david's web-log

Here is a history of the umich.edu homepage. Courtesy of the Wayback Machine. Click on an image to enlarge it.

1996-1997
1997-2002
2002-2006
2006-present

Courtesy of http://www.motivationalbuck.com/create.aspx. Some credit goes to Hey Jenny Slater on the first one. (Click to enlarge.)

Create your own Jackson Pollock at http://jacksonpollock.org/. Nifty, eh?

(Click image to enlarge.)

If you didn’t notice, espn.com today came out with ads in the “ESPN Headlines” area of its website.
Now, I know this is how people monetize content online. That’s just how the internet works. But, it doesn’t mean I can’t find it incredibly annoying, too…

Note: I originally prepared this essay for a class in mid-October 2006. In the two weeks after its writing, Microsoft and Mozilla both released substantial updates to their browsers. This post, therefore, does not aim to give a rigorous comparison of the two browsers but rather persuade IE users that Firefox is a sensible alternative.
The [...]

In March 2006, the social networking site Facebook reportedly turned down a sale of offer of $750 million. According to various reports, creator Mark Zuckerberg was looking for at least $2 billion for the website, which was created less than three years ago on Harvard’s campus. This would trump the $580 million ponied up by [...]

This post references my paper of the same name, which goes into greater detail and can be found here on umich’s servers.
Network neutrality has recently emerged as one of the hottest issues in Washington. In fact, its popularity reached a peak in early-August when Jon Stewart of the Daily Show fame featured the topic on [...]

The internet was going to revolutionize our entire lives. At least that’s what they told us in the 1990’s.
Grocery stores? Merchandisers? Stock brokers? Travel agents? Obsolete and gone. No longer would you leave your house for one of these institutions – no, heck no. They would be just one click away. Everything you could have [...]

Coke vs. Pepsi. General Motors vs. Ford. Ohio State vs. Michigan.
Now, Google vs. Microsoft?
That’s right. The software bohemoth known as Microsoft is preparing for an epic battle against one of the internet’s most beloved little [or not-so-little-anymore] search engines. This all started several years ago when Bill Gates noticed that Google wasn’t looking for the [...]