1.
Merseburg
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Merseburg is a town in the south of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt on the river Saale, approx. It is the capital of the Saalekreis district and it had a diocese founded by Archbishop Adalbert of Magdeburg. The University of Merseburg is located within the town, czech, Merseburk, Meziboř French, Mersebourg German, Merseburg Latin, Merseburga Polish, Międzybórz Sorbian, Mjezybor Venenien was annexed into Merseburg on 1 January 1949. The parish Kötzschen followed on 1 July 1950, since 30 May 1994, Meuschau is part of Merseburg. Beuna was annexed on 1 January 2009, geusa is a part of Merseburg since 1 January 2010. Merseburg was first mentioned in 850, king Henry the Fowler built a royal palace at Merseburg, in the 933 Battle of Riade, he gained his great victory over the Hungarians in the vicinity. Thietmar of Merseburg, appointed in 973, became the first bishop of the newly created bishopric of Prague in Bohemia, Prague had been part of the archbishopric of Mainz for a hundred years before that. Fifteen diets were held here during the Middle Ages, during which time its fairs enjoyed the importance which was transferred to those of Leipzig. Merseburg was the site of an assassination attempt on Polish ruler Bolesław I Chrobry in 1002. The town suffered severely during the German Peasants War and also during the Thirty Years War, from 1657 to 1738 Merseburg was the residence of the Dukes of Saxe-Merseburg, after which it fell to the Electorate of Saxony. In 1815 following the Napoleonic Wars, the became part of the Prussian Province of Saxony. Merseburg is where the Merseburg Incantations were rediscovered in 1841, written down in Old High German, they are hitherto the only preserved German documents with a heathen theme. One of them is a charm to release warriors caught during battle, enterprises, too, blazed a trail in the course of the transformational process. Ultimately, a chemical park emerged at nearby Leuna which is one of the most modern sites of its kind in Europe with high ecological standards, Merseburg was badly damaged in World War II. In 23 air raids 6,200 dwellings were completely or partly destroyed, the historic town centre was almost completely destroyed. Briefly part of Saxony-Anhalt after the war, it was administered within the Bezirk Halle in East Germany. It became part of Saxony-Anhalt again after reunification of Germany, like many towns in the former East Germany, Merseburg has had a general decline in population since German Reunification despite annexing and merging with a number of smaller nearby villages. The cathedral-and-palace ensemble also features a palace garden, other attractions include the Merseburg House of Trades with a cultural stage and the German Museum of Chemistry, Merseburg
2.
East Germany
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East Germany, formally the German Democratic Republic, was an Eastern Bloc state during the Cold War period. The Soviet zone surrounded West Berlin, but did not include it, as a result, the German Democratic Republic was established in the Soviet Zone, while the Federal Republic was established in the three western zones. East Germany, which lies culturally in Central Germany, was a state of the Soviet Union. Soviet occupation authorities began transferring administrative responsibility to German communist leaders in 1948, Soviet forces, however, remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Until 1989, the GDR was governed by the Socialist Unity Party, though other parties participated in its alliance organisation. The economy was centrally planned, and increasingly state-owned, prices of basic goods and services were set by central government planners, rather than rising and falling through supply and demand. Although the GDR had to pay war reparations to the USSR. Nonetheless it did not match the growth of West Germany. Emigration to the West was a significant problem—as many of the emigrants were well-educated young people, the government fortified its western borders and, in 1961, built the Berlin Wall. Many people attempting to flee were killed by guards or booby traps. In 1989, numerous social and political forces in the GDR and abroad led to the fall of the Berlin Wall, the following year open elections were held, and international negotiations led to the signing of the Final Settlement treaty on the status and borders of Germany. The GDR was dissolved and Germany was unified on 3 October 1990, internally, the GDR also bordered the Soviet sector of Allied-occupied Berlin known as East Berlin which was also administered as the states de facto capital. It also bordered the three sectors occupied by the United States, United Kingdom and France known collectively as West Berlin. The three sectors occupied by the Western nations were sealed off from the rest of the GDR by the Berlin Wall from its construction in 1961 until it was brought down in 1989, the official name was Deutsche Demokratische Republik, usually abbreviated to DDR. West Germans, the media and statesmen purposely avoided the official name and its abbreviation, instead using terms like Ostzone, Sowjetische Besatzungszone. The centre of power in East Berlin was referred to as Pankow. Over time, however, the abbreviation DDR was also used colloquially by West Germans. However, this use was not always consistent, for example, before World War II, Ostdeutschland was used to describe all the territories east of the Elbe, as reflected in the works of sociologist Max Weber and political theorist Carl Schmitt
3.
Germany
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Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a federal parliamentary republic in central-western Europe. It includes 16 constituent states, covers an area of 357,021 square kilometres, with about 82 million inhabitants, Germany is the most populous member state of the European Union. After the United States, it is the second most popular destination in the world. Germanys capital and largest metropolis is Berlin, while its largest conurbation is the Ruhr, other major cities include Hamburg, Munich, Cologne, Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Düsseldorf and Leipzig. Various Germanic tribes have inhabited the northern parts of modern Germany since classical antiquity, a region named Germania was documented before 100 AD. During the Migration Period the Germanic tribes expanded southward, beginning in the 10th century, German territories formed a central part of the Holy Roman Empire. During the 16th century, northern German regions became the centre of the Protestant Reformation, in 1871, Germany became a nation state when most of the German states unified into the Prussian-dominated German Empire. After World War I and the German Revolution of 1918–1919, the Empire was replaced by the parliamentary Weimar Republic, the establishment of the national socialist dictatorship in 1933 led to World War II and the Holocaust. After a period of Allied occupation, two German states were founded, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic, in 1990, the country was reunified. In the 21st century, Germany is a power and has the worlds fourth-largest economy by nominal GDP. As a global leader in industrial and technological sectors, it is both the worlds third-largest exporter and importer of goods. Germany is a country with a very high standard of living sustained by a skilled. It upholds a social security and universal health system, environmental protection. Germany was a member of the European Economic Community in 1957. It is part of the Schengen Area, and became a co-founder of the Eurozone in 1999, Germany is a member of the United Nations, NATO, the G8, the G20, and the OECD. The national military expenditure is the 9th highest in the world, the English word Germany derives from the Latin Germania, which came into use after Julius Caesar adopted it for the peoples east of the Rhine. This in turn descends from Proto-Germanic *þiudiskaz popular, derived from *þeudō, descended from Proto-Indo-European *tewtéh₂- people, the discovery of the Mauer 1 mandible shows that ancient humans were present in Germany at least 600,000 years ago. The oldest complete hunting weapons found anywhere in the world were discovered in a mine in Schöningen where three 380, 000-year-old wooden javelins were unearthed
4.
Palo Alto, California
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Palo Alto is a charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area of the United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley and it is named after a coast redwood tree called El Palo Alto. Palo Alto was established by Leland Stanford Sr. when he founded Stanford University, following the death of his son and it has also served as an incubator to several other high-technology companies such as Google, Facebook, Logitech, Intuit, Pinterest, and PayPal. As of the 2010 census, the total resident population is 64,403. Palo Alto is one of the most expensive cities in the United States, the recorded history of Palo Alto dates back to 1769, when Gaspar de Portolá noted an Ohlone settlement. This remains an area of known Indian mounds, a plaque at Middlefield Road and Embarcadero Road commemorates the area. The city got its name from a tall coast redwood tree, named El Palo Alto, a plaque there recounts the story of the Portolà expedition, a 63-man, 200-horse expedition from San Diego to Monterey from November 7–11,1769. The group overshot Monterey in the fog and when they reached modern-day Pacifica, they ascended Sweeney Ridge, thinking the bay was too wide to cross, the group retraced their journey to Monterey, never becoming aware of the Golden Gate entrance to the Bay. Located south of the San Francisquito Creek, west of todays I-280, in 1835, Rafael Soto and family settled near the San Francisquito Creek near Newell and Middlefield, selling goods to travelers. Rafael Soto died in 1839, but his wife, Maria Antonia Mesa, was granted Rancho Rinconada del Arroyo de San Francisquito in 1841, in 1839, their daughter María Luisa Soto married John Coppinger, who was the grantee of Rancho Cañada de Raymundo. Rancho Cañada de Raymundo was West of San Francisquito Creek, and began at Alambique Creek, the border of Rancho Corte de Madera. Bear Gulch Creek flowed on his land in Portola Valley, the rancho also abutted Buelnas grant near Skyline Boulevard and Matadero Creek. Upon Coppingers death, Maria inherited it and later married a visiting boat captain, Greer owned a home on the site that is now Town & Country Village on Embarcadero and El Camino Real. Greer Avenue and Court are named for him, to the west of Rafael Soto, near El Camino and following the Creek, was Rancho San Francisquito granted in 1839 to Antonio Buelna and wife Maria Concepcion. To the south of the Sotos, the brothers Secundino and Teodoro Robles in 1849 bought Rancho Rincon de San Francisquito from José Peña, where the Joness house was, then east down Arastradero Rd. to the north property line of Alta Mesa Memorial Park and Terman Park. The property then went along the bay to the Embarcadero, a boundary in the day, then up to the Stanford University gates, up Galvez. The grant was bounded on the south by Mariano Castros Rancho Pastoria de las Borregas grant across San Antonio Road, thats the Robles Rancho, about 80% of Palo Alto and Stanford University. It was whittled down by 1863 through courts to 6,981 acres, stories say their grand hacienda was built on the former meager adobe of José Peña near Ferne off San Antonio Road, midway between Middlefield and Alma Street
5.
Stanford University
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Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California, adjacent to Palo Alto and between San Jose and San Francisco. Its 8, 180-acre campus is one of the largest in the United States, Stanford also has land and facilities elsewhere. The university was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford in memory of their only child, Stanford was a former Governor of California and U. S. Senator, he made his fortune as a railroad tycoon. The school admitted its first students 125 years ago on October 1,1891, Stanford University struggled financially after Leland Stanfords death in 1893 and again after much of the campus was damaged by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Following World War II, Provost Frederick Terman supported faculty and graduates entrepreneurialism to build self-sufficient local industry in what would later be known as Silicon Valley. The university is one of the top fundraising institutions in the country. There are three schools that have both undergraduate and graduate students and another four professional schools. Students compete in 36 varsity sports, and the university is one of two institutions in the Division I FBS Pac-12 Conference. Stanford faculty and alumni have founded a number of companies that produce more than $2.7 trillion in annual revenue. It is the alma mater of 30 living billionaires,17 astronauts and it is also one of the leading producers of members of the United States Congress. Sixty Nobel laureates and seven Fields Medalists have been affiliated with Stanford as students, alumni, Stanford University was founded in 1885 by Leland and Jane Stanford, dedicated to Leland Stanford Jr, their only child. The institution opened in 1891 on Stanfords previous Palo Alto farm, despite being impacted by earthquakes in both 1906 and 1989, the campus was rebuilt each time. In 1919, The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace was started by Herbert Hoover to preserve artifacts related to World War I, the Stanford Medical Center, completed in 1959, is a teaching hospital with over 800 beds. The SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, which was established in 1962, in 2008, 60% of this land remained undeveloped. Besides the central campus described below, the university also operates at more remote locations, some elsewhere on the main campus. Stanfords main campus includes a place within unincorporated Santa Clara County. The campus also includes land in unincorporated San Mateo County, as well as in the city limits of Menlo Park, Woodside. The academic central campus is adjacent to Palo Alto, bounded by El Camino Real, Stanford Avenue, Junipero Serra Boulevard, the United States Postal Service has assigned it two ZIP codes,94305 for campus mail and 94309 for P. O. box mail
6.
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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The University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign, also known as U of I, University of Illinois, UIUC, or simply Illinois, is a public research-intensive university in the U. S. state of Illinois. Founded in 1867 as a land-grant institution in the cities of Champaign and Urbana, it is the flagship campus of the University of Illinois system. In fiscal year 2015, total research expedentures at Illinois totaled $640 million, the campus library system possesses the second-largest university library in the United States after Harvard University. The university also hosts the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and is home to the fastest supercomputer on a university campus, the university comprises 17 colleges that offer more than 150 programs of study. Additionally, the university operates an extension that offers programs to more than 1.5 million registrants per year around the state of Illinois. The university holds 647 buildings on 4,552 acres and its operating budget in 2016 was over $2 billion. Even though Illinois is a university, only about 12% of the budget comes from the state. Between several cities, Urbana was selected in 1867 as the site for the new school, the University opened for classes on March 2,1868, and had two faculty members and 77 students. Gregory is largely credited with establishing the University as it is today, Gregorys grave is on the Urbana campus, between Altgeld Hall and the Henry Administration Building. His headstone reads, If you seek his monument, look about you, the Library, which opened with the school in 1868, started with 1,039 volumes. Subsequently, President Edmund J. James, in a speech to the Board of Trustees in 1912 and it is now one of the worlds largest public academic collections. In 1870, the Mumford House was constructed as a farmhouse for the schools experimental farm. The Mumford House remains the oldest structure on campus, the original University Hall was the fourth building built, it stood where the Illini Union stands today. During the Presidency of Edmund J. James, James is credited for building the foundation of the large Chinese international student population on campus, on June 11,1929, the Alma Mater statue was unveiled. The Alma Mater was established by donations by the Alumni Fund, the University replaced the original university hall with Gregory Hall and the Illini Union. After World War II, the university experienced rapid growth, the enrollment doubled and the academic standing improved. This period was marked by large growth in the Graduate College and increased federal support of scientific. During the 1950s and ’60s the university experienced the turmoil common on many American campuses, among these were the water fights of the fifties and sixties
7.
YouTube
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YouTube is an American video-sharing website headquartered in San Bruno, California. The service was created by three former PayPal employees—Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim—in February 2005, Google bought the site in November 2006 for US$1.65 billion, YouTube now operates as one of Googles subsidiaries. Unregistered users can watch videos on the site, while registered users are permitted to upload an unlimited number of videos. Videos deemed potentially offensive are available only to registered users affirming themselves to be at least 18 years old, YouTube earns advertising revenue from Google AdSense, a program which targets ads according to site content and audience. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Karim could not easily find video clips of either event online, Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service, and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not. YouTube began as a venture capital-funded technology startup, primarily from an $11.5 million investment by Sequoia Capital between November 2005 and April 2006, YouTubes early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name www. youtube. com was activated on February 14,2005, the first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo. The video was uploaded on April 23,2005, and can still be viewed on the site, YouTube offered the public a beta test of the site in May 2005. The first video to reach one million views was a Nike advertisement featuring Ronaldinho in November 2005. Following a $3.5 million investment from Sequoia Capital in November, the site grew rapidly, and in July 2006 the company announced that more than 65,000 new videos were being uploaded every day, and that the site was receiving 100 million video views per day. The site has 800 million unique users a month and it is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000. The choice of the name www. youtube. com led to problems for a similarly named website, the sites owner, Universal Tube & Rollform Equipment, filed a lawsuit against YouTube in November 2006 after being regularly overloaded by people looking for YouTube. Universal Tube has since changed the name of its website to www. utubeonline. com, in October 2006, Google Inc. announced that it had acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in Google stock, and the deal was finalized on November 13,2006. In March 2010, YouTube began free streaming of certain content, according to YouTube, this was the first worldwide free online broadcast of a major sporting event. On March 31,2010, the YouTube website launched a new design, with the aim of simplifying the interface, Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman commented, We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter. In May 2010, YouTube videos were watched more than two times per day. This increased to three billion in May 2011, and four billion in January 2012, in February 2017, one billion hours of YouTube was watched every day
8.
PayPal
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PayPal is one of the worlds largest Internet payment companies. The company operates as a payment processor for online vendors, auction sites and other commercial users, established in 1998, PayPal had its IPO in 2002, and became a wholly owned subsidiary of eBay later that year. In 2014, PayPal moved $228 billion in 30 currencies across more than 190 nations, the same year, eBay announced plans to spin-off PayPal into an independent company by mid-2015 and this was completed on July 18,2015. On July 20,2015, PayPal had its second IPO, PayPal was established in December 1998 as Confinity, a company that developed security software for handheld devices founded by Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, Luke Nosek and Ken Howery. PayPal was developed and launched as a transfer service at Confinity in 1999. In March 2000, Confinity merged with X. com, a banking company founded by Elon Musk. Musk was optimistic about the success of the money transfer business Confinity was developing. Musk and then-president and CEO of X. com, Bill Harris, disagreed on this point, in October of that year, Musk made the decision that X. com would terminate its other Internet banking operations and focus on the PayPal money service. The X. com company was then renamed PayPal in 2001, Paypals IPO listed under the ticker PYPL at $13 per share and ended up generating over $61 million. Shortly after PayPals IPO, the company was acquired by eBay in July 2002 for $1.5 billion, more than 70 percent of all eBay auctions accepted PayPal payments, and roughly 1 in 4 closed auction listings were transacted via PayPal. PayPal acquired the VeriSign payment solution in 2005 to expand its e-commerce business, by the end of 2007, the company generated $1.8 billion in revenue. In November 2008, the company acquired Bill Me Later, a payments company offering transactional credit at over 9000 online merchants in the US. PayPal revenues for Q12009 were $643 million, up 11 percent year over year,42 percent of revenues in Q12009 were from international markets. PayPals Total Payment Volume, the value of transactions in Q12009 was nearly $16 billion. By 2010, PayPal had over 100 million active user accounts in 190 markets through 25 different currencies, in July 2011, fourteen alleged members of the Anonymous hacktivist group were charged with attempting to disrupt PayPals operations. The denial of service attacks occurred in December 2010, after PayPal stopped processing donations to Wikileaks, on December 5,2013,13 of the PayPal 14 pleaded guilty to misdemeanor and felony charges related to the attacks. The company continued to focus on growth and growth of its Merchant Services division. In 2011, PayPal announced that it would begin moving its business offline so that customers can make payments via PayPal in stores
9.
Steve Chen
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Steven Shih Steve Chen is an American Internet entrepreneur. He is best known as one of the co-founders and the chief technology officer of the popular website YouTube. After having co-founded the company AVOS Systems, Inc. and built the video-sharing app MixBit, Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan. When he was fifteen, he and his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Prospect Heights and he went to River Trails Middle School in Mount Prospect for his middle school education and John Hersey High School in Arlington Heights for his freshman year of high school. For his final three years of school, he attended the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he studied computer science, Chen was an employee at the industry financial company PayPal, where he first met Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. Chen was also an employee at Facebook, although he left after several months to start YouTube. In 2005, Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim and Chen founded YouTube, in June 2006, Chen was named by Business 2.0 as one of The 50 people who matter now in business. On October 16,2006, Chen and Hurley sold YouTube to Google, Chen received 625,366 shares of Google and an additional 68,721 in a trust as part of the sale. The Google shares that he received were reported to be worth over $326 million about 1 year later and he and Hurley started AVOS Systems which acquired Delicious from Yahoo. Inc. Chen was listed as one of the 15 Asian Scientists To Watch by Asian Scientist Magazine on 15 May 2011, Chen married Park Ji-hyun, who is now Jamie Chen, a Google Korea product marketing manager, in 2009. They live in San Francisco with their two children, one son was born in July 2010. The Chens are major supporters of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco where Jamie was appointed a trustee in July 2012, Steve Chens YouTube profile Steve Chen, the local boy that created YouTube – Taipei Times, October 8,2006
10.
Chad Hurley
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Chad Meredith Hurley is an American co-founder and former CEO of the popular video-sharing website YouTube and MixBit. In June 2006, he was voted 28th on Business 2. 0s 50 People Who Matter Now list, in October 2006, he and Steve Chen sold YouTube for $1.65 billion to Google. Hurley worked in eBays PayPal division—one of his tasks involved designing the original PayPal logo — before starting YouTube with fellow PayPal colleagues Steve Chen, Hurley was primarily responsible for the tagging and video-sharing aspects of YouTube. Hurley was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, the child of Don and Joann Hurley. He has two siblings, a sister, Heather, and a younger brother, Brent. Since childhood, Chad showed extreme interest in the arts, but then became interested in computers. He was a runner for Twin Valley High Schools cross-country program. He was also member of the Technology Student Association during high school and he graduated from Twin Valley High School, Elverson in 1995 and went on to receive his B. A. in Fine Art from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1999. By his marriage to Kathy Clark, Hurley is the son-in-law of the legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur James H. Clark, Hurley founded YouTube in 2005 with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. On October 16,2006, Chen and Hurley sold YouTube to Google Inc. for $1.65 billion and it was reported in the Wall Street Journal that Chad Hurleys share was $345. 6M at Googles February 7,2007 closing stock price of $470.01. He received 694,087 Google shares directly and another 41,232 shares in a trust, youTubes 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 Googles 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. In August 2013, Chen and Hurley launched another company called MixBit which does video editing using smart phones, Chad 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 personnel were dismissed from their duties. Neither Hurley, team principal Ken Anderson, nor sporting director Peter Windsor would comment on the failure to make it to the grid. It is rumored that Hurley is still trying to get involved with F1 via other teams and he is a part-owner of the NBAs Golden State Warriors and the MLS Los Angeles Football Club. Michael Moritz interviews Chad Hurley et al. at TechCrunch40 conference video Chad Hurleys Executive Producer profile on The 1 Second Film
11.
Germans
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Germans are a Germanic ethnic group native to Central Europe, who share a common German ancestry, culture and history. German is the mother tongue of a substantial majority of ethnic Germans. The English term Germans has historically referred to the German-speaking population of the Holy Roman Empire since the Late Middle Ages, before the collapse of communism and the reunification of Germany in 1990, Germans constituted the largest divided nation in Europe by far. Ever since the outbreak of the Protestant Reformation within the Holy Roman Empire, of approximately 100 million native speakers of German in the world, roughly 80 million consider themselves Germans. Thus, the number of Germans lies somewhere between 100 and more than 150 million, depending on the criteria applied. Today, people from countries with German-speaking majorities most often subscribe to their own national identities, the German term Deutsche originates from the Old High German word diutisc, referring to the Germanic language of the people. It is not clear how commonly, if at all, the word was used as an ethnonym in Old High German, used as a noun, ein diutscher in the sense of a German emerges in Middle High German, attested from the second half of the 12th century. The Old French term alemans is taken from the name of the Alamanni and it was loaned into Middle English as almains in the early 14th century. The word Dutch is attested in English from the 14th century, denoting continental West Germanic dialects, while in most Romance languages the Germans have been named from the Alamanni, the Old Norse, Finnish and Estonian names for the Germans were taken from that of the Saxons. In Slavic languages, the Germans were given the name of němьci, originally with a meaning foreigner, the English term Germans is only attested from the mid-16th century, based on the classical Latin term Germani used by Julius Caesar and later Tacitus. It gradually replaced Dutch and Almains, the latter becoming mostly obsolete by the early 18th century, the Germans are a Germanic people, who as an ethnicity emerged during the Middle Ages. Originally part of the Holy Roman Empire, around 300 independent German states emerged during its decline after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 ending the Thirty Years War and these states eventually formed into modern Germany in the 19th century. The concept of a German ethnicity is linked to Germanic tribes of antiquity in central Europe, the early Germans originated on the North German Plain as well as southern Scandinavia. By the 2nd century BC, the number of Germans was significantly increasing and they began expanding into eastern Europe, during antiquity these Germanic tribes remained separate from each other and did not have writing systems at that time. In the European Iron Age the area that is now Germany was divided into the La Tène horizon in Southern Germany and the Jastorf culture in Northern Germany. By 55 BC, the Germans had reached the Danube river and had either assimilated or otherwise driven out the Celts who had lived there, and had spread west into what is now Belgium and France. Conflict between the Germanic tribes and the forces of Rome under Julius Caesar forced major Germanic tribes to retreat to the east bank of the Rhine, in Roman-held territories with Germanic populations, the Germanic and Roman peoples intermarried, and Roman, Germanic, and Christian traditions intermingled. The adoption of Christianity would later become an influence in the development of a common German identity
12.
Inner German border
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The inner German border was the border between the German Democratic Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany from 1949 to 1990. Not including the similar and physically separate Berlin Wall, the border was 1,393 kilometres long and it was formally established on 1 July 1945 as the boundary between the Western and Soviet occupation zones of former Nazi Germany. It was patrolled by 50,000 armed East German guards who faced tens of thousands of West German, British and US guards, in the hinterlands behind the border were more than a million North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and Warsaw Pact troops. The border was a manifestation of Winston Churchills metaphorical Iron Curtain that separated the Soviet. It marked the boundary between two ideological systems – capitalism and communism and it caused widespread economic and social disruption on both sides, East Germans living in the region suffered especially draconian restrictions. The better-known Berlin Wall was a separate, less elaborate. On 9 November 1989, the East German government announced the opening of the Berlin Wall, over the following days, millions of East Germans poured into the West to visit. Little remains of the inner German borders fortifications and its route has been declared part of a European Green Belt linking national parks and nature reserves along the course of the old Iron Curtain from the Arctic Circle to the Black Sea. Museums and memorials along the old border commemorate the division and reunification of Germany and, in some places, the inner German border originated from the Second World War Allies plans to divide a defeated Germany into occupation zones. The boundaries between these zones were drawn along the boundaries of 19th-century German states and provinces that had largely disappeared with the unification of Germany in 1871. Three zones were agreed on, each covering roughly a third of Germanys territories, a British zone in the north-west, an American zone in the south, france was later given a zone in the far west of Germany, carved out of the British and American zones. The division of Germany was put into effect on 1 July 1945, the redeployment of Western troops prompted many Germans to flee to the West to escape the Soviet takeover of the remainder of the Soviet zone. The wartime Allies initially worked together under the auspices of the Allied Control Council for Germany, cooperation between the Western Allies and the Soviets ultimately broke down because of disagreements over Germanys political and economic future. In May 1949, the three occupation zones were merged to form the Federal Republic of Germany with a freely elected government. The Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic, under communist rule, from the outset, West Germany and the Allies rejected East Germanys legitimacy. The creation of East Germany was deemed a communist/Soviet fait accompli, West Germany regarded German citizenship and rights as applying equally to East and West German citizens. East Germans thus had an incentive to move to the West. In the early days of the occupation, the Allies controlled traffic between the zones to manage the flow of refugees and prevent the escape of former Nazi officials and intelligence officers
13.
Neuss
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Neuss is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located on the west bank of the Rhine opposing Düsseldorf, Neuss is the largest city within the Rhein-Kreis Neuss district. It is primarily known for its historic Roman sites, as well as the annual Neusser Bürger-Schützenfest, in 1984 Neuss celebrated 2000 years since its foundation. It therefore holds the title of Germanys oldest city alongside the city of Trier. Neuss was founded by the Romans in 16 BC as a fortification with the current city to the north of the castrum, at the confluence of the rivers Rhine and Erft. Legio XVI Gallica of the Roman army was stationed here in 43-70 AD and it was disbanded after surrendering during the Batavian rebellion. Later a civil settlement was founded in the area of todays centre of the town during the 1st century AD, Novaesium, together with Trier, is one of the three oldest Roman settlements in Germany. Neuss grew during the Middle Ages because of its location on several routes, by the crossing of the great Rhine valley. During the 10th century, the remains of the martyr and tribune Saint Quirinus and this resulted in pilgrimage to the shrine of St. Quirinus even from countries beyond the borders of the Holy Roman Empire. Neuss was first documented as a town in 1138, one of the main events in the towns history is the siege of the town in 1474–75 by Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, that lasted for nearly a year. The citizens of Neuss withstood the siege and were rewarded by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III. The town was granted the right to mint its own coins and to carry the coat of arms, the imperial eagle. Neuss became a member of the Hanseatic League, although it was never accepted by the members of the League. In 1586, more than two-thirds of the city was destroyed by fire and its importance as a place for trading declined rapidly, and from the mid-17th century onwards, Neuss became a place only important for its agriculture. Until the late 18th century, Neuss belonged to the Electorate of Cologne, from 1794 to 1814, Neuss was part of France during the reign of Napoleon. The town had a population of 6,333 at that time and it was part of the Prussian Province of Jülich-Cleves-Berg and its successor, the Rhine Province. Neuss regained its power in the 19th century, with expansion of the harbour in 1835. The citys boundaries were expanded in 1881, Neuss became part of the new state of North Rhine-Westphalia in 1946
14.
West Germany
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West Germany is the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation on 23 May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990. During this Cold War era, NATO-aligned West Germany and Warsaw Pact-aligned East Germany were divided by the Inner German border, after 1961 West Berlin was physically separated from East Berlin as well as from East Germany by the Berlin Wall. This situation ended when East Germany was dissolved and its five states joined the ten states of the Federal Republic of Germany along with the reunified city-state of Berlin. With the reunification of West and East Germany, the Federal Republic of Germany, enlarged now to sixteen states and this period is referred to as the Bonn Republic by historians, alluding to the interwar Weimar Republic and the post-reunification Berlin Republic. The Federal Republic of Germany was established from eleven states formed in the three Allied Zones of occupation held by the United States, the United Kingdom and France, US and British forces remained in the country throughout the Cold War. Its population grew from roughly 51 million in 1950 to more than 63 million in 1990, the city of Bonn was its de facto capital city. The fourth Allied occupation zone was held by the Soviet Union, as a result, West Germany had a territory about half the size of the interbellum democratic Weimar Republic. At the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided among the Western and Eastern blocs, Germany was de facto divided into two countries and two special territories, the Saarland and divided Berlin. The Federal Republic of Germany claimed a mandate for all of Germany. It took the line that the GDR was an illegally constituted puppet state, though the GDR did hold regular elections, these were not free and fair. For all practical purposes the GDR was a Soviet puppet state, from the West German perspective the GDR was therefore illegitimate. Three southwestern states of West Germany merged to form Baden-Württemberg in 1952, in addition to the resulting ten states, West Berlin was considered an unofficial de facto 11th state. It recognised the GDR as a de facto government within a single German nation that in turn was represented de jure by the West German state alone. From 1973 onward, East Germany recognised the existence of two German countries de jure, and the West as both de facto and de jure foreign country, the Federal Republic and the GDR agreed that neither of them could speak in the name of the other. The first chancellor Konrad Adenauer, who remained in office until 1963, had worked for an alignment with NATO rather than neutrality. He not only secured a membership in NATO but was also a proponent of agreements that developed into the present-day European Union, when the G6 was established in 1975, there was no question whether the Federal Republic of Germany would be a member as well. With the collapse of communism in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989, symbolised by the opening of the Berlin Wall, East Germany voted to dissolve itself and accede to the Federal Republic in 1990. Its five post-war states were reconstituted along with the reunited Berlin and they formally joined the Federal Republic on 3 October 1990, raising the number of states from 10 to 16, ending the division of Germany
15.
Saint Paul, Minnesota
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Saint Paul is the capital and second-most populous city of the U. S. state of Minnesota. As of 2015, the estimated population was 300,851. Saint Paul is the county seat of Ramsey County, the smallest and most densely populated county in Minnesota. The city lies mostly on the east bank of the Mississippi River in the area surrounding its point of confluence with the Minnesota River, and adjoins Minneapolis, the states largest city. Known as the Twin Cities, the two form the core of Minneapolis–Saint Paul, the 16th-largest metropolitan area in the United States, with about 3.52 million residents. Founded near historic Native American settlements as a trading and transportation center, the Dakota name for Saint Paul is Imnizaska. Though Minneapolis is better-known nationally, Saint Paul contains the state government, regionally, the city is known for the Xcel Energy Center, home of the Minnesota Wild, and for the Science Museum of Minnesota. As a business hub of the Upper Midwest, it is the headquarters of such as Ecolab. Saint Paul, along with its Twin City, Minneapolis, is known for its literacy rate. It was the city in the United States with a population of 250,000 or more to see an increase in circulation of Sunday newspapers in 2007. The settlement originally began at present-day Lamberts Landing, but was known as Pigs Eye after Pierre Pigs Eye Parrant established a tavern there. Burial mounds in present-day Indian Mounds Park suggest that the area was inhabited by the Hopewell Native Americans about two thousand years ago. From the early 17th century until 1837, the Mdewakanton Dakota and they called the area I-mni-za ska dan for its exposed white sandstone cliffs. Following the Louisiana Purchase in 1803, a U. S. Army officer named Zebulon Pike negotiated approximately 100,000 acres of land from the local Dakota tribes in 1805 in order to establish a fort. The negotiated territory was located on banks of the Mississippi River, starting from Saint Anthony Falls in present-day Minneapolis, to its confluence with the Saint Croix River. Fort Snelling was built on the territory in 1819 at the confluence of the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers, the 1837 Treaty with the Sioux ceded all local tribal land east of the Mississippi to the U. S. Government. Taoyateduta moved his band at Kaposia across the river to the south, fur traders, explorers, and missionaries came to the area for the forts protection. Many of the settlers were French-Canadians who lived nearby, however, as a whiskey trade flourished, military officers banned settlers from the fort-controlled lands
16.
Saint Paul Central High School
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Central High School of Saint Paul is the oldest high school in the state of Minnesota, United States. Founded in 1866 in downtown Saint Paul, Central has educated many leaders in business, government, literature, arts, sciences, and education throughout the state of Minnesota and the United States. Central also has more Rhodes Scholars among its alumni than any public high school in the U. S. with the most recent scholar, Matthew Landreman. It is also one of the biggest high schools in the state and, as of 2011 and it is also a national Blue Ribbon School. Central High School has been situated in four locations, beginning with the first building in 1866, Central High School was founded in 1866 in response to student requests. Before 1866, there were no opportunities in Saint Paul beyond grade school. Some people thought that the school was a waste of space, eugene Foster was the principal, and Mrs. H. M. Haynes was the lone teacher. The first graduating class of the Saint Paul High School was in 1870, the first 2 diplomas were hand printed on sheepskin. Gradually, the enrolled in the Franklin Building became too large for the two little rooms to accommodate them. In 1872, the Saint Paul High School moved to the Lindeke Building at 7th and that year, graduation exercises were held in the Saint Paul Civic Opera House where they were held until it was destroyed by a fire in 1899. Then the commencement exercises were held in the Peoples Church until the completion of the Saint Paul Auditorium, in 1872, the graduating class consisted of 12 students, five boys and seven girls. In 1873, the class of 12 students originated the custom of presenting each senior with a souvenir appropriate to his/her character. For several years, a prize was offered for the best essay, a Websters Unabridged Dictionary, the President of the Board of Education also presented a prize to the one having the highest standing in the class, usually a fine set of Shakespeares works. A new building opened in 1883 at 10th and Minnesota streets, the building was the first high school built in Saint Paul. In 1888, a 14-room annex was added for laboratories, the Debate society decided to put on plays to make up the money to pay for it. Mechanics Arts High School, then known as Manual Training High School, was first housed in the basement of Central, the school was renamed Central High School in 1888. Soon the building on 10th and Minnesota Street became too small, a compromise was reached when the Minuteman was adopted as a logo and mascot. The adjacent stadium was built in the early 1940s by the WPA and it was renamed James Griffin Stadium in 1998
17.
Computer science
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Computer science is the study of the theory, experimentation, and engineering that form the basis for the design and use of computers. An alternate, more succinct definition of science is the study of automating algorithmic processes that scale. A computer scientist specializes in the theory of computation and the design of computational systems and its fields can be divided into a variety of theoretical and practical disciplines. Some fields, such as computational complexity theory, are highly abstract, other fields still focus on challenges in implementing computation. Human–computer interaction considers the challenges in making computers and computations useful, usable, the earliest foundations of what would become computer science predate the invention of the modern digital computer. Machines for calculating fixed numerical tasks such as the abacus have existed since antiquity, further, algorithms for performing computations have existed since antiquity, even before the development of sophisticated computing equipment. Wilhelm Schickard designed and constructed the first working mechanical calculator in 1623, in 1673, Gottfried Leibniz demonstrated a digital mechanical calculator, called the Stepped Reckoner. He may be considered the first computer scientist and information theorist, for, among other reasons and he started developing this machine in 1834, and in less than two years, he had sketched out many of the salient features of the modern computer. A crucial step was the adoption of a card system derived from the Jacquard loom making it infinitely programmable. Around 1885, Herman Hollerith invented the tabulator, which used punched cards to process statistical information, when the machine was finished, some hailed it as Babbages dream come true. During the 1940s, as new and more powerful computing machines were developed, as it became clear that computers could be used for more than just mathematical calculations, the field of computer science broadened to study computation in general. Computer science began to be established as an academic discipline in the 1950s. The worlds first computer science program, the Cambridge Diploma in Computer Science. The first computer science program in the United States was formed at Purdue University in 1962. Since practical computers became available, many applications of computing have become distinct areas of study in their own rights and it is the now well-known IBM brand that formed part of the computer science revolution during this time. IBM released the IBM704 and later the IBM709 computers, still, working with the IBM was frustrating if you had misplaced as much as one letter in one instruction, the program would crash, and you would have to start the whole process over again. During the late 1950s, the science discipline was very much in its developmental stages. Time has seen significant improvements in the usability and effectiveness of computing technology, modern society has seen a significant shift in the users of computer technology, from usage only by experts and professionals, to a near-ubiquitous user base
18.
Master's degree
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A masters degree normally requires previous study at the bachelors level, either as a separate degree or as part of an integrated course. The original meaning of the degree was thus that someone who had been admitted to the rank of master in one university should be admitted to the same rank in other universities. This gradually became formalised as the licentia docendi, initially, the Bachelor of Arts was awarded for the study of the trivium and the Master of Arts for the study of the quadrivium. The nineteenth century saw an expansion in the variety of masters degrees offered. By 1861 this had been adopted throughout Scotland as well as by Cambridge and Durham in England, when the Philadelphia College of Surgeons was established in 1870, it too conferred the Master of Surgery, the same as that in Europe. In the United States, the first masters degrees were awarded at Harvard University soon after its foundation, at Harvard the 1700 regulations required that candidates for the masters degree had to pass a public examination, but by 1835 this was awarded Oxbridge-style 3 years after the BA. In Scotland, Edinburgh maintained separate BA and MA degrees until the mid nineteenth century, in Scotland all the statutes of the Universities which enforced conditions on the grant of degrees were a dead letter. Probably the most important masters degree introduced in the 19th century was the Master of Science, at the University of Michigan this was introduced in two forms in 1858, in course, first awarded in 1859, and on examination, first awarded in 1862. The in course MS was last awarded in 1876, in Britain, however, the degree took a while longer to arrive. The same two degrees, again omitting the masters, were awarded at Edinburgh, despite the MA being the undergraduate degree for Arts in Scotland. In 1862, a Royal Commission suggested that Durham should award masters degrees in theology and science and this scheme would appear to have then been quietly dropped, with Oxford going on to award BAs and MAs in science. The Master of Science degree was introduced in Britain in 1878 at Durham. At the Victoria University both the MA and MSc followed the lead of Durhams MA in requiring an examination for those with an ordinary bachelors degree. The Bologna declaration in 1999 started the Bologna Process, leading to the creation of the European Higher Education Area, as the process continued, descriptors were introduced for all three levels in 2004, and ECTS credit guidelines were developed. This led to questions as to the status of the masters degrees. In 1903, the London Daily News criticised the practice of Oxford and Cambridge, calling their MAs the most stupendous of academic frauds, in 1900, Dartmouth College introduced the Master of Commercial Science, first awarded in 1902. This was the first masters degree in business, the forerunner of the modern MBA, the idea quickly crossed the Atlantic, with Manchester establishing a Faculty of Commerce, awarding Bachelor and Master of Commerce degrees, in 1903. Over the first half of the century the masters degrees for honours graduates vanished as honours degrees became the standard undergraduate qualification in the UK
19.
Silicon Graphics
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Silicon Graphics, Inc. was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and software. Early systems were based on the Geometry Engine that Clark and Marc Hannah had developed at Stanford University, for much of its history, the company focused on 3D imaging and were a major supplier of both hardware and software in this market. They reincorporated as a Delaware corporation in January 1990, through the mid to late-1990s, the rapidly improving performance of commodity Wintel machines began to erode SGIs stronghold in the 3D market. The porting of Maya to other platforms is an event in this process. In the mid-2000s the company repositioned itself as a supercomputer vendor, Ed McCracken was CEO of Silicon Graphics from 1984 to 1997. During those years, SGI grew from revenues of $5.4 million to $3.7 billion. The addition of 3D graphic capabilities to PCs, and the ability of clusters of Linux- and BSD-based PCs to take on many of the tasks of larger SGI servers, ate into SGIs core markets. The porting of Maya to Linux, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows further eroded the low end of SGIs product line, in response to challenges faced in the marketplace and a falling share price Ed McCracken was fired and SGI brought in Richard Belluzzo to replace him. Under Belluzzos leadership a number of initiatives were taken which are considered to have accelerated the corporate decline, one such initiative was trying to sell workstations running Windows NT called Visual Workstations instead of just ones which ran IRIX, the companys version of UNIX. This put the company in more direct competition with the likes of Dell. The product line was unsuccessful and abandoned a few years later, SGIs premature announcement of its migration from MIPS to Itanium and its abortive ventures into IA-32 architecture systems damaged SGIs credibility in the market. In 1999, in an attempt to clarify their current market position as more than a company, Silicon Graphics Inc. changed its corporate identity to SGI. The new logo drew criticism for wasting the professional associated with the previous cube logo. SGI continued to use the Silicon Graphics name for its product line. In November 2005, SGI announced that it had been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange because its common stock had fallen below the share price for listing on the exchange. SGIs market capitalization dwindled from a peak of seven billion dollars in 1995 to just $120 million at the time of delisting. In February 2006, SGI noted that it could run out of cash by the end of the year, in mid-2005, SGI hired Alix Partners to advise it on returning to profitability and received a new line of credit. SGI announced it was postponing its scheduled annual December stockholders meeting until March 2006 and it proposed a reverse stock split to deal with the de-listing from the New York Stock Exchange
20.
Visible Human Project
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The Visible Human Project is an effort to create a detailed data set of cross-sectional photographs of the human body, in order to facilitate anatomy visualization applications. It is used as a tool for the progression of medical findings, a male and a female cadaver were cut into thin slices which were then photographed and digitized. The project is run by the U. S. National Library of Medicine under the direction of Michael J. Ackerman, planning began in 1986, the data set of the male was completed in November 1994 and the one of the female in November 1995. The project can be viewed today at the National Museum of Health and Medicine near Washington, there are currently efforts to repeat this project with higher resolution images but only with parts of the body instead of a cadaver. The male cadaver was encased and frozen in a gelatin and water mixture in order to stabilize the specimen for cutting, the specimen was then “cut” in the axial plane at 1 millimeter intervals. Each of the resulting 1,871 “slices” was photographed in both analog and digital, yielding 15 gigabytes of data, in 2000, the photos were rescanned at a higher resolution, yielding more than 65 gigabytes. The female cadaver was cut into slices at.33 millimeter intervals, the term “cut” is a bit of a misnomer, yet it is used to describe the process of grinding away the top surface of a specimen at regular intervals. The scanning, slicing and photographing took place at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, the male cadaver is from Joseph Paul Jernigan, a 38-year-old Texas murderer who was executed by lethal injection on August 5,1993. At the prompting of a prison chaplain he had agreed to donate his body for scientific research or medical use, some people have voiced ethical concerns over this. The 59-year-old female donor remains anonymous, in the press she has been described as a Maryland housewife who died from a heart attack and whose husband requested that she be part of the project. Freezing caused the brain of the man to be slightly swollen, nerves are hard to make out since they have almost the same color as fat, but many have nevertheless been identified. Small blood vessels were collapsed by the freezing process, tendons are difficult to cut cleanly, and they occasionally smear across the slice surfaces. The male has one testicle, is missing his appendix. Also visible are tissue damage to the dorsum of each forearm by formalin injection, the male was also not cut while in standard anatomical position, so the cuts through his arms are oblique. The female was missing 14 body parts which includes nose cartilage, the reproductive organs of the woman are not representative of those of a young woman. The specimen contains several pathologies, including disease and diverticulitis. The data may be bought on tape or downloaded free of charge, one has to specify the use and sign a license agreement that allows NLM to use. NLM can cancel the agreement at any time, at point the user has to erase the data files
21.
Google
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Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products. These include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, Google was founded in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were Ph. D. students at Stanford University, in California. Together, they own about 14 percent of its shares, and they incorporated Google as a privately held company on September 4,1998. An initial public offering took place on August 19,2004, in August 2015, Google announced plans to reorganize its various interests as a conglomerate called Alphabet Inc. Google, Alphabets leading subsidiary, will continue to be the company for Alphabets Internet interests. Upon completion of the restructure, Sundar Pichai became CEO of Google, replacing Larry Page, rapid growth since incorporation has triggered a chain of products, acquisitions, and partnerships beyond Googles core search engine. The company leads the development of the Android mobile operating system, the Google Chrome web browser, and Chrome OS, the new hardware chief, Rick Osterloh, stated, a lot of the innovation that we want to do now ends up requiring controlling the end-to-end user experience. Google has also experimented with becoming an Internet carrier, alexa, a company that monitors commercial web traffic, lists Google. com as the most visited website in the world. Several other Google services also figure in the top 100 most visited websites, including YouTube, Googles mission statement, from the outset, was to organize the worlds information and make it universally accessible and useful, and its unofficial slogan was Dont be evil. In October 2015, the motto was replaced in the Alphabet corporate code of conduct by the phrase Do the right thing, Google began in January 1996 as a research project by Larry Page and Sergey Brin when they were both PhD students at Stanford University in Stanford, California. They called this new technology PageRank, it determined a websites relevance by the number of pages, and the importance of those pages, Page and Brin originally nicknamed their new search engine BackRub, because the system checked backlinks to estimate the importance of a site. Originally, Google ran under Stanford Universitys website, with the domains google. stanford. edu, the domain name for Google was registered on September 15,1997, and the company was incorporated on September 4,1998. It was based in the garage of a friend in Menlo Park, craig Silverstein, a fellow PhD student at Stanford, was hired as the first employee. The first funding for Google was an August 1998 contribution of $100,000 from Andy Bechtolsheim, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, given before Google was incorporated. At least three other investors invested in 1998, Amazon. com founder Jeff Bezos, Stanford University computer science professor David Cheriton. Author Ken Auletta claims that each invested $250,000, early in 1999, Brin and Page decided they wanted to sell Google to Excite. They went to Excite CEO George Bell and offered to sell it to him for $1 million, vinod Khosla, one of Excites venture capitalists, talked the duo down to $750,000, but Bell still rejected it. Googles initial public offering took place five years later, on August 19,2004, at that time Larry Page, Sergey Brin, and Eric Schmidt agreed to work together at Google for 20 years, until the year 2024
22.
Airbnb
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Airbnb is an online marketplace and hospitality service, enabling people to lease or rent short-term lodging including vacation rentals, apartment rentals, homestays, hostel beds, or hotel rooms. The company does not own any lodging, it is merely a broker and it has over 3,000,000 lodging listings in 65,000 cities and 191 countries, and the cost of lodging is set by the host. Like all hospitality services, Airbnb is a form of collaborative consumption, registration and account creation is free. On each booking, the company charges guests a 6%-12% guest services fee, see also How to Book a Space on Airbnb, a how-to article from wikiHow Users can search for lodging using a variety of filters including lodging type, dates, location, and price. Before booking, users must provide an email address, telephone number, and in some cases. See also How to List an a Apartment on Airbnb, a article from wikiHow Users can create a listing by selecting list your space after logging in. A listing will not go live until the host is ready to publish, pricing is determined by the host, with recommendations from Airbnb. Hosts can charge different prices for nightly, weekly, and monthly stays as well as make adjustments for seasonal pricing, hosts add descriptions of the residence, amenities, available dates, cancellation policies, and any house rules. Hosts are advised to upload at least a few photos of the lodging that is offered, for eligible hosts, Airbnb offers free professional photography. Interested parties are required to message the property owner directly through Airbnb to ask regarding the property. Unless the host has enabled instant book, in case requests for stays are accepted automatically. After the reservation, hosts coordinate meeting times and contact information with guests, some cities have restrictions on subletting for a short period of time. In some cities, collection of a transient occupancy tax by Airbnb is required, in many cities, hosts must register with the government and obtain a permit or license. Airbnb has published a list of regulations and requirements by city, however, in addition, many landlords or community associations also have restrictions on short term sublets. In addition to the Airbnb website, the company offers mobile applications for iOS, Apple Watch and these offer geolocation and much of the functionality of the website, including private messaging. The mobile apps have received several awards, Airbnb had to overcome the obstacle of stranger danger to build a level of trust between hosts and guests and to instill confidence in its platform. Airbnb did this by requiring user profiles so that members can learn about their hosts and guests ahead of time and by establishing a ratings, founder Joe Gebbia has said that Airbnb has specifically designed for trust. Airbnb recommends that hosts obtain insurance which covers damages caused by guests, Airbnb offers secondary insurance, called its host guarantee
23.
Seed money
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Seed money, sometimes known as seed funding or seed capital, is a form of securities offering in which an investor invests capital in exchange for an equity stake in the company. The term seed suggests that this is an early investment, meant to support the business until it can generate cash of its own. Seed money options include friends and family funding, angel funding, Seed money can be used to pay for preliminary operations such as market research and product development. Investors can be the founders themselves, using savings and loans and they can be family members and friends of the founders. Investors can also be outside angel investors, venture capitalists, accredited investors, Seed funding involves a higher risk than normal venture capital funding since the investor does not see any existing projects to evaluate for funding. Hence, the investments made are usually lower as against normal venture capital investment, Seed funding can be raised online using equity crowdfunding platforms such as SeedInvest, Seedrs and Angels Den. Investors make their decision whether to fund a project based on the strength of the idea. Seed money may also come from product crowdfunding or from financial bootstrapping, bootstrapping in this context means making use of the cash flow of an existing enterprise, such as in the case of Chitika and Cidewalk. Government funds may be targeted toward youth, with the age of the founder a determinant, often, these programmes can be targeted towards adolescent self-employment during the summer vacation. Depending on the system, municipal government may be in charge of small disbursements. The European Commission runs microfinance programmes for self-employed people and businesses with fewer than 10 employees, European seed capital is available, but typically is limited to a 50% share. European SMEs can often benefit from the Eureka programme, which federates SMEs and research organisations,23 page description of EU support programmes for SMEs inventorium. org - South-West UK specific list European Commission page on Seed and start-up finance Angel investor Series A round
24.
Google+
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Google+ is an interest-based social network that is owned and operated by Google. The service, Googles fourth foray into social networking, experienced growth in its initial years, although usage statistics have varied. Three Google executives have overseen the service, which has undergone substantial changes leading to a redesign in November 2015, Google+ is the companys fourth foray into social networking, following Google Buzz, Google Friend Connect, and Orkut. According to a 2016 book by a former Facebook employee, some leaders at Facebook saw Googles foray into social networking as a threat to the company. Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg instituted a company-wide lockdown, signaling that employees were supposed to dedicate time to bringing Facebooks features into line with Google+, according to Ars Technica, Google+ signups were often just an incidental byproduct of signing up for other Google services. Consequently, the number of active users on Google+ grew significantly. In 2011 Google+ reached 10 million users just two weeks after the launch, in a month, it reached 25 million. In October 2011, the service reached 40 million users, according to Larry Page, based on ComScore, the biggest market was the United States followed by India. By the end of the year Google+ had 90 million users, in October 2013, approximately 540 million monthly active users made use of the social layer by interacting with Google+s enhanced properties, like Gmail, +1 button, and YouTube comments. Some 300 million monthly active users participated in the network by interacting with the Google+ social networking stream. But user engagement on Google+ was low compared with its competitors, ComScore estimated that users averaged just 3.3 minutes on the site in January 2012, versus 7.5 hours for Facebook. In March 2013, average time spent on the site remained low, roughly 7 minutes, according to Nielsen, not including traffic via apps. In February 2014, The New York Times likened Google+ to a ghost town, citing Google stats of 540 million monthly active users, but noting that almost half dont visit the site. The company replied that the significance of Google+ was less as a Facebook competitor than as a means of gathering and connecting user information from Googles various services. In April 2014, Vic Gundotra, the executive in charge of Google+, by March 2015, Google executive Bradley Horowitz, who had co-founded Google Plus with Gundotra, had replaced Besbris, becoming vice president of streams, photos, and sharing. In an interview with Steven Levy published on May 28,2015, by that time, two core Google+ functions, communications and photos, had become standalone services. Google Photos, Googles photo and video library, was announced at the May 2015 Google I/O conference, Google Hangouts, Googles communications platform, was announced two years earlier, also at Google I/O. Google subsequently refocused Google+ on shared interests, removing features not supporting a social experience
25.
Dr. Dobb's Journal
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Dr. Dobbs Journal was a monthly journal published in the United States by United Business Media. It covered topics aimed at computer programmers, when launched in 1975, DDJ was the first regular periodical focused on microcomputer software, rather than hardware. In its last years of publication, it was distributed as a PDF monthly, publication ceased at the end of 2014, with the archived website continuing to be available online. Dennis Allison was a computer consultant on the San Francisco Peninsula. Allison said, Let us stand on each others shoulders, not each others toes, the journal was originally intended to be a three-issue xerographed publication. Titled dr. dobbs journal of Tiny BASIC Calisthenics & Orthodontia it was created to distribute the implementations of Tiny BASIC, the original title was created by Eric Bakalinsky, who did occasional paste-up work for PCC. Dobbs was a contraction of Dennis and Bob and it was at a time when memory was very expensive, so compact coding was important. Microcomputer hobbyists needed to avoid using too many bytes of memory—avoiding overbyte, PCC agreed, and hired Jim Warren as its first editor. He immediately changed the title to Dr. Dobbs Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia prior to publishing the first issue in January 1976, Jim Warren was DDJs editor for only about a year and a half. Eventually PCC, the corporation, sold DDJ to a commercial publisher. The newsletters content was originally pure enthusiast material, all of the content came from volunteer contributors, with Steve Wozniak as one of the better known of them. In later years, the magazine received contributions from all over the world working in application development and embedded systems across most programming languages. The magazines focus became more professional, columnists included Michael Swaine, Allen Holub and Verity Stob, the pseudonymous British programmer. The title was shortened to Dr. Dobbs Journal, then changed to Dr. Dobbs Journal of Software Tools as it became more popular. The magazine later reverted to Dr. Dobbs Journal with the line, The World of Software Development. In January 2009 Jonathan Erickson, the editor-in-chief, announced the magazine would cease print publication. A website and monthly digital PDF edition, the primary Dr. Dobbs content streams at the end were the Dr. Dobbs website, Dr. Dobbs Journal, and a weekly newsletter, Dr. Dobbs Update. In addition, Dr. Dobbs continued to run the Jolt Awards and, since 1995, regular bloggers include Scott Ambler, Walter Bright, Andrew Koenig, and Al Williams
26.
Fazlur Rahman Khan
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Fazlur Rahman Khan was a Bangladeshi-American structural engineer and architect, who initiated important structural systems for skyscrapers. Considered the father of tubular designs for high-rises, Khan was also a pioneer in computer-aided design and he was the structural designer of the Sears Tower, since renamed Willis Tower, the tallest building in the world from 1973 until 1998, and the 100-story John Hancock Center. Khan, more than any individual, ushered in a renaissance in skyscraper construction during the second half of the 20th century. In his honor, the Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat established the Fazlur Khan Lifetime Achievement Medal, Fazlur Rahman Khan was born 3 April 1929 in British ruled Dhaka, later East Pakistan, which is now present day Bangladesh. He was brought up in the village of Bhandarikandii, in the Faridpur District near Dhaka and his father Abdur was a high school mathematics teacher and textbook author. He eventually became the Director of Public Instruction in the region of Bengal and after retirement served as Principal of Jagannath College, Khan attended Armanitola Government High School, in Dhaka. After that, he studied Civil Engineering in Bengal Engineering College, Shibpur and he received a Fulbright Scholarship and a Pakistan government scholarship, which enabled him to travel to the United States in 1952. There he studied at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 1967, he elected to become a United States citizen. Khan introduced design methods and concepts for efficient use of material in building architecture and his first building to employ the tube structure was the Chestnut De-Witt apartment building. In 1955, employed by the architectural firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, he working in Chicago, Illinois. He was made a partner in 1966 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1967, Khans personal papers, most of which were in his office at the time of his death, are held by the Ryerson & Burnham Libraries at the Art Institute of Chicago. The Fazlur Khan Collection includes manuscripts, sketches, audio tapes, slides. Khans central innovation in design and construction was the idea of the tube structural system for tall buildings, including the framed tube, trussed tube. His tube concept, using all the wall perimeter structure of a building to simulate a thin-walled tube. Most buildings over 40 stories constructed since the 1960s now use a design derived from Khans structural engineering principles. Lateral loads such as forces, seismic forces, etc. begin to dominate the structural system. Wind forces become very substantial, and forces caused by earthquakes, the tubular designs resist such forces for tall buildings. Tube structures are stiff and have significant advantages over other framing systems and they not only make the buildings structurally stronger and more efficient, but also significantly reduce the structural material requirements
27.
Sal Khan
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He is also the Founder of Khan Lab School, a brick-and-mortar school associated with Khan Academy. As of December 2016, the Khan Academy channel on YouTube has more than 3 million subscribers, in 2012, Time named Salman Khan in its annual list of the 100 most influential people in the world. Forbes magazine featured Khan on its cover with the story $1 Trillion Opportunity, Salman Khan was born to Muslim parents in Metairie, Louisiana. His father, Dr. Fakhrul Amin Khan, is from Barisal, Bangladesh and his mother, Masuda Khan, is from Murshidabad, West Bengal, India. Khan attended the public school Grace King High School in Metairie, Louisiana, where, as he recalls, Khan was class president in his senior year. Khan also holds a Master in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, in 2002, Khan was a summer intern at PARC. From 2003 to late 2009, Khan worked as a hedge fund analyst at Connective Capital Management, in late 2003, Khan began tutoring his cousin, Nadia, in mathematics over the internet using Yahoo. s Doodle notepad. When other relatives and friends sought his tutoring, he moved his tutorials to YouTube where he created an account on November 16,2006, the popularity of his educational videos on the video-sharing website prompted Khan to quit his job as a financial analyst in late 2009. He moved his focus to developing his YouTube channel, Khan Academy, Khan consequently received sponsorship from Ann Doerr, the wife of John Doerr. His videos received worldwide interest from students and non-students, with more than 458 million views in the first number of years. Khan outlined his mission as to accelerate learning for students of all ages, with this in mind, we want to share our content with whoever may find it useful. Khan plans to extend the school to cover topics such as English. Khans videos are used to educate rural areas of Africa. Khan published a book about Khan Academy and education goals titled The One World Schoolhouse, Khan Academy, initially a tool for students, added the Coach feature in 2012, promoting the connection of teachers with students through videos and monitor tools. Salman Khan has been featured on the The Colbert Report, PBS NewsHour, CNN, in 2009, Khan Academy received the Microsoft Tech Award for education. In September 2010, Google provided $2 million to support the creation of more courses, also near that time, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation provided Khan Academy with $1.5 million to help Khan Academy to grow as an organization. In March 2011, Salman Khan was invited to speak at TED by Bill Gates who says he uses Khan Academy Exercise Software to teach his own children, on June 2,2011, Salman Khan appeared on The Colbert Report to talk in an interview about his teachings. He told the audience how he planned to use his software to revolutionize the field of education, Khan has also been interviewed by journalist Charlie Rose, appearing on Charlie Rose on May 4,2011, and by news anchor Tom Brokaw
28.
The Daily Star (Bangladesh)
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The Daily Star is the largest circulating daily English-language newspaper in Bangladesh. Founded by Syed Mohammed Ali on 14 January 1991, as Bangladesh transitioned and restored parliamentary democracy, The Daily Star emerged as a leading, the newspapers position in Bangladesh is comparable to that of The New York Times in the United States and The Independent in the United Kingdom. Its motto, Committed to Peoples Right to Know, appears on the section of the front page. The newspaper is led by Mahfuz Anam, a fighter and former United Nations official. Its principal bureaus are located in Dhaka and Chittagong, with several representatives abroad and it is organized into sections, News, Opinion and Editorial, Star Business, Star Sports, Arts and Entertainment, National and Metropolitan. Its major supplements include The Star, Forum, Lifestyle, Star Literature, Law & Our Rights, Shout, Star Insight and Science, the Daily Star is owned by Mediaworld, in which a major share is held by Latifur Rahmans Transcom Group. The Transcom Group also owns Prothom Alo, one of the most widely read Bengali newspapers in the world, Mahfuz Anam, editor and publisher of The Daily Star, is also on its six-member board of directors, of which Rokia Afzal Rahman is chairman. The board deals with financial matters, the general section of the newspaper is headed by Dr Salehuddin Ahmed, its managing editor, while the news team is led by Syed Ashfaqul Haque, chief news editor. Ahmed Ali is in charge of the Metro, other leaders are AFM Jamaluddin, Mizanur Rahman, Selim S. H. Transcom Group, controlled by businessman Latifur Rahman, Abdur Rouf Chowdhury of Rangs Group, the Daily Star publishes a number of supplements along with its 24-page main publication. The Star, a weekly, is published every Friday. Lifestyle, a fashion and lifestyle tabloid, is published every Tuesday. Star Showbiz, Weekly entertainment tabloid, focused on local international movie, music, Shout, a weekly tabloid-size supplement for teenagers, is published every week. Bytes Technology page Next Step Shift Law and Our Rights, a supplement on legal issues. RisingStars, a weekly supplement for teenagers, was published every Thursday. Star Campus was a supplement of the paper. Forum, a magazine, edited by Shah Husain Imam, is published with the newspaper on the first Monday of the month. Star Insight, page 12, was published every Wednesday, the Daily Star is widely criticized for backing the army-installed government, led by former bureaucrat Fakhruddin Ahmad and armed with sweeping emergency powers to curb media and civil rights
29.
Die Welt
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Die Welt is a German national daily newspaper, published as a broadsheet by Axel Springer SE. Die Welt was founded in Hamburg in 1946 by the British occupying forces and it originally carried news and British-viewpoint editorial content, but from 1947 it adopted a policy of providing two leading articles on major questions, one British and one German. The 1993 circulation of the paper was 209,677 copies, at its peak in the occupation period, it had a circulation of around a million. The modern paper takes a self-described liberal cosmopolitan position in editing, the average circulation of Die Welt is currently about 180,000 and the paper can be obtained in more than 130 countries. Daily regional editions appear in Berlin and Hamburg, and in 2002 the paper experimented with a Bavarian edition, a daily regional supplement also appears in Bremen. The main editorial office is in Berlin, in conjunction with the Berliner Morgenpost, Die Welt is the flagship newspaper of the Axel Springer publishing group. Its leading competitors are the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, financially, it has been a lossmaker for many years. The newspaper currently publishes an edition entitled Welt Kompakt, a 32-page cut-down version of the main broadsheet. Welt Kompakt has a look and is targeted to a younger public. The paper does not appear on Sundays, but the linked publication Welt am Sonntag takes its place, Welt Kompakt was also redesigned to use that typeface. In 2009, the Sunday edition Welt am Sonntag was recognized as one of the World’s Best-Designed Newspapers by the Society for News Design, on 2 May 2014, Swiss German business magazine BILANZ began to be published as a monthly supplement of Die Welt. The paper was banned in Egypt in February 2008 due to the publication of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad, since 1999, the Die Welt book supplement Die Literarische Welt has presented an annual €10,000 literature prize available to international authors. The award is in honor of Willy Haas who founded Die Literarische Welt in 1925. the worlds great dailies, profiles of fifty newspapers pp 353–60 Official website WELT ONLINE Article Archive for Die Welt
30.
Wayback Machine
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The Internet Archive launched the Wayback Machine in October 2001. It was set up by Brewster Kahle and Bruce Gilliat, and is maintained with content from Alexa Internet, the service enables users to see archived versions of web pages across time, which the archive calls a three dimensional index. Since 1996, the Wayback Machine has been archiving cached pages of websites onto its large cluster of Linux nodes and it revisits sites every few weeks or months and archives a new version. Sites can also be captured on the fly by visitors who enter the sites URL into a search box, the intent is to capture and archive content that otherwise would be lost whenever a site is changed or closed down. The overall vision of the machines creators is to archive the entire Internet, the name Wayback Machine was chosen as a reference to the WABAC machine, a time-traveling device used by the characters Mr. Peabody and Sherman in The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show, an animated cartoon. These crawlers also respect the robots exclusion standard for websites whose owners opt for them not to appear in search results or be cached, to overcome inconsistencies in partially cached websites, Archive-It. Information had been kept on digital tape for five years, with Kahle occasionally allowing researchers, when the archive reached its fifth anniversary, it was unveiled and opened to the public in a ceremony at the University of California, Berkeley. Snapshots usually become more than six months after they are archived or, in some cases, even later. The frequency of snapshots is variable, so not all tracked website updates are recorded, Sometimes there are intervals of several weeks or years between snapshots. After August 2008 sites had to be listed on the Open Directory in order to be included. As of 2009, the Wayback Machine contained approximately three petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of 100 terabytes each month, the growth rate reported in 2003 was 12 terabytes/month, the data is stored on PetaBox rack systems manufactured by Capricorn Technologies. In 2009, the Internet Archive migrated its customized storage architecture to Sun Open Storage, in 2011 a new, improved version of the Wayback Machine, with an updated interface and fresher index of archived content, was made available for public testing. The index driving the classic Wayback Machine only has a bit of material past 2008. In January 2013, the company announced a ground-breaking milestone of 240 billion URLs, in October 2013, the company announced the Save a Page feature which allows any Internet user to archive the contents of a URL. This became a threat of abuse by the service for hosting malicious binaries, as of December 2014, the Wayback Machine contained almost nine petabytes of data and was growing at a rate of about 20 terabytes each week. Between October 2013 and March 2015 the websites global Alexa rank changed from 162 to 208, in a 2009 case, Netbula, LLC v. Chordiant Software Inc. defendant Chordiant filed a motion to compel Netbula to disable the robots. Netbula objected to the motion on the ground that defendants were asking to alter Netbulas website, in an October 2004 case, Telewizja Polska USA, Inc. v. Echostar Satellite, No.02 C3293,65 Fed. 673, a litigant attempted to use the Wayback Machine archives as a source of admissible evidence, Telewizja Polska is the provider of TVP Polonia and EchoStar operates the Dish Network
31.
Mashable
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Mashable is a digital media website founded by Pete Cashmore in 2005. Mashable was created by Pete Cashmore from his home in Aberdeen, Scotland, time noted Mashable as one of the 25 best blogs in 2009, and it has been described as a one stop shop for social media. As of November 2015, it has over 6,000,000 Twitter followers, voting was conducted online through Mashable and its 24 blog partners. On 10 January 2008 at the Palace Hotel, San Francisco, winners included Digg, Facebook, Google, Twitter, YouTube, ESPN, Cafemom and Pandora. The 2nd Annual Open Web Awards was an international competition that took place between November and December 2008. The 3rd Open Web Awards were held in November and December 2009, winners included Pandora Radio for best mobile music site or app, Fish Wrangler for best Facebook game, and Surprise Marriage Proposal in Spain as best YouTube video. In 2010, Mashable renamed the Open Web Awards to the 4th Annual Mashable Awards, winners include HootSuite for Best Social Media Management Tool, ReachLocal for Best Social Media Service for Small Business, iPad for Best New Gadget, and Angry Birds for Best Mobile Game. Mashable Connect is an annual invite-only conference and it was held on 12 May –14 May 2011, with 300 attendees. Speakers included Scott Belsky, Founder & CEO, Behance, Adam Ostrow, Rohit Bhargava, SVP, Global Strategy & Marketing, sabrina Caluori, Director of Social Media & Marketing, HBO, and Greg Clayman, Publisher, The Daily. Themes discussed included content curation, the democratisation of content, social media, social television, Mashable UK Mashable Asia Mashable Australia Mashable India Mashable Studios Mashable with France 24 CineFix Ars Technica GigaOM ReadWriteWeb TechCrunch
32.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker
33.
Quora
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Quora is a question-and-answer site where questions are asked, answered, edited and organized by its community of users. Its publisher, Quora, Inc. is based in Mountain View, the company was founded in June 2009, and the website was made available to the public on June 21,2010. Users can collaborate by editing questions and suggesting edits to other users answers, Quora believes most of human knowledge, experiences, opinions is still not on the internet, they are in the form of books and peoples experiences, only a few of which go on the internet. Quoras mission is to share worlds knowledge by letting people contribute to knowledge base. Quora was co-founded by two former Facebook employees, Adam DAngelo and Charlie Cheever, DAngelo resigned from his position at Facebook in January 2010 to create Quora. Quoras base of users grew quickly in December 2010, Quora had an estimated 100 million monthly unique visitors, as of March 2016. In June 2011, Quora redesigned its website, in order to make information discovery, Quora released an official iPhone app on September 29,2011, followed by an Android app on September 5,2012. In September 2012, Quora announced that co-founder Charlie Cheever was stepping back from a role at the firm. In January 2013, Quora launched a blogging platform, Quora launched full text search of questions and answers on its website on March 20,2013, and extended the feature to mobile devices in late May 2013. It also announced in May 2013 that all its metrics had tripled relative to the time in the prior year. TechCrunch reported that, although Quora had no plans for monetization. In April 2014, it was announced that Quora was raising $80 million from Tiger Global at a reported $900 million valuation, Quora was also one of the members of the Summer 2014 Y Combinator batch. In March 2016, Quora acquired Parlio, in April of that year, the company also began a limited rollout of advertising on the site. In October 2016, Quora launched Quora en español to the public, following this announcement in early 2017, a beta of Quora in French was announced. Quora requires users to register with their names rather than an Internet pseudonym, although verification of names is not required. This was done with the intent of adding credibility to answers. Visitors unwilling to log in or use cookies have had to resort to workarounds to use the site, users may also log in with their Google or Facebook accounts using the OpenID protocol. They can upvote or downvote answers, and suggest edits to extant answers provided by other users, the Quora community includes some well-known people, such as Jimmy Wales and Adrián Lamo
34.
History of YouTube
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The history of YouTube began when PayPal employees created a video-sharing website where users could upload, share and view content. The Internet domain name www. youtube. com was activated on Monday, February 14,2005 at 9,13 p. m. YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, when they worked for PayPal. Prior to working for PayPal, Hurley studied design at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, Chen, YouTubes initial headquarters was above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California. The domain name YouTube. com was activated on February 14,2005 with video upload options being integrated on April 23,2005. The first YouTube video, titled Me at the zoo, was uploaded on April 23,2005, YouTube began as an angel-funded enterprise working from a makeshift office in a garage. In November 2005, venture firm Sequoia Capital invested an initial $3.5 million, in April 2006, Sequoia and Artis Capital Management invested an additional $8 million in the company, which had experienced significant growth in its first few months. During the summer of 2006, YouTube was one of the fastest growing sites on the World Wide Web, the site delivered an average of 100 million video views per day in July. It was ranked the fifth-most-popular website on Alexa, far out-pacing even MySpaces rate of growth, the website averaged nearly 20 million visitors per month according to Nielsen/NetRatings, with around 44% female and 56% male visitors. The 12- to 17-year-old age group was dominant, YouTubes pre-eminence in the online market was substantial. According to the website Hitwise. com, YouTube commanded up to 64% of the UK online video market, YouTube entered into a marketing and advertising partnership with NBC in June 2006. On October 9,2006, it was announced that the company would be purchased by Google for US$1.65 billion in stock, at that time it was Googles second-largest acquisition. The agreement between Google and YouTube came after YouTube presented three agreements with companies in an attempt to avoid copyright-infringement lawsuits. YouTube planned to continue operating independently, with its co-founders and 67 employees working within Google, Googles February 7,2007 SEC filing revealed the breakdown of profits for YouTubes investors after the sale to Google. In 2010, Chad Hurleys profit was more than $395 million while Steve Chens profit was more than $326 million, in 2006, Time Magazine featured a YouTube screen with a large mirror as its annual Person of the Year. It cited user-created media such as posted on YouTube and featured the sites originators along with several content creators. The Wall Street Journal and New York Times also reviewed posted content on YouTube in 2006, with regard to its effects on corporate communications. PC World Magazine named YouTube the ninth of its Top 10 Best Products of 2006, in 2007, both Sports Illustrated and Dime Magazine featured positive reviews of a basketball highlight video titled, The Ultimate Pistol Pete Maravich MIX. It is estimated that in 2007 YouTube consumed as much bandwidth as the entire Internet in 2000, originating in 2007, the YouTube Awards are annual awards given out in recognition of the best YouTube videos of the preceding year as voted by the YouTube community
35.
Censorship of YouTube
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Video-sharing platform YouTube is the second-most popular website as of 2016, according to Alexa Internet. Censorship of it has occurred and continues to occur in countries throughout the world. In other countries access to the website as a whole remains open, in cases where the entire site is banned due to one particular video, YouTube will often agree to remove or limit access to that video in order to restore service. As of September 2012, countries with standing national bans on YouTube include China, Iran, Pakistan, Syria, YouTube was also mostly blocked in Germany from YouTubes side due to disputes between GEMA and YouTube over royalties until they made peace in 2016. YouTubes Terms of Service prohibit the posting of videos which violate copyrights or depict pornography, illegal acts, gratuitous violence, or hate speech. User-posted videos that violate such terms may be removed and replaced with a message stating, YouTube offers an opt-in feature known as Restricted Mode, which filters videos that may contain mature content. In August 2016, YouTube introduced a new system to users of violations of the advertiser-friendly content rules. The hashtag #YouTubeIsOverParty was prominently used on Twitter as a means of discussing the controversy, in March 2017, a number of major advertisers began to pull their advertising campaigns from YouTube, over concerns that their ads were appearing on objectionable and/or extremist content. The Restricted Mode of YouTube is a meant to filter out sexually explicit or otherwise inappropriate content for minors. In addition, lesbian pop duo Tegan and Sara told the Guardian If you put @YouTube on restricted mode a bunch of our music videos disappear, … LGBTQ people shouldn’t be restricted. Critics have stressed that LGBT content should not be seen as sexual or inappropriate for children. The availability of LGBT content to LGBT youth, such as information coming out, is vitally important. Gun channels have also affected by Restricted Mode. YouTube was first blocked in China for several months from October 15,2007 to March 22,2008 and it was blocked again from March 24,2009, although a Foreign Ministry spokesperson would neither confirm nor deny whether YouTube had been blocked. Since then, YouTube is not accessible from China, however, YouTube can still be accessed in Hong Kong and Macau. Google might now be planning to gain access of YouTube in China as of 2017, on December 3,2006, Iran blocked YouTube, along with several other sites, after declaring them immoral. The block came after a video was posted online that appears to show an Iranian soap opera star having sex, the block was later lifted and then reinstated after the 2009 Iranian presidential election. In 2012, Iran reinstated the block, along with Google, on January 17,2016, some users reported that the website was unblocked although the site was blocked again on January 20
36.
Social impact of YouTube
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As the worlds largest video platform, YouTube has had impact in many fields, with some individual YouTube videos having directly shaped world events. In June 2008, Michael Wesch observed in YouTube a cultural phenomenon of networked individualism, in 2011, Willow Scobie asserted the anthropological significance of YouTube and noted evidence of a transformative experience for some people, and that some could identify as being a YouTuber. By the end of 2013, Khan Academys network of YouTube channels grew to 26,000 no-fee videos that collectively had been viewed 372 million times. Certain public school systems, non-profits, and charter schools use YouTube videos of outstanding educators in the training and professional development of teachers. At a more level, individuals use YouTube to carry how to videos sharing their knowledge in areas such as cosmetics. Beyond being what a Forrester Research analyst characterized as the largest video platform on the globe, however, YouTube keyword searches are confined to metadata—video titles and labels—rather than the video content itself. In the year following YouTubes 2005 launch, some early video creators gained large viewing audiences, while others created small, legion of Extraordinary Dancers producer Jon M. Such fields include dance and music, with Chu saying the Internet was causing dance to evolve, collaborative meetings, a global online equivalent of the Homebrew Computer Club, take place virtually, via video. A further step is to mix geographically distributed performances into a single work, the Tokyo Times noted J Rices We Pray for You YouTube video, benefitting victims of the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, as an example of a trend to use such crowdsourcing for charitable purposes. Director Kevin Macdonald explained that the film wouldnt have been possible pre-Internet, the anti-bullying It Gets Better Project expanded from a single YouTube video directed to discouraged or suicidal LGBT teens. In addition to public reaction, legislative action was undertaken almost immediately to study the prevalence of bullying. Local experts characterized the video as catching the collective emotional pulse of a crowded, YouTube was included in Entertainment Weeklys 100 Greatest list in 2009—though with the ironic praise, a safe home for piano-playing cats, celeb goof-ups, and overzealous lip-synchers since 2005. Learmonth reasoned that online journalism, being based on greatly diminished economics and expectations, is intrinsically inaccurate, in this vein, GroupMs CEO was quoted as saying there seemed to be a bigger premium on popularity than authority. A Pew Research Center study found that a new kind of visual journalism had developed, in which citizen eyewitnesses and established news organizations share in content creation. The study found that while 51% of the most watched YouTube news videos were produced by news organizations, pews deputy director observed that news reporting on YouTube was opening up the flow of information and forging new areas of cooperation and dialogue between citizens and news outlets. In July–August 2012, YouTube provided the first live-stream coverage of the events in the Summer Olympic Games, in August 2012 YouTube formed its Elections Hub that streamed speeches from American national political party conventions and featured content from eight major news organizations. S. The video became a symbol of the Iranian opposition movement, the Polk Awards curator saying that the video such a important news element in. The award panel said it wanted to acknowledge the role of ordinary citizens, videos of al-Qaeda militant Anwar al-Awlaki, including some urging attacks against the United States, were posted to YouTube
37.
YouTube Spotlight
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YouTube Spotlight is YouTubes official channel, hosted on its own website. As explained by its name, the channel is used to spotlight videos, Events that have been brought to light by the channel include YouTube Comedy Week and the YouTube Music Awards. Additionally, the channel uploads videos including episodes of YouTube Nation, on November 2,2013, the YouTube Spotlight channel briefly surpassed PewDiePies channel, to become the most subscribed channel on the website. The channel ascended to the top position through autosuggesting and pre-selecting itself as an option upon new user registration for YouTube. Throughout December 2013, the channel and PewDiePie struggled for the top position, as of February 42017, the channel has earned over 25.5 million subscribers and 1.0 billion video views. The channel is ranked as the 4th most subscribed channel, behind PewDiePie, HolaSoyGerman, since 2010, YouTube has released an annual YouTube Rewind video through its Spotlight channel. All YouTube Rewind videos from 2012—2016 have surpassed 100 million views, the 2010 and 2011 videos, however, have less than 10 million views each. The 2016 video became YouTubes fastest video to reach 100 million views and it is also the third most liked non-music video of all time with over 2.75 million likes. On December 14,2016, shortly after the 2016 Rewind video was released, in January 2014, YouTube Nation was launched on its own channel, as a collaborative project between YouTube and DreamWorks Animation. DWA oversaw the production while YouTube managed the sales and marketing of the series, the series is a news series that rounds up information from the Spotlight channel. YouTube promotes the series through its Spotlight channel, as well, early in its history, the series used guest hosts Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart, and Mamrie Hart to help propel the series and its audience. Due to regularly being promoted on the Spotlight channel, YouTube Nation was able to reach the 1 million subscriber milestone within three months of its launch, the series was nominated for the 4th annual Streamy Award under Best News and Current Events but lost to SourceFed. After 350 episodes, the series aired its last episode on December 5,2014, in May 2013, the Spotlight channel was used to stream its Comedy Week event, produced by ChannelFlip. During the event, YouTube used its homepage to spotlight comedy videos made specifically for the event, the video of the 2-hour kickoff event has earned 1.06 million views as of September 2014. The event was met with mixed reception, with the particular mixture of new and traditional media personalities. The event was the first of its kind in relation to being streamed by YouTube, although it was marketed as the first annual Comedy Week event, there have been no announcements in regards to a follow-up Comedy Week event. On August 4,2013, YouTube launched Geek Week, which was kicked off by Freddie Wong in the United States, and Tomska in the United Kingdom. The week was composed of themed days, which included Blockbuster Sunday, Global Geekery Monday, Brainiac Tuesday, Super Wednesday, Gaming Thursday, the event was launched in conjunction with Nerdist in the US, and ChannelFlip in the UK
