Trivia: Smiley & "Frowny" Emoticons

In its Events That Shaped The Wired World section, Wired magazine credits Scott Fahlman with first using the Smiley :-) & "Frowny" :-( emoticons in electronic messages.

On Sept. 19th, 1982, he had proposed on the computer-science department bulletin board at Carnegie Mellon University that the smiley be used as a joke marker & "frowny" to mark things that are NOT jokes.

Scott came up with the idea after reading “lengthy diatribes” from people on the message board who failed to get the joke or the sarcasm in a particular post.

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Facebook embarrassment

A Facebook update of an acquaintance who expressed solidarity with the cause of Children dying from Cancer, showed up thus -

Also see:
See what Google is suggesting
See what Google is suggesting - II

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History of Apple

Did you know, Apple was founded on April Fool's day in 1976 by Jobs, 21, & Wozniak, 25.

This is how their first product Apple I looked like -

Check out NY Times' History of Apple in pictures.

Also see:
Google Timeline
History of Microsoft
The Apple Museum - 30 years in 2 minutes

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HOW TO sarcastically tell someone to google for their answer

Before Google became popular, it was common to see the expression RTFM (or in polite terms, Read The Fine Manual) used in internet forums if a poster asked a question without doing any homework. These days it is more common to see messages directing such users to Google or Bing instead of the manual.

LMGTFY.com (the word LMGTFY represents the initial letters of "let me google that for you") is one among a bunch of sites that sarcastically explains how to use Google. It lets a responder create a shortened URL for a saved search query for a question that a poster may have posed without putting any effort to solve it by himself.

The popular Q&A site, StackOverflow discourages impatient responders from posting LMGTFY-like links.

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Story behind “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog” cartoon

In an interview with New Yorker magazine cartoonist Peter Steiner, CartoonBank blog (dead link; I picked this content from their feed) asked him: 

Your cartoon, “On the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog,” is one of the best-selling New Yorker cartoons of all time – and, since it was published in the early days of the Internet (1993), it is considered a prescient sign of changing times. Can you tell us the back story of this cartoon? At the time, did you have any idea how significant it would become, or did the image of two dogs logging on just strike you as funny?

He answered: I didn’t even think it was that good. I put the two dogs there and then I put the caption, and it became this huge phenomenon.

So there is no story after all, behind this famous illustration in Internet history 

Peter Steiner is also a novelist & a former professor

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Inside: Google on National Geographic channel

Trivia from the "Inside: Google" program that I got to see last week on National Geographic channel in my part of the world (India) -

• Google has plans for taking the cloud to the sea. It has a patent for a "water-based data center"
• Their offices have whiteboards everywhere & a lot of note-taking is done electronically
• Googlers don't just get free food at office but also services like free laundry & haircuts
• Many of the popular Google products like Google Earth, Docs (Writely), YouTube, Blogger are acquired

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Job ad in HTML source code

While looking at the HTML source code of a page on The Register, I noticed a link to a job opening -

Talk about targeted advertising!

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15 years of Internet Explorer

Last month, Internet Explorer turned 15. Here's a timeline of IE releases based on excerpts from seattlepi's article on the history of IE -

IE1 was born when Microsoft got a license from Spyglass Inc. for the source code of Mosaic -- the first graphical Web browser technology. Microsoft launched IE1 in August 1995 as part of the Windows 95 Plus! pack, a $49 add-on for the landmark operating system.

IE2 came in November 1995, and by April 1996 it also was available for Windows NT, Windows 3.1 and Macintosh. Users could buy it as part of the Internet Starter Kit for Windows, which cost $20.


It wasn't until Internet Explorer 3.0, in August 1996, that Microsoft introduced the "blue E" logo we all know now.

IE4 was the Big Mama. Released in September 1997, Microsoft soon bundled it with Windows 98 -- a practice that took IE's market share from less than 20 percent in late 1997 to about 60 percent by 1999.

IE4 introduced Microsoft's Trident layout engine, which is still in use today in Internet Explorer.

Microsoft continued to eat away at Netscape's usage with Internet Explorer 5.0, which was officially released in March 1999 and was another major player in United States v. Microsoft.

IE6 shipped with Windows XP in 2001.

Microsoft itself has since likened the 9-year-old browser to old, spoiled milk, urging users to upgrade to the current version, Internet Explorer 8.

Internet Explorer 7, though it represented a big leap for Microsoft's browser, wasn't as widely used as IE6. Launched in October 2006, it included tabbed browsing, support for RSS and protection against phishing -- features popularized by rival Mozilla's Firefox.

By the time Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 in March 2009, Chrome was on its second version and had a market share of about 2 percent.

The beta of Internet Explorer 9 is expected on September 15, 2010.

Related:
A Brief History of the Web
The History of Microsoft

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Some lesser known Google tricks

Crowdsourced answers to questions on "Hidden features of  product/service X" on the StackOverflow family of sites, make for interesting reading. I picked a few tips & trivia I didn't know earlier, from a similar thread on Google Search -

1. The calculator feature in Google understands not just numbers but also words. This query would still return the correct answer -
(five plus seven) divided by six

2. Searching for "population germany" will display a chart as the first result -

(Note though that Wolfram Alpha can do more complex mathematical calculations & give more detailed answers for search terms like population germany. )

3. The results for define:camouflage are different from en:en camouflage. The latter returns a dictionary-style definition of camouflage

4. Searching for anagram gives an interesting "did you mean?" suggestion, and a query for ASCII Art also has an unexpected effect.

5. Another poster informs that inserting the letter 'l.' before 'google.com' in the URL of Google or any subdomain and get to the same site, e.g.:
video.l.google.com
mail.l.google.com

This way, you can still watch videos even if your filter blocks video.google.com

6. The Google Labs feature Experimental search makes Google keyboard-friendly.

Related:
Bing + Wolfram | Alpha = Cool
.

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Channel 9 "But Why?" Series

Did you know the alternative names that were initially thought out for Windows were "Interface Manager" & "Microsoft Desktop"?

What's in a name? A lot, in retrospect.

If you are interested in oddities and little known answers to mysterious questions about Microsoft products, check out the Channel 9 "But Why?" Series from the folks who brought you "The History of Microsoft"

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SQL Server DATENAME function returns Month number instead of name?

I recently came across a query posted by a puzzled developer -
Why does SELECT DATENAME(MONTH,GETDATE()) return '09' instead of the obvious result of 'September'?

The DATENAME function, after all, returns a character string representing the specified datepart of the specified date.

It turns out that if the language environment is set to Japanese, Korean or Traditional/Simplified Chinese (during installation or using SET LANGUAGE), months are stored as numerals instead of words for those languages & that's how they show up.

This can be verified by running the sp_helplanguage system stored procedure which reports information about a language.


Also see:
HOW TO find a column's value without specifying the column name

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See what Google is suggesting

Google does not seem to keep the secret questions we ask anonymously to itself :-)




... nor does it mind poking fun

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Selecting multiple attachments at once in GMail

I came across the multi-select attachments in GMail feature by accident but later found that this has been documented or rather blogcumented. You have to hold down the Ctrl key and click on each file you want to attach to your message.

However, there is a twist. This feature works in all browsers (IE, Safari, Chrome, Opera) except Firefox, the browser I normally use with GMail.


In Firefox it shows the File Upload control while in other browsers, it displays the Open dialog box to choose files.



No wonder I've been missing that feature all these days.

Related posts:
HOW TO easily verify your website design in different browsers/OSs
HOW TO test a web page in different versions of IE
HOW TO make web pages "cross browser"

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Software industry inspires cartoonists & vice versa

Nikhil recently posted a Dilbert comic strip on 'featuritis'. He wished the comic strips were available with full text search, something I would love as well. It would be cool if search engines had a feature to return cartoon strip images matching keywords in them.

It is interesting how the software industry has inspired cartoonists and vice versa. Here is a list of Dilbertisms related to computers & Internet -

• Keyboard Plaque - The disgusting build-up of dirt and crud found on computer keyboards.
• Mouse Potato - A couch potato with broadband.
• Three-fingered Salute - The Ctrl+Alt+Delete combination required to reboot old versions of DOS, bring Windows 95 back to the real world, and log on in Windows NT/2000/XP.
• Chips and Salsa - Chips = hardware, Salsa = software, as in 'Well, first we gotta figure out if the problem's in your chips or your salsa'.
• Screenager - An online teen (18-24) that grew up in front of a TV or computer screen.
• PEBKAC - Fault code used by helplines and call centres. Stands for 'Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair' - ie, a meatware issue.
• Percussive Maintenance - Beating an electronic device with a stick in an attempt to get it to work again.
• Uninstalled - Euphemism for being sacked. Heard on the voice-mail of a vice president at a downsizing computer firm, eg: 'You have reached the number of an Uninstalled Vice President. Please dial our main number and ask the operator for assistance' (also quoted as 'de-installed') (Synonym = decruitment).
• 404 - Clueless. From the HTTP error code 404 (page not found).
• Alpha Geek - The most knowledgeable, technically proficient person in an office or work group.
• BSOD - Known by Microsoft as a 'stop error' and by everybody else in the world as the 'Blue Screen Of Death', this is Windows' number one way of spoiling your day.

Keeping up with the times, the Dilbert site has a Mashups feature that lets registered users replace Scott's punchline with their own. The text is filtered for obscenities and converted into &@*$#!s. Not just that it even let's other user's rank, comment on user submitted ideas and flag offensive content.

"I’m surrendering myself to the realities of the Internet," Scott Adams is reported to have said. "People can already doctor strips. We’re just making it easier so people have more reason to visit the site."

Randall Munroe creator of XKCD on the other hand doesn't use submitted comic ideas.

Also see:
Al Jaffee's MAD mag Fold-Ins in Flash

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Keyboard shortcuts common to Firefox & IE 8 (Beta 2)

The trouble with giving advice is people want to pay you back. - Alfred Neuman

I'm glad most of my favorite keyboard shortcuts in Firefox 3 and IE 8 (Beta 2) are similar. Here is the list including some IE specific shortcuts:

Command	Shortcut
Back	Backspace or Alt+Left Arrow
Forward	Alt+Right Arrow
New tab	Ctrl+T
Undo Close Tab	Ctrl+Shift+T
Switch between tabs	Ctrl+Tab/Ctrl+Shift+Tab
Reload/Refresh	F5
Full Screen	F11
Caret Browsing	F7
Toolbar Search Box	Ctrl+E
Zoom In	Ctrl++
Zoom Out	Ctrl+-
Clear Private Data	Ctrl+Shift+Del
Go to Location/Address Bar	Ctrl+L
Go to Search box	Ctrl+E
Find	Ctrl+F
Find Next	F3
New Window	Ctrl+N
Close Tab	Ctrl+W
Open link in new background Tab	Ctrl+Left Mouse Button
Private Browsing (introduced in IE8 & Firefox 3.5)	Ctrl+Shift+P
Add "http://www." to the beginning and ".com" to the end of text in address bar	Ctrl+Enter
Page down/Page up	Space/Shift+Space
Open Download Manager	Ctrl + J
IE specific shortcuts
Developer Tools	F12
Open Quick tabs	Ctrl+Q
Open new InPrivate Browsing window	Ctrl+Shift+P
Duplicate/Clone tab	Ctrl+K

Did you know the keyboard shortcut to open a new tab in Opera was once Ctrl+N? It was changed to Ctrl+T on popular demand.

Talking of Opera, here is some trivia (source: Wikipedia) -

Håkon Wium Lie, chief technical officer of the Opera Software company is the creator of the CSS web standard.

With version 8.5 (released in 2005) the advertisements were removed entirely and primary financial support for the browser came through revenue from Google (which is by contract Opera's default search engine).

Opera technology is now found in Adobe GoLive, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, and other components of the Adobe Creative Suite

..a development build of Opera's layout engine, Presto, scores 100/100 on the Acid3 standards compliance test and renders the test correctly. However, it does not actually pass the test due to slow performanceAlso see:
My Favorite Visual Studio 2005 & SQL Server 2005 Keyboard Shortcuts

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HOW TO find approximate time when a web page was posted

For certain time-sensitive info on the Web to be useful, it helps to know when a particular web page was posted.

Google now extracts and shows the byline date from pages that have one. The byline dates are presented uniformly even though they may be in different formats.

Search Google by providing the URL of the web page whose posting date you want to find. If this does not help, try the Internet Archive Wayback Machine.



Related link:
HOW TO get back a missing web page or website

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