Website Nostalgia

It's sort of hard to get nostalgic about websites, for a couple of reasons. First, the World Wide Web hasn't been around that long, just since 1989, and I doubt that too many of the people reading this blog entry were actually surfing the web in 1989. The mid '90's is when most of us ventured out into "cyberspace" as it was called then. So must of us have only been surfing for a decade and a half. It's hard to get nostalgic about something that isn't that old.

Moreover, even if you DID have a favorite site way back in 1998, you can't really relive the experience by going to the site today. Over the last 11 years that web site, if it's still around at all, has been redesigned probably 4 or 5 times. You can't go back.

Or can you? Thanks to the Wayback Machine at the Internet Archive, you can type an address in and see what websites looked like years and years ago. Visit microsoft.com as it looked on February 22, 1999, and note that it proudly trumpets that Windows 98 was the best selling software of the year 1998. Visit Amazon.com from March of 2000 and note that there were only about 8 different Amazon online departments, instead of the dozens online now. Or visit Yahoo.com from 1996 and see a site in its infancy.

Those sites appeal to the general population, I guess. For me, though, I enjoy seeing my school district's website from 1998, which was right about the time I took over the district site.  I wasn't sure then and I'm not sure now what the leaves were supposed to represent. I also like visiting the high school's website circa 2002, when my Integrated Web Design class was creating and updating the website. And the first web address I ever typed into a web browser was NBC.com in 1996, and it pretty much looked like this.

You can play around yourself at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

Cloud Computing

I'm always amazed at my inability to see the "big picture" sometimes when it comes to technology...

...I first heard the term "cloud computing" probably ten years ago, and it sounded like the dumbest idea in the world to me at the time. "One day," I remember reading, "you won't purchase software and install it on your computer. Instead, the software will be available over a network like the Internet, and you'll pay a subscription to use that service." How dumb, I thought. I want to buy software ONCE and OWN it, not keep paying to use it.

The problem, though, is that software never works that way. After a year or two a new version of the software comes out, and the new version has new features that you want or need, and the only way to get it is to buy the new software.

Cloud computing, though, elminates that problem, as well as eliminating a lot of other problems, too. But it's always been difficult to explain.

The federal government, though, has announced a major initiative to introduce cloud computing in federal offices, and they've created a web site that explains the process. The website is http://apps.gov/, and once the page loads, on the right, there's a little video that explains what cloud computing is. Maybe this video will make cloud computing understandable for people who have better vision than I do.

Sometimes I'm on the Kids' Side

I was frantically called on the phone by a teacher at one of the schools a couple of years ago. She said that something was terribly wrong with all of the computers in her computer lab. When I asked her what the problem was, she said, "All of the screens are backward!"

"What do you mean 'backward'?" I asked.

"I don't know!" she said. "They're all backward!"

I couldn't get any more intelligently out of her, so I told her I'd get to her lab as quickly as I could. About ten minutes later I walked over to the computer lab at the school. I walked in and immediately laughed. The screens weren't backward. They were upside down. Some students had gone into the graphics properties on the computers and rotated the display on every one of them 180 degrees. The displays were upside down.

And the teacher's solution: she had turned all of the monitors upside down so that the displays would be correct. The monitors were rolling back and forth on top of their curved tops with the stands flailing back and forth in the air. And kids were sitting in chairs trying to type on these monitors.

"What are you laughing about?" the frazzled teacher laughed. "Do you see what I mean? They're BACKWARD!"

"I'm sorry I laughed," I said sincerely. "It's just that...well..you have the monitors upside down!"

"What else was I supposed to do?" she yelled at me. "I have classes to teach!"

"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry. And you did what you had to do to get back to teaching. I think it's great that you found a solution. Here," I said, pointing her to one of the computers where no student was sitting, "let me show you what's wrong." I got on the computer and showed her how to rotate the monitor's display.

"Oh my God!" she exclaimed. "That's so easy! How did you know how to do that?"

I shrugged and smiled. "It's what they pay me for. I can help you get the rest of these fixed if you'd like."

"No, no, no," she said. "I can do the rest of these! I'm just glad you came over. How do you think something like this could have happened?"

I glanced over at the students. Two boys in the corner were trying hard to stifle their laughter. They weren't very successful. "I don't know," I told her. "It could be several things. My guess is that there was some kind of update to the graphics card that was downloaded automatically last night and that might have done something. I wouldn't worry about it. You know how to fix it, and unless it keeps happening," I said as I raised my eyebrows and shot a meaningful glance at the two boys, "I wouldn't spend too much time on it."

"Well, thanks again!" she said, and I thanked HER for being willing to rotate the other monitors herself, and I went out the door.

Why didn't I call out the kids for what they did? Technically, they were vandalizing the equipment. They had violated the "Acceptable Use Policy" that they had signed. They could have been given discipline ranging from detention to a ban from computers for the rest of the year. Why didn't I give them the punishment they'd earned?

The answer is simple: when I was a student, I would have done the same thing.