The year 2000 was marked by "the explosion of mobile technology. The mobile phone has become for many people, including me, the personal communicator which allows you to be anywhere anytime and still be reachable. But the mobile internet is still a dream. The new services on mobile (GSM) phones are extremely primitive and expensive (WAP = Wait and Pay)."
What has happened since one year? Henk wrote in July 2001: "I am experiencing a tremendous change with having a 'broadband' connection at home. To be connected at all times is so completelely different from dial-up. I now receive email as soon as it arrives, I can listen to my favorite radio stations wherever they are. I can listen to the news when I want to. Get the music I like all the time. (...) The only thing which is missing is good quality real time video. The bandwidth is too low for that.
I now have a wired and a wireless LAN [Local Area Network] in my home. I can use my laptop anywhere in the house and outside, even at the neighbors and still being connected. With the same technology I am now able to use my wireless LAN card in my computer when I travel. For instance, during my recent visit to Stockholm, there was connectivity in the hotel, the conference center, the airport and even in the Irish pub!
Ten years later, in June 2011, Henk explained: "I have always followed the development of ebooks with much interest, as a professor in communication systems and an organizer of study tours in Silicon Valley. I didn't use them much during 40 years, because of the lack of progress in reading devices. I never liked reading a book on a computer or PDA. Now, with tablets like the Kindle of the iPad, I am finally reading ebooks. I see a huge expansion of digital reading with tablets that are easy to use and with a very large choice of ebooks thanks to electronic commerce and companies like Amazon."
What has he been working on lately? "I am a serial entrepreneur who is creating a start-up in the field of mobility. I use the internet all the time to find partners and ideas. We also use online books to learn the art of innovation!"
2001 > WIKIPEDIA, A COLLABORATIVE ENCYCLOPEDIA
[Summary] Wikipedia was launched in January 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger (Larry resigned later on) as a global free collaborative online encyclopedia, financed by donations, with no advertising. Its website is a wiki, which means that anyone can write, edit, correct and improve information throughout the encyclopedia, with people contributing under a pseudonym. The articles stay the property of their authors, and can be freely used according to Creative Commons or GFDL (GNU Free Documentation License). Wikipedia quickly became the largest reference website. It was in the top ten websites in December 2006, and in the top five websites in 2008. In May 2007, Wikipedia had 7 million articles in 192 languages, including 1.8 million articles in English, 589,000 articles in German, 500,000 articles in French, 260,000 articles in Portuguese, and 236,000 articles in Spanish. Wikipedia celebrated its tenth anniversary in January 2011 with 17 million articles in 270 languages et 400 million individual visits per month for all websites.