The First Ever Email, the First Tweet, and 10 Other Famous Internet Firsts

PA - Twitter founder Jack Dorsey's first tweet simply said, 'just setting up my twttr' (PA)

When was the first email sent, and who sent it? What was the first ad to ever run on a web page? How about the first picture uploaded to the Internet?

Here are 12 famous Internet firsts that were monumental in shaping web history.

1. The first email was sent by Ray Tomlinson to himself in 1971. "The test messages were entirely forgettable. . . . Most likely the first message was QWERTYIOP or something similar," he said.

Ray Tomlinson (Flickr via whlwcl)

2. The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com on March 15, 1985. Now it serves as a historic site.

Symbolics

3. The first website was dedicated to information about the World Wide Web and went live on August 6, 1991. Here's the url:http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html.

Info.cern.ch

4. The first picture ever uploaded on the web was posted by Tim Berners-Lee (inventor of the World Wide Web) on behalf of a comedy band called Les Horribles Cernettes.

Gizmodo via Motherboard

5. The first AOL Instant Message was sent by Ted Leonsis to his wife on Jan. 6, 1993.It read, "Don't be scared ... it is me. Love you and miss you."

His wife replied, "Wow ... this is so cool!" Leonsis later became AOL's Vice Chairman.

Ted Leonsis (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
6. Joe McCambley ran the first banner ad ever online. It went live in October 1994 on HotWired.com and it promoted 7 art museums, sponsored by AT&T.

7. The first item sold on eBay (back then it was AuctionWeb) was a broken laser pointer for $14.83 in 1995. The man who bought it told founder Pierre Omidyar he collected broken laser pointers.

Daily Mobile

8. The first book purchased on Amazon was Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought in 1995.

Amazon

9. The first sentence uttered on Skype was in Estonian in April 2003 by a member of the development team. It was 'Tere, kas sa kuuled mind?' or "Hello, can you hear me?" in English.

10. Mark Zuckerberg was the first person on Facebook with ID number 4 (the first three Facebook accounts were used for testing). The first non-founder to join Facebook was Arie Hasit (below), who is now in Israel studying to be a rabbi.

BuzzFeed

11. The first YouTube video posted was posted by co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. It was uploaded on April 23, 2005 and has been watched nearly 10 million times.


12. The first tweet was written by co-founder Jack Dorsey on March 21, 2006.

Twitter/@Jack

3 Secure Smartphones for Business

Check out three new models with souped-up security features.

If your mobile phone contains work documents, losing it can prove disastrous for you and your business. With that in mind, more hardware companies are rolling out supersecure models. We ranked the following phones, each of which features robust 256-bit encryption, by their souped-up security features.

HTC One
SecureThe new 5-ounce HTC One features advanced options for unlocking the phone's screen, including face detection and drawing a pattern. As with the other phones here, you can fully encrypt all data on the HTC One under Settings. The Android 4.1.2 phone has front- and rear-facing cameras, a bright 4.7-inch screen, and a superfast Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 processor. Another plus? The phone lasts for an impressive 18 hours of talk time. Cost: $199 for 32GB of storage and a two-year contract with Sprint, AT&T, or T-Mobile

Samsung Galaxy S 4More secure
This 4.6-ounce Android 4.2 phone includes Knox, a feature that provides extra security for work-related files and apps. Using the free Samsung for Enterprise service, your IT staff can wipe phone data remotely and require a strong password to unlock the screen. The S 4 also offers advanced unlock options, including face detection. The phone, which has a large 5-inch display and front- and rear-facing cameras, will be available this spring through several carriers, including AT&T and Verizon. Information on battery life and pricing was not available at presstime, but comparable Samsung models have retailed at $199 for 16GB of storage and a two-year contract.

BlackBerry Z10Most secureThis 4.8-ounce phone has a built-in, highly sophisticated security feature, BlackBerry Balance, that separates and secures work and personal information on the phone. (For example, it prevents users from pasting contents of work emails into emails in personal accounts.) IT staff can add and remove work apps remotely. The phone has a 4.2-inch touchscreen and front- and rear-facing cameras, and it lasts for about 10 hours of talk time. It comes with apps for Linked­In and Dropbox. Cost: $199 for 16GB of storage and a two-year contract from AT&T or Verizon

Facebook Home Hits 500K Downloads In Five Days, Pales In Comparison To Instagram’s Android Shift

It would appear that Facebook Home has just surpassed 500k downloads on Google Play since launching on the platform five days ago on April 16. The app’s Google Play listing notes the milestone, and Ben Evans confirmed on Twitter.

Facebook Home isn’t so much of an app as a user interface for the phone, putting Facebook smack dab in the center of Android user’s smartphone experience. Users with Facebook Home can post status updates and view the newsfeed straight from the lock screen, and conduct messaging without ever being interrupted thanks to Chat Heads.

In essence, it’s Facebook’s push past being an app like every other app and being a central force of the smartphone, a launch pad. Hopes are seriously high, as foreshadowed by Zuckerberg’s sweaty brow at the announcement, but word had originally circulated that users weren’t all that into Facebook Home around launch day.

Clearly, that’s not true as the app has garnered over 100,000 downloads a day since launch. Still, these aren’t blow-out numbers. Remember when Instagram launched on Android, and hit over 1 million downloads in a day? And then hit over 5 million downloads in six days? Yeah, those were blow-out numbers.

You also have to consider that Facebook has over a billion users, so 500K doesn’t really move the needle.

But in Facebook’s defense, the Home application is only available on select devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S III, Galaxy Note II, HTC One X, and the HTC One X+, along with the Facebook Phone itself the HTC First.

Oh, and Facebook is now quite happy for Instagram’s success on Android, after that slight $1 billion acquisition.

Tags: facebook home, facebook, instagram