who came up with the idea of google
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The Google Summer of Code, often abbreviated to GSoC, is an international annual program in which Google awards stipends to contributors who successfully complete a free and open-source software coding project during the summer. , the program is open to anyone aged 18 or over, no longer just students and recent graduates. It was first held from May to August 2005. Participants get paid to write software, with the amount of their stipend depending on the purchasing power parity of the country where they are located. Project ideas are listed by host organizations involved in open-source software development, though students can also propose their own project ideas. The idea for the Summer of Code came directly from Google's founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page. From 2007 until 2009 Leslie Hawthorn, who has been involved in the project since 2006, was the program manager. From 2010 until 2015, Carol Smith was the program manager. In 2016, Stephanie Taylor took over management of the program. Overview Each year, the program follows a timeline. First, open-source organizations apply to participate. If accepted, each organization provides a list of initial project ideas and invites contributors to their development communities. Contributors who meet the eligibility criteria then submit up to 3 proposals that detail the software-coding projects that interest them. These applications are then evaluated by the corresponding mentoring organization, with mentors and organizational administrators reviewing the applications and deciding how many "slots" to request from Google, and which proposals to accept. Google allocates slots to each organization, taking into account organizational capacity, mentoring history, and the number of applications the organization has received. Finally, organizations select the top proposals to fill their slots and Google verifies eligibility before announcing accepted contributors. In the event of a single contributor being selected by more than one organization, the organization which allocates a slot to the student first is given priority. History 2005 In 2005, more than 8,740 project proposals were submitted for the 200 available student positions. Due to the overwhelming response, Google expanded the program to 419 positions. The mentoring organizations were responsible for reviewing and selecting proposals, and then providing guidance to those students to help them complete their proposal. Students that successfully completed their proposal to the satisfaction of their mentoring organization were awarded $4500 and a Google Summer of Code T-shirt, while $500 per project was sent to the mentoring organization. Approximately 80% of the projects were successfully completed in 2005, although completion rates varied by organization: Ubuntu, for example, reported a completion rate of only 64%, and KDE reported a 67% completion rate. Many projects were continued past summer, even though the SOC period was over, and some changed direction as they developed. For the first Summer of Code, Google was criticized for not giving sufficient time to open source organizations so they could plan projects for the Summer of Code. Despite these criticisms there were 41 organizations involved, including FreeBSD, Apache, KDE, Ubuntu, Blender, Mozdev, and Google itself. According to
Google Summer of Code
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The Commuter Cars Tango is a prototype ultra-narrow electric sports car designed and built by Commuter Cars, an electric car company based in Spokane, Washington. History Commuter Cars was founded in Spokane, Washington, by Rick Woodbury and his son Bryan Woodbury in 1998. Bryan Woodbury says that his father had come up with the original idea sometime in the early 1980s. He had learned that 106 million people in the United States were driving to work alone. He came up with the idea for a single-seat electric car. Starting in the 1980s, Woodbury started researching hydrogen power, which lead to fuel cells. The relatively light weight of the fuel cells led to his idea of a stable, narrow vehicle with a low center of gravity. While waiting for fuel cell technology to catch up, he eventually settled on a design for the car to have individual electric motors for each wheel. In his spare time, he worked on building his first car. In 1998, he sold his yacht to fund the company. He settled on a plan to use parts that were already produced, instead of producing every part for the vehicles. Commuter Cars used various parts manufactured for other, more common cars. Among those parts was a safety cage made to NASCAR specifications. Production of the first of their line of ultra-narrow electric sports cars began with the Tango T600. The company designed a small electric car. They stated that production of the first version, at a rate of about 100 cars per year, was set to begin in late 2005. Actor George Clooney took delivery of the first Tango kit on August 9, 2005, which was a major milestone for the company. Clooney appeared in the press with the car, explaining its features and promoting it. Difficulties with their UK manufacturer forced Commuter Cars to take over manufacturing themselves; for this reason the second vehicle did not ship until February 11, 2008. It was completely assembled in Spokane, Washington. The second car eventually found its way into the second-floor office of Google CEO Eric Schmidt as part of an April Fools' Day joke. By 2008, Commuter Cars had only produced 10 cars, which sold for an average of $121,000 each. The company generated a significant amount of media interest with the sale to Clooney. However, that initial media attention did not lead to a production deal. In 2010, the company entered the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize in the "Alternative" category. The vehicle entered was a Tango T600 owned by Google founder Sergey Brin, borrowed back for the competition. After passing many of the performance tests with ease, the car failed to complete the 100 mile durability run (one of the complicated set of requirements for the prize) and was eliminated from the competition. The company did not get a production deal with a manufacturer, and by 2014, fewer than 20 cars had been built in the United States. Throughout the company's history, Commuter Cars has had limited
Commuter Cars Tango
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Ranking of query is one of the fundamental problems in information retrieval (IR), the scientific/engineering discipline behind search engines. Given a query and a collection of documents that match the query, the problem is to rank, that is, sort, the documents in according to some criterion so that the "best" results appear early in the result list displayed to the user. Ranking in terms of information retrieval is an important concept in computer science and is used in many different applications such as search engine queries and recommender systems. A majority of search engines use ranking algorithms to provide users with accurate and relevant results. History The notion of page rank dates back to the 1940s and the idea originated in the field of economics. In 1941, Wassily Leontief developed an iterative method of valuing a country's sector based on the importance of other sectors that supplied resources to it. In 1965, Charles H Hubbell at the University of California, Santa Barbara, published a technique for determining the importance of individuals based on the importance of the people who endorse them. Gabriel Pinski and Francis Narin came up with an approach to rank journals. Their rule was that a journal is important if it is cited by other important journals. Jon Kleinberg, a computer scientist at Cornell University, developed an almost identical approach to PageRank which was called Hypertext Induced Topic Search or HITS and it treated web pages as "hubs" and "authorities". Google’s PageRank algorithm was developed in 1998 by Google’s founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page and it is a key part of Google’s method of ranking web pages in search results. All the above methods are somewhat similar as all of them exploit the structure of links and require an iterative approach. Ranking models Ranking functions are evaluated by a variety of means; one of the simplest is determining the precision of the first k top-ranked results for some fixed k; for example, the proportion of the top 10 results that are relevant, on average over many queries. IR models can be broadly divided into three types: Boolean models or BIR, Vector Space Models, and Probabilistic Models. Various comparisons between retrieval models can be found in the literature (e.g., ). Boolean Models Boolean Model or BIR is a simple baseline query model where each query follows the underlying principles of relational algebra with algebraic expressions and where documents are not fetched unless they completely match with each other. Since the query is either fetch the document (1) or doesn’t fetch the document (0), there is no methodology to rank them. Vector Space Model Since the Boolean Model only fetches complete matches, it doesn’t address the problem of the documents being partially matched. The Vector Space Model solves this problem by introducing vectors of index items each assigned with weights. The weights are ranged from positive (if matched completely or to some extent) to negative (if unmatched or completely oppositely matched) if documents are present. Term Frequency -
Ranking (information retrieval)
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The Google logo appears in numerous settings to identify the search engine company. Google has used several logos over its history, with the first logo created by Sergey Brin using GIMP. A revised logo debuted on September 1, 2015. The previous logo, with slight modifications between 1999 and 2013, was designed by Ruth Kedar, with a wordmark based on the Catull font, an old style serif typeface designed by Gustav Jaeger for the Berthold Type Foundry in 1982. The company also includes various modifications or humorous features, such as modifications of their logo for use on holidays, birthdays of famous people, and major events, such as the Olympics. These special logos, some designed by Dennis Hwang, have become known as Google Doodles. History In 1997, Larry Page created a computerized version of the Google letters using the free graphics program GIMP. The typeface was changed and an exclamation mark was added mimicking the Yahoo! logo. "There were a lot of different color iterations", says Ruth Kedar, the graphic designer who developed the now-famous logo in May 1999. "We ended up with the primary colors, but instead of having the pattern go in order, we put a secondary color on the L, which brought back the idea that Google doesn't follow the rules." The font Catull was used, "I was trying to find something that was both traditionally tied to the beautiful fonts in the past and also had a very current and in some ways surprising ways", says Ruth, "I really loved the way that it had these very elegant stems and ascenders and descenders and also had these Serifs that were very, very precise and I wanted something that when you looked at it, it was very clear that it's something you haven't seen before". In 2010, the Google logo received its first major overhaul since May 31, 1999. The new logo was first previewed on November 8, 2009, and was officially launched on May 6, 2010. It utilizes an identical typeface to the previous logo, but the "o" is distinctly more orange-colored in place of the previously more yellowish "o", as well as a much more subtle shadow rendered in a different shading style. On September 19, 2013, Google introduced a new "flat" (two-dimensional) logo with a slightly altered color palette. The old 2010 Google logo remained in use on some pages, such as the Google Doodles page, for a period of time. On May 24, 2014, the Google logo was slightly updated with some minor typographical tweaks, with the second 'g' moved right one pixel and the 'l' moved down and right one pixel. On September 1, 2015, Google introduced a controversial "new logo and identity family" designed to work across multiple devices. The notable difference in the logo is the change in the typeface. The colors remained the same as with the previous logo, however, Google switched to a modern, geometric sans-serif typeface called Product Sans, created in-house at Google (which is also used for the
Google logo
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Solve for X was a community solution engagement project and think tank-like event launched by Google to encourage collaboration, solve global issues and support innovators. The "X" in the title represents a remedy that someone or a team is already pursuing which ran from 2012 to 2014. History The project began on February 1, 2012 at a three-day convention at CordeValle Resort in San Martin, California. Google's team sought people working on various solutions. Solve for X talks were presented by innovators to 50 people in attendance who then collaboratively brainstormed to help those pursuing solutions, hosted by Google executives Eric Schmidt, Megan Smith, and Astro Teller who co-created the project. The convention took place annually. The website launched on February 6, 2012. The pitch component of Solve for X has been likened to TED talks since both projects host seminars by innovators, which can be viewed by others online. European director Bruno Giussani stated regarding Google's endeavor: "The world needs more ideas, not fewer and more commitment to sharing them freely and openly so that collectively we can test-run them and turn them into reality ... Google being at the origin of this, obviously technology and engineering will play a big role in Solve For X". Solve for X, co-founded by two leaders at Google with the support of Eric Schmidt, was initially believed to be linked to the Google X Lab working on new technology such as web-connected appliances, driverless cars, and space elevators, In 2013–14, the Solve for X team joined with several partner organizations, to support embedding their talks-plus-audience-community-brainstorming format in partner gatherings. The inaugural meeting that took place in 2012 featured the inventor and entrepreneur Rob McGinnis, discussing "Global Water Scarcity". Ira Glass opened the 2014 summit with a talk on climate change entitled “Ira Glass tries to boss you into a moonshot”. References External links Official site Official recap Google
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The E-G8 Forum (or simply the eG8) was an invitation-only summit of leaders in government and industry focusing on the Internet in the context of global public policy. The event was put on by Publicis Groupe and was convened by French President Nicolas Sarkozy from May 24-25th 2011, prior to the 37th G8 summit, and was held at the Tuileries Garden in Paris. Origin The idea for the event came up on a blog post by Tariq Krim in which the founder of Netvibes complained that France doesn't have its own CTO. The blog post was reposted by Arnaud Dassier and Loïc Le Meur, and read by the Elysée's technical counsellor Nicolas Princen, who then convinced Nicolas Sarkozy to take a step towards the French digital natives after the failure of Hadopi. Attendees The conference, which was the first of its kind, was a meeting of international government figures and those in the global technology industry. It included participants such as Eric Schmidt from Google, Sheryl Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, Jimmy Wales from the Wikimedia Foundation, French Minister of the Economy Christine Lagarde, Rupert Murdoch from News Corp, and was opened with a speech by Sarkozy. A few invitees, such as author Cory Doctorow, refused to attend in protest before it even began, and claimed the event was, more or less, a PR stunt financed by the advertising industry and Sarkozy's connections to Publicis Group. Content and reactions The discussion over the two-day meeting surfaced many tensions between technologists and policy makers. In general, Sarkozy led a camp pushing for further government regulation (such as HADOPI law in France) to protect minors, prevent or punish copyright infringement, and to encourage economic growth through electronic commerce. Participants such as John Perry Barlow, Yochai Benkler, Zuckerberg, and Schmidt spoke out during the event against tight regulatory control of the Internet. While the forum was publicized as a way for technology leaders to participate in the G8's thinking on Internet-related public policy, a copy of a communique from the G8 which was composed before the closing of the Forum was leaked to The New York Times. References External links g8internet.com, a protest site At the eG8, 20th century ideas clashed with the 21st century economy, O'Reilly Radar G7 summits 2011 in Paris 2011 conferences Internet governance
E-G8 Forum
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Google Māori is a Māori-led initiative which was made possible by Google's popular Google in Your Language initiative, which saw the translation of Google's homepage translated into te reo Māori. Background Around the time the Google in Your Language programme began, Craig Nevill-Manning, the New Zealand computer scientist who developed Froogle reached out to a former colleague at Waikato University, Dr. Te Taka Keegan, with the idea of translating Google into Māori. While working on his doctorate, Te Taka began the translation effort in his spare time. Over the course of the next six years, with the help of several other volunteers, he had covered 68% of the messages. In 2007 TangataWhenua.com's husband-and-wife team of Potaua and Nikolasa Biasiny-Tule began to project manage the initiative. As project managers they initiated the support of the Māori Language Commission and dozens of volunteers, leading ultimately to all translations being completed within a year—just in time for te Wiki o te Reo Māori (Māori Language Week) 2008. In total more than 1,600 phrases, totaling more than 8,500 words, had been translated. Launch Google Māori was launched during te Wiki o Te Reo Māori in 2008 at Te Wānanga o Aotearoa, in Rotorua. Google sent two representatives to the event, which was widely covered by national and global media. About Google in Your Language The Google in Your Language initiative is in line with Google's overall mission of making the world's information accessible in as many languages as possible. The programme began in 2001 and is designed to give anyone the tools to translate Google services into languages in which they are fluent, as a result the Google homepage now appears in more than 100 languages. References and sources External links Search Google in te reo Maori | Google | TVNZ New Zealand websites Maori Māori language Internet properties established in 2008 Māori mass media
Google Māori
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Gretchen Andrew is an American artist. Her painting practice is mostly described as an exploration of search engine art and virtual reality. Her work was exhibited in museums and galleries in Europe and the United States, including De Re Gallery, Arebyte gallery. Biography Gretchen Andrew grew up in New Hampshire. She studied Information Systems at Boston College where she attended on a track scholarship. Describing her degree she has said, "Information systems is all about how companies use technology for competitive advantage...translated into art, I'm asking how I can use information to create meaning." Andrew worked in Silicon Valley at both Intuit and Google. After working there from 2010 to 2012, she left Google to become a painter. She has claimed to have developed her artistic technique by watching how to videos on YouTube. The idea that one can learn about all topics on the Internet was the motto of her artistic series "How to How to How to". From 2012 to 2017 she apprenticed with London-based figurative painter Billy Childish who is still her mentor. Work Gretchen Andrew's paintings explore and manipulate the functioning of search engines, particularly Google Search. Her first search engine art piece occurred accidentally when she would copy Billy Childish's paintings and title them as "After Billy Childish". Since internet technology was unable to grasp the nuance between original and facsimile, her versions popped up first when she searched for his paintings online. In 2018 Gretchen's work then focused on the political and social impact of search technology, exploring in a paper with The British Computer Society the implications for artificial intelligence. In 2018 she coined the term "search engine art" in a book she co-authored with Irini Papadimitriou through V&A Digital Futures. In February 2019 Gretchen Andrew used her Internet Imperialism process to convince Google Image Search that images of her artwork are the most important visual content related to Frieze Los Angeles, the much-hyped international art fair. The digital performance brought her prominence with The Los Angeles Times, Hyperallergic, artnet, and others reporting on Gretchen and her practice. She has manipulated the search results using search engine optimization techniques for the terms "powerful person", "made for women", and "frieze Los Angeles", among others. Her paintings and search engine art are said to relate to the art world in an aspirational way. In 2023, she was part of the curatorial team of the Santa Monica Art Museum founded by art collector and businessman Christoph Rahofer and her work was included in the exhibition Looking West. References External links Official website Gretchen Andrew's Collection "Made for Women" 1988 births American women artists Artists from Los Angeles Boston College alumni Internet art Living people Painters from London 21st-century American women artists
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Sidewalk Labs LLC is an urban planning and infrastructure subsidiary of Google. Its stated goal is to improve urban infrastructure through technological solutions, and tackle issues such as cost of living, efficient transportation and energy usage. The company was headed by Daniel L. Doctoroff, former Deputy Mayor of New York City for economic development and former chief executive of Bloomberg L.P. until 2021. Other notable employees include Craig Nevill-Manning, co-founder of Google's New York office and inventor of Froogle, and Rohit Aggarwala, who served as chief policy officer of the company and is now Commissioner of New York City Department of Environmental Protection. It was originally part of Alphabet Inc., Google's parent company, before being absorbed into Google in 2022 following Doctoroff's departure from the company due to a suspected ALS diagnosis. Projects Sidewalk Toronto In April 2016, The Information reported that Sidewalk intended to create a new city in the United States to test design ideas prior to real world implementation. Sidewalk did not confirm that report, but has said it had engaged in thought experiments about what it could be like to develop a community "from the internet up." In October 2017, Sidewalk Labs announced plans to develop Quayside, a neighborhood in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, in response to a competition organized by Waterfront Toronto. Branded as Sidewalk Toronto, the project aims to become "a testbed for emerging technologies, materials and processes" to address issues such as sustainability, accessibility, inclusiveness and prosperity in urban communities. The initiative is also envisioned to be scaled up across Toronto's Port Lands, an area that is one of the largest areas of underdeveloped urban land in North America. The project progressed slowly with ongoing consultation from the public. In 2018, the company opened a new Toronto office and began holding weekend open houses in which visitors from the public contributed their ideas to the development of the Sidewalk Toronto project. In 2019, Sidewalk Labs said it had consulted thousands of Torontonians for its development plans. However, representatives of Waterfront Toronto's Digital Strategy Advisory Panel (DSAP) said that Sidewalk Labs's projects contained too much "tech for tech's sake." In May 2020, the project was abandoned due to the economic uncertainty posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Development Advisory Services Sidewalk Labs offers advisory services for real estate developers to use technology to meet environmental, affordability, and equity goals. Sidewalk Labs has advised on the following four projects: Mana Wynwood — a 23.5–acre project in Miami that will serve as a trade center between Latin America and China and an arts and entertainment center Downtown Summerlin — a 300–acre mixed-use development with minimalized parking in Las Vegas The Power Station — a 29–acre mixed-use residential community on the waterfront in San Francisco at the site of a former electrical plant Vancouver Innovation Center — conversion of a 180–acre industrial manufacturing site into a mixed-use residential and commercial community in the Portland/Vancouver area Traffic flow in the United States In early 2016, Sidewalk Labs began working with
Sidewalk Labs
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Genius is an American digital media company founded on August 27, 2009, by Tom Lehman, Ilan Zechory, and Mahbod Moghadam. Its website serves as an online music encyclopedia allowing users to provide annotations and interpretation to song lyrics, news stories, sources, poetry, and documents. Originally launched as Rap Genius, with a focus on hip-hop music, the company attracted the attention and support of celebrities, and venture capital enabling further growth. The site expanded in 2014 to cover other forms of media, such as pop, literature, R&B, and added an annotation-embedded platform. That same year, an iPhone app was released. To reflect these new goals, the site relaunched as Genius in July 2014. An Android version was released in August 2015, and in 2016 and 2017, the company began producing music-focused original video content and hosting live events and concerts. History Lyric Sites before Rap Exegesis (2000s) Prior to the creation of this site, there were websites specifically for searching up lyrics, such as AZLyrics or SongMeanings, some were meant for specific genres, others include guitar tabs or MIDI with them (as in Karaoke). Few lyric sites of the time actually embedded the songs that are meant to be transcribed, and even fewer had annotations to explain subtleties like samples, interpolations, references to other lyrics, wordplay, double-entendres or rhyme-schemes. Genius first started as a crowdsourced hip-hop focused lyric site, and was originally named Rap Exegesis. The site changed its name to Rap Genius in December 2009 because "exegesis" was difficult for users to spell. Founding and early years (2009–2012) It was created in August 2009 by founders Tom Lehman (who "entered the first line of code" for the website at 12:30 PM on August 19, 2009), Ilan Zechory, and Mahbod Moghadam, the three of whom met during their undergraduate years at Yale University. Lehman and Moghadam came up with the idea for the site in the summer of 2009 when Lehman asked Moghadam about the meaning of a Cam'ron lyric. After Lehman built the earliest version of the site, he—along with cofounders Moghadam and Zechory—decided to leave their jobs at D.E. Shaw and Google to pursue the idea full-time and bring it to fruition. Initial funding In 2011, with the site "drawing over 1 million unique visitors per month", Rap Genius applied to start-up incubator Y Combinator, and "became the fastest-growing start-up in Y Combinator history", obtaining $1.8 million in seed funding, which enabled the founders to occupy offices in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. In 2012, the company received an additional $15 million investment from Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (also known as a16z), prompted in part by partner Marc Andreessen's own past effort to build a group annotation feature into a web browser. Ben Horowitz described Genius as "one of the most important things we've ever funded". The company's three co-founders were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 in December 2012. Establishment of verified accounts The popular success of the venture was exemplified by the participation of artists like
Genius (company)
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A stick PC or PC on a stick is a single-board computer in a small elongated casing resembling a stick, that can usually be plugged directly (without an HDMI cable) into an HDMI video port. A stick PC is a device which has independent CPUs or processing chips and which does not rely on another computer. It should not be confused with passive storage devices such as thumb drives. A stick PC can be connected to a peripheral device such as a monitor, TV, or kiosk display to produce visual or audio output. Stick PCs generally have limited computing power and are not suited for intensive tasks, but can be suitable in other applications that do not require such power. History The stick PC was first introduced in 2003. The Gumstix, which came out that same year, used the ARM architecture system on a chip (SoC) and the Linux 2.6 kernel. Windows CE can be installed on this stick. It was based on the idea of making a PC similar in size to that of an average stick of chewing gum. As the popularity of smart TVs and set-top boxes to view streaming services (such as the Roku) grew, companies started looking at making these small computers even smaller and easier to use. Several stick PCs using ARM architecture SoCs were introduced around 2012, made of sticks pluggable in an HDMI port, including the Android Mini PC MK802 series from Rikomagic, using Android or Linux distributions, both based on Linux and Allwinner Technology or Rockchip SoC and Cotton Candy, using Samsung Exynos SoC. 2013-2014 saw several manufacturers come out with stick PCs. MeeGoPad released the first x86 based stick PC, featuring the Intel Atom Z3735F Processor. In April 2013, Tronsmart released the MK908, using the Rockchip RK3188 (featuring the quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 and ARM Mali-400MP GPU). On July 24, 2013, Google introduced the Google Chromecast, a streaming device similar in function and design to a stick PC. On November 19, 2014, Amazon released a smaller version of the Amazon Fire TV called the Fire TV Stick. In March 2015, ASUS and Google introduced the Chromebit, a stick PC based on the Rockchip RK3288 SoC and running Google's ChromeOS. In 2016, Intel introduced the Intel Compute Stick. It was discontinued in June 2020. Neural compute sticks In July 2017, Intel released the Movidius Neural Compute Stick which included a Vision Processing Unit for vision-specific AI workload. In January 2018, the Laceli AI Compute Stick came out, including a neural network processor unit for AI workload called Lightspeeur 2801S Neural Processor, and claiming to be more powerful and more energy-efficient than the Movidius. In November 2018, the Orange Pi AI Stick 2801 came out, also featuring the Lightspeeur 2801S Neural Processor. See also Single-board computer System on a chip References Digital media players Networking hardware Streaming media systems
Stick PC
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Google News is a news aggregator service developed by Google. It presents a continuous flow of links to articles organized from thousands of publishers and magazines. Google News is available as an app on Android, iOS, and the Web. Google released a beta version in September 2002 and the official app in January 2006. The initial idea was developed by Krishna Bharat. The service has been described as the world's largest news aggregator. In 2020, Google announced they would be spending billion to work with publishers to create Showcases, "a new format for insightful feature stories". History As of 2014, Google News was watching more than 50,000 news sources worldwide. Versions for more than 60 regions in 28 languages were available in March 2012. , service is offered in the following 35 languages: Arabic, Bengali, Bulgarian, Cantonese, Chinese, Czech, Dutch, English, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Indonesian, Japanese, Kannada, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Malayalam, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. The service covers news articles appearing within the past 44 days on various news websites. In total, Google News aggregates content from more than 20,000 publishers. For the English language, it covers about 4,500 sites; for other languages, fewer. Its front page provides roughly the first 200 characters of the article and a link to its larger content. Websites may or may not require a subscription; sites requiring a subscription are no longer noted in the article's description. On December 1, 2009, Google announced changes to their "first click free" program, which has been running since 2008 and allows users to find and read articles behind a paywall. The reader's first click to the content is free, and the number after that would be set by the content provider. Google on December 1, 2009 changed their policy to allow a limit of five articles per day, in order to protect publishers from abuse. This policy was again changed on September 29, 2015 where this limit was changed to three articles per day. In October 2017, this program was replaced with a "flexible sampling" model in which each publisher chooses how many, if any, free articles were allowed. The layout of Google News underwent a major revision on May 16, 2011. On July 14, 2011, Google introduced "Google News Badges", which it later retired in October 2012. Additionally in July 2011, the Sci/Tech section of the English Google News versions was split up into two sections: Science and Technology. It was announced that this section split would be performed on other language versions as well. , this split had not been applied to all language versions of Google News. In June 2017, the desktop version of Google News saw a thorough redesign that according to Google had the goal to "make news more accessible and easier to navigate ... with a renewed focus on facts, diverse perspectives, and more control for users." Yet several options such as the search tools menu
Google News
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PolyCola, previously known as GahooYoogle, is a metasearch engine ( search engine that searches multiple search engines at once) which was created by Arbel Hakopian. It was started with the domain www.GahooYoogle.com in 2005. When it was first known to the public, it was discussed in BBC radio, was chosen at HotSite by USA Today and managed to have entries in Fox News Channel. However, the site was shut down due to legal problems. GahooYoogle.com had a legal problem, so after the shut down, the site was moved to Yahoo! with the order made by the court after being an issue for couple of years. After the shut down, the creator, Arbel Hakopian, decided to expand his original idea of GahooYoogle.com and came up with the idea of PolyCola.com; currently it is operating with the address www.polycola.com. The new and improved PolyCola.com lets searchers to minimize the time and problem they might have in using multiple search engines. Metasearch engine PolyCola is a metasearch engine. A metasearch engine is a tool which lets you submit a word or phrase in the search box. Then it sends your search concurrently to other individual search engines which then sends it to its own databases. Within couple of seconds, you receive the result from several search engines. A metasearch engine only sends your search terms to databases of individual search engines; it does not have its own database of web pages. Search engines are made up with three main parts. First, the search engine follows links on the web in order to request pages that are either not yet cataloged or have been updated. Then these pages are updated and added to the search engine index. The final part of a search engine is the search interface and relevancy software. Usually major search engines do not operate by allowing search of the actual web, but rather allow a search of a catalog of content that is slightly outdated. Each of the three parts that make up a search engine is able to do most of the following: Accept query; check for advanced matching or any misspelling to recommend for correct spelling Check for any query that might be related to other vertical search databases and place those related links to a small number of items Collect a list of relevant pages for the results. These are ranked based on content, link citation data and usage data. List related advertisements nearby. Technical details PolyCola lets searchers to simultaneously search and compare results from major metasearch engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Live Search, Ask.com, Dogpile, AltaVista and AOL. PolyCola also has smart tool bar where searchers can choose results to be from general Web Browser to specific areas such as Images, Videos, News, Shopping, Directory, Answers and Blogs. The instruction to using PolyCola is very simple. PolyCola lets searchers to choose two search engines among listed above seven search engines Then you can select a search type from general Web Browser to Blogs as listed
Polycola
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A holographic optical element (HOE) is an optical component (mirror, lens, directional diffuser, etc.) that produces holographic images using principles of diffraction. HOE is most commonly used in transparent displays, 3D imaging, and certain scanning technologies. The shape and structure of the HOE is dependent on the piece of hardware it is needed for. The coupled wave theory is a common tool used to calculate the diffraction efficiency or grating volume that helps with the design of an HOE. Early concepts of the holographic optical element can be traced back to the mid-1900s, coinciding closely with the start of holography coined by Dennis Gabor. The application of 3D visualization and displays is ultimately the end goal of the HOE; however, the cost and complexity of the device has hindered the rapid development toward full 3D visualization. The HOE is also used in the development of augmented reality (AR) by companies such as Google with Google Glass or in research universities that look to utilize HOEs to create 3D imaging without the use of eye-wear or head-wear. Furthermore, the ability of the HOE to allow for transparent displays have caught the attention of the US military in its development of better head-up displays (HUD) which is used to display crucial information for aircraft pilots. Early development The holographic optical element is closely linked to holography (science of making holograms), a term proposed by Dennis Gabor in 1948. Since the idea of holography came around much has been done over the next few decades to try and create holograms. Around the 1960s, Yuri Nikolaevich Denisyuk, a graduate student from Leningrad recognized that perhaps the wave front of light can be recorded as a standing wave in a photographic emulsion (light crystal) by using monochromatic light which can then reflect light back to reproduce the wave front. This essentially describes a holographic mirror (one of the first HOEs created) and fixed the issue of overlapping images. However, there was little practical use in Densiyuk's proposal and his colleagues dismissed his results. It was not until around the mid-1960s that Densiyuk's proposals resurfaced after some development from Emmett Leith and Juris Upatnieks. These two associates encoded and reconstructed images with a two step hologram process on photographic transparency. More experiments for holographic instruments such as the holographic stereogram developed by Lloyd Cross in the 1970s took the imaging process developed by Leith and Uptanieks and arranged them into vertical strips that were curved into a cylinder. These strips act as an aperture that light passes through, so when a viewer is to look through them, a 3D image can be seen. This demonstrates a very simple version of the diffraction concepts that are still utilized in the production of HOEs and a prototype for 3D glasses. Classification Volume and thin HOEs HOEs differ from other optical devices since they do not bend light with curvature and shape. Instead, they use diffraction principles (the distribution of light as it passes through an aperture) to diffract
Holographic optical element
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"Holy Mountain" is a song by English rock band Noel Gallagher's High Flying Birds. Written by frontman Noel Gallagher, it was released on 9 October 2017 as the first single from the band's third studio album Who Built the Moon? (2017). The song features Paul Weller playing organ. Background The song was premiered on its release day by British radio stations Radio X, BBC Radio 2 and Absolute Radio. Gallagher described the song as being one of his favourite pieces of music he has ever written, saying that it sounds great live and his children love it and his friends’ children love it. Interviewed by Radio X, Gallagher said: "Holy Mountain is about your nearest and dearest, yeah. How it came about was, one of the first sessions we did, the hook line, the tin whistle thing that is like one of the most catchiest things in the world, is a sample from a track by a brilliantly titled band from the 60s called The Ice Cream, and a track called 'Chewing Gum Kid'(1968), don't try and Google it, it's beyond obscure, you'll never find it... " "Dead in the Water" The single's B-side is a live acoustic version of "Dead in the Water", recorded at RTÉ 2FM Studios in Dublin, Ireland in between takes of then-current single "The Dying of the Light". Gallagher recounted; "I had just written ["Dead in the Water"] a couple nights before and they were messing about, moving microphones around and it sounded so good in my headphones that I just started to sing that song. I had no idea it was being recorded, right? No idea at all." He then said that when his team were looking for bonus material to include on 2017's Who Built the Moon?, someone suggested including that performance of "Dead in the Water". Gallagher said of the performance, "that is such a special moment in time, and I might never re-record that because it's such a personal moment for me. And it's live, and it's as bare naked as you can get. And it was a brand new song, and it really is a great tune." When asked in 2021 why he had not released a studio version of "Dead in the Water", Gallagher said he took a play out of Neil Young's playbook, mimicking how Young has never released a studio recording of "Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)". Gallagher did reveal that he attempted a studio recording of the song with an orchestra for the 2021 compilation Back the Way We Came: Vol 1 (2011–2021), but ultimately scrapped the idea. Music video The official video for "Holy Mountain", directed by Julian House and using the original cameras from Top of the Pops in the 1970s, was released on the band's Vevo account on 11 October 2017. The video sees the band in a room filled with coloured lights and also features animated scenes. Reception The NME described the song as "a jaunty and vibrant, horn-driven, arena-ready
Holy Mountain (song)
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Google Nest is a line of smart home products including smart speakers, smart displays, streaming devices, thermostats, smoke detectors, routers and security systems including smart doorbells, cameras and smart locks. The Nest brand name was originally owned by Nest Labs, co-founded by former Apple engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers in 2010. Its flagship product, which was the company's first offering, is the Nest Learning Thermostat, introduced in 2011. The product is programmable, self-learning, sensor-driven, and Wi-Fi-enabled: features that are often found in other Nest products. It was followed by the Nest Protect smoke and carbon monoxide detectors in October 2013. After its acquisition of Dropcam in 2014, the company introduced its Nest Cam branding of security cameras beginning in June 2015. The company quickly expanded to more than 130 employees by the end of 2012. Google acquired Nest Labs for US$3.2 billion in January 2014, when the company employed 280. As of late 2015, Nest employs more than 1,100 and added a primary engineering center in Seattle. After Google reorganized itself under the holding company Alphabet Inc., Nest operated independently of Google from 2015 to 2018. However, in 2018, Nest was merged into Google's home-devices unit led by Rishi Chandra, effectively ceasing to exist as a separate business. In July 2018, it was announced that all Google Home electronics products will henceforth be marketed under the brand Google Nest. History Nest Labs before acquisition by Google Nest Labs was founded in 2010 by former Apple engineers Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers. The idea came when Fadell was building a vacation home and found all of the available thermostats on the market to be inadequate, motivated to bring something better on the market. Early investors in Nest Labs included Shasta Ventures and Kleiner Perkins. Acquisition by Google of Nest Labs, Dropcam, and Revolv On January 13, 2014, Google announced plans to acquire Nest Labs for $3.2 billion in cash. Google completed the acquisition the next day, on January 14, 2014. The company would operate independently from Google's other businesses. In June 2014, it was announced that Nest would buy camera startup Dropcam for $555 million. With the purchase, Dropcam became integrated with other Nest products; if the Protect alarm is triggered, the Dropcam can automatically start recording, and the Thermostat can use Dropcam to sense for motion. In September 2014, the Nest Thermostat and Nest Protect (a smoke alarm) became available in Belgium, France, Ireland, and the Netherlands. Initially, they were sold in approximately 400 stores across Europe, with another 150 stores to be added by the end of the year. In June 2015, the new Nest Cam, replacing the Dropcam, was announced, together with the second generation of the Nest Protect; there were internal reports that sales of the rebranded camera fell. On October 24, 2014, Nest both acquired the hub service Revolv, and discontinued its product line, gaining the expertise of Revolv's staff. Nest as a subsidiary of Alphabet Inc. In August 2015, Google announced that it would
Google Nest
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Google Moderator was a Google service that used crowdsourcing to rank user-submitted questions, suggestions and ideas. It was launched on September 25, 2008 and shut down on June 30, 2015. The service allowed the management of feedback from a large number of people, who could vote for questions they thought should be posed from a pool of questions submitted by others or submit their own to be asked and voted on. The service aimed to ensure that every question was considered, let the audience see others' questions, and helped the moderator of a team or event address the questions that the audience most cared about. The service was nicknamed Dory internally by Google, a reference to "the fish who asked questions all the time in ''Finding Nemo". Google Moderator was developed by Google engineers Dave S. Young, Taliver Heath, and Colby Ranger in their 20% time, led by project manager Katie Jacobs Stanton. In December 2008, Google Moderator was used by the President-elect Barack Obama's transition team in a public series called "Open for Questions", in which they answered questions from the general public. The first series ran for less than 48 hours and attracted 1 million votes from 20,000 people on 10,000 questions. The second series ran for just over a week and attracted 4.7 million votes from 100,000 people on 76,000 questions. In January 2009, Obama appointed Stanton to the newly created position of Director of Citizen Participation. Google Moderator was shut down on June 30, 2015, because the usage did not match Google's expectations. The site remained available as read-only until August 15, 2015, at which time it closed completely. Content will remain available for a minimum of two years via Google's Takeout tool. Since the shutdown, the term has been used to refer to Google Moderators, an advanced permission given to certain accounts to allow the user to monitor certain aspects of Google and take administrative action(s) when needed. References External links Moderator Bug and issue tracking software 2008 software Internet properties established in 2008 Products and services discontinued in 2015
Google Moderator
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Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism is a 2018 book by Safiya Umoja Noble in the fields of information science, machine learning, and human-computer interaction. Background Noble earned an undergraduate degree in sociology from California State University, Fresno in the 1990s, then worked in advertising and marketing for fifteen years before going to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for a Master of Library and Information Science degree in the early 2000s. The book's first inspiration came in 2011, when Noble Googled the phrase "black girls" and saw results for pornography on the first page. Noble's doctoral thesis, completed in 2012, was titled "Searching for Black girls: Old traditions in new media." At this time, Noble thought of the title "Algorithms of Oppression" for the eventual book. By this time, changes to Google's algorithm had changed the most common results for a search of "black girls," though the underlying biases remain influential. Noble became an assistant professor at University of California, Los Angeles in 2014. In 2017, she published an article on racist and sexist bias in search engines in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The book was published on February 20, 2018. Overview Algorithms of Oppression is a text based on over six years of academic research on Google search algorithms, examining search results from 2009 to 2015. The book addresses the relationship between search engines and discriminatory biases. Noble argues that search algorithms are racist and perpetuate societal problems because they reflect the negative biases that exist in society and the people who create them. Noble dismantles the idea that search engines are inherently neutral by explaining how algorithms in search engines privilege whiteness by depicting positive cues when key words like “white” are searched as opposed to “asian,” “hispanic,” or “Black.” Her main example surrounds the search results of "Black girls" versus "white girls" and the biases that are depicted in the results. These algorithms can then have negative biases against women of color and other marginalized populations, while also affecting Internet users in general by leading to "racial and gender profiling, misrepresentation, and even economic redlining." The book argues that algorithms perpetuate oppression and discriminate against People of Color, specifically women of color. Noble takes a Black intersectional feminist approach to her work in studying how google algorithms affect people differently by race and gender. Intersectional Feminism takes into account the diverse experiences of women of different races and sexualities when discussing their oppression society, and how their distinct backgrounds affect their struggles. Additionally, Noble's argument addresses how racism infiltrates the google algorithm itself, something that is true throughout many coding systems including facial recognition, and medical care programs. While many new technological systems promote themselves as progressive and unbiased, Noble is arguing against this point and saying that many technologies, including google's algorithm "reflect and reproduce existing inequities." Chapter Summaries Chapter 1 In Chapter 1 of Algorithms of Oppression, Safiya Noble explores how Google search's auto suggestion feature is demoralizing. On September 18, 2011,
Algorithms of Oppression
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Google One Pass was an online store developed by Google for publishers looking to sell subscriptions to their content. Similar to the Android Market, where "apps" are sold to users via their Android mobile devices, One Pass offered the ability for publishers of any size, from large media companies to independent publishers, to sell their content through Google's service. The content was made available through both the Internet and Android mobile devices. Google announced the closure of One Pass on April 20, 2012. History One Pass was officially announced on February 16, 2011 at Humboldt University in Berlin by Eric Schmidt. Google One Pass became immediately available for publishers in Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S. Priced content/subscriptions Similar to the Android Market, Google shared in the revenue generated by all sales through One Pass. On its launch date, revenue was split between the publisher and Google in a 90%/10% respectively. That was significantly less than Apple's competing product that provided only 70% of the revenue to the publisher and kept the remaining 30%. Publishers determined the payments models and had full control over the content they charged for and content they offered for free. The system itself managed the user authentication, payment processing, administration and the distribution to any device that was browser enabled and/or had a native mobile app that could distribute the content. The core idea was to allow the publishers to focus on what they do best and not worry about the hassle involved in building an online store. Publishers also had access to all of a customer's information when the customer actually subscribed or purchased any content from the publisher. This may be part of the agreement the customer made when signing up to use One Pass. In the Apple subscription system, publishers are only given user data if the user specifies that they can have it. Availability for users Users outside the countries/regions listed below only had access to free applications through Google One Pass. Paid content was available to Google One Pass users only in the following countries: Availability for publishers Initially the service allowed publishers in any country where Google Checkout was available to distribute content through One Pass. References External links Blog Washington Post article One pass One Pass
Google One Pass
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Lottie Dolls are a series of dolls created by Arklu Ltd. Launched in August 2012. Lottie promotes STEM subjects for kids and was even the first doll in space when she travelled to the International Space Station alongside British European Space Agency Astronaut, Tim Peake, on the Principia Mission, in December 2015. History Arklu co-founders, Ian Harkin and Lucie Follett, based in London at the time, noticed a niche in the market, with parents concerned about the over-sexualization of dolls currently available in the market. They began 18-months of research, alongside British academics, resulting in Lottie; a doll based on the proportions of an average 9-year-old girl (with the exception of her head, which is larger to allow more hairstyling play). The research was gathered by leading British academics, Professor David McCarthy (Prof of Nutrition and Health - Institute for Health Research & Policy, London Metropolitan University) and Dr Margaret Ashwell OBE (formerly Science Director of the British Nutrition Foundation). Arklu co-founder and Managing Director Ian Harkin decided to move from London to Letterkenny in County Donegal, close to Ian's hometown of Ballybofey in 2014. Having secured a grant from Enterprise Ireland's High Potential Start-Up Fund, Arklu were able to move and expand their business. Lucie Follett was Arklu's Creative Director with responsibility for all brand building, product development and product partnerships. Google Adopt a Start-Up Arklu was also named the winner of the "Google, girls award Adopt a Start-Up" programme in 2016. Eight finalists were chosen to present their company strategy to a panel of judges. Arklu was awarded €10,000 AdWords Credit, $20,000 Cloud Credit, and is now eligible for the Google Cloud Platform for Start-Up program. The "Adopt a Start-Up" Programme was created to assist companies in developing their business strategies and accelerate the growth of high-potential Start-Ups in Ireland. Products Lottie and Finn are the main characters of the Arklu line. Lottie changes in appearance with different hair and skin tones. Finn was launched in 2014, and his clothes both fit Finn and Lottie, allowing boys and girls to interchange outfits. New friends of Lottie, Sammi and Mia, have recently been released. One of the most successful competitions Arklu have organised was encouraging kids to design an outfit for Lottie – resulting in the first ever commercial production of a crowd-sourced design. The winning design, Superhero Lottie, was produced based on the drawing by 6-year old, Lily, from Ohio, and was independently judged by the Brave Girls Alliance. European Space Agency & Stargazer Lottie Stargazer Lottie was designed by 6-year old Abigail from Canada. She came up with the idea for an astronomy-based doll due to her interest, and her wanting other kids to learn more about space. She emailed Arklu, explaining her idea, and in collaboration with the European Space Agency, and help from Dr Karen Masters (female astronomer at Portsmouth University), Stargazer Lottie was created. Stargazer Lottie was the first doll to ever make it into space – voyaging alongside British astronaut Tim Peake. Peake
Lottie Dolls
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Apple University is a training facility of Apple Inc., located in Cupertino, California. This corporate university was designed to instruct personnel employed by Apple in the various aspects of Apple's technology and corporate culture. History Steve Jobs established Apple University in 2008 as a way to inculcate employees into Apple's business culture and educate them about its history, particularly as the company grew. The program was devised by Joel Podolny, then the Dean of Yale School of Management. Jobs selected him when the program was founded, and Podolny was head of the program and effectively dean of the university until 2021. He also was a vice president at Apple. Courses are not required, only recommended. Employees sign up for courses tailored to their positions and backgrounds on an internal website available only to Apple staff members. It is highly secretive and rarely written about. Employees are strongly discouraged from talking about the company in general, including Apple University. No pictures of the classrooms have surfaced publicly. Apple has strenuously pursued the vision that function and beauty come from simplicity, and teachers in its internal training program sometimes point to a series of Picasso lithographs that illustrate the drive to boil down ideas to their most essential components. Academic staff and instructors The full-time members of the faculty design and teach the courses. Faculty members include professors from universities like Yale; Harvard; the University of California-Berkeley; Stanford; and M.I.T. Some faculties continue to hold positions at their universities while also working for Apple. The instructors include: Tim Cook, CEO Joel Podolny, formerly the dean of Yale School of Management Richard Tedlow, a Harvard University business historian Randy Nelson who came from the animation studios Pixar and DreamWorks Animation Joshua Cohen, a Berkeley professor Morten Hansen, of Berkeley Noelle Stout, a Stanford professor Courses Some courses teach case studies about important business decisions that Apple made. These strategic decisions include the one to make the iPod and its iTunes software compatible with Microsoft's Windows system. This was a topic of fierce debate internally at Apple, with Steve Jobs strongly opposing the notion of sharing the iPod with Windows. Jobs eventually gave in to his lieutenants. It turned out that opening the iPod to Windows users led to explosive growth of the music player and the iTunes Store, and this in turn would later be critical to the success of the iPhone. “Communicating at Apple.” This course focuses on clear communication for making products intuitive, sharing ideas within Apple, and marketing products. “Project Management.” No information provided. Course is confidential. “Vendor Management.” “What Makes Apple, Apple.” Focuses on one of Jobs's goals: to make complex computer technologies feel understandable and natural. In the course, an instructor showed a slide of the remote control for the Google TV. The remote had 78 buttons. Then the instructor, Nelson, showed a photo of the Apple TV remote, a thin rod with three buttons. Campus The classes are taught on Apple's corporate campus in Cupertino, California. Apple
Apple University
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Chad Meredith Hurley (born January 24, 1977) is an American webmaster and businessman who serves as the advisor and former chief executive officer (CEO) of YouTube. He also co-founded MixBit, a since closed video sharing service. In October 2006, he and Steve Chen sold YouTube for $1.65 billion to Google. Hurley worked in eBay's PayPal division—one of his tasks involved designing the original PayPal logo—before co-founding YouTube with fellow PayPal colleagues Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. Hurley was primarily responsible for the tagging and video-sharing aspects of YouTube. Early life and education Hurley was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, the second child of Don and Joann Hurley, and grew up near Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. He has an older sister, Heather, and a younger brother, Brent. Since childhood, Hurley showed interest in the arts, and became interested in computers and electronic media during high school. He was a standout runner for Twin Valley High School's cross-country program, which won two of its PIAA State titles with him as a member in 1992 and 1994. He was also a member of the Technology Student Association during high school. He graduated from Twin Valley High School in 1995 and earned a B.A. in Fine Art from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1999. Career YouTube Hurley founded YouTube in 2005 with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. On October 16, 2006, Chen and Hurley sold YouTube to Google Inc. (now Google LLC) for $1.65 billion. It was reported in The Wall Street Journal that Hurley's share was $345.6M at Google's February 7, 2007, closing stock price of $470.01. He received 694,087 Google shares directly and another 41,232 shares in a trust. YouTube's other two co-founders, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, received 625,366 shares and 137,443 shares, respectively valued at $326.2M and $64.6M. The Journals report was based on Google's registration statement with SEC filed on February 7, 2007. Hurley stepped down as CEO of YouTube in October 2010 and stated he would stay on as an advisor of YouTube, allowing Salar Kamangar to take over the CEO position. MixBit In August 2013, Hurley launched another company called MixBit which does video editing using smartphones. According to Steve Chen, it was Chad's idea to turn Avos into MixBit even before the inception of YouTube. The app resembles other famous short-video recording smartphone apps such as Vine, Instagram and Vyclone. Its limit of recording stretches up to 256 clips, and each clip can be maximum 16 seconds long. It also features the editing tools similar to its other competitor apps. Formula One Hurley was involved as a major investor with US F1 Team, one of the new entrants in Formula One automobile racing for the 2010 season. On March 2, 2010, the team's personnel were dismissed from their duties and the team was unofficially shut down. Neither Hurley, team principal Ken Anderson nor sporting director Peter Windsor would comment on the team's failure to make it to the grid. Investments Hurley has made several investments. He is a minority
Chad Hurley
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Sherwood is an animated science fiction streaming television series created by Diana Manson and Megan Laughton that premiered on March 6, 2019, on YouTube Premium. It is a new telling of the Robin Hood legend. Some reviewers have noted the focus on socioeconomic class, as Robin lives among "the impoverished 99%," leading rebels who will overthrow the Sheriff, who lives in an Upper City housing "the wealthy citizens of Sherwood." Others also noted the focus on class difference, with Robin and her comrades trying to "overcome inequality and fight for justice." Apart from this, others said the series has a cyberpunk feeling to it. The show had a world premiere in Sydney, Australia, in March 2019. In April 2020, Sherwood was one of the originals that Google decided to make freely available in light of the pandemic. Even though the show's season one episodes aired in March 2019, official accounts on Twitter and Instagram regularly post content about the show. Premise In the year 2270, in the dystopic 23rd century, 14-year-old hacker Robin Loxley and her friends battle the Sheriff of Nottingham in a Britain devastated by environmental disaster. Characters Main Robin Loxley (voiced by Anya Chalotra) is the main protagonist of the series. She often has to fight and steal from the Sheriff of Nottingham, to protect Sherwood. She is called "Insurgent Hood" by the Sheriff and his allies, also once takes the alias of "Marian Johns." Iniko (voiced by Tyler Posey) is one of the main protagonists, the pilot of the submarine Amphy, and a self proclaimed Sea Pirate. Gisbourne (voiced by Aneurin Barnard) is the son of the Sheriff of Nottingham and is the Head of Security of the Regime. He often commands the Drobos and attempts to catch the Insurgents. Sheriff Nottingham (voiced by Joseph Fiennes) is the main antagonist of the Sherwood series and rules the Upper City. He is the head of the Regime, with Gisbourne as his Head of Security (and son). Supporting Tui (voiced by Rachel House) is like a mother to Robin, and helps her around the Kelp Farm. Gripper (voiced by Adetokumboh M'Cormack) is part of Robin's crew and acts like a father to Juba. Rose Trefgarne (voiced by Jamie Chung) is a protagonist, often helping out the main cast. Formerly a resident of The Upper City, she now resides in Sherwood. Thomas Loxley (voiced by Darrill Rosen) is a scientist and inventor, and is the father of Robin Loxley. Juba (voiced by Neneh Conteh) is a small girl with dark skin and light blonde hair like Gripper and who is a refugee before she came to Sherwood. Production The idea for the series was originally posed by Diana Manson and Megan Laughton, of a New York company named Baby Octopus, in 2016, to Justin Trefgarne. Additionally, the show is, according to Trefgarne, aimed at "the pre-teen market," and is focused "on positive female empowerment." The production company, Baby Octopus, worked with the Computer Science in Media team of Google
Sherwood (2019 TV series)
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Google Play Books, formerly Google eBooks, is an ebook digital distribution service operated by Google, part of its Google Play product line. Users can purchase and download ebooks and audiobooks from Google Play, which offers over five million titles, with Google claiming it to be the "largest ebooks collection in the world". Books can be read on a dedicated Books section on the Google Play website, through the use of a mobile app available for Android and iOS, through the use of select e-readers that offer support for Adobe Digital Editions, through a web browser and reading via Google Home. Users may also upload up to 2,000 ebooks in the PDF or EPUB file formats. Google Play Books is available in 75 countries. Google Play Books was launched in December 2010, with a reseller program letting independent booksellers sell Google ebooks on their websites for a cut of sales. It also launched an affiliate program in June 2011, allowing website owners to earn a commission by referring sales to the then-named Google eBookstore. However, the reseller program ended in April 2012, with Google stating that it had "not gained the traction that we hoped it would" and "not met the needs of many readers or booksellers". The affiliate program closed for new signups in February 2012, with Google announcing that it would scale down the initiative, making it private and invitation-only. The mobile Android app has seen several significant updates since its introduction, including different reading modes with color contrasts, support for text highlighting and note-taking, a zoomed-out view with easy page sliding in an effort to improve reading experiences for books not read cover-to-cover, a vertical scrolling mode for comic books, a "Night Light" feature that gradually filters blue light to reduce eye strain after sunset, using machine learning imaging technologies to expand speech bubbles in comics, and listening to audiobooks. As the Play Books store had been noted to hold much pirated content, Google discontinued new sign-ups to its publisher program in 2015. The program was reopened only in 2018 when it incorporated an automated process to decline books found to contain extensive text copied from other books already in the store. History The history of Google Play Books can be traced to the Google eBooks service offered by Google before the Google Play brand came into existence. The Google eBookstore was launched on December 6, 2010, with more than three million titles available, making it the "largest ebooks collection in the world". At the time of launch, the service was partnered with 100 independent booksellers, while the number of publishers was 5,000. This increased to 250 independent booksellers and 7,000 publishers in May 2011, along with three million free Google eBooks available in the United States, up from two million at launch. The service was codenamed Google Editions, the name under which it was widely assumed that the service would be launched. Google Books director Dan Clancy had talked about Google's vision to open an ebookstore for
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Kara Ellen Goldin (nee Keenan; born 1967/68) is an American businesswoman. She is the founder and former CEO of Hint Water, a flavored water brand founded in 2005. Early life She was born Kara Ellen Keenan, a daughter of William and Kay Keenan of Tempe, Arizona. Her father worked for Con-Agra, and then for Armour & Company in Phoenix, where he retired as the general manager for distribution, and her mother worked at a local department store. She is the youngest of five children. Goldin grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, after moving there from Minneapolis when she was three years of age. Goldin majored in communications and minored in finance at Arizona State University, graduating in 1989. Career After graduating in 1989 from ASU, she moved to New York City, after accepting her first job out of college at Time Inc. Goldin worked in circulation at Time Inc. for three years. She started out as an executive assistant and worked her way up to managing the airline circulation for the Time Inc. publications. She then moved on to work in advertising sales at CNN. Following her move to San Francisco, Goldin began working for a start-up called 2Market, a spin-out of Apple pursuing a computer-based shopping idea that Steve Jobs developed. She was given the position of National Sales Manager for two years until the company was bought out by AOL. Goldin then began working in e-commerce for AOL as the Vice President of Shopping and E-commerce Partnerships while her husband worked for Netscape. In this position she grew AOL’s e-commerce and shopping business to about a billion dollars in revenue. When AOL acquired Netscape in 2001, Kara decided to take a step back from this field of work and focus on raising her family. After having three children, Goldin realized that she wanted to spend her time creating and living a healthy lifestyle. She had trouble losing the additional baby weight and came to the realization that her main problem was that she was addicted to diet-sweetened beverages, which were reinforcing her craving for high-calorie sugary foods. Goldin then took this idea and launched Hint in 2005 in San Francisco as a healthy alternative to the sugary, diet-sweetened drinks she had been consuming. Hint Water is flavored solely with natural fruit. In the 12 years since its creation, Hint Water has become an asset of the break rooms of some of Silicon Valley’s highest-profile companies, including Google, Facebook and LinkedIn. Hint Fizz carbonated beverage was launched in 2011 and in 2017, Hint began to market sunscreen. Following her work and creation of Hint, Goldin wanted to share her experiences as an entrepreneur with the world. She created The Kara Network as a place for fellow entrepreneurs to reach out and tell their stories as well as provide some helpful insight to those who were interested in following a similar path. Kara’s first job was at age 14 working for a local toy store, Alphabet Toys in Scottsdale where after
Kara Goldin
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Armchair Detectives is a British gameshow whodunnit series that debuted in 2017. The show was commissioned for BBC One Daytime and is produced by Tiger Aspect Productions (a label of Endemol Shine UK). Hosted by Susan Calman, the series is produced by Carly Brooks and Daniel Twist executive produced by Andy Brereton. The show follows in the footsteps of other similar shows, including Whodunnit? (1972–78), Cluedo (1990–93) and Sleuth 101 (2010). In November 2018, the series won a BAFTA Scotland award for Best Entertainment series. Development Conception The show was created by Carly Brooks, who came up with the idea upon listening to the crime podcast Serial, and investigative journalism podcasts Undisclosed and Truth & Justice. Inspired by the marriage of the medium and genre to turn its listeners into active crime-solvers, she decided to create a television series along these lines. Brooks and Andy Brereton chose the gameshow whodunnit (aka playalong murder mystery) format. The creative team pitched the show to Jo Street, Commissioning Editor of BBC Daytime, by having her play a game the two had written for a pilot. Brooks recalled: “We had a whiteboard and papers on the wall. For suspects, we printed out pictures of models from Google and gave them names, and I would read out the story". Street, a crime lover with a dog named Columbo, would successfully solve the murder and enjoy playing the game. Street said she loved the idea due to its ambitious and innovative nature. She thought the show struck the right balance between drama and quiz, and had faith in the murder mystery crafting ability of the development team. Street and BBC Controller Dan McGolpin commissioned 20 episodes, each at 45 minutes in length. The show's pilot episode aired in 2016. The episodes air at 2:15 pm each weekday. The show's catchphrase is: "No one gets away with murder in Mortcliff!" Street sought to use Midsomer Murders as a tonal influence for the show, and as a result placed the show within the 'Cosy Crime' genre in which violence is downplayed or treated humorously, and the crime and detection take place in a small, socially intimate community. She liked how the format of this popular show allowed for murder while keeping the mood a bit ridiculous and light-hearted. Bodycombe, who led the construction of the first series' 20 cases, described it as "kinda a crossover between Cluedo and Midsomer Murders". Puzzle crafting While Armchair Detectives comes up with the basic outline of the each murder, they utilise in David Bodycombe and Dan Peake (who worked on 'unrelated clue-connecting' gameshow Only Connect) to turn their murders into complete puzzles. Their role is to meticulously scatter the complete picture of means, motive, and opportunity throughout the story in verbal (e.g. testimonial), physical, forensic, audio, visual, written, and other clues. There is a fine line between clarity and obviousness, as well as subtlety and obscurity, which colours decisions. The difficulty of the show can reasonably vary between each episode. According to
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Jeremy Stoppelman (born November 10, 1977) is an American business executive. He is the CEO of Yelp, which he co-founded in 2004. Stoppelman obtained a bachelor's degree in computer engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign in 1999. After briefly working for @Home Network, he worked at X.com and later became the VP of Engineering after the company was renamed PayPal. Stoppelman left PayPal to attend Harvard Business School. During a summer internship at MRL Ventures, he and others came up with the idea for Yelp Inc. He turned down an acquisition offer by Google and took the company public in 2012. Early life Stoppelman was born in Arlington, Virginia, in 1977. His mother, Lynn, was an English teacher, and his father, John, was a securities lawyer. Stoppelman is Jewish. He attended Langley High School and a Reform temple as a child and had a Bar Mitzvah. As a child Stoppelman had an interest in computers and business and began investing in stocks at the age of 14. Stoppelman aspired to be a video game developer and took computer programming classes, where he learned the Turbo Pascal software programming system. He attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and obtained a bachelor's degree in computer engineering in 1999. After graduating he took a job with @Home Network. Career After four months of working for @Home Network, Stoppelman accepted a position as an engineer at X.com, which later became PayPal. It was here that Stoppelman met businessman Max Levchin, who later became an investor in Stoppelman's company, Yelp Inc. Stoppelman became the V.P. of engineering at PayPal, and is one of a group of PayPal's early employees sometimes referred to as the PayPal Mafia. Stoppelman left PayPal after its 2003 acquisition by eBay and attended Harvard Business School for one year. During Stoppelman's school break Levchin persuaded Stoppelman to do an internship at the business incubator, MRL ventures. Yelp In the summer of 2004, Jeremy Stoppelman got the flu and had a hard time finding recommendations for a local doctor. He and former PayPal colleague, Russel Simmons, who was also working at MRL Ventures, began brainstorming on how to create an online community where users could share recommendations for local services. Stoppelman and Simmons pitched the idea to Levchin who provided $1 million in initial funding. Under Stoppelman's leadership, Yelp grew to a market capitalization of $4 billion and hosted 138 million user reviews. Steve Jobs called Stoppelman in January 2010 in an effort to persuade him to turn down an acquisition offer by Google and in March 2012 Stoppelman rang the bell for the New York Stock Exchange after Yelp went public. According to Stoppelman, the biggest challenge at Yelp has been "the same problem Google faces in its rankings." Business owners have been suing reviewers that leave negative reviews and raising allegations that Yelp tampers with reviews to favor companies that advertise, leading to legal troubles for the company. In February 2013, Stoppelman accepted a salary of $1,
Jeremy Stoppelman
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Nicholas G. Carr (born 1959) is an American journalist and writer who has published books and articles on technology, business, and culture. His book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction. Career Nicholas Carr originally came to prominence with the 2003 Harvard Business Review article "IT Doesn't Matter" and the 2004 book Does IT Matter? Information Technology and the Corrosion of Competitive Advantage (Harvard Business School Press). In these widely discussed works, he argued that the strategic importance of information technology in business has diminished as IT has become more commonplace, standardized and cheaper. His ideas roiled the information technology industry, spurring heated outcries from executives of Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and other leading technology companies, although the ideas got mixed responses from other commentators. In 2005, Carr published the controversial article "The End of Corporate Computing" in the MIT Sloan Management Review, in which he argued that in the future companies will purchase information technology as a utility service from outside suppliers. Carr's second book, The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, was published in January 2008 by W. W. Norton. It examines the economic and social consequences of the rise of Internet-based cloud computing, comparing the consequences to those that occurred with the rise of electric utilities in the early 20th century. In the summer of 2008, The Atlantic published Carr's article "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" as the cover story of its annual Ideas issue. Highly critical of the Internet's effect on cognition, the article has been read and debated widely in both the media and the blogosphere. Carr's main argument is that the Internet may have detrimental effects on cognition that diminish the capacity for concentration and contemplation. Carr's 2010 book, The Shallows, develops this argument further. Discussing various examples ranging from Nietzsche's typewriter to London cab drivers' GPS navigators, Carr shows how newly introduced technologies change the way people think, act and live. The book focuses on the detrimental influence of the Internet—although it does recognize its beneficial aspects—by investigating how hypertext has contributed to the fragmentation of knowledge. When users search the Web, for instance, the context of information can be easily ignored. "We don't see the trees," Carr writes. "We see twigs and leaves." One of Carr's major points is that the change caused by the Internet involves the physical restructuring of the human brain, which he explains using the notion of "neuroplasticity." In addition to being a Pulitzer Prize nominee, the book appeared on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list and has been translated into 17 languages. In 2014, Carr published his fourth book, The Glass Cage: Automation and Us, which presents a critical examination of the role of computer automation in contemporary life. Spanning historical, technical, economic, and philosophical viewpoints, the book has been widely acclaimed by reviewers, with the New York Times Sunday Book Review terming it "essential." In 2016, Carr published Utopia
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Jigsaw LLC (formerly Google Ideas) is a technology incubator created by Google. It used to operate as an independent subsidiary of Alphabet Inc., but came under Google management in February 2020. Based in New York City, Jigsaw is dedicated to understanding global challenges and applying technological solutions, from "countering extremism", online censorship and cyber-attacks, to protecting access to information. Its current CEO is Yasmin Green. History Google Ideas In 2010, Eric Schmidt approached Jared Cohen to lead Google Ideas, as a "think/do tank" to research issues at the intersection of technology and geopolitics, and has worked on projects intended to protect activists and independent media from cyber-attacks. Ideas brought together a team of Google engineers, research scientists, product managers, and policy experts to address these issues. The team also hosted a number of conferences, including the 2017 Conflict in a Connected World Roundtable Series, in partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations' Center of Preventative Action. Ideas came under scrutiny for its links with the US State Department and its regime change activities. Jigsaw In February 2016, Eric Schmidt announced in a Medium post the expansion of Google Ideas into a technology incubator named Jigsaw. According to Schmidt, the new name "reflects our belief that collaborative problem-solving yields the best solutions" and the team's mission "is to use technology to tackle the toughest geopolitical challenges, from countering violent extremism to thwarting online censorship to mitigating the threats associated with digital attacks". Jigsaw was expected to leverage more of Alphabet's engineering talent and resources to build more sophisticated products. Jared Cohen, formerly with the Policy Planning Committee at the US State Department, was the CEO of Jigsaw until 2022. In January 2023, Alphabet announced about 12,000 employees being laid off. Citing conversations with anonymous former employees, Forbes reported the Jigsaw team of 50 was reduced by somewhere between a third and a half. The company did not disclose numbers and did not give employees a reason, but Jigsaw was not generating revenue. Projects Constitute In 2013, Jigsaw (then known as Google Ideas) teamed up with researchers at the University of Texas and the University of Chicago to launch Constitute, an indexed repository of national constitutions. The objective of the project is to identify a coherent set of constitutional options and sample text for those writing constitutions. The site was one of the early uses of the Semantic Web as a data model. The project has undergone regular updates since 2013 and is used by scholars, citizens, and constitutional drafters. Perspective In February 2017, Jigsaw and Google launched the free Perspective API, "a new tool for web publishers to identify toxic comments that can undermine a civil exchange of ideas". Using machine learning technology, Perspective offers a score from zero to 100 on how similar new comments are to others previously identified as toxic, defined as how likely a comment is to make someone leave a conversation. Publishers can use Perspective in a number of ways, from offering readers instant feedback on
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Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical character recognition (OCR), and stored in its digital database. Books are provided either by publishers and authors through the Google Books Partner Program, or by Google's library partners through the Library Project. Additionally, Google has partnered with a number of magazine publishers to digitize their archives. The Publisher Program was first known as Google Print when it was introduced at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2004. The Google Books Library Project, which scans works in the collections of library partners and adds them to the digital inventory, was announced in December 2004. The Google Books initiative has been hailed for its potential to offer unprecedented access to what may become the largest online body of human knowledge and promoting the democratization of knowledge. However, it has also been criticized for potential copyright violations, and lack of editing to correct the many errors introduced into the scanned texts by the OCR process. , Google celebrated 15 years of Google Books and provided the number of scanned books as more than 40 million titles. Google estimated in 2010 that there were about 130 million distinct titles in the world, and stated that it intended to scan all of them. However, the scanning process in American academic libraries has slowed since the 2000s. Google Book's scanning efforts have been subject to litigation, including Authors Guild v. Google, a class-action lawsuit in the United States, decided in Google's favor (see below). This was a major case that came close to changing copyright practices for orphan works in the United States. A 2023 study by scholars from the University of California, Berkeley and Northeastern University's business schools found that Google Books's digitization of books has led to increased sales for the physical versions of the books. Details Results from Google Books show up in both the universal Google Search and in the dedicated Google Books search website (books.google.com). In response to search queries, Google Books allows users to view full pages from books in which the search terms appear if the book is out of copyright or if the copyright owner has given permission. If Google believes the book is still under copyright, a user sees "snippets" of text around the queried search terms. All instances of the search terms in the book text appear with a yellow highlight. The four access levels used on Google Books are: Full view: Books in the public domain are available for "full view" and can be downloaded for free. In-print books acquired through the Partner Program are also available for full view if the publisher has given permission, although this is rare. Preview: For in-print books where permission has been granted, the number of viewable pages is limited to a "preview" set by a variety of access restrictions
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Andrew Norman Wilson (born November 1983) is an artist living in America. Education Wilson went to Medfield Senior High School in Medfield, Massachusetts. He received a BS in Television, Radio, and Film from the Newhouse School of Communications at Syracuse University in 2006. Wilson then received an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2011. Works Virtual Assistance Wilson's video work Virtual Assistance (2009–11) was made while he was an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In this piece Wilson documents his use of a personal assistant outsourcing service located in India called GetFriday. The work presents Wilson's relationship with Akhil, his 25-year-old personal assistant. Instead of asking Akhil to complete the tasks he was used to doing for other clients - such as email, finances, and calendar management - Wilson reversed this by asking Akhil to assign him tasks and to come up with ideas for collaborative projects. Workers Leaving the Googleplex (2011) Workers Leaving the Googleplex is a 2011 video artwork consisting of synchronized footage of two Google locations in Mountain View, California, with a voice-over narrative spoken by Wilson. Its title references the Lumière brothers' Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory. The inspiration for this piece came from Wilson's experience of working at Google in 2007; it presents the class structure of Google shown through Wilson's encounter with the yellow-badge workers, a stratum of workers that privately scan books for Google Book Search. Wilson's casual attempts to film and interview the yellow-badge workers were stopped quickly by Google, and it resulted in the termination of his employment at Google. It went viral when it began to be circulated on the Internet in 2011. ScanOps This project is a photographic series made of Google Books images in which errors in the scanning process are visible. The yellow-badge workers that are the subject of Workers Leaving the Googleplex is the same group of workers responsible for the scanning of books for Google Books images. Movement Materials and What We Can Do Movement Materials and What We Can Do is an extended essay video that presents an overview of Workers Leaving the Googleplex and ScanOps while considering related histories of film and video, photography, and literature. The material basis of analog and digital media, as well as their labor processes, are also addressed. SONE SONE (formerly known as Stock Fantasy Ventures) consists of proposals to investors to fund the creation of commercial image concepts that were then distributed on both the art market and stock media marketplaces such as Getty Images. The images were meant to supply the global market of advertising, business, art, and journalism with imagery that represents widespread feelings of financial uncertainty and discontent. Public Investor Meetings were held at various locations, and the project had its solo gallery debut at Project Native Informant in London in June 2014. The project was brought to an end through a liquidation event at the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw
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Trump Card is a 2020 American political documentary film produced, co-written, and co-directed by right-wing political commentator, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza. The film focuses on "the corruption and gangsterization of socialism in the Democratic Party as embodied by the two remaining presidential candidates, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden." It was originally scheduled to be theatrically released on August 7, 2020, but was later delayed to a digital distribution on October 9, 2020. Premise D'Souza described the film as "an exposé of the socialism, corruption and gangsterization that now define the Democratic Party. Whether it is the creeping socialism of Joe Biden or the overt socialism of Bernie Sanders, the film reveals what is unique about modern socialism, who is behind it, why he says it's evil, and how we can work together with President Trump to stop it." Release The film was initially set to be released by Cloudburst Entertainment in the United States on August 7, 2020, two weeks before the 2020 Republican National Convention. It was later delayed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic keeping most domestic theaters closed, and was rescheduled for a digital release sometime in September. D'Souza later announced the film would be made available via DVD and video-on-demand on October 9, 2020. Reception VOD rentals In its debut weekend, Trump Card was the top-rented film on Apple TV and Google Play and second on FandangoNow. In its second weekend, it remained first at Google Play, while finishing second at Apple TV and third on Fandango. By its third week it placed fifth at Fandango, second at GooglePlay, and eighth at Apple TV. Critical response Writing for The A.V. Club, Vadim Rizov gave the film a grade of "F", saying: "By this point, D'Souza is unconvincingly frothing on the soundtrack about how 'the socialist left and the Democrats want to make us grovel' and 'make us worms,' but the whole premise is, predictably, a radical, cynical misunderstanding of Orwell." Mike McGranaghan of The Aisle Seat gave the film one out of four stars and wrote: "D'Souza is merely preaching to the choir. Any possibility of convincing moderate or liberal viewers is pretty much zero, thanks to unreliable commentators and manipulation of basic facts." Hunter Biden controversy A centerpiece of the film is the promotion of theories involving Joe Biden's son, Hunter, and the idea that he was involved in illegal activity while his father was Vice President. One example is when D'Souza describes the idea of impropriety in regard to a supposed payment of $3.5 million to Hunter Biden from the wife of the mayor of Moscow. This accusation, referenced repeatedly by Donald Trump in the first 2020 presidential election debate, has not been substantiated. The accusation of impropriety with Moscow, before the release of Trump Card, came to prominence through an investigation of the Biden family by Senate Republicans. Though the Senate report argued a possibility of criminal activity, and was attacked as politically motivated and flawed by figures including Mitt Romney,
Trump Card (2020 film)
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"Reunion" is a 2013 Google India advertisement for Google Search. It was directed by Amit Sharma, written by Sukesh Kumar Nayak, produced by an Indian branch of Ogilvy & Mather, and published on YouTube on 13 November 2013. "Reunion" is about the fictional reunion between two elderly men, Baldev Mehra (Vishwa Mohan Badola) from India and Yusuf (Mysore Shrinivas Sathyu) from Pakistan, who were separated as children during the partition of India in 1947. The advertisement had a strong impact in both India and Pakistan, leading to hope for the easing of travel restrictions between the two countries. It went viral and was viewed more than 1.6 million times before officially debuting on television on 15 November 2013. Sequence Baldev Mehra (Vishwa Mohan Badola) is an elderly Hindu man in Delhi, India, and Yusuf (Mysore Shrinivas Sathyu) is an elderly Muslim man in Lahore, Pakistan. One day Baldev shows his granddaughter Suman (Auritra Ghosh) an old, dated photograph of two children. He tells her that it is himself and his best friend Yusuf when they lived in Lahore prior to the Partition of India in 1947. In front of his house there was a park with a gate made in the stone age and each evening he and Yusuf would fly kites there and "steal" Jhajariyas from Yusuf's family sweet shop. When Partition came, however, Baldev and his family had to leave for India overnight. Many decades later, Baldev still thinks of Yusuf and misses him. Using details of her grandfather's story, Suman is able to locate Yusuf's sweet shop in Lahore via her laptop and Google. She connects with his grandson Ali (Syed Shabahat Ali) who helps her to plan a surprise visit from Yusuf on Baldev's birthday. This is the first of a sequence of five ads showing the two old friends reconnecting. The idea and storyline may have been inspired by the 2012 short film, Respect, by Taha Kirmani. Cast Mysore Shrinivas Sathyu as Yusuf Vishwa Mohan Badola as Baldev Mehra Auritra Ghosh as Suman Syed Shabahat Ali as Ali Production According to Sukesh Kumar Nayak, Group Creative Director of Ogilvy Mumbai, Google had stated in their brief that "the only thing they wanted was to see [...] how meaningful the search engine is in real life." Nayak also stated that they wanted to make "the connection between real life and Google, magical." "Reunion" was filmed "in different areas in Delhi, including an old Haveli in Connaught Place, Red Fort, India Gate, and a small scene in Lahore, Pakistan." Singer Clinton Cerejo composed the music for the spot. Reception The Star notes that "Reunion" has "gone viral online, reflecting demands in the two countries for closer people-to-people ties [....] Internet users left thousands of comments on social networking sites describing how the advert had brought them to tears and renewed their hopes for improved relations between the two neighbours." Max Fisher of The Washington Post states that "if you are from South Asia, have family from South
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Tune-Yards (stylized as tUnE-yArDs) is the American, Oakland, California–based music project of Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner. Garbus's music draws from an eclectic variety of sources and uses elements such as loop pedals, ukulele, vocals, and lo-fi percussion. Tune-Yards’ 2011 album Whokill was ranked the number one album of that year in The Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop critics’ poll. The album Nikki Nack was released in 2014, with its first single, "Water Fountain", being picked up by Google Pixel in 2016 for an advertising campaign. The album I Can Feel You Creep into My Private Life was released in January 2018. At the same time, Tune-Yards provided an atmospheric score for the sci-fi film Sorry to Bother You. History and work Born in 1979, Garbus was raised in New York City and in New Canaan, Connecticut. She attended Smith College. She was a puppeteer for the Sandglass Theater in Vermont and lived in Montreal where she played ukulele in the band Sister Suvi with guitarist Patrick Gregoire and drummer Nico Dann. Merrill's sister Ruth Garbus is also a musician who has played solo and in the band Happy Birthday. After releasing her first Tune-Yards album in 2008, she moved to Oakland, California, where her partner in Tune-Yards, Nate Brenner, also lives. The first Tune-Yards album, Bird-Brains (stylized as BiRd-BrAiNs) was originally self-released by Garbus on recycled cassette tape. It was recorded using only a handheld voice recorder. A limited edition vinyl was released in June 2009, via the Portland-based imprint Marriage Records. In July 2009, it was announced that Tune-Yards had signed to 4AD, and a limited edition pressing of Bird-Brains was released on August 17, 2009. A full worldwide release followed on November 16, 2009 (and November 17 in North America). The autumn 2009 pressing was remastered at Abbey Road Studios by Christian Wright, and includes two new bonus tracks: "Want Me To" and "Real Live Flesh." A second album, Whokill (stylized as w h o k i l l), was released on April 19, 2011. A single from it, "Bizness", came out in February 2011. It was produced by Garbus and engineered by Eli Crews at New, Improved Studios in Oakland, California. Applying the live approach to Garbus' studio work for the first time, Garbus works with bass player Nate Brenner, who co-wrote some of the album's songs. Comparing the act to Sonic Youth, Frontier Psychiatrist said, "if Bird-Brains was Garbus' Evol, a record bursting with musical ideas that attempted to subvert the notion of song, who kill is Garbus' Sister, a record that embraces the traditional pop song as a vehicle to convey those ideas." The album as well as singles "Bizness" and "Gangsta" received mention on many top 2011 album and song lists, including Time, Rolling Stone, Spin, and the New York Times. In early 2012, the Village Voice's annual "Pazz and Jop" poll of critics named Whokill the No. 1 album of 2011. The song "Fiya" is featured on a 2010 commercial for
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Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı (17 April 1890 – 13 October 1973; born Musa Cevat Şakir; pen-name "The Fisherman of Halicarnassus", ) was a Cretan Turkish writer of novels, short-stories and essays, as well as a keen ethnographer and travel writer. Early life Şakir was born in 1890 to the Kabaağaclı family. He was the brother of artists Fahrelnissa Zeid and Aliye Berger, and grew up on Büyükada in İstanbul. His father, Mehmed Şakir Pasha, was an impoverished military officer who arranged for his son to study at Oxford University. Cevat dropped out and during his voyage back to Turkey married an Italian woman named Anise. In 1914 he fatally shot his father after an argument on their family farm. Cevat said that they were arguing about his wife. He was sentenced to 14 years in jail, but was released after a general amnesty. Following a political offense in 1925, he was exiled for three years to Bodrum and settled there. Career After completing his sentence in Istanbul, he returned to Bodrum where he lived for 25 years, adopting his pen name in homage to Halicarnassus, Bodrum's name in antiquity. He is credited with bringing the fishing and sponge-diving town to the attention of the Turkish intelligentsia and then to the reading public, thereby starting its journey to become a major international tourist attraction. He is credited with inventing the Blue Cruise that has become a feature of Southern Aegean and Mediterranean tourism. One of his poems about Bodrum is shown on a sign in the city: When you reach the hill, you will see Bodrum. Don't think you'll leave as you came. Others before you thought the same, as they departed they left their soul behind in Bodrum. In 1950, he took a minor role in a movie, under the screen name Cevat Şakir Kabaağaç. An erudite and colourful man, Şakir had a great impact on the evolution of intellectual ideas in Turkey during the 20th century. He was an early environmentalist and many trees that he planted in Bodrum still survive there. Tributes On April 17, 2015, Google celebrated his birthday with a Google Doodle. The story of the Fisherman of Halicarnassus is featured in his niece Shirin Devrim's 1994 book, A Turkish Tapestry: The Shakirs of Istanbul. Works Short stories Ege Kıyılarından (1939) Merhaba Akdeniz (1947) Ege’nin Dibi (1952) Yaşasın Deniz (1954) Gülen Ada (1957) Ege’den (1972) Gençlik Denizlerinde (1973) Parmak Damgası (1986) Dalgıçlar (1991) Gündüzünü Kaybeden Kuş Novels Aganta Burina Burinata (1945) Ötelerin Çocuğu (1956) Uluç Reis (1962) Turgut Reis (1966) Deniz Gurbetçileri (1969) Essays Anadolu Efsaneleri (1954) Anadolu Tanrıları (1955) Mavi Sürgün (self-biography, 1961) Anadolu’nun Sesi (analysis, 1971) Hey Koca Yurt (1972) Merhaba Anadolu (1980) Düşün Yazıları (1981) Altıncı Kıta Akdeniz (1982) Sonsuzluk Sessiz Büyür (1983) Çiçeklerin Düğünü (1991) Arşipel (1993) See also Blue Cruise Azra Erhat Sabahattin Eyüboğlu Fahrelnissa Zeid Aliye Berger Füreya Koral Footnotes References Who is who database - Biography of Cevat Şakir Kabaağaçlı 1890s births 1973 deaths Turkish writers Robert College alumni Writers
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Lettrs is a global mobile application and social network that allows users to compose and send mobile messages privately or publicly. The lettrs app converts mobile voice, data and pictures to digital personal and public messages via its text and mobile delivery inventions. lettrs is headquartered in New York City and Drew Bartkiewicz is the company’s CEO and co-founder. In 2015, Mark Jung was named the company Chairman. lettrs has a global user base in 174 countries, over 1 million downloads and has been featured in several media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, CBS and NPR. History lettrs was established in 2012 by technology entrepreneur Drew Bartkiewicz. Bartkiewicz came up with the idea for the company in 2008 after being inspired by his grandmother’s letter writing and his own experiences during his service in the military. lettrs was officially established the summer of 2012 with the help of his wife, Araceli Bartkiewicz, and children, though it was not launched as a global platform from its beta phase until December 2012. Bartkiewicz introduced the lettrs mobile application at the PostalVision 2020/3.0 conference in Washington, D.C. in 2013. The Android version was released in July 2014, followed by a re-release of the iOS app in October. Features lettrs provides a mobile platform for customers to create and deliver mobile letters in 80 translated languages with a selection of writing themes, proprietary “SocialStamps” and styles. It facilitates both private messaging and public posting of signed, translated and networked mobile-to-mobile letters. The signature service of lettrs is the translation of letter messages in real time complete with original user signatures and selectable SocialStamps. The lettrs mobile network is able to translate an original digital letter in up to 80 languages. Users may also share open letters and the lettrs stamps across other major social networks. In December 2014 the company introduced a feature named SocialStamps that allows users to add a customized stamp to a letter. At the feature’s launch, the company offered 47 different stamps with plans to issue new stamps monthly. As part of the release the lettrs 2014 Persons of Note stamps on the lettrs network featured Michelle Phan, Narendra Modi, Bob Woodruff of ABC News and Stanley A. McChrystal. Users can share letters and the SocialStamps via Facebook and Twitter. lettrs also integrates with Google+ and Instagram so that users may broaden the distribution of their letters beyond the mobile app. Users can also pen open public letters or petitions for supporting causes, persons, or brands. lettrs conducted its first Hollywood movie integration in April 2015 with Relativity Media. The company released stamps featuring images from the movie Desert Dancer. In May 2015, lettrs released the "Women of Note" stamp collection. It featured 12 notable women including Michelle Obama, Queen Rania of Jordan, Shakira, Michelle Bachelet, Laura Bush, Sonia Gandhi, Ellen DeGeneres and Angelina Jolie. Recognition and partnerships In 2014, Google selected lettrs as one of the Best Android Apps of the year. Lettrs has worked with the USO,
Lettrs
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Take This Lollipop is a 2011 interactive horror short film and Facebook app written and directed by Jason Zada. Developer Jason Nickel used Facebook Connect to bring viewers themselves into the film, through use of pictures and messages from their own Facebook profiles. Starring actor Bill Oberst Jr. as 'The Facebook Stalker', the film acts to personalize and underscore the dangers inherent in posting too much personal information about oneself on the internet. The information gathered from a viewer's Facebook profile by the film's app is used once and then deleted. The title is derived from the 1963 song "Please Little Girl Take This Lollipop", written and performed by singer-songwriter Bobby Jameson, which is used in the film. According to Zada, Take This Lollipop was taken offline "a few months" prior to August 2018. The film's website now hosts a new version of Take This Lollipop, now a horror game about a meeting. However, as of 2022, the website now hosts both experiences, albeit for $2.00 to access. Synopsis The interactive film first requests that viewers temporarily allow the application access to their Facebook account, and then incorporates information gleaned from the viewer's Facebook page to fill in details of the film itself. Showing 'The Facebook Stalker' as a thin, creepy fellow, hunched over and typing at a computer keyboard, images provided from the accessed Facebook account begin to appear as the stalker types at his keyboard, and appears to search for the specific Facebook user who had granted access. The Stalker becomes more and more agitated as he scrolls through the discovered information, until he locates the home of the user, pulls up Google Maps, and finds directions to the user's home from geographic data contained in his or her profile. With the user's profile picture taped to its dashboard, the stalker is then seen driving in his car to the user's location, apparently to perform mayhem. At the end of the film, a screen appears with an image of a blue lollipop containing a razor blade. Below the image is the viewer's Facebook screenname and the name of the stalker's next victim as gleaned from the viewer's own profile. Production Concept The title comes from a parents' warning to children to avoid taking candy from strangers. The concept developed from director Jason Zada's attraction to horror films from his youth, his wish to do something serious within that genre, his experience as a digital editor, and his understanding that people place their personal information on the internet for anyone to find. He decided to create a project that would "get under people's skin without any gore or anything", and that would underscore its point by making it about the viewer in a quite personal manner. The writer/director came up with the idea in September 2011, after waking up one morning and thinking about how he loved the Halloween season. Zada explained, "I wanted to do something that messed with people and I wrote the script. Instantly, I knew
Take This Lollipop
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"Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage" was a hoax study allegedly released by a Canadian company called AptiQuant Psychometric Consulting Co. on July 26, 2011, that claimed to have correlated the IQs of 100,000 internet users with which web browsers they used. Its claims that users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer had lower IQs than users of other browsers was widely covered in the media, and its revelation as a hoax was widely cited as an example of the weaknesses of the media. The speed with which the story was reported was also alleged by some to be indicative of anti-Microsoft bias. The hoax was arranged by Tarandeep Gill, a web developer from Vancouver, British Columbia. He claimed it was to raise awareness of the outdated nature of earlier versions of Internet Explorer that still have significant market share. It came amid a wave of other negative coverage of earlier versions of Internet Explorer. Reported results The study was presented as measuring how IQ affects choices to adopt new technologies. Conception Gill says he got the idea for the hoax about a month prior to its release when working on his website. "IE6 compatibility was being a pain in the ass," he told ReadWriteWeb. Release The report was covered by many news outlets. Initially the discrepancy was explained by that the advanced computer users with high IQs were savvy enough to choose other browsers. When the report was first covered by the BBC some readers were skeptical of its authenticity and quickly noted that the domain for the company had only been set up a month prior and that pictures of the company's staff were from the French company Central Test. Central Test began investigating the issue and said it was considering legal action against whoever had used the photos. It was initially suspected that the whole thing was a plot to spread malware; however, the PDF was examined and none was found. As the hoax was uncovered additional problems with the report were raised, the results were noted as improbable and the task of collecting 100,000 users very difficult. The address given on the website was looked up using Google Street View and it turned out to be just a parking lot. While the story was being covered Gill posed as Leonard Howard, the fabricated owner of AptiQuant, to the media. He also wrote a blog on the AptiQuant website about how they were being sued by Internet Explorer users and that it had been receiving hate mail. Internet Explorer users acted defensively.<ref>Robert X. Cringely. "Microsoft and IE: This time it's personal". InfoWorld', March 8, 2011.</ref> Some news outlets criticized the methodology of the study, although without realizing it was a hoax. It was even described as "Junk science at its worst". Some defended the study; for example, The Register wrote, "The methodology of the study appears sound." Aftermath The hoax coverage was said by some to be a victory for citizen journalism, as it was readers who first uncovered
Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Browser Usage
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QANDA (stands for 'Q and A') is an AI-based learning platform developed by Mathpresso Inc., a South Korea-based education technology company. Its best known feature is a solution search, which uses optical character recognition technology to scan problems and provide step-by-step solutions and learning content. As of March 2024, QANDA solved over 6.3 billion questions. QANDA has 90 million total registered users and has reached 8 million monthly active users (MAU) in 50 countries. 90% of the cumulative users are from overseas such as Vietnam and Indonesia. In January 2024, its MathGPT, a math-specific small large language model set a new world record, surpassed Microsoft's 'ToRA 13B', the previous record holder in benchmarks assessing mathematical performance such as 'MATH' (high school math) and 'GSM8K' (grade school math). 'MathGPT' was co-developed with Upstage and KT. In March 2024, Mathpresso launched 'Cramify' (formerly known as Prep.Pie), an AI-powered study material generator designed to create personalized exam prep materials for U.S. college students. It uses generative AI to create customized study materials uploaded by students. Its features include a range of tools including Prep Notes, Prep Sets, and Quick Solver. History Co-founder Jongheun ‘Ray’ Lee first came up with the idea of QANDA during his freshman year in college. While he was tutoring to earn money, Lee realized that the quality of education a student receives is greatly based on their location. Lee saw his K-12 students were regularly asking similar questions and realized that these questions were from a pre-selected number of textbooks currently being used in schools. He decided to team up with his high school friend, Yongjae ‘Jake’ Lee to build a platform whereby, one uses a mobile app to scan and submit questions, and students can ask and receive detailed responses. Lee's school friends, Wonguk Jung and Hojae Jeong, joined the team. In June 2015, Mathpresso, Inc. was founded in Seoul, South Korea. In January 2016, Mathpresso's first product QANDA was launched. It supported a Q&A feature between students and tutors. In October 2017, QANDA introduced an AI-based search capability that permitted users to search for answers in seconds. In April 2020, Jake Yongjae Lee(CEO & co-founder) and Ray Jongheun Lee (co-founder) were selected as Forbes 30 under 30 Asia. In June 2021, QANDA raised $50 million in series C funding. Jake Yongjae Lee was recognized as an Innovator Under 35 by MIT Technology Review. In November 2021, QANDA secured a strategic investment from Google. Since its inception, it has received backing in Series C funding from investors namely Google, Yellowdog, GGV Capital, Goodwater Capital, KDB, and SKS Private Equity with participation from SoftBank Ventures Asia, Legend Capital, Mirae Asset Venture Investment, and Smilegate Investment. In September 2023, Mathpresso has raised $8 million (10 billion KRW) from Korea's telecom giant, KT. The total cumulative investment is about 130 million US dollars. The partnership aims to accelerate the development of an education-specific Large Language Model. The company intends to incorporate the LLM model to fortify its AI tutor, which later
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Google Web Accelerator was a web accelerator produced by Google. It used client software installed on the user's computer, as well as data caching on Google's servers, to speed up page load times by means of data compression, prefetching of content, and sharing cached data between users. The beta, released on May 4, 2005, works with Mozilla Firefox 1.0+ and Internet Explorer 5.5+ on Windows 2000 SP3+, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, Windows Vista and Windows 7 machines. It was discontinued in October 2008. Bugs and privacy issues It was discovered that Google Web Accelerator had a tendency to prevent YouTube videos from playing, instead displaying an error message stating that the video was no longer available. Google Web Accelerator sent requests for web pages, except for secure web pages (HTTPS), to Google, which logged these requests. Some web pages embedded personal information in these page requests. Google received and temporarily cached cookie data that the user's computer sent with webpage requests in order to improve performance. Google Web Accelerator crawled every web page it came across, leading it to inadvertently deleting web pages when it indiscriminately prefetched links. In order to speed up delivery of content, Google Web Accelerator sometimes retrieved webpage content that the user did not request and stored it in the Google Web Accelerator cache. Cached versions of web pages that were created when one user was logged in were sometimes served to other users, allowing them to see private account information. Some privacy experts expressed concern that Google could "combine personal and clickstream data with existing search history data contained in Google's own cookie to create a far-reaching profile" on users. Related Google Search Opera Turbo References Web Accelerator Web accelerators
Google Web Accelerator
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Cyclomedia is a Dutch company specialising in the large-scale and systematic visualisation of environments based on 360° panoramic photographs (Cycloramas). Using specialised technology, large public areas are photographed and stored in an online database. Overlapping panoramic images are captured at 5-meter intervals from public roads at street level, with the camera system mounted on a moving car. This service is not available to the general public. Applications The high resolution spherical panoramas are located to an accuracy within 10 cm, allowing the user to perform photogrammetric 3D measurements and use the imagery for 3D modelling and texture mapping. The panoramic photographs have been used for the construction of virtual environments, indoors as well as outdoors in the form of 3D city models. The imagery has also been used for the quality control of large-scale maps. History 1980–1990 The idea of 360° panoramic photography originated at the Delft University of Technology. The first research for a camera prototype, the FRANK system, was carried out in 1980. In 1986 the Frank Data company was established in 's-Hertogenbosch. In 1987 the first prototype of the camera was ready to make black and white recordings. The name CycloMedia was first used as a brand name by Frank Data. 1991–2000 At the end of 1991 the development of a digital film scanner and computer-controlled measuring system started; it came into commercial use a few years later. In 1992 the company moved to Vught. Cyclomedia was launched on 4 October 1994. In 1995 the municipality of Rotterdam became its first customer, commissioning the imaging of the whole city. In 1999 Cyclomedia moved to Waardenburg. 2001–2004 Digital full colour photography was introduced. A new, digital system, the Digital Cyclorama Recorder (DCR) 2, came into use in 2001. 2005–2009 In July 2005 CycloMedia introduced another new production system, DCR 3, and a portable system making it possible to make recordings at locations that a car cannot reach. In 2006 the company again started to build a photo database of the Netherlands. Further developments were put in hand in the fields of camera technology (DCR 7, to make recordings while driving) and 3D imaging. In 2009 Cyclomedia began automated traffic sign detection using Cyclorama. 2010 onwards The GlobeSpotter® web based viewer (SaaS) was launched in 2010. The following year the company brought out its 9th generation digital recording system (DCR9), including additional picture-in-picture cameras for capturing high resolution Cycloramas. Cyclomedia also upgraded its 3D processing technology based on point cloud and textured mesh processing methods. Cyclorama came into use in the Nordic countries, Germany and other parts of Europe, and the US. In 2013, the company added nationwide oblique imagery (NederlandObliek) with full functional integration in GlobeSpotter®. In May 2013 the company moved to Zaltbommel. See also Google Maps Google Earth Immersive Media Company Here Technologies Eye2eye Software MapJack Location View EveryScape Bing Maps References External links Cyclomedia OTN Article on Cyclomedia: Authorizing Access to Dynamic Spatial-Temporal Data "Interactive navigation services through value-added Cyclomedia panoramic images", ACM Digital Library,
CycloMedia
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Hole.io is a 2018 arcade physics puzzle game with battle royale mechanics created by French studio Voodoo for Android and iOS. Players control a hole in the ground that can move around the map. By consuming various objects, holes will increase in size, allowing players to consume larger objects as well as the smaller holes of other players. Critics praised the game when it debuted, and it took the top spot in the free apps section on the App Store and on Google Play. Some critics however, characterized the game as a clone of the 2018 independent game Donut County. It has also been criticized for being promoted as a multiplayer game when the other "players" are likely computer-controlled NPCs. Gameplay Hole.io combines several gameplay mechanics. In Classic mode, the player's objective is to become the largest hole by the end of a two-minute round by traveling around the area and consuming trees, humans, cars, and other objects which fall into the hole if appropriately sized. Gradually the hole becomes larger and capable of sucking in buildings and smaller holes. If an object is too big it will not fall in and might block the way preventing other objects from going through. Players need to utilize the game's real-time physics to their advantage and optimize their path for effective growth. Other holes can consume the player's hole resulting in "death" and respawning several seconds later. "Battle" mode is a battle royale mode that pits the player against multiple opponents with the goal of being the last hole standing. While players can still consume the environment, the goal is to eliminate all other holes. Both Classic and "Battle" modes are not playing against players, but rather computers. Additionally, a solo mode exists which allows players to play alone with the goal of consuming as close to 100% of the city within two minutes. The simple mechanics of the game put it in the hyper-casual genre. Comparison to Donut County Donut County is a 2018 independent video game that was in development for at least six years before its release on 28 August 2018, sparking allegations by that game's developer that Voodoo copied his idea. Both games use the same mechanic of a hole in the ground swallowing objects to grow bigger; however, Donut County additionally features a storyline and a cast of characters which Hole.io lacks. Conversely, Hole.io adds a cityscape. According to Variety, Hole.io's developer Voodoo's entire range of games consists of clones of other games. Voodoo managed to secure a $200 million investment from Goldman Sachs shortly after releasing Hole.io. In an August 2018 interview, Donut County creator Ben Esposito remarked that developers like Voodoo who clone were on one side of the game making spectrum while he was on the other side coming up with new ideas. Reception Soon after its release, Hole.io made it to the top of the free games section on the Apps Store and Google Play, receiving over 10 million downloads on Google Play
Hole.io
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Chris Barton is an American tech entrepreneur, inventor, investor, and keynote speaker. He founded Shazam, a music identification and discovery company, and was its first CEO. Early life and education Chris Barton was born and raised in the United States, and lives in California. His father, John P. Barton, was a professor in nuclear physics, and his mother, Claudia F. Barton, was a professor in the field of computer science. His father is British and his mother is French, which he cites as giving him both the interest in living in the UK and the passport to do so; his parents also set up a nuclear physics consultancy, which he credits as inspiration for his choice of an entrepreneurial career. Barton graduated from University of California, Berkeley, with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree in Economics, and later pursued a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree from the same institution. Barton also earned a Master in Finance degree from the University of Cambridge. Career Barton's career began as a strategy consultant at L.E.K. Consulting in London and the San Francisco Consulting Group, and it also included an internship at Microsoft in London. Shazam In summer 1999 while on an internship in his MBA program, Barton conceived of the idea for Shazam as a service to enable consumers to find out what songs were playing where music could be heard, based on recording the song's audio and pattern-matching it to a database of songs. After conceiving the idea for Shazam, Barton co-founded the company in 2000, along with co-founders Philip Inghelbrecht and Dhiraj Mukherjee, and later, Avery Wang as the fourth co-founder. Barton located the company in London, based on the UK being the world-leading country (at the time) as measured by per-capita music purchases. During his early tenure with Shazam, as CEO, Barton raised angel funding for the company, buoyed by a summer 2000 technology breakthrough from technical co-founder Avery Wang which enabled him to demonstrate the music recognition technology at fundraising pitches. As CEO, Barton raised $7.5 million in venture capital and secured initial distribution partnerships with the four leading mobile operators in the UK, enabling Shazam to commercially launch in 2002. Barton left to join Google in early 2004 when Google was still a private company. He continued to participate in Shazam's governance as Board Director until 2018, when Shazam was acquired by Apple. On September 24, 2018, Apple acquired Shazam for a reported $400 million. In 2022, Apple announced that Shazam has been downloaded over 2 billion times. In 2012, Shazam announced that it drove over $300 million a year in music downloads. Shazam had raised $143.5 million in venture capital financing and its investors included Kleiner Perkins, IDG Ventures, DN Capital, Institutional Venture Partners, Sony Music, Universal Music and Warner Music. Google and Dropbox From 2004 until 2016, Barton held roles at Google and Dropbox, focusing on areas such as Android business development and establishing partnerships with mobile operators. Barton was the first business development employee
Chris Barton (entrepreneur)
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Yossarian Lives was a metaphorical search engine, a type of Internet search engine. Its algorithms return results that are disparate, but potentially metaphorically related to the user's query. These results are intended to encourage creative thinking and diversity of thought. "We don't want you to know what everyone else knows, we want you to generate new knowledge." The search engine emphasizes new knowledge vs. the reinforcing of existing information. The site works to avoid the "filter bubble" by returning results that are conceptually related but disparate, compared with traditional search engines that return the most popular or common results. As of 2019, the site went offline. The company was based in London, UK. History Yossarian Lives was founded by Daniel Foster-Smith, and J. Paul Neeley in 2011. The idea for the engine came to Foster-Smith and Neeley in February 2011 during a late night conversation while they were students at the Royal College of Art in Design Interactions. Neeley states that Yossarian Lives aims to find new ways around the "filter bubble," helping people generate new ideas, suggesting that "Search engines make suggestions based on what everyone else has searched for. Instead of inviting us to stretch or grow, these algorithms collapse possibilities." The ambitions and difficulties of the project have been highlighted by observers. As an example, YossarianLives talks about "The Stephen Fry Problem," an issue where individual users' understanding of particular metaphors vary. The name of the search engine has been a topic of discussion. According to a New Scientist article, "The name is derived from the anti-hero of the novel Catch-22, as the company wants to solve the catch-22 of existing search engines, which they say help us to access current knowledge but also harm us by reinforcing that knowledge above all else." Neeley defends the name and suggests it is working well for the company. The company outlines several reasons why they love the name, and suggest that on several occasions it has been called the best company name ever. Features The site currently uses metaphor to return images that are conceptually related to the query. A "Resonance" button improves the users search results over time. Reception Yossarian Lives has seen coverage in The Observer, WIRED, the New Scientist, the Metro, and the Times of India. The Observer suggested YossarianLives was "out there" but "if it works, potentially disruptive." A "look the other way" search engine good for "generating ideas." WIRED has called the engine "the metaphorical google." In June 2011, Yossarian Lives won a Deutsche Bank Award. The awards provide funding for creative enterprise in the UK. In November 2011, Yossarian Lives won a placement in Wave IV at InnovationRCA, a James Dyson and NESTA funded incubator. YossarianLives! was a finalist at Seedcamp's January London 2012 Event, and the winner of the Thinking Digital Start-Up Competition in May 2012. In January 2013, in an article on Google the future of search by The Observer, Yossarian Lives was listed as a Google alternative along with Wolfram
YossarianLives
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MindMeister is an online mind mapping application that allows its users to visualize, share and present their thoughts via the cloud. MindMeister was launched in 2007 by MeisterLabs GmbH, a software company founded by Michael Hollauf and Till Vollmer. After 10 years in the market, MindMeister has more than 7 million users who created more than a billion ideas to date. Overview MindMeister provides a way to visualize information in mind maps utilizing user modeling, while also providing tools to facilitate real-time collaboration, coordinate task management and create presentations. MindMeister is based on a freemium model, with a basic account available free of charge, providing limited functionality. The commercial model is built upon 4 different pricing levels with a choice of monthly or yearly subscription-charges. For use in the education sector, 3 different functional levels are available. The aim of MindMeister is to enable individuals to collaborate on a mind map, where everyone can share ideas, comments and plans, as well as vote on ideas in real-time. MindMeister allows users to share and edit mind maps, leave comments and feedback, attach files, images, videos, and link to external, as well as internal sources, via embedded URLs. Mind maps can be shared with colleagues internally or externally via an email invitation to collaborate, or via a hyperlink. Mind maps can also be turned into interactive presentations. Development The idea behind MindMeister was first devised when the two founders, Michael Hollauf and Till Vollmer, were working together using Writely, which had been recently acquired by Google Docs, and the mind mapping tool MindManager. At the time, MindManager had to be installed locally, which made it hard to share mind maps externally or with anyone who had not installed the software. While using Google Docs and MindManager together, the idea was born to combine the two, forming a collaborative online mind mapping tool which could be easily shared and edited, via the cloud. Milestones In 2006, MindMeister's first prototypes were created, in which mind maps were developed with 1x1 px DIVs. On February 7, 2007, MindMeister was released as a private beta. In the same year, MindMeister was awarded the Red Herring 100 Europe Award. In 2008, MindMeister 2.0 was released. In this release, the History View was added. In 2009, 5 additional languages were added and, with the advent of the iPhone, MindMeister for iOS was released. In 2010, MindMeister was added to the Google Apps Marketplace and the first native version for iPad was released. In 2011, MindMeister for Android was released and the presentation mode was integrated in the online version. In 2012, MindMeister integrated with Google Drive. In 2013, MindMeister Groups were introduced and MindMeister integrated with Google Hangouts. In 2014, the add-on for Google Docs were released and MindMeister became a Google Cloud Premier Partner. New features released include Comments and Votes, New Map Layouts and Video Support. In 2015, an integration to BiggerPlate was added as well as Geistesblitz for the AppleWatch. See also List of collaborative
MindMeister
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David Mark Byttow (born February 12, 1982) is an American Internet entrepreneur who was the co-founder and CEO of the mobile application Secret. In October 2018, it was announced that Byttow is now the director of engineering at Snap, Inc. Early life and education Byttow was born and raised in Munster, Indiana and taught himself how to program video games at the age of 10. He dropped out of Purdue University to pursue a career in video game programming. Career In 2001, Byttow joined a (now defunct) video game company named CodeFire. After that, he joined The Collective as a gameplay programmer for popular video game consoles. In 2007, Byttow did contract work for Bandai Namco Entertainment on the Xbox 360 and PS3 game Afro Samurai. He then joined Google as a Staff Engineer for five years where he worked on App Engine, Google Wave and Google+. He then joined Square, Inc. as Technical Director and head of Square Wallet. He was at Square for nearly a year before founding Secret (app) with Google-colleague Chrys Bader-Wechseler. Byttow announced the shut down of Secret (app) on April 29, 2015. After Secret shut down, Byttow began working on a project called Bold designed to "help teams and companies foster ideas." In 2017, after a few years working to establish this company, Byttow terminated the idea and joined Postmates to lead Product and Engineering for their apps. In October 2018, he joined Snap as its director of engineering, but left the company six months later. Byttow had previously taken an interest in Snapchat since 2014 when he met Evan Spiegel and tried to take Secret in a similar direction as the platform. See also Secret (app) Anonymous social media References 1982 births Living people American technology chief executives American software engineers Google employees American video game programmers People from Munster, Indiana
David Byttow
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Johann Helfrich von Müller (January 16, 1746 in Kleve – 1830) was an engineer in the Hessian army who conceived the difference engine in 1786 (first written reference to the basic principles of a difference machine is dated to 1784), an idea that later evolved into modern computers. In 1784, he was responsible for an improved adding machine based on principles of Leibniz's stepped reckoner. Müller was demonstrably the first who came up with the idea of calculating mathematical tables automatically by a machine. To achieve this, he planned building a printing differential engine. However, this plan was not realized. References Biography of Johann Helfrich Müller, with information on his calculating machines d'Ocagne, Maurice (1905). Le Calcul Simplifié Par Les Procedes Mecaniques Et Graphiques. Google Book Search. Retrieved on April 23, 2008. Dr Stefano Zottino ANALYTICAL ENGINE L'IDEA INNOVATIVA DI CHARLES BABBAGE, Thesis, Università Ca' Foscari di Venezia, Italy. Krause, Christine: Das Positive von Differenzen Die Rechenmaschinen von Müller, Babbage, Scheutz, Wiberg, ... Engineers from Hesse 1746 births 1830 deaths People from Kleve
Johann Helfrich von Müller
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Frank Henry Willard (September 21, 1893 – January 11, 1958) was an American cartoonist best known for his syndicated newspaper comic strip Moon Mullins which ran from 1923 to 1991, working alongside assistant Ferd Johnson. He sometimes went by the nickname Dok Willard. Early years As a youth, Willard dropped out of several schools. In addition to jobs at county fairs, he worked in a mental institution. In 1909, he moved with his family to Chicago. He went to Union Academy, where he illustrated the Reflector yearbook in 1912. After attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Chicago in 1913, he was a cartoonist with the Chicago Herald (1914–18), where he drew the Sunday comic strips Tom, Dick and Harry and Mister and Mrs. Pippen/Mrs. Pippin's Husband and a daily comic strip which used various titles. At the Herald, he got to know cartoonists E. C. Segar and Billy DeBeck, of Popeye and Barney Google fame respectively. WWI Entering the U.S. Army in 1917, Willard served with the American Expeditionary Force in France (1918–19). "Our unit built roads and did no fighting," he said. Unemployed on his return, he was given a place to stay by DeBeck and worked briefly on DeBeck's Barney Google and Snuffy Smith in 1920. Through DeBeck's influence, he landed a job that year in the King Features Syndicate bullpen where he did just "about everything but carry water for the elephants." He next wrote and drew The Outta Luck Club for King Features (1919–23), where he also substituted for cartoonist Jean Knott on his Penny Ante poker panel. Moon Mullins In 1923, Joseph Patterson of the Chicago Tribune-New York News Syndicate wanted a lowlife strip to compete with Barney Google. The curious chain of events that brought Willard, Patterson and Moon Mullins together began because Willard and other King Features cartoonists had to show their planned panels in advance to the King editor, who usually rejected Willard's ideas. Willard was angry, but he exploded when he saw some of his gags surface in George McManus' Bringing Up Father. As Willard's assistant Ferd Johnson recalled: The editor was feeding Willard's ideas to the Syndicate's big star. Later Willard and McManus were very good friends, but at the time, Willard got so damn sore that he went and had a couple of drinks and then went after the editor. He found the guy sitting in his chair, and he let him have one that knocked him onto the floor. Willard knew he'd get fired for that—and he did. But the story got around, and when Captain Patterson, who was looking for a tough guy strip, heard about it, he said, "That's my man." He called Willard in. And that's how Moon got its start. Moon merchandising Moon Mullins quickly became popular after it was launched as a daily on June 19, 1923. A few months later, Ferd Johnson signed on as Willard's assistant, eventually doing a great deal of the work. The success of the strip enabled
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Lalaloopsy is a line of plastic rag dolls from MGA Entertainment. Originally released in 2010 as Bitty Buttons, the brand name was changed to Lalaloopsy shortly after launch. They began to grow in popularity during the holiday season in 2010. A variety of Lalaloopsy dolls have been released, as well as several Lalaloopsy themed video games. In November 2012 and February 2013, Lalaloopsy TV specials and TV series began airing on the Nick Jr. Channel and Netflix. History On July 19, 2010, MGA Entertainment announced the launch of a line of doll toys, Bitty Buttons (created by Amandine Consorti), featuring eight 14-inch original rag dolls. Bitty Buttons had the tag line "Sew magical! Sew cute!". Each doll character was created with a fictional theme, reflecting the day they were sewn on, the fabric they were sewn from, and their pet. Isaac Larian, CEO of MGA Entertainment, said, "Bitty Buttons was designed to teach kids that everybody is unique in their own special way. The new brand promotes the idea that old things can become new again, everything can be repurposed and nothing should ever go to waste". According to company press releases, the dolls were "designed to encourage a child's imagination and creativity" and "teach important life lessons such as diversity, individuality and the idea that everything deserves a second life". At release, the original eight dolls were Crumbs Sugar Cookie, Jewel Sparkles, Peanut Big Top, Bea Spells-a-Lot, Mittens Fluff 'N' Stuff, Dot Starlight, Pillow Featherbed, and Spot Splatter Splash. The dolls changed from "Bitty Buttons" to "Lalaloopsy" shortly after launch. In November 2010, the Lalaloopsy toy line won the "Large Doll" category in the People's Play Awards, and was featured the next day on the American television program Live with Regis and Kelly. Lalaloopsy's original dolls were described by CBS's The Early Show in November 2010 as "the hottest toy of the season," and MSNBC referred to them as "this year’s Tickle Me Elmo". The New York Post described them as, "Creating Cabbage Patch-like hysteria among Holiday shoppers." On December 21, 2010, Lalaloopsy dolls were in the first spot on "Google’s Hottest Holiday Internet Searches." According to Google searches for Lalaloopsy dolls were "up 20% since the beginning of December." On February 13, 2011, the addition of three new characters: Patch Treasurechest, Blossom Flowerpot, and Tippy Tumblelina were added to the existing line of 8. It was also announced that the company would be expanding the line of toys to include new mini versions of the dolls as well as made-for-DVD feature that has been released in spring 2012. Additional mini-series were created as well as exclusive holiday-themed dolls that could only be found at certain retail stores. On June 28, 2011, three new characters: Marina Anchors, Sahara Mirage, and Misty Mysterious were added as well as additional play-sets. Development of a Nintendo DS title was also announced, with the official release date being November 6, 2011. Each game came with one of four mini dolls. On November 16,
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George Skakel ( ; July 16, 1892 – October 3, 1955) was an American businessman. He founded the Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, part of SGL Carbon, and was the father of Ethel Kennedy, the widow of Robert F. Kennedy. Early life and career Skakel was born in Chicago, Illinois, to businessman James Curtis Skakel and Grace Mary Jordan, who were Protestants of Dutch ancestry. He had an elder brother William Skakel, a younger sister Margaret Skakel, and a younger brother James Curtis Skakel Jr. Skakel began his career as a railroad shipping clerk earning $8 a week. While employed by the railroad, he noticed the price volatility of coal fines for coke, which is a byproduct of producing more-in-demand forms of coal. At most times, the coal mining companies were forced to store the coke or pay to have it disposed of in rivers. Skakel came up with an idea to purchase the coke from coal companies. In May 1919, Skakel and two partners put up $1,000 and established The Great Lakes Coal & Coke Company. The company would purchase the coke from coal companies and reprocess it into clean carbon which was used to produce aluminum. By 1929, Skakel had become a multi-millionaire. The business eventually grew into The Great Lakes Carbon Corporation, which became one of the largest privately held corporations in the United States. After Skakel's death in 1955, his sons George Jr. (who also died in a plane crash, in 1966) and James III took over the business. Personal life Skakel married his former secretary Ann Brannack (1892–1955) on November 25, 1917. They had seven children: Georgeann Skakel Dowdle-Terrien (1918–1983) James Curtis Skakel III (1921–1998) George Skakel Jr. (1922–1966) Rushton Walter Skakel (1923–2003), father of Thomas and Michael Skakel. Patricia Sistine Skakel Cuffe (1925–2000) mother to Ciarán Cuffe of the Green Party. Ethel Skakel Kennedy (born 1928) married Robert F. Kennedy in June 1950. Ann Skakel McCooey (1933–2023) married John H. McCooey, Sr., they had a son, John H. McCooey, Jr., and a daughter, Annie McCooey. Death On October 3, 1955, George and Ann Skakel were killed when the private plane they were traveling in crashed near Union City, Oklahoma. They are buried at Saint Mary's Cemetery in Greenwich, Connecticut. References Further reading Rancho Palos Verdes – Ginger Garnett Clark – Google Books Fight of the Century – Timothy Dumas – Google Books Murder in Greenwich - Mark Fuhrman, Stephen Weeks - Google Books Robert Kennedy and His Times - Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. - Google Books 1892 births 1955 deaths 20th-century American businesspeople Accidental deaths in Oklahoma American people of Dutch descent Businesspeople from Chicago Victims of aviation accidents or incidents in the United States
George Skakel