The return of animated GIFs

Back in 1996, there was this new invention that allowed using animation is web sites. Those were the days were the default website background was gray. Now its white. There were a couple of years that black really was the backgroun color to have on your site - but that was soon changed. Microsoft Explorer has taken the browser wars, and with it - the non-white background web dies.

It's funny, as animated gifs were forgotten, stored away on dusty hard drives in all corners of cyber-space.

The MSN messenger 6 allows defining shortcuts to display animated gifs. These gifs, when recieved as messages, can be added to the recipient "emoticons list", and then sent to others.
Most people do not know they can add any animated gif to their emoticons list, so they relay on others to send them over, and pass them on.

Recent couple of months - I am witnessing the rivaval of animated gifs, as those are being sent to me (and from me) to all, as a form of virus. They spread quick. Especially the fat laughing kid, which to tell you the truth is a bit sad. Not to mention the "sexy" sometime pornographic ones that I often get from a gay friend of mine.

Funny how things have their day in the sun, then forgot forever, and suddenly, with no forseeable reason, make their return with vengence.

Take the letter 'w' on your keyboard for instance. How often was it used before the web came on? rarely. and now? it is being clicked by millions of people around the world, www this and www that. The letter 'w' is now a proud member of the popular kids on the keyboard. So in @ which, when growing up, seemed to me so odd, placed on the keyboard, with no apparent reason to use it. I used to have a "british pound" sign on my old Sinclair spectrum. It did not make the cut. @ survived, while the pound sign is dead. They now call the # character pound. Sir claive sinclair is probably pissed off.

a pissed off Sir.