The first 100 .Com domain names

A blogger has gone through the trouble of tracking down the first 100 .Com domain names registered. So if you were wondering which companies were the first to jump on the Internet bandwagon your in luck. The list is pretty interesting, both because of who is on it, as well as who isn't.

Check it out: The 100 oldest domains on the internet.

Via WebbAlert: Webb Alert

Internet Trolls are evil tricksters

I found this essay on the Internet troll over at drewspeak. It's a complete analysis and commentary on the practice of trolling. If you haven't encountered the trolls, then you really haven't spent much time on message boards, or at least don't bother reading the comments sections of some of the bigger blogs. Trolls are those people who deliberately start arguments for no reason other than that they can. They purposefully go around insulting and attacking people from behind their partial Internet anonymity.
The statement "don't feed the trolls" means don't respond to their comments and attacks. By responding, you are giving them exactly what they want.
Here is a quote from the essay:

“The troll comes to the door of a new forum and sets down his bag of tricks. If he has a grudge against the people inside discussing and debating their passions with a certain degree of amicability, peacability and decorum, he does not show them. He has the cracked, stoic smile of Robin Goodfellow, a Puck with the simple desire to disrupt peace itself. He loves chaos; his bag is full of golden apples he can lob to set the masses squabbling. He has also many masks, smoke bombs, straw men, cloaks, puppets, matches, ethanol, knives, dust, sand, and magicks of the most arcane sort. He knows what he is about - causing trouble. Why? This is the troll’s darkest mystery - if any one knew his secret, he would die. For all trolls, their motive power is this: without contraries, they cannot progress.”

Read the entire essay here: The Internet Troll As The Trickster Archetype Via Boing Boing

Internet Censorship maps

The OpenNet Initiative is an organization that tracks and monitors Internet censorship. On their website you can test individual URLs for blocking, and also see interactive maps of censorship throughout the world. Each country and region is rated and what type of content it censors is laid out in detail. The methods and agencies by which the censorship is enforced are also described in detail. All in all, a pretty useful site if you are interested in Internet censorship.

Check out the official site: OpenNet Initiative
Found Via Boing Boing: OpenNet reveals the global Internet censorship trends

Mapping the Blogosphere

Matthew Hurst, a scientist at Microsoft Livelabs, has collected data on how Blogs interconnect. He used that data to generate maps showing the different ways that news and people travel from blog to blog. The map above represents data collected over six weeks.
The maps are pretty cool looking. The white dots on the map above, are the most active blogs. As you can see, most of the other blogs connect to the active ones in some way.

Check out the Discover article: http://discovermagazine.com/2007/may/map-welcome-to-the-blogosphere
See Matthew's Blog for more maps and more info: Data Mining: Text Mining, Visualization and Social Media

The Internet is no longer mostly guys

It seems that women now outnumber guys online. The percentages are 48% to 52%. So the difference isn't huge, but it is significant. Especially when you look at the growth statistics. Since 2000, female Internet usage has risen 12% and male usage has only risen 3%. According to the research, the difference also likely to remain that way in the future. I find this is interesting, mainly because the IT and gaming industry is still so male dominated. That means that unlike in previous years, the use of the Internet is no longer centered around IT and gaming. So what is it centered around?

Via Slashdot: Females Outnumber Males Online and eMarketer: More Women Online