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I was just reminded as I read on an article about Jessamyn West that she was quicker to recognize the future of the internet than I had been.

The first time I ever saw the Internet with pictures was in Romania,” West said, adding that it must have been sometime in 1995. The Internet was created in the 1960s and early ’70s as a way for the American military to share information between computers. Information meant text.

In October 1995, a little-known group called the Federal Networking Council defined the term “internet” for the first time, paving the way for easier use by the public. “I remember seeing it and thinking, oh my god, this is going to be huge,” West said.

My first exposure to some of the power of the internet was in 1994. I had my own linux box running in my dorm room (I believe it was about version .98 of the kernel). With some friends, I had pulled together a database-backed gopher-based system called SIN (the Student Information Network) that allowed students to search for others based on common academic interests. We had the gopher running on port 666, and it allowed for students to list their academic interests and search by any word combination.

When I heard of Mosaic and saw it in practice, I was offended. Anybody could see that it was prettier than gopher. But it would have required me to learn yet another annoying programming language, and consider visual appearance (my arch-enemy). So I therefore rejected the new technology outright. I specifically remember in 1995 when one of my professors asked for my opinion about the newest technology, and I told him that things wouldn’t change much over the following five to ten years, because gopher had already been around quite some time, was easy, and had never caught on much anyway. My opinion was as skeptical as Clifford Stoll’s.

I didn’t catch on until 1998. In fact, in 1997, I was teaching physics at a technical college when one of my students, Brady, suggested to me that I should get a real job programming instead of slaving away in academia.

I followed his advice, and in early 1998 I was sitting around in an office of a microsoft subcontractor in Kirkland, Washington, writing Visual Basic Controls in templatized C++ for Windows CE. At this point, I finally took a good look at Microsoft, and its likely future, and the internet, and accepted that I’d clearly been proven wrong. I interviewed at Amazon.com and got a job there with the automated ordering systems.

I worked as a Computer Engineer at Amazon for a year, then took some time off from work. Since then, I’ve worked on and off but never had one single long-term full-time job.

I bought my first domain name while at Amazon.com, and for a while I had a blog in 2001-2; but then the webhost deleted the content when i was on a spiritual odyssey in India in 2003 and I was in denial of the lost page rank and power it had brought. A few years ago I started again, no page rank, no pages, no online reputation. And now I’m moving to drupal.

Indeed, over the past year, I’ve implemented several new sites based on drupal, and I think it’s a good system.

Although I do some custom php work for some clients (like AERO’s online Directory of Alternative Education I recommend in general that a new online presence be based on drupal unless there is a very good reason to use a different technology AERO’s Alternative Alumni Database that I built for them with drupal cost only a fraction of their custom Directory of Alternative Education.

Feel free to contact me about putting together an interesting drupal-based website for your business.

Yes, I was a late adopter, but not too late.

It’s not too late for you either.

By: By: Peter Palma

Palma SEO by Peter Christopher is your solution provider for website implementation. I specialize in drupal installation and search engine optimization consultation. Check out Drupal Hawaii website for more useful tips.

Article Source : I Was Late To Recognize The Internet, But Not Too Late : ArticleDashboard