Chapter 406 Mosaic

"The University of Minnesota has charged for their Gopher, and now we are all playing NCSA (National Center for Supercomputer Applications) Mosaic at UIUC (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)."

Champaign is quite far from Chicago, two hundred kilometers, and the group drove south. On the way, Andrew and Henry gave Song Ya the latest trends in the Internet industry.

However, the professional terms mixed in their words were a bit difficult for Song Ya to understand, so he could only interrupt, "Wait, wait, please clarify, 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 search or download data. It is very useful, but unfortunately there are more and more users. The network started to get congested, and the University of Minnesota stopped providing free access in February."

Andrew explained, "Didn't our company just pay for the service? You don't know? Some information about the music industry can be found through the gopher-based allmusic database, which is very convenient."

This kind of small expenditure, Song Ya probably glanced at it for a while and then signed and agreed. How can I remember a lot, but this is not the point, "Really? What about the ncsa mosaic?"

"ncsamosaic is based on the World Wide Web browser, and it is still in the beta stage. We have participated in the volunteer program to help out with suggestions." Henry said: "It is cool and supports a graphical interface."

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

Song Ya half-understood and asked while listening, the time passed quickly, and under the guidance of Andrew, the old Mike parked the car in a parking lot on the uiuc campus.

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

"It's okay, Mike."

Stopping the old Mike who stopped him, Song Ya smiled and quickly signed their names on the clothes or books for them.

"Are you going to get back together with Fergie?"

"You really shouldn't be seduced by her best friend aplus."

"Are you going to transfer here?"

The girls took the opportunity to ask various questions.

"Nice to meet you, hello, yes, the weather is good today." Song Ya waved goodbye to them with clichés, and some tall male athletes cast unfriendly glances. It's football and basketball. Of course, there will definitely not be any guy rushing to bully him now.

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

After registering in the visitor book, they walked into a computer room with two rows of computers. Some unkempt white men in plaid shirts sat in front of the computers, concentrating on typing on the keyboard, and raised their eyelids when they saw big stars coming in. Then keep busy.

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

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

"I'll teach you how to do it."

Andrew began to teach, "See the url bar above? You type, then a colon, then double slashes..."

Song Ya operated smoothly, and immediately followed the double slash with a dot.

"Didn't you play the World Wide Web?" Andrew smiled, and didn't take it to heart: "Click followed by ncsa, click,

Mosaic..."

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

A webpage with an ncsamosaic graphic logo quickly popped up, "Here is fast, we can't do it at home, this picture is unnecessary, it will always take a long time to load..."

The technology geeks are not indifferent to the fireworks in the world. They feel that this big star is really here to understand the cutting-edge technology, so they quietly gather behind Song Ya to watch.

"Technology will move forward, and so will the speed of the Internet." Some people disagree, "Graphical interface, what you see is what you get is the general trend."

"Now you can use the mouse to operate." Andrew continued to teach.

"Oh."

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

The page redirected again, then got stuck halfway through loading, "Huh?" He looked at Andrew.

The technical geeks behind laughed, "It's normal, too many pictures are used on the page." Someone explained.

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

The page is loaded again from scratch.

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

"Uh……"

Song Ya didn't want to explain to him the familiar feeling of deja vu that she occasionally had for no reason, "I don't know this at all, it's really the first time to operate."

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

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

"Yes." Song Ya replied, this familiar feeling should be caused by his 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 has sufficient funding, and the funding comes from the government. It is also related to the firm support of Senator Gore, and it is impossible to accept external investors.

"Mark." Henry said to the person who spoke back just now: "Is the graphics function really not considered to be removed?"

"Henry, don't mention this, can you? HTML already supports image functions." The man named Mark responded.

"This is Mark Anderson. The ncsamosaic was completed by him and Beena." Andrew introduced Song Ya.

"Hello."

Song Ya put 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 he couldn't tell that he was a programmer who could work in NCSA. It's more like the kind of white student who especially likes to bully weaker classmates.

"Hello aplus, are you here at UIUC? Or is there a similar program at the University of Chicago?"

The guy finished the handshake with a wary look 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, me and Bina, just two of us."

After a while, another programmer, Bina, also came. This white guy has a standard programmer appearance, thin, wearing glasses, clumsy in communication, and bookish.

A group of people stood up and chatted, most of the time it was the technical geeks who made various suggestions, and the atmosphere of the discussion was very good.

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

Biner gave an approximate time point, "Functions such as compatibility with ftp and gopher should be added by then."

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

"This is ncsa..." The expressions of the two really seemed to have heard a joke, "I thought you just wanted to learn about the cutting-edge trends of the Internet, boss." Henry said.

"Ncsa doesn't pay much attention to this browser, right? I just gave it to two programmers. Is it not feasible to release it for commercialization?" Song Ya asked.

The two technical geeks don't understand commercialization, "Let me ask Biner, he is full-time, and Mark is just an undergraduate student who came to help." Andrew went to have a private chat with Bina, and the other party directly refused up.

"Then you continue to keep in touch with this place." Song Ya was not without regrets, and stayed to play for a while, and the more he operated, the more inexplicably familiar he felt.

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

"Web browser, commercial?"

Hawkins is of course knowledgeable, but he is not very optimistic. "Those who engage in the Internet are idealists, and they are all clamoring for freedom and free. The gophers of the University of Minnesota did not make any money after charging. .Now network services are all supported by the funds of universities and research institutions. In the past, the military engaged in Arpanet did not seek money, and could not find a direction to make profits. Let’s focus on hardware, aplus, our first generation pda The product is coming out soon, if you can put some more money in, maybe we can be one step ahead of Apple..."

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

But he didn't know that he was also a shareholder of Apple now, hum, let the subordinates compete freely, whoever wins will do.

Song Ya hung up the phone, always feeling unwilling, and then remembered something, and hung up the phone to Riise, the general manager of a+ pedal company.

"Did you forget the last time we talked about Silicon Valley real estate?"

Riser never forgot about land speculation, "Although the land is acquired in Sunnyvale in the name of a high-tech project, web browsers are considered high-tech, right?"

This is a way, Song Ya pondered again.