Author: Sarah Holsapple

  • The Ball Revisited

    At some point just before Halloween of 1996 someone began rolling foil candy wrappers up in a ball. A few months later, in January of 1997, the size and growth of The Ball started to be recorded on a website. 

    Fans of The Ball sent in wrappers and were acknowledged on the website, as The Ball grew its measurements were recorded on the growth chart. StarDOT technologies donated a WinCamOne Digital Camera for the photos

    The internet was different in 1997, a new and interesting media to be explored, it was dynamic and interactive – still in the ‘what can we do with this’ phase. It hadn’t yet replaced print media to the extent it has today (New York Times went online in 1996 ).  Certainly not as ubiquitous. Definitely not mobile. Most of us were still dialing inThe first photo on the internet was just 5 years previous.

    The Ball was popular at the time and was noticed by many. The Ball was chosen as a ‘Pretty Strange Site’ by Yahoo! Internet Life (a print magazine about the internet), and was reviewed in Netsurfer Digest. The Ball was even mentioned in an early June 1997 ‘This American Life’ episode titled ‘Tales from the Internet’ (link from the ‘This American Life’ archive ). Ira Glass mentions “all the hype about the revolutionary changes the internet is going to bring us… .”

    I reached out for an update and you’ll be glad to hear that The Ball is still around. Current measurements are: 1853g or so, circumference 376mm, diameter of 120mm, so about the same size as a CD. Photo below is the ball as of 4/13/2020.

  • A Brief History of Flash

    Take a minute to check out “A Brief History of Flash”, our new exhibit on Flash programming. 

  • Student Spotlight – Haocheng (Marshall) Zhao

    Haocheng (Marshall) Zhao has been working with us at ibiblio as a Student System Administrator for Project Gutenberg. Marshall is a graduate student here at UNC SILS working on his Master’s in Information Science with a focus on Data Science. Marshall is currently working on Project Gutenberg website maintenance including some database updates and bug fixes. We’re glad to have Marshall on our team.