Guild Wars Wintersday 2007 Finale

I spent part of my New Year’s Day at the Guild Wars Wintersday 2007 finale. I got both Dwayna’s and Grenth’s festival hats — but mostly supported Grenth, because I want winter to last longer. For the cold!

In 2007, two big online games hit the Philippines — EVE Online and Lineage II. In 2008, we might even see Ragnarok Online 2. Here’s to another great year for Filipino gamers!

RIP Netscape

Netscape Navigator was my first Web browser, so I’m sad to see AOL kill it this February. Netscape was developed in 1994 by Marc Andreesen. Marc previously co-authored the world’s first popular Web browser, Mosaic.

Netscape Communications’ successful IPO in 1995 kicked off the dot-com boom. AOL bought Netscape for a whopping $4.2 billion in 1998. Too bad they were unable to withstand Microsoft’s monopolistic bundling of Internet Explorer with Windows.

I’ll miss the Netscape throbber. A huge meteor impact was the perfect metaphor for the dinosaur-killing implications of the Web.

Damn Internet Explorer. Part of the reason Microsoft was able to tie apps to the desktop for so long was because they didn’t update Internet Explorer for so long. With apps now moving off the desktop and onto the Web, Netscape will be avenged — by its Google-backed descendant, Firefox.