One of the most productive research and development concerns in the United States during the twentieth century, Bell Telephone Laboratories, commonly known as Bell Labs, produced numerous inventions that shaped communication, commerce, and everyday life during the twentieth century.

The venture that became known as Bell Labs grew out of Western Electric, the manufacturing division of the American Telephone and Telegraph Company (AT&T). In 1925, AT&T president Walter Gifford established the Bell Telephone Laboratories division to assume the duties of the electrical engineering department of Western Electric, which had been responsible for a number of early advances in telephone technology. From its inception, Bell Labs employed some of the world’s most prominent scientists, producing some of the most dramatic technological advancements of the twentieth century. Among its early inventions were the facsimile (fax) machine, long-distance television transmission, the solar energy cell, and stereo radio broadcasts.

With the outbreak of World War II, Bell Labs refocused its research on the war effort, but it produced a number of inventions during the postwar era that revolutionized modern communications and commerce. Among the most dramatic of these inventions were the transistor, invented in 1947, and the laser, first described in a paper by Charles Townes and William Schawlow in 1957. The transistor made possible the use of smaller, higher-quality, and more durable audio equipment and communications devices, while the laser led to the development of numerous technologies, including laser surgery, highly accurate measuring and timekeeping devices, compact discs (CDs), and digital versatile discs (DVDs).

Apple has been one of the driving forces in innovation in the personal computer and consumer electronics industries. Even at times when the company was considered a niche player in personal computing, features that it pioneered often made their way into products marketed by its more successful competitors. In the twenty-first century, with its iPod MP3 player, the company expanded from computing to marketing “digital lifestyle” devices, and it grew to become the world’s largest online purveyor of digital music files.

Apple (originally Apple Computer) was founded by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, who had close ties to the 1960’s counterculture, and the corporate culture of Apple reflected that mind-set. The Apple motto, Think Different, was not only a counterpoint to Think, the decades-old motto of International Business Machines (IBM), but also a paean to counterculture nonconformity. When Jobs first sought outside investors, he had no idea how to compose a business plan. He had to learn how to relate to corporate executives and produce formal business documents to acquire capital.

Apple quickly established its reputation for innovation. The Apple II personal computer had floppy disk drives at a time when other personal computers still depended on magnetic tape drives for data and software storage. As a result, Apple II users were able to load and operate complex programs such as VisiCalc, the original spreadsheet application and the original “killer app” (that is, a software application that by itself justifies the purchase of the hardware on which it runs). In 1984, Apple introduced the Macintosh, which boasted the first graphical user interface (GUI) on a consumer computer. Users were no longer required to memorize arcane codes for data paths and commands. Instead, a visual representation of a desktop containing folders and files allowed for more intuitive manipulation of applications and data.

The World Wide Web has made text data available like never before. Almost all sites accessible through the Internet can be addressed by either a browser or a program that retrieves the plain-text version of the page containing HTML tags. This availability of raw data has caused a renaissance of programs called screen scrapers. Screen scrapers access data normally targeted at a screen (or browser window) and scrape the desired data from the screen for storage, or repackaging and display.

Brief History of Screen Scrapers
Between the 1970s era of widespread deployment of text-based mainframe/terminal applications and the twenty-first century browser era came the age of the graphical user interface (GUI). Ushered in by the success of the Macintosh, computer applications began to feature windows, drop-down menus, checkboxes, and other user-interface elements that made using programs much more flexible than their text-based predecessors.

The revolution in GUI adoption caused a problem for organizations that had invested tremendous amounts of time and money in mainframe-based text applications. In less than a decade, these text-based applications went from being cutting edge to antiquated. For productivity reasons, organizations had to rewrite these applications to take advantage of the new GUI paradigm. Even more daunting than the mountain of reprogramming was the conversion of data stored in these mostly custom systems. Few standard data formats existed when they were initially designed, so retrieving and converting the data posed tremendous difficulties.

With all of the difficulties in running a virtual community (mostly in added workload and time), it might seem to be a questionable undertaking. This is not the case. I am not trying to discourage the adoption of virtual community technologies but simply make you aware of some of the challenges in their deployment.

The greater your knowledge of the challenges before you attempt to create a virtual community, the greater the likelihood that you will be prepared for the difficulties and overcome them. A poorly implemented community is much more likely to be a failure than a poorly implemented Web site. The Web site will still garner visitors looking for the information it contains, while a failed online community will be like a ghost town with few tourists.

Despite any disadvantages to creating a community, the benefits are substantial:

Creating a virtual community is somewhat like making a movie. Before a single camera starts to roll, there is an entire process of preproduction ensuring that the actors are properly cast, the equipment is rented and functioning, the script is in place, and the department heads know what type of movie they are trying to make. If any of these areas are neglected, from the first day of shooting, the movie will stumble forward, and a vast amount of time and energy will likely be wasted.

Likewise, a virtual community is expensive in time to launch, difficult to attract visitors/contributors,  and poorly planned execution will make even a promising start fizzle into a disappointment. Although Joomla makes the deployment of the features simple, proper planning even for an incremental deployment is critical for site success. By being deliberate in your planning and construction of the new community site, you will minimize the chances of hard-won users becoming frustrated with a poorly working or confusing roll- out and leaving your site forever. The creation and deployment may be divided into roughly three stages.

Three Stages of a Virtual Community
Virtual communities are unlike most traditional Web deployments (such as a static site or online store) in that they derive their value from the intercommunication of a large user base. Under any circumstances, gathering this large number of users can take quite a bit of time. The creation of a virtual community is typically a gradual process, and a visitor surge does not provide the benefits it would on a traditional site. If your Web site was suddenly flooded with a million users overnight, it is unlikely that the site could retain those users for more than a short period of time. Furthermore, the first experience of these new visitors would be empty content and slow performance. Growth for virtual communities is organic because the community slowly discovers what the group has to offer.