Portal:Internet

The Internet Portal

The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a network of networks that comprises private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries a vast range of information services and resources, such as the interlinked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, discussion groups, internet telephony, streaming media and file sharing.

Most traditional communication media, including telephone, radio, television, paper mail, newspapers, and print publishing, have been transformed by the Internet, giving rise to new media such as email, online music, digital newspapers, news aggregators, and audio and video streaming websites. The Internet has enabled and accelerated new forms of personal interaction through instant messaging, Internet forums, and social networking services. Online shopping has also grown to occupy a significant market across industries, enabling firms to extend brick and mortar presences to serve larger markets. Business-to-business and financial services on the Internet affect supply chains across entire industries. (Full article...)

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ScienTOMogy was a parody web site lampooning Tom Cruise's involvement with Scientology, initially hosted at the domain name scientomogy.info. The site was created in 2005 after increased media publicity surrounding Cruise's appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Today Show. ScienTOMogy gained press attention after it was contacted by the Church of Scientology with a cease and desist letter, alleging copyright infringement over use of the word "Scientomogy", claiming that it was too close to the word "Scientology". The proprietor of the site initially agreed to relent to the Church's demands, but after consulting attorneys, instead decided to keep the site. Internet traffic to the site later increased dramatically as a result of the media and press attention surrounding the Church of Scientology's alleged copyright infringement claims.

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Credit: Benutzer:Benson.by

"All your base are belong to us" (often shortened to "All Your Base", "AYBABTU", or simply "AYB") is a broken English phrase (see Engrish) that sparked an Internet phenomenon in 2001 and 2002, with the spread of a Flash animation that depicted the slogan. The text is taken from the opening cut scene of the European Sega Mega Drive version of Zero Wing, a Japanese video game by Toaplan.

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Bomis, Inc. (/ˈbɒmɪs/, from Bitter Old Men in Suits; rhyming with "promise") was an American dot-com company best known for supporting the creations of free-content online-encyclopedia projects Nupedia and Wikipedia. It was co-founded in 1996 by Jimmy Wales, Tim Shell, and Michael Davis. By 2007, the company was inactive, with its Wikipedia-related resources transferred to the Wikimedia Foundation.

The company initially tried a number of ideas for content, including being a directory of information about Chicago. The site subsequently focused on content geared to a male audience, including information on sporting activities, automobiles, and women. Bomis became successful after focusing on pornography. "Bomis Babes" was devoted to erotic images; the "Bomis Babe Report" featured adult pictures. Bomis Premium, available for an additional fee, provided explicit material. "The Babe Engine" helped users find erotic content through a web search engine. The advertising director for Bomis noted that 99 percent of queries on the site were for nude women.

Bomis created Nupedia as a free online encyclopedia (with content submitted by experts) but it had a tedious, slow review process. Wikipedia was initially launched by Bomis to provide content for Nupedia, and was a for-profit venture (a Bomis subsidiary) through the end of 2002. As the costs of Wikipedia rose with its popularity, Bomis' revenues declined; these losses were compounded by the dot-com crash. Since Wikipedia was a drain on Bomis' resources, Wales and philosophy graduate student Larry Sanger decided to fund the project as a nonprofit. Sanger was laid off from Bomis in 2002. Nupedia content was merged into Wikipedia, and it ceased in 2003.

The non-profit Wikimedia Foundation began in 2003 with a board of trustees composed of Bomis' three founders (Wales, Davis, and Shell) and was first headquartered in St. Petersburg, Florida, Bomis' location. Wales used about US$100,000 of revenue from Bomis to fund Wikipedia before the decision to shift the encyclopedia to non-profit status. Wales stepped down from his role as CEO of Bomis in 2004. Shell was CEO of the company in 2005, while on the Wikimedia Foundation board of trustees. Wales edited Wikipedia in 2005 to remove the characterizations of Bomis as providing softcore pornography, which attracted media attention; Wales expressed regret for his actions. The Atlantic gave Bomis the nickname "Playboy of the Internet", and the term caught on in other media outlets. Scholars have described Bomis as a provider of softcore pornography. (Full article...)

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WikiProjects

Main project: WikiProject Internet
Related WikiProjects: Blogging • Websites • Early Web History • Internet culture

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... that Starface was the first album in 19 years to receive a 0/10 score from Pitchfork?
... that the symbol of Slender Man originates from the web series Marble Hornets?
... that a Florida man in his 70s claims an internet following of Gen Zers?
... that a great-nephew of Queen Elizabeth II posted thirst traps on social media?
... that the sex-oriented blog Fleshbot received more than one million views in the week it was launched?
... that the Brazilian online newspaper Migalhas published a book by Supreme Court justice Luís Roberto Barroso under its own publishing house?

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Danah Michele Boyd (or danah boyd, born Danah Michele Mattas in 1977), is an American academic, researcher, and blogger best known for media appearances where she speaks about social networking sites such as Friendster and MySpace. Since 2003, she and her research have been quoted on the subject of social networking in dozens of different articles in media sources such as NPR, Wired, MSNBC, USA Today, Newsweek and The O'Reilly Factor. She was also the subject of a major profile in The New York Times in 2003 and the Financial Times in 2006. She initially studied computer science at Brown University where she worked with Andy van Dam, and then pursued her Master's Degree in sociable media with Judith Donath at the MIT Media Lab. She advanced to Ph.D. candidacy in the UC Berkeley School of Information in 2006, and will be a non-resident fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society for the 2007-2008 academic year.

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The following are images from various internet-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1
Number of Internet hosts worldwide: 1969–2019
Source: Internet Systems Consortium. (from History of the Internet)
Image 2info.cern.ch, the first website, in 2025 (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 3Wi-Fi range diagram (from Internet access)
Image 4Postage stamp of Azerbaijan (2004): 35 Years of the Internet, 1969–2004 (from History of the Internet)
Image 5T3 NSFNET Backbone, c. 1992 (from History of the Internet)
Image 6
Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 7
Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 8Where the WEB was born (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 9Stamped envelope of Russian Post issued in 1993 with stamp and graphics dedicated to first Russian underwater digital optic cable laid in 1993 by Rostelecom from Kingisepp to Copenhagen (see also: Internet in Russia) (from History of the Internet)
Image 10
Internet users in 2023 as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 11The "message block", designed by Paul Baran in 1962 and refined in 1964, is the first proposal of a data packet. (from History of the Internet)
Image 12First Internet demonstration, linking the ARPANET, PRNET, and SATNET on November 22, 1977 (from History of the Internet)
Image 13Robert Cailliau, Jean-François Abramatic, and Tim Berners-Lee at the tenth anniversary of the World Wide Web Consortium (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 14
Internet users in 2023 as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 15BBN Technologies TCP/IP Internet map of early 1986 (from History of the Internet)
Image 161997 advertisement in State Magazine by the US State Department Library for sessions introducing the then-unfamiliar Web (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 17Wi-Fi logo (from Internet access)
Image 18The digital divide measured in terms of bandwidth is not closing, but fluctuating up and down. Gini coefficients for telecommunication capacity (in kbit/s) among individuals worldwide (from Internet access)
Image 19The NeXT Computer used by Tim Berners-Lee at CERN became the first Web server. (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 20Map of the TCP/IP test network in February 1982 (from History of the Internet)
Image 21Satellite Internet access via VSAT in Ghana (from Internet access)
Image 22Internet Connectivity Access layer (from Internet access)
Image 23
Mobile broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from Internet access)
Image 24
Fixed broadband Internet subscriptions in 2012
as a percentage of a country's population
Source: International Telecommunication Union. (from History of the Internet)
Image 25The corridor where the World Wide Web was born, on the ground floor of building No. 1 at CERN (from History of the World Wide Web)
Image 26
Broadband affordability in 2011
This map presents an overview of broadband affordability, as the relationship between average yearly income per capita and the cost of a broadband subscription (data referring to 2011). Source: Information Geographies at the Oxford Internet Institute. (from Internet access)

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I mean, you go to the Internet and you can see all these conversations and arguments that our fans have about our music and that's wonderful to know, that people would take the time to be that involved.

— Alex Lifeson, 1998

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Main topics

Internet

Articles: Application layer; ARPANET; Blog; Browsers; CERN; Collaborative software; Computer file; Computer network; Computer networking; DARPA; Data (computing); Electronic commerce; E-mail; English on the Internet; FidoNet; File sharing; History of the Internet; HTML; HyperCard; Hyperlink; ICANN; Instant messaging; Internet access; Internet capitalization conventions; Internet censorship; Internet Control Message Protocol; Internet democracy; Internet Exchange Point; Internet Governance Forum; Internet privacy; Internet Protocol; Internet protocols; Internet research; Internetworking; Massively multiplayer online role-playing game; Mosaic (web browser); National Center for Supercomputing Applications; Net neutrality; Online chat; Peering; Remote access; Transmission Control Protocol; Scale-free network; Search engine; Security; Social network service; Unicode; Uniform resource locator; User agent; User Datagram Protocol; ViolaWWW; Virtual private network; VoIP; Web browser; Web resource; Web service; Wide area network; World Summit on the Information Society; World Wide Web

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