Product Description
A biography of businessman who started America Online, an Internet service provider, that merged with the largest entertainment company, Time Warner, in 2000. ... Read more

Product Description
This book is a guide to the enormous number of World War II resources available on the Internet. Section One contains addresses of websites with information pertaining to pre-war international diplomacy and crises in Europe and Asia, and United States and Allied wartime diplomacy in Europe and Asia. Section Two lists websites containing information about the world at war, particularly those providing overviews of the war or specifically covering the fighting in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Pacific Islands, or mainland Asia. Sites listed in Section Three contain information about selected major civilian and military leaders of the war years, including Charles de Gaulle, Adolf Hitler, Chiang Kai-Shek, General Douglas MacArthur, Benito Mussolini, General George S. Patton, Jr., Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, Tojo Hideki, and Harry S Truman, to name a few. For each site listed, a brief description and summary of its information is provided. ... Read more

Product Description

The first version of this reference won the RUSA Award for Outstanding Reference Source in 2000. Now expanded to three volumes, the new edition includes a fully revised and extended chronology volume, a volume of biographies, and a volume with articles analyzing key Internet issues. The set also offers many fascinating tidbits about the Internet, including the fact that the phrase "surfing the Internet" was coined in 1992 by librarian Jean Armour Polly in an article in the Wilson Library Bulletin.

This set covers the earliest roots of the Internet, from events dating as far back as the 1800s and the invention of the telephone all the way to the founding of news agencies, the first steps toward digital computing, and the development of computing technology, telecommunications, and media. This work will be of interest to students of mass media, gender, business, and social history as well as technology.

Product Description
"This sophisticated history is the best account so far published of theunpredictable and turbulent evolution of the Internet. With its broadinternational context, the book will be of value to makers and users ofthe global communications network, as well as to science and technologypolicy makers." -- Martin Campbell-Kelly, Reader in Computer Science,University of Warwick, UK

Since the late 1960s the Internet has grown from a single experimentalnetwork serving a dozen sites in the United States to a network ofnetworks linking millions of computers worldwide. In Inventing theInternet, Janet Abbate recounts the key players and technologiesthat allowed the Internet to develop; but her main focus is always onthe social and cultural factors that influenced the Internets design anduse. The story she unfolds is an often twisting tale of collaborationand conflict among a remarkable variety of players, including governmentand military agencies, computer scientists in academia and industry,graduate students, telecommunications companies, standardsorganizations, and network users.

The story starts with the early networking breakthroughs formulated inCold War think tanks and realized in the Defense Department's creationof the ARPANET. It ends with the emergence of the Internet and its rapidand seemingly chaotic growth. Abbate looks at how academic and militaryinfluences and attitudes shaped both networks; how the usual linesbetween producer and user of a technology were crossed with interestingand unique results; and how later users invented their own verysuccessful applications, such as electronic mail and the World Wide Web.She concludes that such applications continue the trend ofdecentralized, user-driven development that has characterized theInternet's entire history and that the key to the Internet's success hasbeen a commitment to flexibility and diversity, both in technical designand in organizational culture.Amazon.com Review
History is written by winners, but Bill Gates isn't talkingyet. Those interested in how this weird, wonderful World Wide Web--andits infrastructure--came to be should turn to historian Janet Abbate'slook at 40 years of innovation in Inventing the Internet.

Peeking behind the curtain to show the personalities and larger forcesguiding the development of the Net, from its dawn as a robust militarycommunications network designed to survive multiple attacks to today'scommercial Web explosion, Abbate succeeds in demystifying thisall-pervasive technology and its creators.

Abbate's survey coverseverything from David Baran's work with the RAND corporation to thedevelopment of packet-switching theory to CERN's Tim Berners-Lee andhis hypertext networking system. She also factors in the influencesthat caused the Net to evolve such as the Cold War, changing researchpriorities, and the hacker subculture that pushed existingtechnologies into new forms, each more and more like today's fast,global communications system.

The research is impeccable, thewriting is lively, and the analysis is insightful. (See especially thediscussion of the "surprise hit" of ARPANET, a minor function known ase-mail.) Abbate clearly knows her subject and her audience, andInventing the Internet encapsulates a milestone of modernhistory. --Rob Lightner ... Read more

Customer Reviews (10)

How the Military Freed University R&D From the Short Term Market Imperatives
Janet Abbate's analysis of the birth of the Internet establishes systematic links between the technological development and its organizational, social, and cultural environment. There are many histories of the Internet - in print and, of course, online. Most of them are full of well-documented information on technology and history. Some even refer to the underlying concepts of communication, information, and knowledge. But Abbate's work is the first that goes beyond mere facts or scholarly exercise, and her findings are most revealing.

The beginning of the Internet is well known: it was a U.S. Defense research program called Arpanet. What is less well known is the internal structure of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) that incubated the network development during its first 10-12 years. Inventing the Internet clarifies how the small agency was created in 1958 to respond to the Soviets' successful launch of the world's first artificial satellite (Sputnik). ARPA never owned a single laboratory. Its role was to create centres of excellence in universities through the financing of research projects in defence-related domains.

ARPA had several project offices that were created and disbanded according to the ever-evolving priorities of the Department of Defense. These offices were managed by directors from the academic world - not from the military. In theory, the offices' budgets were approved by the Congress. In practice, ARPA's management used the pretext of the "national interest" umbrella - and we all know how broad the concept of national interest in the United States is - to remain out of reach of political interference. The result was a purely scientific culture benefiting from the entirely free environment that came with the universities and the plentiful money that came from the military budgets. When ARPA decided in 1969 to connect the supercomputers scattered among university campuses, it had no political or financial difficulty attracting the best computer scientists from all over the United States.

The originality of Arpanet is this intrinsic freedom, in contrast to market laws and official control. Inventing the Internet emphasizes the exceptional character of ARPA, which seems in radical contravention to both the "laissez-faire" dogma and the state-intervention ideology. Arpanet was born in an atmosphere of total confidence within a community whose wholehearted purpose was to connect the computer equipment from as many universities as possible, while imposing the least restricting standards and interfaces. Packet-switching technology was the tool that seemed to impose the fewest constraints : Arpanet was thus based on packet-switching instead of the circuit-switching technology that characterized all other telecommunications networks in the world.

Without detailing all the analyses contained in Abbate's work, I shall give the example of the tensions between the scientists united around Arpanet and the telecommunications carriers backed by their respective governments. Indeed, carriers were being pressed by their business customers to provide them with data transmission. Contrary to a widespread idea, the carriers quickly understood the advantages of packet-switching over circuit-switching. As far back as 1975, the carriers had created the packet-switching X.25 protocol, which centralized the management of the new networks inside the core. The goals of this centralized architecture were to relieve the end user of conducting complex interconnection procedures, to transmit information reliably and, of course, to boost the carriers' profit. On the other hand, computer scientists wanted to move intelligence (and control) out of the network and establish it in the host computers, because they were themselves end users and they did not mind making an extra effort to get the services they wanted, at reduced costs. Moreover, the TCP/IP protocol had been created to make up for an unreliable network in a war environment.

Abbate rightly notes that the TCP/IP and X.25 protocols were not technologically but architecturally incompatible. In the duel between X.25 and TCP/IP, Canada played a leading role: it led an anti-Internet crusade with the help of Great Britain, France, and Japan. What motivated this opposition? IBM was proposing to use its SNA standard to connect its computers, while Canada and its allies wanted to protect their home markets against IBM's monopolistic practices. Canada feared the creation of a computer communications monopoly more than any other country because of the rapid growth of its trans-border data traffic with the United States. It saw in this a threat to its very existence. When the computer scientists proposed TCP/IP instead of IBM's protocol (SNA), the suspicion turned into panic, since this protocol depended directly on the U.S. Department of Defense. This is how the Canadian government and its principal carrier, Bell Canada, ended up being the principal architects of the X.25 protocol and the main adversaries of TCP/IP. This hidden conflict gave birth to the Datapac network in 1976, which was presented to the public as a world first and became the data-transmission protocol in Canada.

Each chapter of Inventing the Internet sheds new light even on facts that we already knew, as it reveals the real stakes of the Internet's formative years - and it does so without taking sides between the conflicting players. Abbate exposes the organizational structures of the involved forces and leaves it to the reader to judge. An example of her absence of bias: she is one of the few authors to call the transfer of the Internet's backbone management to private operators at the beginning of the 1990s "privatization": " The final step toward opening the network to all users and activities would be privatization ". (1) She is correct: the transfer of a publicly owned infrastructure to a series of private corporations, even if there is no formal sale, is called "privatization" everywhere in the world. So should it be in the United States.

There is, however, one major error, all the more egregious since the book is otherwise so well documented. Throughout Inventing the Internet, Abbate refers to the "Canadian PTT." She seems to be confusing the Trans-Canada Telephone System (TCTS) with the European PTT. (2) The TCTS was the grouping of the main Canadian carriers, most of which were private operators (as in the case of Bell Canada) and not state-owned corporations. Although this is a gross error, it should not prevent us from reading this fundamental analysis.

---
(1)Cf. page 195.

(2) The error can be found at pp. 153, 163, and 168.

A History of the Net
This is a terrific book about the history of the Internet and how it came to be.It is very detailed (from both technical and socio-cultural angles) and should be taken as a scholarly read.The importance of the Internet to our society should not be understated, and its significance only grows more every day.It is therefore crucial that users of the Internet (and other life-altering technologies) have a deep understanding about how the technology came into existence, and how it continues to be shaped.Inventing the Internet is the perfect book to help us achieve this understanding.If you use the Internet regularly, then this book is for you.

Insightful!
Janet Abbate exhaustively researched her scholarly history of the Internet and presents it with the detail and tone you would expect from a historian, which she is. Therefore, don't come looking for a breezy, "gee whiz" approach. This is not a promotional pat on the back to the companies that helped popularize the Internet, nor does it glorify dot-coms or any of their fearless leaders. In fact, Abbate devotes the first 75% of her book to the precursor to the public Internet - the ARPANET system used by scientists, researchers and the U.S. military. We recommend this book to all readers who want to know how the Internet really came into existence and how it evolved from a private, secret, scientific resource into today's vast realm of public information, auctions, virtual bookstores, e-mail and even getAbstract.

A well argued and documented claim
One should read Inventing the Internet to explore the thesis of technological determinism shaping the evolution of the Internet.After reading the book, the reader can also judge the success of Abbate's integral thesis that social determinism also shaped the evolution of the Internet.Janet Abbate is a professor in the Department of History at the University of Maryland in College Park.She derived the book from her 1994 dissertation research undertaken at the University of Pennsylvania.The book was produced with six chapters, which she arranged in rough chronological order.Each chapter was then subdivided into topical sections.The book's details support Abbate's claim that the Internet was not born in a discrete originating event, but evolved over a twenty-year period through the convergence of technological advances and societal needs.

Intriguing, but not for the juvenile
The reviewer from "Flagpole" is obviously a disgruntled former student of Ms. Abbate's.Perhaps he flunked a midterm or wrote a lousy paper.But that's his problem...

Anyway, the book is excellent.Looking forward to more insightful analysis on the history of technology in her upcoming books. ... Read more

Product Description
CyberEducator is a hands-on, comprehensive, inexpensive, and easy-to-use overview of the Internet for educators. It includes extensive Web resources for all content areas within education. The guidebook lists the Internet sites most relevant to K-12 and teacher education, including lesson planning, collaborative projects with other schools, general references, and more. This updated edition includes a companion CD-ROM that provides extensive resources for integrating the Web in K-12 classrooms and includes multimedia resources, video clips, and extensive Web links. Updated at Web Site: Web sites change often. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Don't Waste Your Money!
Take my advice and DO NOT buy this book. It was a required text for a course I was taking, and myself and the entire class complained to the instructor and the University. The book is unforgiveably outdated, and has no business still being in print. The publisher, McGraw Hill should be ashamed of themselves for selling this outdated book to unsuspecting buyers, most likely students of Internet courses. This book should either be updated or yanked from publication. It purports to be a guide to the Internet for educators. Well, let me tell you it is more like a guide to a dead end. For $31.95 you get a book and a CD-ROM, both of which are pretty useless. Both the book and the CD are full of links to web sites that prove to be dead links. Either the web sites no longer exist or the URLs haved changed since this book was published in 2001. For example, as part of a discussion of educational listservs, the book and CD provided a list and links to 10 listservs. Out of those 10, only 5 of the listservs are still in existence and of those only 2 of the links provided were still working. Another fine example of currency or lack thereof, a section on search engines touted Alta Vista and Lycos -- no mention of Google of course. Who even hears anything about Alta Vista and Lycos anymore? There is very little of value in this book, and what there is can most certainly be found in another source that is much more current. Enough said! I would have given "0" stars if I could. ... Read more

Product Description
Using the internet has become the easiest and quickest way to find source material and information for researching family history. However, the huge number of websites available can become overwhelming, and the net can prove to be a very frustrating place!

This indispensable book is divided into sections and includes a list of sites which deal with the whole spectrum of genealogy. There is a full alphabetical subject guide providing an accessible directory of web addresses grouped under straightforward headings, such as: Births, Marriages & Deaths; Law & Order; Surnames; Wartime and Military Sources. An index helps to locate specific topics. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Family History on the Net
I had hoped to be buying the latest edition of this book, but the one i have received is for 2007/8. Had I known this before buying, I would not have bought an out-of-date book. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (1)

impressive collection of online resources
With a surfeit of online resources for the student of American history, a specialised search engine would be useful. Or a portal devoted to this subject. Perhaps these exist. But as an alternative, you can try this book. Gevinson has expended considerable effort to collect an impressive list of resources.

Each is briefly explained, alongside its URL. Many are freely available. Some are quite specific. Like a collection of maps that has been digitised and put online. Another is a compendium of famous trials, like Scopes or Sacco and Vanzetti. While someone at Stanford put together a collection of dimestore novels and penny dreadfuls that makes fascinating viewing. ... Read more

Product Description
Embark on a fascinating look at the history of Online Gaming through the eyes of one of the most successful online organizations in the history of gaming. Discover the origins of the modern gaming era. Relive the challenges and triumphs that helped shape The Syndicate and, by extension, the development of a community of more than 8 million people from around the world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (36)

yes I am biased from personal experience
The guild creator (and probably the same guy who is hocking this book + wrote it) runs The Syndicate like a business, not like a guild.It's a sad dilution of what the word "Guild" actually means.Basically he cares more for the reputation of his "pet creation" than the individual people/members that make it what it is.If you've ever been a part of The Syndicate you'll see how the turnover rate is that of Mcdonald's and it is quite the mass of cluster soup.

Great Idea, Very Flawed Execution
This book really embodies a great idea that suffers from a very amateurish execution.This is one of the first (if not only) books focused on describing the history of an online gaming guild, and its an ambitious aim that I'm sure we'll see much more of in the future.To his credit, the author clearly knows a great deal about his subject matter, and his passion and enthusiasm for the guild being described is evident.

The biggest problem unfortunately stems from the author's enthusiasm, as it tremendously colors the story.The author literally has nothing negative to say about the Syndicate, and every decision Dragons (the syndicate's leader, and the author) makes is one that ultimately leads to the triumph that is the guild today.The tone of this book reminds me of an autobiography of Kim Jong Il published by the North Korean government...in reality, a guild this long running must have had more interesting situations than the way they are described here (which is invariably 1) Crisis happens, 2) Dragons presciently thinks it over and decides on the best course of action, 3) said course leads gloriously to today's wonderful guild).Ultimately, the consistently glowing descriptions of everything involved with the guild are just boring.

The less said about the tiresome fantasy sections, where the author describes the guild's activities as if it was a fantasy novel, the better.Suffice to say, your 12 dollars could get you two good fantasy paperbacks, and about 100 times more value if your looking for fantasy stories.

On a more technical level, the writing and especially editing is really haphazard.In addition to numerous typos, grammar errors, etc, the chapters don't flow particularly well together, and occasionally it veers off into tangents that can't possibly be of interest to the casual reader; several chapters, for instance, are basically just recounts of happenings at the various conferences the guild has organized ("John got drunk thursday night", "the hotel guards let us use the pool late," etc.)A quick google search seems to indicate the publisher is an arm of this guild (their only other published book is a fantasy story by one of their guild members); the book definitely could have used the services of a professional publisher.

The basic idea here is a good one (describing the history of a long running fantasy guild).Hopefully it will pave the way for other books like it that will benefit from a more experienced author and more professional development.I'd save your money for those.

Its a Recruitment Tool
The Legend of the Sydicate, while a good book overall for the MMO Industry, didn't live up to my expectations.The book goes over the same few topics over and over.In addition, there are TONS of 'facts' within' the book do not appear to have been researched.For example, they list they are the 1st guild to last 10 years, which is incorrect.It is just a bunch of little things, that add up for me to not reccomend the book.If you are just interested in MMO's in general then it will be a good read.

If your going to base claims, you need to be sure that you are correct when you write them in a book, otherwise you look a little foolish.

How to guide to build a guild
This book should be used as a blueprint for how to build a guild in a MMORPG.Yes, The Syndicate started in the perfect storm, but it was true leadership from Dragons and others that built this group into the power and friends they are now.

The book covers the history of gaming as well as the guild, worth the read for that "insiders" look at the Syndicate.

Interesting, but flawed
I picked up this book after reading about it on Slashdot. I play World of Warcraft and help manage a guild, so I was interested in the subject matter.


The story and history of the guild is interesting, as is the explanation of the guild structure and how they've managed to last for more than ten years (which is remarkable).

The book, however, was hard to read. The author writes in the third person about himself, which made for awkward reading and promoted a certain self-satisfied tone that I really had trouble with. As other people have mentioned, the editing is atrocious. Typos, missing words in sentences, etc. A lot of the chapters feel like standalone essays that were pieced together to make a book, so there is some repetition.

I would recommend this book if you're interested in learning about guild structure and management, but I didn't enjoy reading it. ... Read more

Product Description
Who created the Web and why?How did its introduction change the Internet?How did the Web change the management and operation of businesses, government agencies, research and charitable organizations?How did it affect the way we locate information, buy products, and entertain ourselves?Why did it dramatically impact the use of computers and computer networking? This book answers these and many other questions about the World Wide Web, its history, and its use.It's not uncommon to hear people refer to the Internet and the Web as if they were one and the same thing.There are good reasons why many people make this mistake and why many people are unclear about the relationship between the Web and the Internet.Journalists and newscasters routinely use the two names interchangeably, which is one obvious source of the problem.Another source of the problem - this one far less obvious but of greater impact - has to do with the evolution of Web browsers.Netscape's Navigator and Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which are the two most popular tools for surfing the Web, have become multipurpose network applications that are used for exchanging and managing email, interacting in chat rooms, and other common Internet activities.None of these activities have any connection to browsing the Web, but use of these applications blurs the distinctions between the Web and other services on the Internet as well as between the Web and the Internet itself.This book was written to make these distinctions clear.It explains in a manner that anyone can understand exactly how the Web operates as a service on the Internet and how its system for managing and sharing information functions. The Information Revolution presents the complete history of the World Wide Web - from its original design and engineering as an information management system at CERN to its introduction onto the Internet and its rapid acceptance as a de facto standard for publishing information on the Internet to its role in transforming the Internet into a resource that virtually anyone can use.The Web's history is followed by a detailed explanation of how the Web's technology works and why it works so well.This book also examines many of the ways in which business, government, other organizations, and individuals are using the Web, and it explores how the Web is changing to meet changing needs as well as one possible future for the Web, which is called the Semantic Web. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A fascinating modern history of the technology that gave rise to the World Wide Web
Written by technology consultant J. R. Okin, The Information Revolution: The Not-For-Dummies Guide to the History, Technology and Use of the World Wide Web is a fascinating modern history of the technology that gave rise to the World Wide Web. From the Web's precursors, to how the technology that created it spread so rapidly, its impact on publishing and broadcasting, its empowerment of individuals, to the "dark side" of the Web that can be used to track information about those who surf it, and much more, The Information Revolution gives a grand tour of stunning, rapid, and very recent changes. Heavily researched, and featuring an index for quick and easily reference, The Information Revolution is an ideal resource for students of modern history seeking to better explore and understand the Web's titanic impact. Also highly recommended are the other volumes in this series, The Internet Revolution and The Technology Revolution.
... Read more

Product Description
With an easy-to-read text, this book provides an ideal introduction to history for young children. Intended for school projects it offers links to Internet sites which explore in more detail the topics covered. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Great condition.
This book Was in great condition and I have loved using it along with my other curriculum. Thank You and God Bless

Usborne First Encylopedia of History
Great book for anyone interested in learning about information from different time periods. Has timelines. Useful tool for school reference, upper elementary to high school. Best part is that it is Internet-Linked which helps you get more detailed information on a topic and even print out pictures. The book gives you screened websites to go directly to. I think that it has been revised now and there is a newer edition from Usborne. ... Read more

Product Description
The internet has recently grown from a fringe cultural phenomenon to a significant site of cultural production and transformation.Internet Culture maps this new domain of language, politics and identity, locating it within the histories of communication and the public sphere. Internet Culture offers a critical interrogation of the sustaining myths of the virtual world and of the implications of the current mass migration onto the electronic frontier. Among the topics discussed in Internet Culture are the virtual spaces and places created by the citizens of the Net and their claims to the hotly contested notion of "virtual community"; the virtual bodies that occupy such spaces; and the desiresthat animate these bodies.The contributors also examine the communication medium behind theworlds of the Net, analyzing the rhetorical conventions governing online discussion, literary antecedents,and potential pedagogical applications. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

Not an in-depth analysis of the subject
While I did enjoy this book, I would only recommend it to someone who wanted a very simple history of Amazon.com and Jeff Bezos.I found that the book did not delve far enough into the finer points of Jeff's personality, nor did it completely chronicle the full events that led to Amazon.com's success.

The book was relatively short and an easy read, but most of the information in it seemed to come from outside sources, not from any personal knowledge the author may have had on the subject.I would have liked to have seen some interviews with Jeff himself or at least with some people who knew him well, like family and/or co-workers.This would have given the reader a better insight into who Jeff is, rather than the author just quoting sources from the Internet and magazine articles.

I don't believe enough time was spent on detailing Jeff's early years.I believe that knowing where a person comes from is a major factor in knowing how that person got to where they are today and the author did not provide enough information in this regard for the reader to really get to know Jeff.A lot of points made in this book seemed glossed over; simply mentioned but not explored such as Jeff's family life as a child.

This book was, to me, more like reading a book report and not a very well done report at that.Sure, the author did her research on the subject, but in my opinion, if you are going to write a biography of someone, you need to go a lot deeper into that person's history, personality, goals, dreams and lifestyle if you expect to hold the reader's attention.

In summary, if you are intending to purchase this book, I would only recommend doing so if you are only interested in a brief, factual account of Jeff Bezos.If your intent is to write an in-depth report, I would recommend searching for a better biography on the founder of Amazon.com.

the man.
bezos is an awesome founder. I will write more later. he is too cool 4 school.

Love it
The book is give you the true story for Jeff Bezos & how he start amazon.com from nothing, the book is short you can finish it in one or two days but you'll enjoy it too much, and it'll inspire you. ... Read more

Product Description
The inside story of how a small band of agitators at Microsoft staged the stunning turnaround that transformed the company from an Internet laggard into such a dominant force that it was accused of monopolizing the industry.

1993. Microsoft's Windows software ruled the desktops of America. Nine out of ten personal computers ran the operating system, and most applications--from word processors to spreadsheets--couldn't function without it. When Bill Gates peered into Microsoft's crystal ball, he saw a world of Windows.

Then the Internet burst on the scene, and suddenly Gates's Windows-oriented future didn't look so bright. The Internet ran on UNIX, not Windows. The World Wide Web, not Windows, linked information in a global electronic library. A new software program called Mosaic, not Windows, made finding and reading Web documents as easy as skimming a magazine. Moreover, companies with little stake in Windows--Netscape, America Online, Sun Microsystems--were laying first claim to the Internet frontier.

The Internet was the future of computing--and the world's largest software company wasn't ready for it. Yet four years later, Microsoft's Internet metamorphosis was so complete that the Department of Justice slapped the company with the broadest antitrust action since the breakup of AT&T. In How the Web Was Won, veteran Seattle Times journalist Paul Andrews chronicles, for the first time, the most remarkable business turnaround of the 1990s: the story of Microsoft's turbulent journey from Windows to the Web--and of the handful of Internet believers who led the charge.

Taking the reader into the mind of Microsoft, Andrews reveals how the company struggled first to comprehend and then capitalize on the Net. How twenty-two-year-old Internet hound J Allard was shocked to learn that nobody at Microsoft seemed to know anything about networking computers when he arrived in late 1991. How Steve Ballmer, Gates's Harvard buddy and second in command at Microsoft, lit the Internet fuse with a head-scratching e-mail in December 1993. How Gates's technical assistant, Steven Sinofsky, discovered in early 1994 that Cornell University, his alma mater, was more "wired" than the world's most successful software company. And how by mid-1995, awash in the rising tide of Netscape, America Online, Java, and the Web, Bill Gates assigned the Internet the highest level of importance, launching an effort that, in a matter of months, would provoke the Justice Department, competitors, and industry analysts to warn that Microsoft could someday rule the Internet.

Based on three years of reporting and more than 100 interviews with the prime movers driving Microsoft's Internet strategy and deployment, How the Web Was Won captures the explosive drama and high-stakes gamesmanship of Microsoft's epic struggle for Internet supremacy. The result is an illuminating portrait of a software empire under siege and an intimate look at the fiery competitiveness that kindled its dramatic reversal of fortune.Amazon.com Review
In a brilliant--and, at times, overwhelming--display ofresearch and perspicacity, Paul Andrews chronicles Microsoft'sinternal and public battles to adapt to Internet technology and fightthe browser wars. He starts in 1991: the Internet is barely a blip onthe company radar. Meanwhile, 22-year-old new hire J Allard is askedby Microsoft's No. 2 man, Steve Ballmer, to "make the pain go away"with TCP/IP, the standard Internet protocol. It's just Allard's secondday on the job, and he realizes that the software giant doesn't getit: interoperability between networks and the Internet is key toMicrosoft's future. He begins a grassroots effort to raise Internetconsciousness, eventually distributing a widely read 17-page memotitled "Windows: The Next Killer Application on the Internet." Higherup, Bill Gates's technical assistant, Steven Sinofsky, gets snowed inat technically progressive Cornell University. He's stunned to witnessa student body that's already devoted to a fledgling Internet, andwrites home: "Cornell is WIRED." After intense internal debate (andmore than a few late nights), Gates stops the engines and changescourse to pursue integration of Windows and an Internet browser calledExplorer.

Andrews--a personal-technology columnist for the neighboringSeattle Times--has actually layered several books into one. Inthe first, he writes scores of fascinating profiles on the Internetidealists, architects, and managers who devoted "Microsoft Hours" toredirect the company's focus. In the second, he reports on externalbattles against foes such as Netscape and Sun Microsystems. Inaddition, he explores the hundreds of technological developments(occasionally to the point of distraction) that flourished during thishigh-tech revolution. And, finally, he comments throughout on what ledthe Department of Justice to file the largest antitrust action sincethe breakup of AT&T. Andrews's coverage of this last issue is slantedheavily in Microsoft's favor, but is thorough enough to deflect mostaccusations of bias. Although the Web is far from won, Microsoft'sability to turn its ship around is certainly a victory. --RobMcDonald ... Read more

Customer Reviews (12)

Scratch a free-marketeer and you’ll find a socialist
I am writing this after the appeals court has done the smart thing and voided the breakup remedy and exposed Judge Jackson for the little punk he is (His bias was obvious during the trial, despite MS's missteps. Congress should impeach him pronto). So I have perspective many of the other reviewers don't.

All I can say is: Ah-hah. Ah-hah. The appeals court may have found that MS maintained its monopoly illegally, largely because it didn't provide sufficient evidence that it needed those contracts with PC makers to protect the proprietary elements of Windows. And they may be right (although I think the general rapacity of the software industry is enough). But it agreed with nothing else, and I think the author of this book has been more than vindicated against his critics.

Yes, he had access to top MS officials, and probably shares their views of things. But you don't need that to agree that Netscape did everything all wrong ... they walked out of the HTML 3 standards conference, made their browser as incompatible with IE as they could just because they were so afraid. Their entire business plan could be summed up as "Bill Gates must be incredibly dumb and tone-deaf, so we'll make all the noise we want about how we can make them irrelevant and they won't notice until it's too late. Oh, and if this somehow doesn't work, let's get the Justice Department to sue them."

Well, it tells you a lot about this strategy (as if you couldn't guess) that Netscape today is just another cog in the AOL Time Warner media machine. The author is particularly good at noting what has not been much noticed elsewhere ... how Netscape, especially in the infamous 1995 meeting, seemed to be working hand-in-glove with Justice to create the appearance of improper competition on Microsoft's part (Funny how, when Larry Ellison (and Bill Gates' biggest service to America is keeping that guy from taking his place, believe me) pays people to sniff through DC trash to find connections between MS and DC lobbying groups, the news is more about the latter aspect of the story than the former).

But the larger issue that this book doesn't get into is how the New Economy guys, all devout members of the Church of the Invisible Hand, were done in by their own economic beliefs working too well.

That basically went that MS would become, and remain, hidebound and lazy like all companies with little real competition (of course, many companies have said they competed against Microsoft, which comes as a real surprise to anyone who has used many of their products ... Linux especially). After all, hadn't IBM and Apple before MS? Our laissez-faire theory tells us so, that economics will trump all human ability ... right?

Well, no one ever thought to imagine that maybe a company that has achieved the kind of market dominance that MS has might just retain the competitive instincts that got it there (as plainly logical as that might be). You're going to have to wait a while for MS to get soft. The story is not that it was easy to win the web war or that MS shouldn't have been at risk of losing it in the force place. It was that they got into it at all. The market is supposed to reward supertankers that turn on a dime, isn't it? (In fact, I believe MS's problems may have come from it being too eager to compete sometimes, owing to Gates' oft-cited paranoia that somewhere out there are two guys in a garage building the future that he won't see coming until too late. But should he be penalized for not forgetting his own company's history?....

Along the way, it was hilarious at first but scary later on to see how standard business practices, and things that would be recognized as smart moves in any other business, were invariably transformed into flaws whenever MS did them. Add lots of features to your OS so a broad segment can find it useful? "Bloatware." Keep in mind your customers who are just casual end users? "Dumbing down the operating system?" (Reminds me of Dilbert: "Hey, you're one of those condescending Unix users!" "Here's a nickel, kid. Go buy yourself a better computer") The looniest was, and still is, Linux, dedicated to the principle that people who don't make money from what they do do a better job than people who do. (And this system is often pushed heavily by some of the most libertarian, pro-free enterprise types around! I still do not get it)

So, seven years after the Web became the Internet's killer app, Microsoft has won, and IMO deservedly so. Deal with it. If you weren't in their tent, you should just cash out, shake Bill Gates' hand like a good sport, recognize that they won because they just played a better game, go enjoy a nice retirement and stop wasting the public's time.

Another Piece of Pro-Microsoft Propaganda
This book is obviously very slanted and biased in Microsoft's favor. It seems as if this book came straight out of the Microsoft book ofpropaganda! All of Microsoft's actions in the past are shown to be harmlessand not anticompetitive. In total contrast, the actions of Microsoft'scompetitors are shown in a very negative light. Even the most incidentalactions of Microsoft's competitors are shown in a bad light. It is odd thenthat Microsoft escapes this accounting. The author is obviously verypro-Microsoft and I would not be surprised to see that he may have closecontacts at the company. The author does not really show how Microsoft'sactions regarding "leveraging their OS into other software areas"could lead to destruction of competition in the computer industry. In fact,he either outright ignores this argument or downplays it!Even if you areinterested in how the web was won, this book does not really give muchinsight to outside developments. There is no real context given. Otherbooks fully account for the complex events surrounding the battle forsupremacy on the internet. This book does not. It skims over much of the"outside action" and instead focuses only on Microsoft and it'squest to dominate the new emerging industry. Of course, given that thisbook should revolve around Microsoft but it should NOT exclude other anglesto the story. The author takes Microsoft's side without justifying it forthe readers. And ultimately this EXTREMELY BIASED account makes the authorlose much of his credibility. Also without going in depth with the emergingindustry as a whole the narrative loses much of what would have been veryinteresting and engrossing story. By and large this is one of the worstbooks regarding this interesting period in the computer industry. NOTRECOMMENDED. FIND ANOTHER BOOK IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE INTERNET ANDTHE "BROWSER WARS'.

Make sense of Microsoft's Internet offerings
Microsoft has released such a confusing stream of products into the Internet arena, it's hard to keep up with it all. This book provides excellent perspective and historical context for those decisions. I alsoreally enjoyed the compelling writing style of this book, especially on thefascinating charaterizations of the colorful players at Microsoft. A goodread for anyone interested in the history of the Internet!

Overall good, changed my perception of Microsoft
Overall I liked the book because it shows a side of Microsoft, but advocates them in the side of the antitrust trial, and they don't explain how a free web browser earns money.

Inside the Greatest Company of the New Economy
There's been a lot of blather from competitors about Microsoft's so-called predatory ways -- some of it, I understand, directed at this book.But the real reason Microsoft is so feared and often loathed is that they competeso well.How many companies of Microsoft's size in any industry would befleet-footed enough to completely reinvent their overall strategy toaddress a sea change in their market?This book tells you how thisremarkable company did it.Get to know the real players who helped turnthis battleship around -- and kept Bill Gates very very wealthy. ... Read more

Product Description
Using Computers in History is designed to introduce students to historical computing through practical workshop exercise. Using examples such as the performance of the American and German economies in the 1930s, the working-class pattern of nineteenth-century emigration and the cotton industry, the authors explain and illustrate the range of computing possibilities available to the contemporary historian.
Using Computers in History:
* raises awareness of the use of the computer as an important tool for the historian
* includes spreadsheet exercises based around a range of historical data sets
* explores the use of databases and shows how to construct them
*prompts students to apply the skills they have learnt to a number of examples.

This new edition is updated throughout to take into consideration the latest technological developments, and includes a new chapter on using the Internet and its use as a tool for studying, researching and teaching history. Also included is an accessible introduction to quantitative methods. ... Read more

Product Description
This is a sceptical history of the internet/stock market boom. John Cassidy argues that what we have just witnessed wasn't simply a stock market bubble; it was a social and cultural phenomenon driven by broad historical forces. Cassidy explains how these forces combined to produce the buying hysteria that drove the prices of loss-making companies into the stratosphere. Much has been made of Alan Greenspan's phrase "irrational exuberance", but Cassidy shows that there was nothing irrational about what happened. The people involved - fund managers, stock analysts, journalists and pundits - were simply acting in their own self-interest. Technology provided the raw material for the boom, but that is only part of the story. "Dot.con" describes and explains the all-too-human behaviour of the stock market bubble: how it got going; sustained itself for longer than anybody expected; and then, just when people were starting to think it might not be a speculative bubble after all, went pop. ... Read more

Product Description

This book is an essential reference for both academic and professional researchers in the field of historical computing. It is the first book in English that covers the early era of Nordic computing from the 1950s to the early 1980s. Most of the contributors are themselves pioneers in the field. The book deals with many aspects of Nordic computing such as the development of early computer hardware, development of basic software and compilers, design and implementation of early applications in engineering as well as in organizations and developments in use of computers in education. Other aspects described include Nordic cooperation in terms of conferences and journals as well as the role of computers in social life and in politics.

Paper topics include, among many others, themes such as the pioneering era in Norwegian scientific computing (1948 – 1962), the role of IBM in starting up computing in the Nordic countries, computers and politics, and Algol-Genius as an early success for high level language. Other topics include the birth of Simula, the Scandinavian school of information systems development, and the role of women in the pioneering years of Nordic computing.

This book is indispensable for teachers in computing in that it gives them an extended perspective on the topics they are teaching. It is also valuable for those interested in and working with historical analyses of Nordic computing. It contains original contributions from many pioneers of Nordic computing. These contributions form an excellent beginning to further historical investigations and analyses. The book also contains articles written by computer historians that make significant conclusions about decisions made regarding development of a computing industry in the Nordic countries.

Janis Bubenko, Jr. is professor emeritus of computer and systems science at the Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Sweden. John Impagliazzo is professor of computer science at Hofstra University in New York. Arne Sølvberg is professor of computer and information science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway.

Product Description
This is the first book of its kind to explore the "meaning" of the Internet. You will learn how the Internet, begun as a military project, took on a life of its own that is:shifting power from institutions to individuals; transforming our global economy by removing middlemen from all sorts of transactions; ensuring the free flow of information around the world; changing the way we thinkfrom linear to multi-dimensional; connecting and empowering people in ways never before possible; and creating millions of communities, linked together in one great, ever-changing global community. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (3)

The most influential book I ever read!
1998:A friend gave me this book and said: Read it!
I did, in one sitting, and it literally changed my life. I found the author the next day and we have been collaborating designing open source software to help build communities ever since.
2003: check ... - as Jan 1st we have weaved a web of trust interconnecting over 19,000 participants in 143 countries.
Read this book!And then go to ... - click on Apply and enjoy connecting!

The Internet As A Vehicle For Planetary Evolution
Victor's background as a hypnotherapist and technologist brings a rare and refreshing perspective to what the Internet is all about and the role it is highly likely to play in the future evolution of humanity.Bravissimo!

The Internet as a vehicle to finding our souls again!
Grey proposes that the Internet is serving a role in the evolution of human consciousness, a perspective I haven't heard from anyone else and one that I may never have considered. I can now envision the positive role it plays as we humans eventually rediscover our souls and ultimately transcend our present crises.His book has changed the way I look at the Web forever. ... Read more