Chicago 1990

"The University of Minnesota charged their gopher, and now we are all playing the ncsa (National Center for Supercomputer Application) mosaic of uiuc (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)."

Champagne City is quite far away from Chicago, two hundred kilometers, a group of people drove south, Andrew and Henry on the way gave Song Yakop some of the latest trends in the Internet industry.

However, the professional language in their words is a bit difficult to understand for Song Ya, and she can only interrupt, "Wait, wait, you can make it clear, what is a gopher? What is a mosaic? "

"Gopher is an application layer protocol based on tcp/ip. It has its own interface and retrieval system. Users can access the gopher server on the network through port 70 to find or download information. It's easy to use, but unfortunately there are more and more users. The network has started to congest, and the University of Minnesota will no longer provide free access since February."

Andrew explained, "Didn't our company just pay for the service? Don't you know? Some music circle information is very convenient to search through the gopher-based allmusic database."

Song Ya just glanced at this small expenditure and then signed the agreement. I remember a lot, but this is not the point, "Is it? What about the ncsa mosaic?"

"Ncsamosaic is a web browser based on it. It's still in the testing phase. We have participated in a voluntary program to help with suggestions or something." Henry said: "He is very cool and supports a graphical interface."

"It's very unstable." Andrew didn't like it. "The appearance is too fancy and useless. The plain text gopher client is already very smooth."

Song Ya half-understandably listened and asked. Time passed quickly. Under Andrew's guidance, Old Mike parked his car in a parking lot on the UIUC campus.

As soon as I got out of the car, there was a girl’s inhalation, "aplus?" The girls at this public university seemed to be much more cheerful than those at the University of Chicago. When they saw themselves, they covered their mouths and looked surprised, and then followed behind. Pointing, after gathering about five or six people, he plucked up the courage to gather around and ask for a signature.

"It's okay, Mike."

To stop the blocking old Mike, Song Ya smiled and quickly signed their names on their clothes or books.

"Will you get back with Fergie?"

"You really shouldn't be lured aplus by her girlfriend."

"Will you transfer here?"

The girls took the opportunity to ask various questions.

"It's nice to meet you, hello, yes, the weather is good today." Song Ya waved goodbye to them, some tall male athletes cast unkind eyes. The school's sports are also doing well, especially It was football and basketball. Of course, there would be no guys rushing to bully him now.

"Go this way." The two technical houses were familiar with the road and led him into the ncsa, a small red four-story building.

After registering in the visitor’s book, I walked into a computer room with two rows of computers. Some white men in raunchy plaid shirts were sitting in front of the computer, typing on the keyboard intently. They raised their eyelids when they saw the big stars coming in. Then keep busy.

"They are all volunteers who come to participate in exchange activities just like us, but they are actually here for fun."

Henry whispered, they were all familiar faces, and he used to greet those people affectionately, "Sit here." Andrew told Song Ya to sit down in front of a computer. The machine was turned on and there was only one lonely person on the screen. The gray browser client interface.

"I'll teach you how to operate."

Andrew started to teach, "Did you see the url bar above? You type, then the colon, then the double slash..."

Song Ya operated very smoothly, immediately followed by a dot after the double slash.

"You haven't played the World Wide Web." Andrew smiled, without thinking about it: "Click followed by ncsa, click, mosaic..."

After reporting the website, Song Ya hit enter without waiting for him to teach.

A webpage with a ncsamosaic graphic logo was quickly posted, "Here is very fast, we can't do it at home, this picture is unnecessary, it will always load for a long time..."

The technical houses are not without the fireworks, feeling that this big star really came to understand the cutting-edge technology, so one by one quietly gathered behind Song Ya to watch.

"Technology will move forward, and so will Internet speed." Some people disagreed. "Graphic interface, what you see is what you get is a big trend."

"You can use the mouse now." Andrew continued to teach.

"Oh."

Song Ya slid the mouse, randomly picked a blue hyperlink font, moved the pointer and clicked the left button.

The page jumped again, and then half-loaded and stuck, "Huh?" He looked at Andrew.

The technologists behind them laughed, "Normal, there are too many pictures on the page." Someone explained.

"You swipe..." Just as Andrew opened his mouth, he saw Song Ya skillfully move the pointer to the circular refresh icon with an arrow on the top of the client, and clicked.

The page loads from the beginning again.

"You must have played this." Henry was upset. He might feel that the boss is pretending to be a pig and eating a tiger. "No one will know what that icon is the first time I play it."

"Uh……"

Song Ya didn't want to explain to him the familiar feeling that he would have occasionally for no reason, "I don't know this at all, it's the first time I do it."

Still stuck in the middle of the load, he clicked the small triangle back button to the left of the refresh icon again, and the page returned to the previous homepage.

"These icons are easy to understand, right?" someone asked behind him.

"Yes." Song Ya replied, this familiar feeling should be caused by her own vague memory, so this kind of browser will become popular in the future? It is indeed possible to invest, but I heard that ncsa's funding is very sufficient, and the funding comes from the government, and it is related to the firm support of Senator Gore. It is impossible to accept external investors.

"Mark." Henry said to the person who just responded: "Is the graphics feature really not considered to be removed?"

"Henry, don't you talk about it, okay? HTML already supports the image function." The Mark responded.

"This is Mark Anderson, and ncsamosaic was done by him and Bina." Andrew introduced Song Ya.

"Hello there."

Song Ya threw away the mouse, stood up and shook hands with the other party. This Mark Anderson was even a few centimeters taller than himself, at least 1.95 meters tall, as burly as an athlete, and could not see that he was a programmer who could work at ncsa. It's more like that kind of white student who likes to bully weak pupils.

"Hello aplus, did you come to uiuc to play? Or does the University of Chicago have similar projects?"

The guy finished his handshake with alertness on his face.

"I don't know, I'm just a first-year student."

Song Ya smiled, "This browser is great, did you write it?"

"Yes, I and Bina, just two people."

Soon, another programmer, Bina, also came. This white man was a standard programmer, thin, wearing glasses, awkward at communication, and full of books.

A group of people stood up and chatted with their hands. Most of the time, the technical nerds gave various suggestions. The atmosphere of the discussion was very good.

"A beta version of 1.0 will be released in June."

Bina gave an approximate point in time, "At that time, ftp and gopher compatibility should be added."

Song Ya took the opportunity to pull Andrew and Henry aside, "Help me ask if they accept the investment, quietly." He said.

"This is ncsa..." The expressions on the two of them seemed to have heard a joke. "I thought you just wanted to learn about the frontiers of the Internet, boss." Henry said.

"UU reading www.uukanshu.comncsa doesn't pay attention to this browser, right? I gave it to two programmers. Is it not feasible to put it into commercialization?" Song Ya asked.

The two technical houses don’t understand about commercialization. "I’ll ask Bina. He is a full-time student. Mark is just an undergraduate who came to help." Andrew went to Bina to chat privately, but the other party refused directly. Up.

"Then you guys continue to keep in touch with this side." Song Ya had no regrets, but stayed for a while, and the more he operated, the more familiar he felt.

Back in Chicago, I kept thinking about the browser, "I have to find someone who knows how to ask." He called the founder of palm, Jeffrey Hawkins.

"Web browser, commercial?"

Of course, Hawkins knows how to do it, but he is not very optimistic. "Now those who engage in the Internet are idealists, all clamoring for freedom and free. The gopher at the University of Minnesota has not made any money after charging and has suffered a lot. Now network services are supported by funding from universities and research institutions. The military who used to engage in APANET did not seek money and could not find a profitable direction. Let’s concentrate on hardware aplus, our first-generation pda. The product is coming out soon. If you can invest in more money, maybe we can be one step ahead of Apple..."

This guy took the opportunity to start asking for money again.

But he doesn't know that he is also a shareholder of Apple now, hum, let your subordinates compete freely, whoever wins will do.

Song Ya hung up the phone, always feeling unwilling, remembering something again, and hung up the call to Liser, general manager of a+ pedal company.

"Have you forgotten the last time we talked about Silicon Valley real estate?"

Riiser is obsessed with land speculation, "Although land is acquired in Sunnyvale in the name of a high-tech project, a web browser is considered high-tech, right?"

This is a way, Song Ya pondered again.