Since one of my favorite parts of the Academy Awards show is when they run the retrospective that pays homage to the past winners who are no longer with us, I thought I'd take this opportunity to run a little retrospective of my own. Lets feature some past Internet Companies who had their day in the sun, left an impact on our industry today, but are also no longer with us.

By now, we're all familiar with the concept of timeshifting. We usually use this term to describe the behavior of PVR users when they digitally record programs with the aim of viewing them when it's most convenient for them. At times, I feel as if we concentrate so much on Tivo's commercial-skipping capabilities that we don't look as closely as we should at its ability to take commercial programming out of its time element (time slot) and into one that's more convenient for the viewer.

Well it's not as popular these days as Paris Hilton, Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, and Kazaa, but US Web surfers are thinking about taxes while they are online. According to the Lycos Top 50, "The IRS" came in at number five and "Tax Time" came in tenth.