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first web browser. In 1991, the Web was operational and radically
changed the way people were using the internet. Hypertext links can now
move from a textual or visual document to another one using a simple
mouse click. While becoming interactive, information became more fun to
use. Later on, this interactivity was further enhanced with hypermedia
links that could link texts and images with graphics, video or music.
The World Wide Web Consortium was founded in October 1994 to develop
protocols for the web.

January 1991 > Unicode, an encoding for all languages

First published in January 1991, Unicode "provides a unique number for
every character, no matter what the platform, no matter what the
program, no matter what the language" (excerpt from the website). This
double-byte platform-independent encoding provides a basis for the
processing, storage and interchange of text data in any language, and
any modern software and information technology protocols. Unicode is
maintained by the Unicode Consortium, with its variants UTF-8 (UTF:
Unicode Transformation Format), UTF-16 and UTF-32, and is a component
of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) specifications. In 2008, 50% of
all the documents available on the internet were encoded in Unicode,
with the other 50% still encoded in ASCII, a 7-byte or 8-byte encoding
dating back from 1968.

January 1993 > The Online Books Page, a list of free ebooks

Founded in 1993 by John Mark Ockerbloom while he was a student at
Carnegie Mellon University (in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), The Online
Books Page is "a website that facilitates access to books that are
freely readable over the internet. It also aims to encourage the
development of such online books, for the benefit and edification of
all." John Mark Ockerbloom first maintained this page on the website of
the School of Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University. In 1999,
he moved it to its present location at the University of Pennsylvania
Library, where he is a digital library planner and researcher. The
Online Books Page offered links to 12,000 books in 1999, 20,000 books
in 2003 (including 4,000 books published by women), 25,000 books in
2006, 30,000 books in 2008, and 35,000 books in 2010. The books "have
been authored, placed online, and hosted by a wide variety of
individuals and groups throughout the world", with a number of books
from Project Gutenberg. The FAQ also gives copyright information about
most countries