in the world with links to further reading.

June 1993 > Acrobat Reader and the PDF format

Adobe launched PDF (Portable Document Format) in June 1993, with
Acrobat Reader (free, to read PDF documents) and Adobe Acrobat (for a
fee, to make PDF documents). As the "veteran" format, PDF was perfected
over the years as a global standard for distribution and viewing of
information. It "lets you capture and view robust information from any
application, on any computer system and share it with anyone around the
world. Individuals, businesses, and government agencies everywhere
trust and rely on Adobe PDF to communicate their ideas and vision"
(excerpt from the website). Adobe Acrobat gave the tools to create and
view PDF files, for a number of languages and platforms (Windows, Mac,
Linux). The Acrobat Reader was available for PDAs, beginning with the
Palm Pilot (May 2001) and the Pocket PC (December 2001). Between 1993
and 2003, over 500 million copies of Acrobat Reader were downloaded
worldwide. In 2003, Acrobat Reader was available in many languages and
for many platforms (Windows, Mac, Linux, Palm OS, Pocket PC, Symbian
OS, etc.). Approximately 10% of the documents on the internet were
available in PDF.

July 1993 > The E-zine-list

What exactly is a zine? John Labovitz, founder of the E-zine-list in
1993, explained on his website: "'Zine' is short for either 'fanzine'
or 'magazine', depending on your point of view. Zines are generally
produced by one person or a small group of people, done often for fun
or personal reasons, and tend to be irreverent, bizarre, and/or
esoteric. (...) An 'e-zine' is a zine that is distributed partially or
solely on electronic networks like the internet." 3,045 e-zines were
listed in November 1998, with e-zines spreading like fire. "Even the
term 'e-zine' has been co-opted by the commercial world, and has come
to mean nearly any type of publication distributed electronically. Yet
there is still the original, independent fringe, who continue to
publish from their heart, or push the boundaries of what we call a
'zine'."

November 1993 > Mosaic, the first public browser

Developed by the NSCA (National Center for Supercomputing Applications)
at the University of Illinois (USA) and distributed free of charge from
November 1993, Mosaic was the first browser for the general public and
contributed greatly to the development of the web. In early 1994, part
of the Mosaic team migrated to the N