19re3...ftse, were among them). It's a reminder that the web is all about human connection β€” and we should never forget that.
Web Technology News
WTN #7: Chrome Becomes an AI Browser, With Agents To Come
This week, we may have witnessed the beginning of the end for the traditional web browser. On Thursday, Google announced a raft of new AI features ...
 image
It’s happened: Google Chrome is now an AI browser https://thenewstack.io/chrome-switches-on-ai-the-future-of-browsing-begins-now/
I think of myself as an early adoptor on internet tech, but there is one technology I have never tried and never wish to, either: AirPods. I hate sticking things into my ears. I'm an 'over the ear' headphones guy and I don't see that changing. (p.s. I will probably add Meta's AR glasses to my 'never gonna use' list, but mainly because I have no desire to put Facebook on my face!)
Alright, buckle up internet history fans: we've come to the RSS Format Wars! The year 2000 was when RSS got forked into 2 different protocols: Dave Winer's RSS 0.92 and the RDF-based RSS 1.0. What's remarkable, looking back, is that the top bloggers of the day β€” Kottke, CamWorld, Rebecca Blood, Brad Graham, and others β€” still weren't using RSS by the end of that year. But they *were* building blogrolls.
Cybercultural
2000: Bloggers Make Friends, but RSS Format Wars Kick Off
In 2000, the blogroll becomes a trend as bloggers increasingly link to each other. Meanwhile, RSS bifurcates into two opposing formats: Dave Winer'...
 #InternetHistory #RSS
TBL on the founding of WHATWG, which now controls the HTML standard (clearly he was not a fan, at least initially). image