Webreference.com: Fireworks on the Web: 24 Hours in Cyberspace

What happens when you mix computers with 11,000 MB of RAM and 300 GB of disk storage with thousands of talented people?

A massive explosion of creativity.

24 hours in Cyberspace is a collaborative effort to document how cyberspace affects our lives. The event is being organized by Rick Solmon of Against All Odds Productions who produced A Day in the Life of America and From Alice to Ocean. Rick will light a fire under 100 of the world's best photojournalists, thousands of student and amateur photographers, and Netizens like you to bring back the best stories and photographs they can find from the human side of cyberspace.

Note: 24 Hours in Cyberspace recently re-opened their site (May 8, 1996) with a new look, more photos, and 5 new stories each week. Tune in and read about how an ordinary day became extraordinary.

Rick's team will have their hands full on February 8, 1996 when in less than 24 hours thousands of stories and photographs will come streaming into "Mission Control" in San Francisco. In a single day all the content will be gathered, filtered, edited, arranged into web pages, and uploaded to the Web. The products developed for this effort will redefine Internet publishing.

We want you to win the $100,000 Webmaster's Prize, don't forget to enter

To encourage participation, 24 Hours in Cyberspace is sponsoring a contest for the best amateur and student stories submitted on the big day. The winners' work will be displayed next to professional photographers, and winners will be awarded prizes totalling more than $100,000 in state-of-the-art computer software and hardware, including an "Ultimate Webmasters" package with everything needed to set up and run a Web site. Anyone who signs the site's guestbook will become a permanent part of the site and will become eligible to win more than $50,000 worth of Web-related products.

Behind the Scenes

First, a team of judges will use a relational multimedia database developed by Illustra Information Technologies viewed through Netscape Navigator 2.0 to skim off the digital cream and classify the stories and images.

Next, a team of top editors and designers using Sun Sparc and NEC PowerMate Systems, will use a series of Illustra-developed forms and Netscape Navigator 2.0 to select and edit photos, text, and graphics for each story.

Automatic web page and site creation.

Then the magic begins. A new Internet publishing tool developed by NetObjects, Inc. allows automatic page creation and site management. NetObjects takes the images and text from the Illustra database, inputs them into HTML templates designed by Clement Mok, and builds the entire Web site. Editors can toggle between different layouts to fine tune the look. Once they're satisfied NetObjects automatically generates all the HTML and links, and updates the story's cross references. NetObjects automatically keeps track of all the pages and links, letting the editors republish with new stories and updates every half hour.

5 million hits a day

The site will be hosted on a Sun Netra server running the Netscape Communications Server designed to handle 5 million hits a day. It will be updated hourly as 80 editors, designers, and programmers frantically edit and filter the digital bombardment. For those of you who have created large web sites over a period of months, you can just imagine the frenetic activity they will go through in one day.

The Virtual World's Fair

The Internet 1996 World Exposition will feature the site as part of its grand opening by mirroring the event on its eight "Central Park" servers, distributed worldwide. The servers are connected by 45 Mbps lines, which will effectively triple the international capacity of the Internet on that day. AOL will also join in by producing the first ever "cyber simulcast" in real time, offering AOL members live chat sessions with the editors, organizers and celebrities at Mission Control.

The Future

Smolan's Against All Odd Productions will produce a permanent site by March 17, featuring more in-depth stories and photo essays. A book, CD-ROM, and TV documentary will follow in the fall of 1996.

We know we'll be glued to this site, we think you should be too.