ty of data on the web and elsewhere.

According to the network tracking firm Netcraft, there were 100 million
websites on November 1st, 2006. Previous milestones in the survey were
reached in April 1997 (1 million sites), February 2000 (10 million),
September 2000 (20 million), July 2001 (30 million), April 2003 (40
million), May 2004 (50 million), March 2005 (60 million), August 2005
(70 million), April 2006 (80 million ) and August 2006 (90 million).

1991: UNICODE

[Overview]

First published in January 1991, Unicode is the universal character
encoding maintained by the Unicode Consortium. "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 a component of the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium)
specifications.

1993: ONLINE BOOKS PAGE

[Overview]

Founded in 1993 by John Mark Ockerbloom while he was a student at
Carnegie Mellon University, 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." (excerpt from the website) John
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
listed 12,000 books in 1999, 20,000 books in 2003 (including 4,000
books published by women), 25,000 books in 2006 and 30,000 books in
2007. The books "have been authored, placed online, and hosted by a
wide variety of individuals and groups throughout the world", with
7,000 books from Project Gutenberg. The FAQ also lists copyright
information about most countries in the world with links to further
reading.

[In Depth (published in 1999)]

John Mark Ockerbloom first started the website of the School of
Computer Science of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU CS), and began
maintaining The Online Books Page on it. Web space and computing
resources were provided by the School of Computer Science.

Interviewed by email in