Find a technology entrepreneur or someone affiliated with any kind of media. Here are some ideas: the founders of Apple, Microsoft, google, youtube, jibjab, Amazon, etc. Even MC Hammer is a techie!
Still not interested? Select a name from the Levison book. Your goal: In 150 words, tell us something about the person. Where are they from? What are they famous for? Did they go to college? What kind of childhood? What have they done with their wealth?
EVERYBODY: Please pick someone different from the other class members. There are plenty of people.
EVERYBODY: Please pick someone different from the other class members. There are plenty of people.
DUE APRIL 1, 2014, NOON!!
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ReplyDeleteSteve Jobs and Steve Wozniak started creating Apple Computers in a garage in 1976. Steve was given up for adoption by his biological parents. They were college graduates and very smart. Steve Jobs adoptive parents were loving and the father used to dable in electronics in the garage, and Steve became very interested in the taking apart and rebuilding of electronics. Jobs enrolledat Reed College in Portland, Oregon. Lacking direction, he dropped out of college after six months.
ReplyDeleteApple initially marketed the computers for $666.66 each, and the Apple I earned the corporation around $774,000. Three years after the release of Apple's second model, the Apple II, the company's sales increased by 700 percent, to $139 million. In 1980, Apple Computer became a publicly traded company, with a market value of $1.2 billion on its very first day of trading. Jobs looked to marketing expert John Scully of Pepsi-Cola to help fill the role of Apple's president.
In 1985, Jobs resigned as Apple's CEO to begin a new hardware and software company called NeXT, Inc. The following year Jobs purchased an animation company from George Lucas, which later became Pixar Animation Studios. Believing in Pixar's potential, Jobs initially invested $50 million of his own money into the company. Pixar Studios went on to produce wildly popular animation films such as Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. Pixar's films have netted $4 billion. The studio merged with Walt Disney in 2006, making Steve Jobs Disney's largest shareholder.
He went back to Apple. He got Apple back on the fast track but then was hit with a blow. This blow being Pancreatic Cancer. After years of battling the disease, October 5, 2011, Apple Inc. announced that its co-founder had passed away. He was 56 years old.
Mark Zuckerberg is known globally as the creator of the social media website Facebook which he generated out of his college dorm room. Mark was born on May 14, 1984 in White Plains, New York. His father, Edward ran a dental practice and his mother Karen. He has 3 other siblings, Randi, Donna, and Arielle. In highschool, Mark started to expand his interest in computers and software by creating an early version of Pandora which he called Synapse. Companies such as AOL and Microsoft attempted to hire Mark before he graduated high school but he declined the offers. He then began college at Harvard. By his sophomore year, Mark was named as the "go-to software developer." He had created different programs for his college and eventually he had some friends convinve him to create a social college program named "Harvard Connection." They changed the site name to Facebook and initally created it just for college use but by the end of 2004, the site had more than 1 million users. Mark dropped out of college to devote himself to Facebook full time and moved the company to Palo Alto, CA. Facebook is one of the top social media sites world wide and is continuing to grow.
ReplyDeletecrap! I was going to pick zuckerberg
ReplyDeleteOprah Winfrey has often been called the "Queen of all Media". Not only is she the richest African American woman in the world (Forbes, 2010), she is also North America's only black billionaire (Forbes, 2012). After a rough childhood in which she was raised in poverty by a single mother, Winfrey landed a job in radio while still in high school and began co anchoring the evening news at the age of 19. Her emotional delivery would soon provide her an opportunity to break into the daytime talk show arena made popular by Phil Donahue, and son she would dominate the tabloid talk industry and would launch her own show.
ReplyDeleteNot only does Winfrey rank as one of the richest people in the world, she has also been included in the "50 most generous people" list, having given away more than $400 million of her wealth to promote and provide educational opportunities for the less privileged.
Dena Castling:
ReplyDeleteSergey Brin is a cofounder of Google. A graduate of the University of Maryland, Brin earned a B.S. in Computer Science and went on to earn his Masters at Stanford. His family immigrated to the US from Moscow when he was only 6 years old. The concept for Google was based on his research with Larry Page, a fellow Stanford student at the time. Brin focused on the idea of a data mining system, while page focused more on determining the importance of research papers by how many times it is used in the citations of other papers. In 2002, Brin was listed as one of the top innovators in the world under the age of 35 by the MIT technology review. Currently he is involved with the Project Glass, a program by Google to create a wearable augmented reality display, as well as Google’s driverless car project.
Evan Williams is a co-creator of the social media site Twitter. Williams was born March 31, 1972 (Happy Birthday bro) in Clarks, Nebraska, population 369. He attended the University of Nebraksa-Lincoln for a year and a half before quitting to pursue his dream (Don't try this at home, it may not work for you). After leaving college, Williams co-founded Blogger, which was later bought by Google. Williams then left google and co-founded Odeo - a podcasting company. He then co-founded a company called Obvious Corp, which main project was - you guessed it - Twitter. According to the October 2013 Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) filing, his 12% stake in Twitter will be worth $1.2 billion when the company goes public. In 2012, Williams, along with Biz Stone created Medium.com, a publishing platform. So basically Evan Williams is the man.
ReplyDeleteTechnology entrepreneurs, Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger founded and launched Instagram in October 2010.
ReplyDeleteKevin Systrom graduated from Stanford University in 2006 with a BS in Management Science and Engineering. He interned at Odeo which later became Twitter. Systrom spent two years working for Google on Gmail, Google Reader, and other products. He’s always been interested in social networking that enabled people to come together. He took his passion for photography and combined it with this social networking to put Instagram into existence. He is now the CEO of the Instagram company.
Mike Krieger graduated from Standford University with a degree in Symbolic Systems focusing on Human-Computer Interaction. In undergrad, he interned at Microsoft’s PowerPoint team as a PM and at Foxmarks, now Xmarks as a software developer. After graduating he worked a year and half at Meebo as a designer and as a front-end engineer before joining the Instagram team. For Instagram he does design and development.
Chad Meredith Hurley is an American co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer of the popular video sharing website YouTube and MixBit. He was born on January 24th 1977 (Aquarius!) Chad is the third child of Don and Joann Hurley, and grew up near Birdsboro, Pennsylvania(Pop. 5,163). He has two siblings, an older sister, Heather, and a younger brother, Brent. Since childhood, Chad showed extreme interest in the arts, but then later became interested in computers and electronic media during high school. He was an all star runner in his Highschool Cross Country team in 1995 and went on to receive his B.A. in Fine Art from Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1999. On October 16, 2006, Chen and Hurley sold YouTube to Google, Inc. for $1.65 billion. He now makes about 4.5 MIllion per year and has 2 Children.
ReplyDeleteBill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955. He came from a prominent family, his father a lawyer and his mother serving on the board of directors for United Way and First Interstate BancSystem. His parents desired for him to have a career in law. His interest in computers was sparked in eigth grade when his school, an exclusive prepratory school purchased a Teletype Model 33 ASR terminal and a block of computer time on a General Electric (GE) computer. Gates was fascinated by the machine and took to programming the GE system in BASIC. He was often excused from classes to do just this.
ReplyDeleteGates graduated high school with an ACT score of 1590 out of 1600 and enrolled at Harvard University in 1973. He continued to pursue his interest in computer programming here and eventually dropped out of school in hopes of starting his own company. In 1975, Gates partnered with Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems and "Micro-soft" was born. Gates worked full-time at Micro-soft until 2006 when he announced he would be transitioning into a part-time position of Chief Software Architect. He and his wife, Melinda Gates, are co-chairs of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation that works to enhance healthcare and end poverty globally. Gates consistently makes the Forbes list of the world's wealthiest people and is currently the world's richest man. Gates has three children: Jennifer, Rory, and Pheobe.
Jon Rettinger runs a successful tech firm named Technobuffalo. Jon started as a single blogger around 2007 on YouTube, filming un-boxing and tech demos. Jon started by himself filming in front of a camera, but today Tecnobuffalo is one of the most popular tech channels on YouTube stretching to millions of viewers each year.
ReplyDeleteFor this assignment I chose Stanley Burrel
ReplyDeleteStanley Burrel otherwise known as MC hammer is starting a new carreer as co-starter of DanceJam.com which will attempt to compete with the dance portion of YouTube. Burrel was born in 1962 in Oakland, CA he grew up in poverty. He graduated high school and took a few courses in communications but instead decided to join the navy. He went on to have a career in music, dance, choreography, film, and TV. And is now branching out into social media.
ReplyDeletePierre Omidyar was born in Paris, France before moving to the U.S. as a child. His interest in computers was sparked while attending high school in Virgina. He graduated from St. Andrew’s Episcopal School in Potomac, Maryland before attended Tufts University in Somerville, Mass. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in computer science in 1988. Following graduation he would work for Claris, a subsidiary of Apple Computer, where he worked on upgrading MacDraw to MacDraw II. In 1991 he would co-found a pen-based computing startup, later rebranded as eShop. At 28 years old he began to write original computer code for an online program to enable the listing of direct person to person auction items. After his prototype outgrew his personal website, he was forced to upgrade his internet service provide to a business package. This move, on his service called Auction Web, would eventually become eBay.
ReplyDeleteDavid Karp is the inventor of tumblr. He a highschool dropout now worth over 400 million dollars after yahoo bought tumblr out. He was before that worth 200 million. He was born in 1986 in New York City. He now lives in the tony esquire building in NYC where his apartments worth is 1.6 million dollars.
ReplyDeleteI chose Kounosuke Matushita who is the founder of Panasonic. He is from Wakayama, Japan. He is famous in Japan as an one of the successful persons during industrializing period in Japan. Also, he worked to build cram school after he quit his job. Therefore, he is well known as not only the founder of big company but also a teacher for the school. Actually He did not go to university as well as junior high or high school. He quitted his elementary school when he was 4th grade since his family finances were not good. He started to work at one of the electric companies when he was sixteen years old. It is because he worked hard when he was young, he learned how to manage the marketing and earn money. Then he founded one electric company named Matsushita Denkikigu Seisakujyo which would be the one now we called Panasonic.
ReplyDeleteJeff Bezos was born on January 12, 1964. He quickly found his niche with computers and eventually attended Princeton Univercity where he earned a degree in computer science as well as electrical engineering. After he graduated he became the youngest vice president of the Wall Street investment firm D.E. Shaw. With the money he earned after 4 years at the firm, Bezos launched Amazon.com. Amazon opened on July 16, 1995 and quickly became an internet success. Bezos made a splash once again in 2013 when he bought the Washington Post for $250 million.
ReplyDeleteAndre Romelle Young a.k.a. Dr. Dre was a rapper who founded N.W.A. the rap group based out of Compton California. He is also a producer who founded the rap label Aftermath Entertainment, who is contracted by Interscope Records. He is responsible but not limited to signing Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, and 50 Cent. His recent investment was one he shared with the chief of Interscope Records, it is currently called "Beats by Dre" These headphones can be seen on every head of any music goer. In 2014, Dr. Dre was ranked as the second richest figure in the American hip hop scene by Forbes with a net worth of $550 million. He was a pioneer of Golden Age of Hip Hop in 90's. He along with the rap group NWA were solely responsible for the voice of the minorities during the LA riots. He transcended from NWA after splitting up and joining Death Row Records, the same label that Tupac Shakur was signed to. He eventually dropped in solo debut album "The Chronic" in 93 and even won a grammy for a single he dropped off that album. He went on to produce for the biggest names in hip hop since then such as Snoop Dogg. He actually produce Snoop's first album that went quadruple platinum. Now he will be forever be a one of the biggest names in music history.
ReplyDeleteIf you like playing mobile games then you have Gunpei Yokoi to thank. Born September 10, 1941 and a graduate of Doshisha University with a degree in Electronics, Yokoi began working with Nintendo in 1965. One day, Yokoi saw a man playing with an LCD calculator to pass time on a bullet train. He got the idea to create a watch that doubled as a game and thus the Nintendo "Game & Watch" was born. Yokoi would later go on to design and develop the Game Boy, one of Nintendo's most famous and successful products.
ReplyDeleteYokoi also pioneered the design philosophy of "Lateral Thinking with Withered Technology". The philosophy is that toys and entertainment need not use cutting edge technology, but instead find creative uses with tech that is cheap and readily available. This was the philosophy behind the the Nintendo Wii. The Wii's hardware was vastly inferior to it's competitors but its innovative use of motion technology hooked consumers in a way that no one saw coming.
Sadly, Yokoi passed away in 1997 in a traffic accident. He was honored with a Lifetime Achievement award in 2003 at the International Game Developer's Conference.
I chose the Tim O'Shaughnessy, the founder of LivingSocial, an online market that provides coupons and discounts for users around the world. The reason I chose Tim is because I actually use LivingSocial and a similar service, Groupon, often times when I'm in bigger cities to get cheap deals.
ReplyDeleteTim is now about only 34 years old and as of 2010, was living in D.C. with his wife and child, where LivingSocial is also based. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree from Georgetown University. In 2007, Tim launched LivingSocial but as Hungry Machine. In 2013, the "Good Deal Guarantee" was introduced to the service, which offers customers more time to receive refunds when making returns. This is a great benefit for customer loyalty and attraction, especially on vacation deals. Usually when people book vacations, it's unlikely they can have that same offer.Today, LivingSocial offers discounts for categories such as local, escapes, shop, at home and coupons. Additionally, more than 70 million members around the world and 205 million vouchers to date.