Previous: 1997 / Next: 1999 Timeline Intro              SERVICES & TECH Feb.10, 1998 -- XML (Extensible Markup Language) is recommended by the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) as a general-purpose markup language.    April 1998 -- It is announced that $500 million in industry support has been pledged for the development of the next-generation Internet, called Internet 2. April 1998 -- A study in the journal Science reports that even the best search engines index no more than 34% of the 320 million available webpages. NEC Research Institute scientists report that search engines index the following percentages of the Web. Hotbot -- 34% AltaVista -- 28% Northern Light -- 20% Excite -- 14% Infoseek -- 10% May 1998 -- The U.S. Justice Department sues Microsoft, accusing it of monopolistic practices against competitors. May 20, 1998 -- The Bluetooth Special Interest Group is announced. Bluetooth is an industrial specification for wireless personal area networks. "Bluetooth provides a way to exchange information between wireless devices such as personal digital assistants (PDAs), mobile phones, laptops, computers, printers, digital cameras via a secure, low-cost, globally available short-range radio frequency band." June 1998 -- The Windows 98 operating system is released by Microsoft. June 1998 -- A report from CommerceNet and Nielsen Media Research announces that the number of Internet users over the age of 16 in the U.S. and Canada has reached 79 million. "Will Net appliances edge out PCs?" PC World / CNN, June 22, 1998. "The joys of curling up with a good digital reading device." Steve Silberman, Wired, July 1998. "A History of List Servers." John Buckman, 1998. Aug. 1998 -- Apple computer begins selling its new iMac (Internet Mac) computer. When We Were Young: In the Golden Age of ASCII, Kids could be King." Wired, Sept. 1998. The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) is founded. ICANN is responsible for the global coordination of the Internet's system of unique identifiers. Oct. 1998 -- The Alexa company, which has been preserving Web pages since 1996, donates two terabytes of historical Web content to the Library of Congress. The donation is in the form of an interactive digital sculpture that includes text, images, and audio files from the Web. Fifty percent of U.S. homes have personal computers. In 1995 the number was just 27 percent. The change was driven by strong sales of lower priced computers. (Source: Dataquest market research) Nov. 24, 1998 -- America Online announces that it will acquire Netscape Communications Corporation in a stock deal valued at $4.2 billion. AOL will also enter into a strategic alliance with Sun Microsystems. "Connecting with Intranets." Presstime, Dec. 1998.             THE MEDIA News Example: Jan. 1998 -- The story of President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky demonstrates how the Web is changing journalism. After the Drudge Report breaks the news, a media frenzy follows in both the online and traditional press. (Source: Poynter's Links to the News) "Video Comes to The World Wide Web." AJR, Jan./Feb. 1998. March 1998 -- The New Century Network and its NewsWorks search engine are closed down. This consortium of newspaper companies was founded in 1995. "Internet News Takes Off." Pew Research Center, June 8, 1998. News Example: Aug. 26-28 -- The Charlotte Observer uses a weblog to report the story of Hurricane Bonnie. (Source: "Dispatches from Along the Coast." and "Blogging Bonnie", Chip Scanlan and Jonathan Dube, Poynter Online, Sept. 18, 2003.) Sept. 13, 1998 -- The New York Times website is attacked by hackers calling for the release of Kevin Mitnick, an imprisoned computer criminal. Times officials shut down the site after the break-in is discovered, and they restore most of their site within nine hours. A variety of meta news search engines such as TotalNews and NewsTrawler are available on the Web in 1998. These services regularly index current content from Web news sources. A few of these search engines also serve as archives. "Online Circle Time."  Presstime, Oct. 1998. Nov. 18, 1998 -- The AvantGo mobile information company announces that it will provide news from Knight-Ridder's Real Cities network to handheld devices such as the PalmPilot. Additional news providers include The New York Times, C/NET, and the Wall Street Journal. "Finally, A Peek at Profits: Some News Sites Find the Formula." CJR, Nov./Dec. 1998.                       Awards The 1998 Editor & Publisher EPpy awards (Archived list of winners) The 1998 NAA Digital Edge Awards (Archived list of winners) 1998 Webby Awards (Archived list of winners)  Statistics Nov. 1998 -- A Jupiter Communications survey reports that more than 80% of U.S. online consumers trust online news as much as they trust newspapers, broadcast television, and cable news outlets. Dec. 1998 -- The Pew Center reports that the number of people who get news online at least weekly continues to grow, starting from 4% in 1995 to between 15% to 26% in 1998. Statistics fluctuate related to what is happening in the news. There are approximately 74 million Internet users in the United States. The America Online dial-up service has 15,000,000 subscribers. (Source: AOL) There are approximately 1280 television stations with sites on the Internet or dial-up services. (Source: Editor & Publisher) There are approximately 3250 newspapers with sites on the Internet or dial-up services. (Source: Editor & Publisher) Additional Resources See Also: New Media Bibliography and other Poynter resources about online journalism

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