Web at 25: What World Wide Web means to me?

To mark 25 years of World Wide Web, I am here to share how I began using internet and how I use it today. Over the last 25 years, web is evolved and became part and parcel of our day-to-day life.

I started using internet sometime in 1999. Initially I was just using internet to communicate with people who are far off by sending e-mails and chatting using Yahoo! Messenger; both email and chat applications are my favorite. I still remember my excitement when I sent my first email to my well-wisher Sumit Agarwal and he responded welcoming me to the era of internet. Through email itself, I have made several friends around the world including my present manager Victor Tsaran🙂 Instant messenger too helped to enter into the area of Accessibility; one of our conversations over a instant messenger (MSN) got me an employment with Net Systems Informatics (India) Pvt. Ltd.,.

Then I developed interest to create an online presence for myself and share my thoughts and that gave me an opportunity of learn to create simple websites using readymade templates and on free hosts. I have hosted my first website as srinivasu.itgo.com. This interest of developing websites is something I carry with even today. Presently I own about four websites and also I help others creating their web presence.

Then my usage of internet has grown and today I use it for everything like reading reviews of a product, booking travel and stay, banking, research, get my knowledge updated, share interests, social networking, video conferencing, teaching, shopping, bill payments.

In fact the modern web such as social networking helped in my career life too. LinkedIn helped me to find my job at Yahoo! India and Twitter (Thanks to Dennis L helped me to find my job at PayPal.

Today web is not only available to desktop users but also available on multiple devices such as mobile and tablets. In fact, I use computer for my job work and mostly use mobile and iPad for social networking, reading news and leisure, writing blogs, bill ayments, travel bookings etc., Some of the apps on iOS that I use almost on day-to-day basis are:

  • Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook and WhatsApp for social networking
  • E-mail, Skype – Communication
  • Stocks, Currency Converter, Concur, eTrade, Citibank, SBI – Banking and financial related
  • Google Maps – navigation
  • eBay – Shopping
  • Zite, Flipboard, Sakshi, TOI, BBC – News
  • Flickr – photography
  • Weather – weather forecast
  • Chesswise – playing chess
  • iBooks – reading books
  • YouTube, watching movies, videos etc.,
  • … and many more.

In fact the technology is so handy that recently we have visited my grand mother who is about 96 years, along with our daughter and we were able to share the picture of my grand mother, Hema and our daughter to my brother and other relatives through WhatsApp. Another instance is while I was at work, I could receive all latest updates from around the world through news apps like Sakshi, BBC.

Overall, I cannot imagine a world without internet. Like the inventor of the World Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee pointed out in his video on Web At 25, close the eyes and think for a while how the world would be without world wide web!

WWW has a long way to go. In twenty five years, web grown from simple pages to dynamic and interactive web applications and I’m excited to imagine how the world wide web would be at its 50 years!!

Happy surfing, blogging, sharing and networking!! Happy birthday World Wide Web and Thank you Sir Tim Berners-Lee!

While signing off, here are links to my websites:

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