Things you possibly didn't know about the Internet

The internet is so part of our life, that even if you want to do the annual income tax return for the government, we have to have the computer and the Internet. In addition we have a bunch of many other public services in our hand 24 hours a day. But little by little this technology came up to our life that today we can say that "We Cant Live Without".

However if we rewind some points about the Internet, we have some interesting facts:

- As in Brazil the soup operas are very popular, the first time that was mentioned the term was at "Explode Coração" in 1995, at that time a few people (almost anyone) had connection to the network.

- The radio took 38 years to reach an audience of 50 million people; the TV took 13 years; and the internet only 4 little years.

- When we think about a research on the Internet, the Wikipedia is one of the first links of the result. But before Wikipedia there was the Nupedia, and it was created by the same people in March of 2000 and lasted until September of 2003. The main difference between Wikipedia and Nupedia was the rigorous selection  of articles, and all were done by specialists like PhD. Nowadays, Wikipedia has more than 17 million of articles, and more than 680 thousand of those are in Portuguese (data of March 30, 2011).

- The e-mail we know today was created by a guy called Gary Thuerk in 1971. Before that, it was only possible to send messages by e-mail using computers that were connected to each other. What did he write in that first e-mail?? ... Neither he remembers!!

- After having invented the first e-mail, of course someone invented the first spam. In 1978 a guy called Gary Thuerk, marketing manager of the Digital Equipment company, had an idea to send an advertising e-mail to the the masses.

- The first item sold at eBay was a broken laser pen by 14 dollars. Nowadays eBay is one of the biggest platform of sales in the World.

Well, there are a bunch of many other interesting histories about this fantastic tool of communication that changed the World forever and the way we see the World.

Main reasons why small companies don't have backup plan

Nowadays there are many ways to backup your data, and now there are one more option that is the Cloud. Even though, many small and medium companies still keep not having implemented a backup plan, and consequently put their data in risk.

There are some researches about this subject, as the one conducted by Symantec revealing that more than 57% of the small and median companies have no plan in case of data loss. Another research conducted by Carbonite pointed out that half of companies suffered unrecoverable data loss.

With so many ways to implement it, why do these companies still keep working without backup plan?
Small companies in general are very busy with many things at the same time, and backup plan is just one more thing, not giving the right importance.

A few reasons are giving in this concern when asked to entrepreneurs:

- It's too expensive: Costs are always the first excuse for small companies that need to take the most of each penny spent. But on the other hand, to have a data loss and not able to get back to work would be the worst. But its also true that with big amount of data, the cost of backup would be quite expensive.

- This will never happen to me: This means that not because you are not on the route of natural disasters like hurricane, floods, etc that will never happen. There are others that happen very often like robbery, fire, physical hardware problems and many others quite susceptible that might occur when you least expect it.

- I just forgot to look for it: Usually entrepreneurs are very busy doing many things simultaneously, and take care of this is just one more duty that can have low priority. But this is not anymore a good excuses since there are many tools that perform synchronized automatic backups.

- Keeps my computer slow: This is very linked with anti-virus programs and old backup programs that in the past used to keep the computers slow due to the high processor and memory consuming. However today there are good tools that work in background, with many options including the one to run only when the computer is idle, as well as the possibility to schedule to run at night.

- I don't want my information in the cloud: Many companies really dislike the idea of having information somewhere out of the company. They feel more comfortable keeping the data at home, but as part of the good backup plan, at least one copy of your data must be out of the office in order to be recoverable in case you can't reach the office.

- I don't have IT department: Some professional devices designed for big amount of data really need someone with skills to operate, but many other solutions are designed specifically for small companies to be simple and easy to use and requires very little knowledge to implement.

- It's in my pen-drive: Many people do that, but most commonly as a personal backup, and the dangerous point here is that not always you have a full daily backup stored in this cheap and portable device. Another weak point, usually people keep this device with the computer, or on the desk, and definitely makes the strategy a big point of failure.

There are still many other excuses why companies don't implement backup strategy. But a few questions are raised: How much value do you give to your information? How much time do you need to have a full restore of your information? Do you keep up-to-date your equipment? and lastly, how much money do you invest on Information Technology?

Technologies that will disappear in the next few years

Technology advances very quickly and things that were common ten years ago (CRT televisions, fax machines) are falling into disuse so scary. At this rate, we can predict some current products that possibly will disappear in the next years. The reason for this is because the features are being embedded in other devices, but also the business model has changed.

- GPS: Nowadays, portable navigation devices are shared visions on the panels and windshields of cars. And more, mobile phones are coming with this feature and does many other things, and why not to say better. The free and famous program, the Google Map Navigation is one of the best programs concerning to this area, and can justify the reason of drop in sales of navigation program in 2010 with more than 22%. But we are talking about the GPS for driving purposes, the ones very popular for end users.

- CD/DVD ROM: With the advent of Internet, we can download practically all we need, like programs, videos, games and many other things we have stored in CD/DVD. With the high speed that providers are offering, its much easier and cheaper downloading what we need instead of sending the package to your home and wait for the delivery service. In addition, we are not counting the risk of losing the package or even have the media scratched.

- Netbook: smaller, lighter and cheaper than notebooks, the netbooks were for a short period the best choice for the ones that were looking for something cheaper, portable and with internet access. With weaker processors and tiny screen the netbooks were kind in imperfect solution. Notebooks kept the evolution with faster processors and more than five hours of battery use, but some new gadgets came up, such as smartphones and now the tablets that are much more suitable and accessible to supply the need of internet navigation, entertaining and simple computing functions.

We can quote some more devices, such as e-readers, so popular for reading but now threatened by the tablets that also provide many other things. And why not to say the wireless internet routes, where service providers are offering cable TV, optical fiber, satellites, high speed internet on mobile phones and why not to have the wireless service too?!?!

Not only devices like these are being threatened, but many others in our daily use we don't realize they can be replaced by something more powerful or even the change of habit.
The subject is widely polemic, but in the next few years we'll see which of them still survived!!