Spring Internet World '99 has opened in Los Angeles at the LA Convention Center
and runs throughout the week with over 70,000 people attending (the conference
and expo outgrew the San Jose Convention Center 2 years ago!)
Keynoters this year include Sean Malony, Senior VP, Intel, John Chambers, President of Cisco Systems, Rob Glaser, CEO of RealNetworks and John
Sidgmore, Vice Chairman of MCI WorldCom.
Highlights here later this week. Visit The Internet World site.
1998: THE YEAR IN CYBERSPACE THUNDERS, WONDERS, BLUNDERS, PLUNDERS
1998 was an unforgettable year in cyberspace, full of web thunders, streaming
wonders, corporate mega-mergers, IPOs going through the roof, e-commerce
going still higher, Bill Gates blunders and Ken Starr and Congressional
plunders!
Special Persecutor Kenneth Starr and the U.S. House of Representatives became
the world's #1 pornographers, putting the whole cigar on the internet for all
to read, and ultimately impeaching the President, even as Congress passed the Decency
Act to safeguard kids from the very net pornography they themselves
published....
(http://www.salonmagazine.com) Salon, the internet magazine, outed House Judiciary
Committee Chairman Henry Hyde as an adulterer, as Larry Flynt outed and topled
incoming House Speaker Livingston the same way.....House Whip Tom DeLay,
with extreme cowardice, cut off his web email to anyone outside his right-wing
Texas constituency.
At Christmas, internet e-commerce went through the roof, beyond the best
expectations, as people were buying an estimated 10% or more of their holiday
purchases on the net.
And many of them were doing their gift shopping on their new under-$600
personal computers, with some companies like Korean emachine dropping their
price to $399.
Steve Jobs brought (http://www.apple.com) Apple Computers back from the dead with the IMac...at the end of 1998, the IMac was the top-selling personal
computer of the year!
At year's end, there were predictions from dire to ridiculous on the effect
of the Y2K Millenium bug on everything from banking to air traffic control as
clocks hit the year 2000....
and so it was as we entered the last year of this century!
