TABLE OF CONTENTS Radio, television, and newspapers were common channels of content distribution for the decades preceding the early 1990s when the first Web browsers appeared. The Internet had already existed for some time, but was mostly used by the research community, universities, and big corporations.
HTTP revolutionarized the way the Internet was used, and made it accessible and appealing to the general public. HTTP browsers turned it into a completely new channel for content distribution, with a degree of interactivity that radio and television broadcasts were unable to provide. The WWW uses a pull model for content distribution, and "browsing" became the paradigm for pulling content from the millions of Web servers on the Internet.
Today when thinking of browsing, what first comes to mind is the WWW. There are also other browsing services, however, such as Videotex, WAP, and iMode. This chapter concentrates on the WWW and its mobile counterparts, WAP and iMode. The strength these technologies is their accessibility to both clients and servers alike. Anybody can set up a Web site in half an hour, and completely for free. This makes the Web, WAP, and i-mode very interesting for third-party content delivery.
The vast majority of Web sites contains free information, but there are also many sites that require payment. And they are not all adult sites, as Table 4.1 shows.
| Site URL | Premium Content Offered |
|---|---|
| http://www.apple.com/itunes/store | Online music store |
| http://www.bluemountain.com | Electronic postcards for all occasions |
