Netconcepts

Netconcepts was a web marketing and web development agency founded by Stephan Spencer and headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. Netconcepts specialized in SEO for Fortune 500 ecommerce companies and major media brands. Netconcepts was acquired in January 2010 by Covario, which was then the nation's largest independent SEM (search engine marketing) and SEO (search engine optimization) solutions provider, offering both software and marketing services for paid and organic search management. Covario was itself acquired in 2014 by Dentsu Aegis, a multinational media and digital marketing communications company.

Overview

In 1995, the web development company Internet Concepts LLC was founded by its president Stephan Spencer, eventually renaming itself to Netconcepts LLC.

In 2000, A New Zealand office, Netconcepts Ltd., was opened by Spencer in Browns Bay, Auckland and then later, Christchurch. Netconcepts Ltd. was the design and production arm of Netconcepts LLC, the office in Madison. The majority of the over 50 staff wereemployed in the New Zealand office though some of the owners and key executives were based in Madison. The company was featured in a case study by the New Zealand Government's Work-Life Balance Project.

Internet

The Internet is the global system of interconnected mainframe, personal, and wireless computer networks that use the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to link billions of devices worldwide. It is a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business, and government networks of local to global scope, linked by a broad array of electronic, wireless, and optical networking technologies. The Internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services, such as the inter-linked hypertext documents and applications of the World Wide Web (WWW), electronic mail, Usenet newsgroups, telephony, and peer-to-peer networks for file sharing.

Although the Internet protocol suite has been used by academia and the military industrial complex since the early 1980s, rapid adoption of its use was driven by events of the late 1980s and 1990s such as more powerful and affordable computers, the advent of fiber optics, the popularization of HTTP and the Web browser, and a push towards opening the technology to commerce. Internet use grew rapidly in the West from the mid-1990s and from the late 1990s in the developing world. In the 20 years since 1995, Internet use has grown 100-times to reach over one third of the world population, leading to its services and technologies being incorporated into virtually every aspect of contemporary life. The impact of the Internet has been so immense that it has been referred to as the "8th continent".

Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of physical objects—devices, vehicles, buildings and other items which are embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and network connectivity, which enables these objects to collect and exchange data. The Internet of Things allows objects to be sensed and controlled remotely across existing network infrastructure, creating opportunities for more direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems, and resulting in improved efficiency, accuracy and economic benefit; when IoT is augmented with sensors and actuators, the technology becomes an instance of the more general class of cyber-physical systems, which also encompasses technologies such as smart grids, smart homes, intelligent transportation and smart cities. Each thing is uniquely identifiable through its embedded computing system but is able to interoperate within the existing Internet infrastructure. Experts estimate that the IoT will consist of almost 50 billion objects by 2020.