1. Internet History: 1996-1998 BY: HOLLY SPENCER

2. Nokia releases the Nokia 9000 Communicator, the first cellphone with internet capabilities o Details: The Communicator part is driven by an Intel 24 MHz i386 CPU. It has 8 MB of memory, which is divided between applications (4 MB), program memory (2 MB) and user data (2 MB). The operating system is GEOS 3.0 o The Nokia 9000 is a major step for Nokia in the area of cellular data products and demonstrates our leadership in the area of wireless data communications o The Nokia 9000 Communicator was a cell phone that was a smartphone before the word was invented o It rolled all of the features of a computer into a phone, putting email, web browsing, fax, word processing and spreadsheets into a single pocketable device

3. HoTMaiL launches as one of the world’s first Webmail services, its name a reference to the HTML internet language used to build webpages o Outlook.com is a free web-based email service run by Microsoft. One of the world’s first webmail services, it was founded in 1996 as Hotmail by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith in California o Hotmail was acquired by Microsoft in 1997 for an estimated $400 million and launched as MSN Hotmail, later rebranded to Windows Live Hotmail as part of the Windows Live suite of products

4. Netflix launches as a company that sends DVDs to homes via mail. o Reed Hastings and fellow software executive Marc Randolph co- found Netflix to offer online movie rentals. o Netflix, Inc. is a provider of on-demand Internet streaming media available to viewers in all of North America, and most of Europe and of flat rate DVD-by-mail in the United States, where mailed DVDs are sent via Permit Reply Mail. o The company was established in 1997 and is headquartered in Los Gatos, California.

5. Google.com registers as a domain o Google.com is registered as a domain on September 15. The name—a play on the word "googol," a mathematical term for the number represented by the numeral 1 followed by 100 zeros— reflects Larry and Sergey's mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web

6. AOL launches AOL 4.0 and inundates American homes with CD-ROM mailers o AOL was the only major brand built with direct marketing. Major kudos to Jan Brandt and her team. They knew which words and colors were the most effective. And they were constantly trying to best their previous efforts. The Tide-colored CD marketing piece was the champion for a long time. People kept popping them in computers and signing up

7. The Dancing Baby, a 3D animation, becomes one of the first viral videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-5x5OXfe9KY