A lot of history in only a short time

By Peter Vogel

I suppose I've had high-speed Internet access at home now for around a decade.

Prior to that it was more than a decade of dial-up, going right back to, dare I say it, 110 baud modems, on early Apple computers, and even on a variety of Commodore and Radio Shack machines, as well as an IBM XT.

In those days a jump to 300 baud was a luxury, and then came 1,200. Surely it couldn't get any faster than that.

Of course those speeds kept increasing. Sitting on the shelf beside me I see unopened, still in its original shrink wrap, a Practical Peripherals 14,400 bits per second data and fax modem, a gift from Industry Canada in 1997 to accompany a teaching award.

Even federal departments charged with keeping Canada on technology's cutting edge didn't foresee the change in Internet access that began in this country about a decade ago. Anyone remember Telix, an early all-purpose modem/communications program, or Telidon, the government's videotext system?

In the early 1990s Internet service providers began to spring up like weeds, among them one of the biggest in Canada, Internet Direct. Most of those providers have disappeared; there have been many rounds of consolidation. My provider around that time, Internet Portal Services, was generally lauded for excellent service. It was eventually gobbled up by a Fraser Valley company called Uniserve, a company that still operates a large number of domains under their original names.

I still hold onto my portal.ca e-mail address, although it is difficult to say how much longer I will be able to. It may no longer be viable for Uniserve, and similar operations, to maintain domains with small numbers of clients.

Once broadband arrived in my neighourhood I signed up with the cable provider of the day, Rogers. Phone-based broadband arrived later, but for more than a decade I have remained on cable, which in B.C. switched to Shaw ownership in a territory swap between the two cable giants.

In Notre Dame high school, where I teach, we introduced broadband with the only service then available in the area in 1996, ISDN, a long-established stable system provided by Telus. It wasn't as fast as today's ADSL service but it was several years before that came to our part of East Vancouver.

The Telus ADSL business service in the school, save for a couple of problems, has been rock solid. We use it not only for inbound web browsing and mail, but also for outbound web hosting for many diocesan organizations. I'd certainly like to see improved outbound speed, but it turns out that there is nothing affordable within reach of the school. To improve our web serving speed we'd have to move up to a service costing nearly $1,200 a month.

Perhaps one of these days we'll be able to tap into the fibre optic feed that passes under the school's main parking lot entrance. Rumour has it that the feed, presently dark or inactive, is owned by Google. That search giant snapped up many of the assets of 360 Networks, a fibre-optic behemoth that went bankrupt.

Today my home broadband remains a Shaw connection, augmented a year or so ago with the Xtreme-I add-on for around $10 a month. For me, the jump to around 10 megabits per second (from 4 or so) is well worth the extra cost. Your mileage may vary.

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In conjunction with the big Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco a week ago, a CNET offshoot called Webware www.webware.com published a list of the top 100 web-based applications as voted by almost 2 million visitors over the past year.

Webware is essentially a site where computer users learn about practical and often cutting-edge web applications, be they for productivity (for example Google's documents suite or Microsoft's Office Live workspace), for data manipulation (for example Zillow or Google Maps), or for community services (examples include LinkedIn, MySpace, YouTube).

Webware's top 100 list (follow the link on the main page at www.webware.com) is an eclectic mix of the well known (think Firefox, iTunes, Facebook, Google) and the less familiar (consider Deviant Art (an online arts community), Friendster (possibly making a comeback), Gaia Online (graphically focussed social networking site for teenagers) and Maxthon (a popular browser in China).

Check out the top 100 page where you will find each application's logo displayed and linked to a description and review. Be sure to try out some of the more quirky products, such as RememberTheMilk www.rememberthemilk.com.

Although not on Webware's list you are bound to find an occasional use for a 10-minute e-mail address. If you are signing up for an Internet-based service that requires a validation e-mail and you are hesitant about using your regular e-mail address, try a short-life address at www.10minutemail.com. Use it and forget about it right after. No need to worry about spam.

Suggestions and comments about this column may be sent to peterv@portal.ca.