1966 02 (Feb)

Apranet Founded.

ARPANET, as it would become, was not in fact a Command and Control System that would survive a nuclear attack, but simply a military computer network for sharing data across long distances. It influenced the creation of the Internet,

1974 May   TCP/IP proposed possibly the most significant development in Net history.

1984 Oct .com introduced

1987 June CompuServe developers released the GIF image

1990 Nov www proposed

1993 Feb But the first Web browser to really take off was called Mosaic.

1994 Late SSL Developed

1995 Apr Apache released

Half of the Web sites in existence use servers running Apache. It’s completely free, open-source HTTP server software, responsible for dishing out Web pagesApache fuelled an explosive growth of the Web, and up until around 2000, even Microsoft’s Hotmail ran on Apache.

1996 Dec Flash I.O.

1997 Dec R.S.S. Created

1971 Late Network Email

1976 Mar Royal Email

1978 May First Spam

1996 July Hotmail bornHotmail was the first major Web-based email provider, conceptualised by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith in 1995, launched in 1996, and bought by Microsoft in 1997 for $400m. The deal is a massive milestone in modern communicative history and extended what was previously only available behind an Internet service provider to any user on any networked computer in the world.

2004 Apr Gmail started

1979 Late Usenet convinced

1985 Mar The well

1988 Aug IRC created

1995 Feb First Internet phone

1996 Jun ICQ released

Although not the first instance of real-time chat via computer terminals, ICQ was the first global, GUI-based instant messaging client, and its popularity exploded in the late 90s. It was created by another Israeli company, Mirabilis, and was quickly acquired by AOL in 1998 for just over $400m, despite the fact that AOL ran its own IM network, AOL Messenger.

1989 Apr MP3 patented

1995 Feb Internet radio launches

1999 Jun Napster launches

2002 Oct Bittorrent i.o.

2005 Feb Youtube started

1994 MAY Sex.com registered

1996 Apr Internet archive

1998 Aug Google gets funding

1999 Nov SourceForge opens

2003 Apr itunes store launched

1993 May THE TECH

1994 FEB Yahoo born

1995 Jul Amazon starts up

2000 Jan AOL time warner

1995 Sep Javascript

1997 Dec Weblog coined

1999 Aug Blogger born

2001 Jan Wikipedia created

2004 Dec Digg launches

2000 Feb Mafiaboy attack

2005 Feb RIAA sues the dead

2005 Apr Shi Tao convicted

2006 May pirate bay raided

2007 May digg hexed

2005 Oct Sony rootkit

2006 Aug AOL Mail leak

2006 Oct Ipods shipped with virus

2007 Aug Viacom DMCA fail

2008 Aug Police porn mixup

Honourable mentions from ‘In the Beginning’
1978 – First BBS system online in America
1983 – FidoNet online
1984 – Cisco founded
1985 – .uk domain extension introduced

Honourable mentions from ‘Wiring the Web’
1981 – Hayes Communications creates the Smartmodem
1993 – CNET founded
1994 - First mainstream banner ad with click-through rates used
1995 - Internet Explorer created

Honourable mentions from ‘All About Email’
1982 - Dr Jonathan Postel proposes SMTP protocol
1989 - Lotus Notes email software released
1996 - Microsoft releases Internet Mail and News 1.0
1998 - BlackBerry 850 launches

Honourable mentions from ‘Welcome to the Social’
1991 - AOL begins development of AIM, releasing six years later
1998 - Open Diary launched
2002 - Friendster founded
2003 - MySpace relaunched as social network

Honourable mentions from ‘Online Media’
1991 - First networked webcam set up inside Cambridge University
1995 - RealAudio version 1.0 released
2007 - BBC iPlayer launched
2007 - iTunes launches DRM-free store with EMI on-board

Honourable mentions from ‘Web Property’
1994 - World Wide Web Consortium founded by Tim Berners-Lee
1995 - AltaVista search engine launched
1997 - First instance of BBC News Web site goes live
1997 - Heat.net gaming network starts up
1999 - Goatse.cx shocks unwary surfers
1996 - DoubleClick founded

Honourable mentions from ‘Web 1.0′
1995 - Boing Boing launches as Web site
1996 - JenniCam goes live
1998 - Hamster Dance launches
1999 - WebVan launches, just before epically failing
2000 - Dotcom bubble bursts

Honourable mentions from ‘Web 2.0′
2001 - b2, which became WordPress, is created
2004 - Flickr launches
2006 - Twitter launches
2006 - Facebook abandons college-only approach, allows anyone to join

Honourable mentions from ‘Law and Order’
1994 - Vladimir Levin $10.7m bank hack
2002 - Gary McKinnon arrested
2003 - RIAA mistakenly sues grandma for sharing gangsta rap
2007 - Jammie Thomas fined $220,000 for sharing 24 songs on the Net
2007 - Apple gets ThinkSecret shut down
2007 - AllOfMP3.com is clobbered

Honourable mentions from ‘Most Epic Fails’
2006 - Google accidentally deletes own official blog
2006 - Capcom gang bang URL controversy
2007 - iTunes accidentally leaks Stargate Atlantis