Microsoft

While iPhone and BlackBerry models tend to get most of the attention, there are a lot of us who depend on smartphones powered by the Windows Mobile operating system.

So if you've got one in your pocket, circle October 6 on your calendar. That's when Microsoft says Windows Mobile 6.5 will be released.

It doesn't appear that there's that much to be excited about, though.

As the naming convention would indicate, Windows Mobile 6.5 is an incremental update from the current 6.1 version.

The home screen (which is what you see when you pull the phone out of your holster or pocket) will now be capable of hosting dynamic content like news, scores and stock prices without having to click on e-mail or your browser.

I am looking forward to seeing improvements in what is currently an extremely lame Internet Explorer Mobile browser, which is almost unusable unless you access Web sites specifically designed for cell phone use.

I've come to rely on third-party browsers from Opera and Skyfire when I want to view a big-screen site on my pocket-size screen.

But the WinMo 6.5 version of IE is said to incorporate a version of Adobe's Flash technology that could make it friendlier, especially when accessing multimedia content.

The new Windows Mobile will also be the first edition to have access to Windows Marketplace for Mobile, which will give users the ability to download and install new software from the handset, in much the same way Apple's App Store is available for iPhone users and the BlackBerry App World is available for fans of that product.

Unfortunately, Microsoft has designed the Marketplace so that it will only work on version 6.5 devices and above, which will severely limit its initial impact.

The phone I'm currently using — the Samsung Jack — was sold with the promise that it will be upgradeable to WinMo 6.5, so I'll give you a report after it becomes available.

It is not likely that Windows Mobile 6.5 will be an option for handsets prior to version 6; and it's unclear how many of the more recent WinMo phones will qualify. That's because upgrades are up to the phone manufacturer and the mobile carrier.

Since both are in the business of selling you new hardware, I wouldn't hold my breath.

Richard Nixon was sworn in as president of the United States.

A wooden bridge in Chappaquiddick, Mass. was the scene of a fatal accident involving Sen. Edward Kennedy.

And man took his first steps on the surface of the moon.

But something else happened in the year 1969 that would change just about everything in the years to follow.

Internet pioneer Len Kleinrock poses for a portrait next to an Interface Message Processor. The Interface Message Processor was used to develop the Internet.

Forty years ago this week — at Len Kleinrock's lab in Los Angeles at the University of California — scientists linked up two computers with a 15-foot cable — the crude beginning of what we know today as the Internet.

Later that same year, computers at UCLA and three other West Coast universities were interconnected as part of ARPANET, a Defense Department project to improve communications between research teams, but it was 1972 before the network was demonstrated to the general public.

Electronic mail became the primary application of ARPANET and its variously-named successors, but that system remained closed to the masses.

CompuServe, a private network, began offering public e-mail service in 1979 and a rudimentary online "chat" function the following year.

Meanwhile, the progenitor of AOL went live in 1985; America Online was launched late in 1989, 20 years ago.

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web and the first Web browser.

It was not until 1991 that someone named Tim Berners-Lee at the CERN European physics lab figured out how to harness the power of interconnected computers while making it easy to navigate. He developed the concept of the World Wide Web and the Web "browser," based on the ideas of other scientists and writers dating back to the pre-computer era.

But the Internet didn't enter the public consciousness until the early 1990s, when it became possible for regular folks like us to get a dial-up connection to the Web.

It took Gutenberg's printing press several hundred years to have a worldwide impact on society, something the World Wide Web has achieved and surpassed in an eyeblink of human history.

While the Internet is scorned by many for delivering spam, spreading viruses and peddling porn, its role in providing a global conduit for the exchange of ideas and information could yet prove to be the factor that brings us the answers to the biggest problems facing mankind like hunger, disease and conflict.

Happy anniversary, Internet; I can't begin to imagine what the next 40 years will bring.

E-mail askwalt@wfaa.com