Timeline

From londongeek

Jump to: navigation, search

Contents

1984

  • JANET (Joint Academic Network) launched.

1991

  • JANET [TCP/IP] service launched.
  • BBC register bbc.co.uk.

1992

  • June - Demon Internet launched. The UK's first (?) ISP, pioneering the "tenner-a-month" price. [+VAT :-)]

1993

  • City of London Telecom launches first Telco service.

1994

  • London Internet Exchange is formed by BT, Demon, EUnet GB and PIPEX
  • Telegraph Online launched (November I believe, and it was branded as "the electronic telegraph"). Also has ISP service provided by Demon - First of many VISPs.
  • April: First series of The Net on BBC2. First TV show, certainly in Europe, possibly anywhere to display a URL of a Web site for back-up info managed by BBCNC, and first TV show in Europe to ask for feedback via e-mail. (This was within the first 1000 web sites worldwide)
  • JANET increases bandwidth to Pipex from 64Kbps to 1Mbs in response to above.
  • University Of Plymouth ( aka Plymuff ) starts 'Computer Systems and Networks' BSc Degree - The first Network / Comms Eng / Computing hybrid Degree in the country.
  • Cyberia, 'world's first internet cafe' (except for that other one in Canada), launched.
  • December - Issue One of dotnet, the internet magazine published.

1995

  • March - BBC Radio 1 Interactive Night brings down much of JANET and Pipex network for extended periods one Sunday evening due to traffic.
  • April -- BBCNC team trial Real Audio streaming client in UK, the first attempt to use this outside Seattle. Later, the same month, the BBCNC team announces free web pages on the Pipex Worldserver for BBCNC members.
  • Demon introduces vPOP (virtual Point of Presence) service using Energis as Telco. Enabled virtual local numbers to be dialed into, eventually became basis for 0845 non-geographic numbers.
  • Peritas Online Training site launched (still running)
  • Demon Internet licenses 1st Real Server in UK and netcasts from Live '95 (was Progressive Networks in those days and only audio).
  • November -- Chotankers, the first BBCNC international associate member pages, are approved by the BBCNC team. GOOGLE discussion forum archives show Chotankers first published documents from defeat of a Disney history theme park planned for Prince William County, Virginia.

1996

  • March = Easynet floats on the AIM

1997

  • Feb - WiredUK folds (read [//www.spesh.com/danny/wireduk/ this])
  • March - [//www.ntk.net/1997/03/21/ First] NTK sent out
  • July - COLT launches Internet Service
  • Bill Gates appears at Macworld in a manner that reminded a lot of people of the 1984 superbowl commercial by Apple.
  • September - First [//www.proteinos.com/ninfomania Ninfomania] sent out by [//www.protein.co.uk Protein]
  • December, just before Christmas, DorlingKindersley announce huge wave of redundancies, thus starting the .com careers of a couple of hundred x-dkers

1998

  • March - Demon sold to Scottish Telecom for ?66.6M
  • April - EasyJet sells plane tickets online
  • July - Tesco, the supermarket, launches free ISP
  • September - Acorn Computers Ltd. ditch desktop production to focus on STBs, leaving the Acorn computer market in disarray
  • September(ish) - Freeserve launched, first large-scale 'free' ISP
  • October - LastMinute launched, and bookpages.co.uk turns into Amazon.co.uk
  • November - OnDigital launched with a ?90 million advertising campaign

1999

  • Acorn rename themselves to Element 14, and are later bought by Pace Micros.
  • February - void launched
  • February - boo.com takes on first employees
  • October (?) QXL floats. Shares rise massively and then plummet.
  • early November - boo launches
  • November 23rd -The VALinuxLetter goes out inviting around 3000 Linux developers (including several London.pm folk) to participate in their forthcoming IPO and MAKE MONEY FAST!!1!
  • December (?) ebookers floats simultaneously on 2 stock exchanges. Site only live for a month before the float. Similar result to QXL.
  • 31 December 1999: FTSE100 reaches peak of 6,930.2 (it's downhill from here)
  • NTL claim to have launched some kind of service to someone, somewhere in Manchester.

2000

  • May - Digex opens Data Centre in London
  • May 18th boo goes bust (but it's ok, there are lots of jobs around still)
  • July - PSINet starts first stage of implosion, stock price at one point ~~US$70 plummet to ~~US$32 and slowly spiral downwards.
  • September? - PSINet shares hit about US$1.5, and later drop so low that they drop off NASDAQ
  • December - Beenz says it wants to "move its focus away from the Internet", and lays off London staff

2001

  • February - Fotopic launches public service
  • Sept - deepend goes into voluntary liquidation. employees go into involuntary redundancy
  • Sept 11th - world goes into economic meltdown (as do most news servers).

2002

  • Blog usage hits critical mass
  • April - Beeb closes.
  • June - RoyalBankOfScotland initiate taking 100% ownership of WorldPay, having boosted shareholding through their acquisition of Natwest Bank, buying out remaining shareholders PSINet and EnergisSquared plus various private holdings, leaving some small-investor staff hurting from their losses.

2003

  • February - Cyberia finally staggers to its knees and closes its doors after 8 years. Only to be sold to a Korean delegation who plan to reopen it as a Korean hairdresser and billiard hall. Oh, and internet cafe.
  • May/June? - Productivity dropped around london, as the londongeek.org [[[wiki]]] was born
  • June - Halifax and Abbey National ditch WAP banking
  • SCO sue IBM over alledged stolen pieces of UNIX code which have apparently turned up in the Linux kernel.
    • SCO send letters a number of big companies who use linux that they can still keep doing so as long as they buy SCO's linux. Somewhere in a field in Lincolnshire, a cow is overheard to say 'FUD!'.
    • Novell, on the other hand, claims that they never sold copyright or patent rights to SCO in the first place.
    • Microsoft buy a SCO Unix License, not that they have any use for it it: They're just paying SCO for their hard FUD work.
    • To add insult to injury, rumours circulate that the code in question was actually stolen by SCO from Linux, could the GPL finally have it's day in court?
    • IBM own 30,000 patents and can afford whole fleets of lawyers.
    • SCO clearly just want to be bought.
    • And this changes nothing much in London.

2004

  • Nothing appears to be happening
Retrieved from "http://londongeek.org/index.php/Timeline"
Personal tools