THE HISTORY OF WEB SITE DESIGN IN TAMPA BAY

Since long before the railroad there have been mechanical calculators, but it was electronics that allowed the first stored program computer in 1944, the famous "ENIAC" and, in 1945, the first computer bug! By 1948 the first commercial computer was available with the much friendlier name "UNIVAC." The mouse and html emerged in the 1960s, believe it or not, around the same time of the first networks, which were conjured up by the Advanced Research Projects Administration, called ARPANET. But the "click" and the "network" did not meet for many lonely years. Universities and military scientists first used the internet to share arcanums, and by the late 1980s, when Internet Adept founder Dewey Davis-Thompson was in school at New College, the Florida Honors College in Tampa Bay, the internet had become a regular part of daily life for students.

In 1990 there was still no web, however. The internet was graphics-free! There was no such thing as web pages ... just text messages, email attachments and file transfers. Chat rooms were run by connecting two dozen phone lines to a computer in somebody's garage. Such "BBS" networks like SunRay were very local in nature. Meanwhile the beginnings of national and international connectivity were seen with text-only CompuServ and AOL.

Then, in 1991, html and the internet were finally married by Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Paul Kunz (among others) to make the first web pages. Documents could be stored on one computer and viewed on another, just a click away! Still, for another five years it remained mostly a tool for universities and laboratories.

Web design for dot com was brand new in 1995, and our Tampa Bay web site design, hosting and search engine placement team was the first website design company in Tampa. Internet Adept, Inc. began as Cyber-Place, an offshoot of Dewey's company Computer Tutors of Tampa, established in 1991 to help people with email.

Ausec and Cheney, a local advertising firm working in broadcast and print media, had a small web site sales team that worked with Dewey Davis-Thompson to design web sites stored at InterAcess, the first Tampa ISP, on Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa, Florida where he learned the basics of web design and web site hosting. Within months Davis-Thompson had set up another company, solely for web site design consulting and search engine optimization (SEO) which became incorporated as Internet Adept in 1997.

As the regular technolgy beat writer for the Weekly Planet, a columnist for Computer Friendly News and a reporter for the Tampa Tribune, St. Petersburg Times, WMNF and WUSF Davis-Thompson saw the first stirrings of interest in web sites and web site design in Tampa Bay, Florida. Among the first web site junkies were his friends at Info Haus Cyber Cafe, on Armenia in Tampa, Florida, where Davis-Thompson gave "Surfing Lessons" every Tuesday night for newbies.

In 1996 Davis-Thompson wrote a grant proposal, and with $10,000 and a lot a midnight oil helped to make WMNF the first radio station to broacast from a Tampa Web Site, designed by Clay Bennett, a Pulitzer Prize winner from St. Petersburg, Florida.

In the ten years plus since then, the web site design community in Tampa Bay has grown, as has the client list for Internet Adept. We believe it is our excellent service and commitment to honesty, fair prices and customer satisfaction that have helped us to keep strong - even in the face of the dot com "bubble."

"It has been our pleasure to provide web site design, search engine optimization and hosting services on projects like the Tampa Theatre web site, the Tampa Housing Authority web site, the Tampa Bay Business Guild web site and the Tampa Bay Workforce Alliance web site."

For more information about Internet Adept, Inc. and our web site design and search engine optimization services, please visit www.iadept.com or call 727-821-0434.