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Internet Explorer is being hilariously serenaded after 27 long years of browsing history

So long, old friend.

"Internet Explorer symbol" by Christiaan Colen is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Celebrities like Ryan Reynolds say goodbye to Internet Explorer

If you were an internet user in the '90s, you absolutely had a run-in with Internet Explorer. In the early days of Microsoft Windows, it was hard to avoid—at some point, you almost always accidentally clicked on it. I remember the frenzy of trying to close it before it fully opened. Let's be honest, Internet Explorer was the worst. But it was also a seminal part of early internet culture. And even though no one uses it anymore, we certainly will miss it … maybe.

Microsoft announced in 2021 that Internet Explorer would cease to exist on June 15, 2022, and it's sticking to its word. "The Internet Explorer 11 desktop application will be retired and go out of support on June 15, 2022, for certain versions of Windows 10," its announcement read. Of course, people have taken to the internet to share their feelings, which are, of course, exactly as great as we'd expect from the internet.

"not internet explorer joining the 27 club," one user on Twitter wrote.

"Internet Explorer is finally shutting down on June 15 after 27 years. Seems it’s lagging a bit, I clicked “close” 26 years ago," someone else tweeted.

"Goodbye Internet Explorer. You’ll be missed by no one other than old boomers who don’t know how to install a better web browser," read another.

Many people gave props to the browser for one of its best functions: using it to download another browser. I remember using it to download Firefox and Chrome.

Even actor Ryan Reynolds got in on the memorials.

Microsoft introduced Windows users to Internet Explorer way back in 1995 as the alternative to Netscape Navigator, which it went on to replace. We all remember that there was a point where you couldn't be a Windows user without being forced to use IE. It was so slow that downloading a picture could take as long as 10 minutes. I can see the little pages flying into the folder if I close my eyes.

According to AP, the Justice Department sued Microsoft in 1997 because it made IE a fundamental part of the user experience. It claimed Microsoft "violated an earlier consent decree by requiring computer makers to use its browser as a condition of using Windows." In 2002, Microsoft settled an antitrust battle over claims it created a Windows monopoly. The company faced a similar fight in Europe where regulators claimed that by tying Internet Explorer to Windows, it created a disadvantage for browsers like Mozilla Firefox and Chrome.

Just because Internet Explorer is joining AOL Instant Messenger, BlackBerry and the Microsoft Word paperclip in the internet graveyard doesn't mean that Windows is out of the browser game.

In 2015, Microsoft launched Microsoft Edge, which is going to be its primary browser. Microsoft describes Edge as "a faster, more secure and more modern browsing experience than Internet Explorer." It assures users that Microsoft Edge will still support the "legacy sites" that needed Internet Explorer to run.

"Instead of using 'this browser for this site' and 'that browser for that site,' now you can just use Microsoft Edge," it said.

Despite the alternative, you can't deny that the retiring of Internet Explorer is the end of a bygone era. It may have been slow and not user friendly, but it's part of our history. Thank you to the little browser that could.

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How 9 upgrades from the tech world are changing lives in the real world.

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Microsoft Windows 10 - Upgrade Your World

Technology is always evolving to make tomorrow better than yesterday.

Businesses are able to run more smoothly, we can connect with people faster — even something as simple as ordering takeout has become, well, simpler.

But what we don't always see is the greater purpose the tech world's incredible advancements are serving. Technology can do great things to make the world a better place.

With it, education has become more accessible, social media has given a voice to the voiceless — even treating a patient halfway across the world has become possible.

Nonprofits have harnessed the power and potential of technology to create more good in the world as well. They are optimizing their operations, amplifying their voices, and expanding their critical programs and services to upgrade their communities and the world.

Here are nine awesome ways nonprofits are using technology to everyone's advantage.

1. Improving the health of mothers and newborns in India with do-it-all phones and real-time data.

Health care workers in Bihar, India, used to have to carry up to 38 backbreaking ledgers from home to home just to keep record of their patients' progress. But with help from CARE, the workers can now conduct checkups just by using an app on their phones.

Image via Windows/YouTube.

They can schedule visits and register and record real-time health information for mothers, pregnant women, and newborns, giving health care workers a quicker picture of what their patients' needs are and how they can improve their condition without missing a beat.

2. Mapping underwater habitats to create a more sustainable ocean ecosystem.

The Nature Conservancy's Mapping Ocean Wealth initiative is creating an exciting new way to study and map marine life.

Image via The Nature Conservancy, used with permission.

Researchers are creating detailed maps to better understand the value of ocean ecosystems and how they ultimately affect the livelihood of surrounding communities. The mapping provides people with more accurate information on how to maximize the ocean habitats and better sustain their ecosystems.

3. Breaking barriers and promoting inclusion for all of the world's athletes.

Special Olympics is stepping up their game by providing their athletes with tech to help them track performance, train smarter, and compete harder. On top of that, they can share their achievements online and connect with other athletes.

Image via Windows/YouTube.

In addition, they are using technology to bring athletes with and without disabilities together through Play Unified — a series of events across the country sponsored by Special Olympics. Through the beauty of sport, they're working — and playing — together to promote inclusion and combat the intolerance many individuals with disabilities face.

4. Building better school systems and improving childhood literacy in remote areas.

250 million children around the world lack basic reading and writing skills. Thankfully, Pencils of Promise has made it a mission to lower that number by building schools, providing quality educational programming, and supporting teachers in remote communities.

Image via Windows/YouTube.

Even better, they digitally track and measure the progress of each student, making it easier to see the effects of their lesson plans and adjust them to be more effective. Now with 363 schools around the world, Pencils of Promise continues to make progress toward its goal of providing access to quality education for all children.

5. Providing support groups for and connecting young people living with HIV.

The stigma surrounding HIV can be incredibly difficult to deal with for a young person. But Keep a Child Alive has found that technology can play a simple but extremely effective role in changing their outlook.

Image via Windows.

Using Skype, young people are able to share their experiences, challenges, hopes, and dreams with others just like them. Whether across town or across the African continent, they're creating a community of empowerment focused on fighting the impact of HIV on their families, friends, and communities.

6. Creating a global community of difference-makers and coordinating their efforts online.

Global Citizen's plan is straightforward: End extreme poverty, fight inequality, and fix climate change by 2030. Yes, it's bold, but they believe it can be done with the help of technology.

Image via Global Citizen/YouTube.

Global Citizen provides an online platform for people to connect with others, spread the message to world leaders, and fight for change. But they're also making it incredibly fun. Through gamification and the wildly successful Global Citizen Festival, doing great things has never been so engaging.

7. Creating more effective and meaningful connections between children and their sponsors.

Save the Children provides an early start to education for children living in poverty. And with technology's help, they can speed up the learning process significantly.

Image via Windows.

Connecting each sponsor with the children they're supporting is a key part of what keeps Save the Children's programs going, but it typically requires a lot of data transfer between offices that can take up to three weeks. With a more efficient online system in place, however, data can be accessed in real time, resulting in accelerated and improved interactions between sponsors and the children they're supporting.

8. Generating the largest educational event in the history of the world.

Code.org has a simple idea: Get kids to explore computer science with just an hour of code. It started out small but has since expanded to over 100 million students in 180 countries. Now anyone can organize their own Hour of Code around the world!

Image via Windows.

With an ever-evolving digital landscape, knowledge in computer science is extremely important for our future generations. No doubt, the world's largest educational event will only get bigger as the message continues to spread.

9. Giving a voice to young women around the world.

Malala Yousafzai has taken the world by storm with her relentless pursuit of education for girls around the world through her nonprofit, Malala Fund. Her organization has partnered with Nairobits, a Kenyan nonprofit that provides training in communications and technology to marginalized adolescent girls.

Image via Malin Fezehai/HUMAN for Malala Fund. Used with permission.

The program also provides job support and mentorship for these young women to improve their quality of life and assist their families in a way they never could before. As of 2015, they had 150 girls enrolled in the program, and that number has already doubled this year. Just imagine where they'll be in a decade!

All of these efforts are part of Microsoft's initiative to Upgrade Your World.

As part of the launch of Windows 10, Microsoft undertook a yearlong initiative to celebrate people and organizations doing great things to upgrade the world. They invested $10 million in 110 nonprofits and donated more than $10 million in technology to help them achieve more.

But it's not just these organizations that are benefiting — each year, Microsoft supports more than 100,000 nonprofits around the world with software and services to help them do more good.

In fact, your favorite nonprofit could qualify for a software donation from Microsoft, too. Visit microsoft.com/nonprofits for more details.

Without question, technology can be a powerful force that opens exciting opportunities for nonprofits. And if these organizations are any indication, we can't wait to see what the future holds.

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His hotel didn't understand what 'wheelchair accessible' meant. So he built an app.

There’s a new app on the horizon that will open doors to accessibility for people with disabilities when they travel.

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People who have disabilities often come up against unavoidable obstacles when they travel.

Image via Access Earth/Facebook, used with permission.

When Ireland native Matt McCann was planning a trip to London back in 2012, he made sure the hotel fit all his requirements — most importantly, wheelchair accessibility. Since Matt has cerebral palsy, he has to be more discerning about the places where he chooses to stay. After some research, the hotel he chose appeared to check out ... that is, until he got there.

The hotel was not nearly as accessible as it claimed to be online.

There were steps leading up to the reception area that were difficult for him to climb. When he finally made it to his room, he couldn’t fit his rolling walker through the door.

Needless to say, this was a problem. Matt, together with his friend KC Grant, asked for a refund and left the hotel for one that was truly wheelchair accessible.

Matt's experience was eye-opening, and it sparked an idea to improve this lack of accessibility information.

According to Matt, the problem really lies in how hotels currently define "wheelchair accessible."

“Typically, when a hotel advertises itself as wheelchair accessible, they are looking specifically at the hotel rooms themselves," he says. "Rarely can you find specific accessibility information about the exterior of the hotel itself or access to the other amenities in the hotel such as the breakfast room, restaurant, or bar."


Image via iStock.

Despite what hotel owners and managers might think, access to these areas is just as important, and it often makes or breaks a travel experience for people with disabilities.

Matthew, KC, and their friend Jack Gallagher put on their software-engineer caps and came up with an ingenious program: Access Earth.

Access Earth is a platform to search, find, and add accessible locations. The data is compounded through crowdsourcing and can easily be updated by answering “yes” or “no” questions. It also includes virtual tours of hotel properties and local attractions including restaurants and shopping centers.

Image via Access Earth, used with permission.

“The key thing is that everyone’s definition of accessibility is different, and that is what Access Earth aims to address,” Matt told Upworthy.

They were able to complete the app in time to enter it into Imagine Cup in 2014 — "Microsoft’s premier technology competition that tasks students with creating apps that will change the world." Not surprisingly, they made it through the semifinals and ended up landing in third place in the World Citizenship category.

Since then, Matt, his business partner Ryan O’Neill, and their team have been working on expanding their data reach and getting the app mobile-ready.

Image via msuwelfare/Instagram, used with permission.

They’ve started an ambassador program, which encourages volunteers to rate more buildings and add more information to the site. Currently, you can only access Access Earth through its website and via Windows Phone, but iPhone and Android apps shouldn’t be too far behind.

“Everyone’s definition of accessibility is different, and that is what Access Earth aims to address."

The company plans to take Access Earth to the United States within the next 12 months. Right now, it's in beta testing but open to anyone to use.


Image via Access Earth, used with permission.

The future looks bright for this determined little start-up.

While expansion will be a challenge because it comes with accessibility guideline discrepancies, they remain optimistic. Until then, it’s all about continuing to cultivate their user base and develop their online presence so people with disabilities can find them.

Their goal is to make businesses prioritize universal accessibility in their building plans rather than add in accessible additions as an afterthought.

However, the only way for them to really succeed is with your help. If you’ve recently been to a hotel that had particularly good accessibility for individuals with disabilities, go to their website and add it to the list.

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Paid parental leave: It's a win-win for people and companies.

It was big news when media giant Netflix announced it was giving its employees unlimited maternity and paternity leave for the first year after a child's birth or adoption.

Fortune called Netflix's move "game-changing," and several companies followed the streaming company's lead, including Microsoft, which improved its parental leave policy within 24 hours of Netflix's announcement.

Despite the move being good news for children and great news for parents, it's 2016. Generous parental leave policies shouldn't really be big news for the world.

Child-rear and chill? Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.

America is the only industrialized nation in the world without mandatory paid maternity leave.

That is to say, there's no law in the United States requiring it — which puts us in the company of just a couple other countries in the world, like Papua New Guinea and Suriname.

The closest thing we have is the Family and Medical Leave Act, which offers job protection to those who have to spend time away from work for family-related reasons. Pregnancy and adoption are among those reasons, as well as foster care placement, but the time off is unpaid.

That means that, yes, it's still big news when a company takes it upon itself to financially support employees who are starting or continuing their families.

The better news, however, is that when companies have generous parental leave policies, things tend to go really well for everyone.

Offering paid parental leave tends to help companies much more than it hurts them, studies show.

Like any benefit, parental leave is an investment that a company makes in its employees. Ideally, the short-term cost of paid parental leave (which is often funded by a small payroll tax, similar to Social Security) should be outweighed by the long-term benefits, such as increased productivity, improved employee morale, and better retention of great employees.

“If you lose someone, you might need to spend more time and energy and money on recruiting someone than you would obviously if you’re able to retain excellent employees,” Marie Danzig, head of creative and delivery at Blue State Digital, explained to ThinkProgress, noting how important employee retention is to companies like hers.

Marie Danzig speaking in San Fransisco in 2015. Photo by Kimberly White/Getty Images for LinkedIn.

It's easy to see how a brand-new parent, when afforded the opportunity to take some time off to stay at home and, you know, be a parent to their new child or children, would be more likely to stay at their job for a long time.

"There’s something about sitting with your family in a nice cozy house, not having to go to work, and getting a paycheck to pay for all the things that you need," Matt Ipcar, executive creative director and senior vice president at Blue State,told ThinkProgress. "In the back of your mind you’re constantly like, ‘Wow, my company is really great.'"

Offering paid parental leave also helps promote gender equality and even potentially addresses the problem of the gender wage gap.

A new study of 22,000 companies in 91 countries found that companies offering more paternity leave for new dads also have more women in their boardrooms and holding executive positions.

Essentially, when parents are treated as parents (regardless of their gender) and everybody gets time off to bond with and parent their children, people of all genders see more equal opportunities arise.

“In countries that are more family-friendly and have greater support for child-bearing and rearing, women experience less disruptions in their careers and are more likely to make it to the top,” Marcus Noland, executive vice president and director of studies at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, told the Huffington Post.


Chart via Catalyst.

As of 2015, only 1.4% of CEOs in the finance/insurance S&P 500 were women. A large and often-cited reason for the lack of women in CEO positions is that women are often expected to take on child-care duties, while men are not. When companies offer new dads as much paid time off as they offer new moms, things tend to balance out all the way to the top.

By the way, companies with more women in leadership tend to perform better and become more profitable. Just sayin'.

Basically, parental leave is good for everyone.

Paid parental leave is good for parents, who get to spend valuable bonding time with their children; it's great for children who get valuable time with their parents; and it's great for the companies that offer it. By treating their employees well, companies can improve their overall performance by retaining their best employees.

There's no good reason to be against parental leave for parents of any gender.

That is, I guess, unless you just really enjoy being in an exclusive club with Papua New Guinea, which is cool — I hear they have a great rugby team. But that's not how we should be making important parental leave policy decisions.

As someone whose complete and utter terror at the prospect of having kids is slowly fading into a marginally milder terror, can I just say: It's 2016. Let's make parental leave a priority. OK? It's just the right thing to do.

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