Introduction

Metcalfe's Law states that the value of a network grows by the square of the size of the network. So a network that is twice as large will be four times as valuable because there are four times as many things that can be done due to the larger number of interconnections.

Because of Metcalfe's Law, the largest network always wins over smaller networks, even if the smaller network has some larger initial value due to some special-purpose feature or benefit. Since the Internet is the largest network of all, it has won over any proprietary network.

Many wireless Lan public hotspots make wireless consumption cheap and easy. This means that e-commerce happens anytime, anywhere worldwide. Micropayments will become part of our daily life and new e-cash standards will emerge.

According to the estimations of the World bank, in 2050 the main language used on the web will be chinese (total speakers in 2005: more than 1.3 billion), the second hindi (total speakers in 2005: 480 million native, 800 million total), then arabic (total speakers in 2005: 286 million) and/or urdu (total speakers in 2005: 104 million) and english in 5th position (2005 data: English is first language for 380 million people and second language for 150 million-1 billion people).

IXP Internet Exchange Point

May 2006: The Internet backbone consists of many different networks. Usually, the term is used to describe large networks that interconnect with each other and may have individual ISPs as clients. For example, a local ISP may provide service for a single town, and connect to a regional provider which has several local ISPs as clients. This regional provider connects to one of the backbone networks, which provides nationwide or worldwide connections.
These backbone providers usually provide connection facilities in many cities for their clients, and they themselves connect with other backbone providers at Internet Exchange Point (IXP)s such as MAE-East in New York or FreeIX in France. One of the largest of these IXP's in terms of both throughput and accessible routes is the LINX (London Internet Exchange) in London's docklands.
Backbone networks are usually commercial, educational, or government owned, such as military networks. Some large companies that provide backbone connectivity include UUnet (now a division of Verizon), British Telecom, AT&T, Sprint Nextel, France Télécom, BSNL, Teleglobe, Qwest, and SAVVIS.

Internet Maps

May 2006: Check out this extremely detailed map of the North American Internet backbone including 134,855 routers. the colors represent who each router is registered to: red is Verizon, blue AT&T, yellow Qwest, green is major backbone players like Level 3 & Sprint Nextel, black is the entire cable industry put together, & gray is everyone else, from small telecommunications companies to large international players who only have a small presence in the U.S.
This map demonstrates that although AT&T & Verizon own a lot of Internet pipes, they currently do not dominate the Internet infrastructure.

Reality Mining

Unprecedented data sets about continuous human behaviour. We are collectively annotating the planet.

Analytics Experts

November 2007: You are likely familiar with Alexa, a division of Amazon that measures website traffic. There is a site called Quantcast which is becoming a well respected third-party way to measure web traffic in an accurate manner. Currently Quantcast allows you to see how many unique visitors any site has. If a site has enough traffic you can find an incredible wealth of information about it from its visitor’s household income to education level. You can also find the top subdomains, sites with a similar audience and gender.

Create Your own Social Network

Emerging Online Full Screen Video Streaming Services

September 2007: These new sites, all of which are ad-supported and transmit video with peer-to-peer technology, are seeking to improve video quality and attract professionally produced content -- which is to say: to be more like TV. Joost, Babelgum and Veoh have several heavyweights to compete with, including Microsoft's LiveStation, Apple TV and the recently unveiled Hulu, a joint venture of NBC Universal and News Corp.

Web 2.0

August 2006: Web 2.0 is the second generation of Internet-based services that let people collaborate and share information online in a new way - such as social networking sites, wikis, communication tools, and folksonomies.
 
The key principles that characterize Web 2.0 are:

May 24, 2005:
Alexa's Top Ten English Language websites

World broadband numbers in Q1 2005

June 2005: World broadband lines reached 164 million in Q1 2005, up 52 million lines since Q1 2004.
The United Status leads, with 36.5 milion lines. China remains in second place with 28.3 million, followed by Japan, South Korea, France, and Germany.

Internet Vision

June 2005: David Clark, who led the development of the Internet in the 1970s, is working with the National Science Foundation on a plan for a whole new infrastructure to replace today's global network. A new architecture could allow for ubiquitous embedded wireless communications devices and sensors. It could also provide for more secure and convenient forms of commerce. A super-high-speed Internet could even allow people a world apart to collaborate inside elaborate 3-D virtual arenas, a process called tele-immersion.

MindMap of Cyberspace, August 2005

Virtual Worlds, Metaverse

Snow Crash, a book by Neal Stephenson that featured a virtual reality-based successor to the Internet called Metaverse.

Second Life

Browse the Web in Three Dimensions

Back in the late 90s, all the hype was about VRML—Virtual Reality Markup Language—which would turn the web into an immersive environment that you'd maneuver around to get to the information you wanted. 3D web isn't dead, an XML format called X3D—a free run-time architecture that can "represent and communicate 3D scenes and objects using XML"— is starting to take hold. There's even a mobile browser for X3D. Anyone who has used Vista, Microsoft's new operating system, knows that viewing 3-D content on a computer isn't new. With Vista, windows are arranged in a 3-D stack, and users can flip through them and pick the one they want to bring forward. The upcoming version of Apple's OS X will use a similar effect in a feature called Time Machine that presents and saves every version of a file created on the computer.

Face Recognition

A Rich Internet Application

Technology Enabled Social Revolution

Emerging Services

Online Music Market

July 2006: In the US, music downloads - fee based rather than subscription services - now account for 25 percent of music sales, especially among the 25-54 age groups. Under 25s mainly use peer to peer sites, plus download music videos, ring-tones and movies.

MP3 Downloads Switzerland

Internet 2

Next generation Internet :: Meganet :: click tv

Internet, a new channel for film distribution

The advancements in Internet digital media distribution have happened very quickly. The first generation of streaming came online around 1994: the experience was bad quality audio.

The second generation of streaming is what we are familiar with now. Good audio quality in reasonable file size and acceptable video quality when played back in a small window.

The third generation of digital media on the Internet is where we are going and it will guarantee:
:: Security - robust digital rights management solutions to secure the content
:: Quality - similar to what we are used to get when watching movies at home on TV

Self Publishing

Technology enabled marketing

Product Marketing Research

Blogging: From Nanopublishing to the Business of Social Media

July 2004: There are more than 3 million documented blog sites, a number that grows by 10,000 new blogs a day. Combine blogs with social networks, RSS readers, and simple syndication, and social media is poised for phenomenal growth. The tools of social media are creating powerful business opportunities.

In the future, everybody might get paid for the popularity of their contribution.

Chinese Blogs / August 2005

China now boasts a 14.2 million-strong blogosphere.

GeoBlog / Nov 2005

Blogpet / Jan 2005

Vlogs: Video Blogs / July 2005

Vlogs are blogs that primarily feature video shorts instead of text.

Splogs / October 2005

Splogs are blogs containing content scraped out from the original sites.

Free Online Video Streaming Services / May 2006

Webservices

Web services take advantage of software standards such as XML to allow Web sites to automatically share data and other content. The term covers everything from the simplest machine-to-machine conversations to elaborate plans to conduct big business operations online.
 
Amazon.com allows thousands of Web site developers to take pieces of Amazon's technology and build it into their own sites. Such sites take care of their own customers, but have Amazon handle all the e-commerce behind the scenes in exchange for a small percentage sales cut.
 
Amazon and search directory Google have taken an open Web services approach. By contrast, Microsoft and Macromedia argued the best way to wipe away complexity is to adopt their software as the centerpiece of Web services.

Online Market makers

Online Market Makers are intermediaries that aggregate three services for market participants:
 
a place to trade
rules to govern trading
infrastructure to support trading
 
The central purpose of market makers is to organize a marketplace as intermediaries who provide services to both buyers and sellers (brokers just provide matching services on behalf of clients).

Typical Transaction types:
Catalogs
Auctions
Exchanges

Online Market Maker Strategies
GBF "Get Big Fast"
   Winner-take-all structure, network effects,
   scale economies
GIRF "Get it Right First"
   Protecting quality is critical
   Learning by doing is important

E-Commerce Solution

Payment Gateway Providers

Cyber Extortion

Cyber extortion attempts, once the industry's dirty little secret, are now being reported to the police with greater frequency and thus increase the odds of arrests.
 
Cyber Extortion Examples:

IT Security

A virus is a program that reproduces its own code by attaching itself to other executable files so that the virus code is executed when the infected executable file is executed. Boot sector viruses work by hiding in the first sector of a disk, the virus is loaded into memory before the system files are loaded. This allows it to gain complete control of DOS interrupts so that it can spread and cause damage. One of the latest trends is hackers racing to exploit software flaws as soon as they are announced by the companies. The latest example is the Sasser Worm (May 2004) which emerged 18 days after Microsoft posted the software patch on its Web site.
 
Key logging is another method used to capture your personal information. Here's how it works. You click on a link to a website or open an attachment that secretly installs software on your computer. Once installed, it records everything you type, including any User IDs, Passwords and account or personal information. Thieves know how to retrieve this information, or even set it up to automatically have it sent back to them! This is a very real risk when using public or shared computers such as those in Internet cafes.

Encrypting Data

The number of people out there who want to steal, tamper with, or destroy your data is going up, not down. And the chances are growing that you'll be targeted for such an attack. The day will come when all data - in transit and at rest - will be encrypted.

Technologies such as firewalls, Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS), and Virtual Private Networks (VPN) seek to secure data assets by protecting the perimeter of the network. While important in their own right, these targeted approaches do not adequately secure storage. Consequently, they leave data at the core dangerously open to both internal and external attacks. According to the FBI, 50 to 80 percent of security breaches originate inside the firewall, where security is weakest.

Absolute Anonymous file-sharing

April 2004

Mobile payments

Jun 23 2003
Paying for web content with our mobile phones is definitely something that would make our life easier. The end of filling forms with credit-card information. It can be as simple as sending an SMS with a code.

Online music
iTUNES music store update:

Apr. 28 2003 - May 28 2003

Today, the download pace has slowed to about 100,000 tracks a day. After 1 month of operations, 3 million songs have been sold!
This is an impressive result considering the following:
:: US only market = 250 million
:: 80% have a PC = 200 million
:: 1% Mac on OsX = 2 million target segment

Internet Radio

Payment gateway providers

Mobile payments

Jun 23 2003
Paying for web content with our mobile phones is definitely something that would make our life easier. The end of filling forms with credit-card information. It can be as simple as sending an SMS with a code.

Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX

Macromedia is enabling new forms of collaboration and communication with Macromedia Flash Communication Server MX

Photo Storage and Community Photo Sharing

May 2006: Now the boom in photo sharing has spread to the area of video sharing.

Video Sharing

May 2006: The boom in "citizen" videography and video publishing.

Mixing Video Online

November 2006: More people are turning to the Web to watch television shows and movies, thanks to sites like YouTube and Apple's iTunes store. But there's an emerging breed of website that's letting people go beyond passively viewing video. A number of startups, including Jumpcut, Grouper, and Motionbox, are providing free software tools that let anyone mix video clips online and, in some cases, make movies even if they don't have content of their own. Yahoo, based in Sunnyvale, CA, recently acquired Jumpcut after looking at the trajectory of Internet video.

Public Services

Internet Supervision

Online Assistant

Traceroute Utility Tools

Web-based Geolocation Technology

July 2004: "Type 'dentist' into Google from New York, and you'll get ads for dentists in the city. Try watching a Cubs baseball game from a computer in Chicago, and you'll be stymied. Pre-existing local TV rights block the webcast."
 
This technology allows companies to be two-faced or even 20-faced based on who they think is visiting.

Open Source Alternatives

Firefox is solid and secure browser, earning hearty recommendations from CERT (the Computer Emergency Response Team - heavyweights in the world of computer security). Firefox is based around Gecko, the next-generation webpage rendering engine built from the ground up for efficiency and standards-compliance by the Mozilla developers. It can be downloaded at www.mozilla.org. While you're there, you might want to take a look at Thunderbird, an excellent Mail/Groupware client similar to Microsoft's Outlook, also based on Mozilla.

Open Source CRM

Open Source CMS

The internet engine: Search!

There are over 550B pages of information publicly available on the Internet today (IDG). The top search engines have indexed just 1%, or 3B pages on average.

Search will account for $2 billion in advertising sales this year (Sep. 2003). It's predicted to grow at 35 percent annually, to nearly $7 billion by 2007. (Source: U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray)
 
How do Search engines make money?

2002 Search Revenues (in millions)

Share of search traffic

November 2004: Percent share of the U.S. market for online search

November 2005: Percent share of the U.S. market for online search

March 2007: the world's most trafficked Web properties

Yahoo

Over the last two years Yahoo has moved to diversify its revenue stream from online advertising into premium, fee-based services like job searches, personal ads, enhanced e-mail and multimedia content like games, music and videos. Yahoo's billion-dollar buying spree in 2003 included search engines AltaVista and AlltheWeb.
Based on user visits during the week ending on March 27 2004, Yahoo's dedicated search site had 10.2 percent share of the search market, compared with Google's 14.9 percent. Additionally, Yahoo's main page that also features news and other information as well as search, was the most visited in the overall category for search engines and directories with 29 percent share.

Google

MSN Search

Nov 2004: MSN has been working on a search tool for at least two years. If you are a webmaster you might have noticed that "MSNBot" has been spidering your sites as MSN Search gathered information and compiled its own database. The beta search engine is currently live and with its clean design and relevant results can definately challenge Google's dominance of the search market. Keep in mind that results displayed by the beta engine are different from results displayed on their main MSN site which continues to show results from the Yahoo/Overture database.

Internet Messaging Services in China

A market survey by research firm iResearch shows that concurrent IM users in China in 2003 amounted to 5.5 million, of which Tencent's QQ took up 71%, MSN Messenger 17%, and Netease.com's POPO 2004 6%. Besides, Sina.com's UC, Sohu.com's SOQ, and Yahoo! Messgener etc. also take large market shares.
 
At present, Tencent's QQ2004 runs ten value-added service channels and still is the Chinese number one instant chat tool, winning 8 million concurrent users, a record high. The registered user base of TomSkype of Tom.com also exceeds 2 million.

SOHU | SINA | NETEASE

Q1 2004   Sohu   SINA   NetEase
Rev.($MM)   $25.9   $41.1   $22.6
Rev. growth   80%   129%   67%
Earnings ($MM)   $10.9   $16.0   $12.6
EPS growth   125%   300%   46%
Net margins   42%   39%   56%

BAIDU

August 6, 2005: The Beijing-based company's shares closed at $122.54 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, a 354 percent gain from its initial public offering price of $27. The rapid run-up gave Baidu a market value of $4 billion. Baidu earned $1.8 million on revenue of $13.6 million during the first half of 2005. Baidu.com's market value is more than 2,000 times its 2004 profit. That compares with a ratio of 75 for Google and 70 for Yahoo.

Comprehensive Metasearch

Metasearch Visualization

Making sense of an unstructured world

Digital Fluency

There is a real desire to consume and republish information. Issues of fair use and copyright are left up to users. It is a classic trade-off between ease of use and copyright protection.

Internet dating:
Premium pay services

Internet dating has been one of the rare consistently successful online business ventures as millions of Internet users around the world continue to pay a subscription to post a personal ad, hoping for a chance to meet a perfect match. Jupiter Research estimates the market for online personal services hit 20 million euros ($23 million) last year, and sees it growing to 117 million euros by 2007. In 2003 people in the USA spent more money on online dating sites than they did on online music and video sites or online adult entertainment (Jupiter Research).

Electronic Uncoupling

With the U.S. divorce rate at about 50 percent, millions of people are drawn to the Internet to seek professional assistance or just basic information about the legal, financial or psychological aspects of dissolving a marriage. The Internet, to an extent, de-emotionalizes divorce, which for many is a traumatic experience.

Business Networks and Social Networks

May 2005: Friendster seems to have lost its appeal as the hot new virtual spot. Its traffic has been surpassed by new sites, like Intermix's (MIX) MySpace.com and recent startup, TheFacebook.com, which has become a big hit on college campuses. In the fall of 2003, Friendster had little idea about its future business. But it had one asset, a fast-growing audience base. Users went to Friendster to see friends, and friends' friends. It was a virtual bar or meeting place that attracted crowds. It was so popular that despite having no revenue, Kleiner Perkins and Benchmark invested. Friendster also started a trend whereby other social-networking sites, like Google's Orkut and Tribe.net started. Friendster had 1.7 million unique visitors at the time of the investment ($53 million valuation in the fall 2003).

March 2004: ZeroDegrees (just acquired by InterActiveCorp. (Nasdaq:IACI)) is one of more than a dozen start-ups that have been launched over the past year in the hope of cashing in on the trend popularized by dating site Friendster, which has drawn millions to seek connections via online social networks. Friendster is the leading example of personal/dating sites, along with Tribe Networks and CraigsList. Last month, Google Inc. introduced Orkut, its own personal referral service. In contrast, ZeroDegrees focuses on business contacts. Some 218,000 people have signed up since the site for the service was introduced in August 2003. Potential rivals include LinkedIn, Contact Networks, Socialtext, Spoke Software, Ryze, Visible Path and Eliyon.

Manage Business Contacts

June 2005: Online Calenders

The Internet could well be the perfect platform for turning calendars into virtual "life organizers." it is only a matter of time until Google Inc. of Mountain View, California adds online calendar services to its online search, e-mail, calendar, blogging and shopping services.

Evite > Connect with Friends, Plan Events, Know Where to Go

Evite is the free social planning site featuring invitations, social networking, local information and event listing. From planning a dinner party for friends to finding something to do on Saturday night, Evite makes it easy to explore local areas, communicate, coordinate, and make decisions. Launched in 1998, Evite is an operating business of IAC/InterActiveCorp (NASDAQ: IACI) Local and Media Services.

FOAF

The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is about creating a Web of machine-readable homepages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do.

Podcasting

People (whether amateurs or professional broadcasters) create audio files that Internet users can download directly to computers and thence to their iPods or other digital audio players. Such a file could be a recording of a blogger reading his latest blog entries. It might be a garage band that wants to disseminate its music without having to deal with the music industry. What's especially cool about podcasting is that software developers are blending it with other types of many-to-many technology such as blogs and RSS syndication.

Create and sell

Free CRM, Live Chat, Visitor Monitoring

Create Surveys & Get Feedback

P2P WINS IN COURT

Apr 28 2003

A federal judge has ruled that P2P (peer-to-peer) software companies Grokster and Streamcast are not liable for copyright infringements by users of their software."Grokster and Streamcast are not significantly different from companies that sell home video recorders or copy machines, both of which can be and are used to infringe copyrights," the judge found.

In 1984, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Sony, whose VCRs could be used to record copyrighted programs.

The networks of Grokster and StreamCast are decentralized. The companies' client software searches the network of connected users, looking for a powerful computer, which it then turns into a "supernode," or search hub. This supernode then scans the network to fulfill the user's request. Due to the decentralized nature of these P2P networks, there is no admissible evidence "that the defendants have the ability to supervise and control the infringing conduct".

Audio/Video

Anti-Piracy: File-Spoofing etc...

Spam

The term spam originally comes from "spiced ham" made by U.S. canned food giant Hormel Foods Corp.
 
Spam is expected to account for about 67 percent of all e-mails worldwide this year, up several-fold from eight percent in 2001. China is the world's third-largest spam producing country, after the United States and South Korea, accounting for 11.62 percent of all unwanted messages.

Critical Art


 
NERO wearing the Adidog shirt
 
Join Shaping Tomorrow - Anticipate The Future