Difference between revisions of "Evan Goldfarb"

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<br />AOL inc (Formally America Online and AOL TimeWarner) is an American based global internet and media service provider.  AOL was established in 1983 and at time provided dial-up service connection for anyone who wanted to join the network, and it was officially founded in 1985 in  Dulles, Virginia (PBS).<br />
 
<br />AOL inc (Formally America Online and AOL TimeWarner) is an American based global internet and media service provider.  AOL was established in 1983 and at time provided dial-up service connection for anyone who wanted to join the network, and it was officially founded in 1985 in  Dulles, Virginia (PBS).<br />
  
<br />In the year 2010, there are many applications and functions that people use AOL for everyday.  There is AOL Instant Messenger, AOL Mail, AOL Radio, AOL Weather, AOL Video, and many more options from the online community.  At the peak of AOL's popularity, over 30 million people were members world wide.  In 2001, AOL and TimeWarner announced they would become a conglamorate, which was considered to be "the most significant development in the Internet business world to date" at the time.  However, on May 28th 2009, AOL and Time Warner split ending a 8 year long relationship.  What had thought to be a visionary attempt to meld old media with new media never materialized.<br />
+
<br />In the year 2010, there are many applications and functions that people use AOL for everyday.  There is AOL Instant Messenger, AOL Mail, AOL Radio, AOL Weather, AOL Video, and many more options from the online community.  At the peak of AOL's popularity, over 30 million people were members world wide.  In 2001, AOL and TimeWarner announced they would become a conglamorate, which was considered to be "the most significant development in the Internet business world to date" (Hu & Junnarkar).  However, on May 28th 2009, AOL and Time Warner split ending a 8 year long relationship.  What had thought to be a visionary attempt to meld old media with new media never materialized.<br />
  
 
==The Beginning==
 
==The Beginning==

Revision as of 23:03, 27 June 2010

Wiki Entry #1: Logic Piano


The Logic Piano was created by William Stanley Jevons, A British Economist and Logician in the mid 19th century. From a young age Jevons was a brilliant young man. He was born in Liverpool, UK to a father who had strong scientific tastes as well as a writer on legal and economic subjects. He was also an iron merchant. His mother was the daughter of William Roscoe, an English historian and a writer. At the age of 15 Jevons was sent to London to attend University College School. He graduated in 2 years and then was off to Sydney, Australia in 1854. Five years later in 1859 he returned to the University College London to get his B.A. and M.A. in moral sciences. He began to write often and soon became a tutor at at Owens College in Manchester. In 1866, he was elected professor of logic and mental and moral philosophy and Cobden professor of political economy in Owens college (William Stanley Jevons, Wikipedia). It was only three years after this that Jevons would create one of the most revolutionary inventions of his and our time, the Logic Piano.


Jevons was a very logical thinker obviously, so much that he created something called "Substitution of Similar's." An example of this would be Jevons picking apart metal (Barrett and Connell, 2005).

Iron is a metal
Metal is an element
Iron = metal
Metal = Element
Therefore, Iron = element


This goes to show just how logical Jevons thought process was. With this in mind, Jevons was using a "logical slate" on which he had his combinations typed up ready for elimination as early as 1863 (Barrett and Connell, 2005). In one of his later pieces The Substitution of Similars, he describes a series of wooden boards with various combinations. This was the outline that would soon turn into one of his greatest inventions. In 1869, fitted within a wooden case, and with a keyboard mounted on the front to operate the substitution mechanism, the Logic Piano was finally built. This incredible piano could deal with up to four terms at a time. Jevons wanted to build a machine with 16 terms, but it simply would have been too big and complicated to make. The logic expressions are typed via the keys (well...more like they are played since it is a piano), and hitting full stop removes all impossible combinations from the screen. The copula is the "=" key and the "finis" key resets the machine (Barrett and Connell, 2005).


Jevons, his logical thinking, and the logic machine/piano anticipate contemporary computing in some way. The logical aspect of computers today run on a system of 1 and 0s (embodied in the circuitry). In 1940, a man named Claude Shannon used Jevons logic and logic piano to present a "symbolic analysis of relay switching curcuits" that Boolean algebra could be used to describe switching circuits (Barrett and Connell, 2005). The computer's of Apple and Microsoft that we use today are made possible because of Jevons' logic and Shannon's. It is amazing how many technological advancements of today's time are due to findings in the 1880s where they barely had any technology whatsoever compared to the 1900s and the 2000s. Sure eventually someone down the line may have figured out how to run computers, but this may have come many years later and today we may not have the laptops, high definition televisions, and many more technological items that we use in our everyday lives. Jevons always considered himself "unworthy" of seeing the logic of the future, but he saw it (Barrett and Connell, 2005). Who knows what he could have done if Jevons was not hampered by the technology of his time.




Wiki Entry #2: Mr. Paul Allen

Overview


Mr. Paul Gardner Allen (born Jan 21 1953) is an industrialist and philanthropist. He gained most of his fame by co-founding Microsoft with Bill Gates (Paul Allen, Wikipedia). Today he is the 37th richest person in the world being worth about$13.5 billion (Forbes.com).


He is a big time investor, as he is the founder and chairman of Vulcan Inc. (private asset Management Company). Allen has a multi-billion dollar investment portfolio which includes stakes in Diego (A line of high definition Digital Video Recorders produced by ARRIS Group Inc.), Kiha Software (founded by Allen), real estate, and other media/technology companies. He is also chairman of Charter Communications, which provides cable TV, high speed internet, and telephone services to more than 5.7 million people in 29 states (Paul Allen, Wikipedia). Charter Communications is the 4th Largest cable operator behind Comcast, Time Warner, and Cox Communications. Allen Also owns three sports teams: The Seattle Seahawks of the NFL, the Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA, and the Seattle Sounders FC of the MLS (Forbes.com)

How it all began


Allen was born and raised in Seattle to parents Kenneth and Faye. The dynamic duo of Allen and Gates met while they attended Lakeside School. Although Allen was two years older than Gates, they became friends because of their common interest of computers. They would often use the computers at Lakeside to develop their programming skills. After they graduated, Allen went to Washington State University but dropped out after two years to work for a company called Honeywell as a programmer. That company just happened to be in Boston where his buddy Bill Gates was attending Harvard University. Somehow Allen convinced Gates to drop out of school so they could pursue their dream of being software programmers (Paul G. Allen, Encyclopedia Britannica). This would forever change modern technology.


Believe it or not, Microsoft was co-founded by Gates and Allen in New Mexico in 1975. They began to write the first microcomputer BASIC for the Altair, a computer kit based on Intel’s new 8080 chip. Altair’s producer MITS makes Allen the associate director of software. Now Allen has to divide his time between MITS and Micro-Soft. Soon Micro-Soft was gaining publicity and everyone wanted a part of it. Apple commissions Micro-Soft to supply a version of its BASIC for the Apple II and Radio Shack bought a BASIC for its TRS-80. Then, IBM came to Microsoft and asked them to develop and license DOS and BASIC to IBM fro its new personal computer. Allen and Gates moved from New Mexico to Bellevue, Washington and they started the job for IBM. This is the foundation of Microsoft’s remarkable growth (Paul G. Allen, Encyclopedia Britannica).


However, right when things were booming, Allen had to resign from Microsoft in 1983 after being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. This was treated by radiation therapy and several months later Allen was cured. From 1983 to 2000, Allen was involved in many projects and companies that did not include Gates or Microsoft. Allen came back in 2000 as a senior strategy adviser to top Microsoft Executives (Microsoft.com)

Allen's other projects/companies


In 1984, Allen founded Asymetrix, a software development company in Washington, to make application development tools that non-programmers can use. This company later became Click2learn.com and then later merged with Docent to become Sum Total System in 2004.


In 1992, Allen started Starwave which was a producer of online content sites. Starwave did great work for ESPN SportsZone and ABCNews.com, so much that Disney bought the company for $350 million (Wikipedia).


In 1998, Allen bough Marcus Cable which was the 10th largest cable company at the time for $2.8 billion (Pelline, "Paul Allen to Buy Marcus Cable".


In 2003, Vulcan Ventures began funding Project Halo. Nothing like this had ever been attempted, but Allen being the innovator he is wanted to pursue this idea. This project is an attempt to apply Artificial Intelligence techniques to the problem of producing a digital Aristotle that might serve as a mentor, providing comprehensive access to the world’s knowledge (PaulAllen.com)


Allen also is a major contributor to the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) project (Paul Allen, Wikipedia)


Allen founded the Experience Music Project in 2000. This was inspired by his interest in a museum to house his huge collection of Jimi Hendrix memorabilia. It is a one-of-a-kind museum combining interactive and interpretive exhibits to tell the story of the creative, innovative, and rebellious expressions that defines American popular music (PaulAllen.com)

Philanthropy


Allen is also quite the philanthropist. He has given over $1 billion dollars to charity. There are two major foundations in which Allen is involved. There is the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation that supports the work of non-profit organizations that conduct effective community work primarily in the five-state Pacific Northwest region of Washing, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. The foundation consists of 5 programs: Arts and Culture, Community Development and Social Change, Economic Relief, Education and Youth Engagement, and Science and Technology Innovations Programs (The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, http://www.pgafoundations.com/). The other foundation is the Allen Institute for Brain Science (founded in 2001) is an independent, non-profit medical research organization dedicated to performing innovative basic research on cellular function in the brain and distributing its discoveries to researchers around the world.

Contributions


it is fairly obvious what important contributions Paul Allen has made to the history of the digital age, computers, and computing. If Allen had not convinced Gates to drop out of Harvard and start Microsoft, computer would not be the same as they are today. The technology would not be as advanced, we may still have slow computers, and the Microsoft empire which includes all the office programs, instant messengers, and just the programs 95% of computers in the world use would not be available today. Allen and Gates are the two people who have made computers what they are today. Sure Steve Jobs and the people at Apple are doing a great job in revolutionizing the computer industry, however I don't think that would be possible without the work of Paul Allen and Bill Gates. In a way, they have helped lead us into the digital age. Today when you think of computers the first thing that pops in your mind is Bill Gates and rightfully so. The man is the face of Microsoft and has changed the world forever. However, do not forget the man who CONVINCED Gates to drop out of college and start this company because if it had not been for Paul Allen, there would not be Microsoft Today. There may be Dell's, Mac's, and many other types of computers, but most of them are designed for Microsoft XP or Windows 7. Long after Allen passes on, his legacy will live forever thanks to Microsoft. Everyone in the world has come in contact with Microsoft in one way or another and I don't see why this will ever change.


Welcome, You've Got Mail! Wiki #3 America Online (AOL)


AOL inc (Formally America Online and AOL TimeWarner) is an American based global internet and media service provider. AOL was established in 1983 and at time provided dial-up service connection for anyone who wanted to join the network, and it was officially founded in 1985 in Dulles, Virginia (PBS).


In the year 2010, there are many applications and functions that people use AOL for everyday. There is AOL Instant Messenger, AOL Mail, AOL Radio, AOL Weather, AOL Video, and many more options from the online community. At the peak of AOL's popularity, over 30 million people were members world wide. In 2001, AOL and TimeWarner announced they would become a conglamorate, which was considered to be "the most significant development in the Internet business world to date" (Hu & Junnarkar). However, on May 28th 2009, AOL and Time Warner split ending a 8 year long relationship. What had thought to be a visionary attempt to meld old media with new media never materialized.

The Beginning

It is hard to believe that AOL started off as a service to provide online gaming in the early 1980s, but this is how AOL started off. In 1983, Bill von Meister founded Control Video Corporation (CVC). The only product the company provided was online service called Gameline for the Atari 2600 video game console. The interested gamers bought a modem from the company for 49.95$ and paid a one-time new membership few of $15, then Gameline allowed it's members to download one game at a time to play and look at the high scores for $1. The game could be played as long as they console was not turned off or a new game was downloaded. However, a minor downfall to this idea was that when a subscriber was playing a game, they had to disconnect their telephone line.

In January of 1983, Steve Case was hired as a marketing consultant for CVC and in May of 1983, Jim Kimsey became a manufacturing consultant for CVC to help out with their financial troubles. These two men would become two of the most important people to the creation of America Online. In 1985, Von Meister quietly left the company and Kimsley took over as the CEO. He renamed CVC to Quantum Computer Services, Inc. From there, Kimsey took the company to new levels and increased the technology and efficiency of their software.

Kimsey wanted to change the strategy of the entire company, so he launched a dedicated online service called Quantum Link, which was based off the software of PlayNet, Inc.(person-to-person online communication and game network). The word got out about Quantum Link and soon everyone wanted the software. In May 1988, Quantum and Apple launched AppleLink Personal Edition for Apple II and Macintosh computers. In August of the same year, Quantum launched PC Link, a service for IBM-compatible PCs developed in a joint venture with the Tandy Corporation. In 1989, Quantum Link and Apple parted ways and to distinguish themselves from Apple Steve Case put out a company contest to name its main online service. However, he did not like any of the answers he received so he went with his own choice, America Online, in October of 1989. Meanwhile, when Kimsey took over Quantum Link, his goal was to eventually make Case the CEO. Case went form Vice President of marketing when the company first started, to executive vice president in 1987, and then eventually became CEO in 1991 when Kimsey retired. A new era for America Online and the online based community was about to take place.

America Online, the choice of a new generation

When Case first came out with America Online, he wanted to appeal to the every day common person rather than only to people who specialized in computers and computer gaming. Therefore, he positioned America Online as an online service for people who were not too familiar with computers. Case wanted AOL to connect people from all over, so he used the "chat room" concept from PlayNet where gamers could talk to each other and applied it to everyday people. There were three types of chat rooms:

1. Private chat rooms - Could be created by any user and held up to 23 people

2. Conference chat rooms - held up to 48 people and the content of the chat room was moderated by American Online.

3. Auditoriums - This is not like the other two types of chat rooms. There was a "stage" where everyone in the auditorium chat room could see what was happening. However, there were also individual rows of the auditorium (27 people per row). Anything that happened in an individual row, only those 27 people in the row could view what was happening.


From there on out, American Online's popularity flourished in the early 1990s. In March of 1992, American Online officially went public. However, the headaches were just starting for America Online as they had some serious takeover scares from the creators of Microsoft Bill Gates and Paul Allen (WSJ, AOL Time Warner Inc.) Those issues were shortly handled and in the following year America Online grew to be the 3rd biggest online internet provider. It was a rocky start for America Online but things seemed to be going in the positive direction as membership was growing each day. However, on May 11, 1993, Gates went head-to-head with Case again and said 'I can buy 20% of you or I can buy all of you. Or I can go into this business myself and bury you. (Swisher, American Online: Often Down, Never Out). Despite the major threats from genius Bill Gates, America Online prevailed and continued to grow.

On March 11, 1996, AOL signed an agreement with Netscape to develop a browser that AOL could integrate into its client software. Seeing as Netscape and Internet Explorer were right in the middle of the "Browser Wars", Microsoft came back with a deal that offered to bundle and promote AOL software with its Windows operating system. This was an offer than AOL could simply not turn down. Internet Explorer was more easily adaptable to AOL and Microsoft made it so that AOL could integrate browser technology seamlessly into AOL's service (Hu, AOL Exec Details Choosing IE). From there on, Microsoft kept growing and along with Microsoft came the growth of AOL.

By the mid 1990s America Online had surpassed all of the leading online service providers. America Online passed GEnie, prodigy, and CompuServe. In 1996, America Online made the smart choice from charging an hourly few to charging a monthly fee of $19.99. Not only could people now use an online service, but they could go on 24 hours a day and pay a flat rate (Wikipedia, AOL). By 1999, America Online had over 10 million subscribers and the numbers only kept rising.

American Online and Time Warner Merger

In 2001, American Online and Time Warner created a merger to take over the digital world. The merger was an all-stock deal and amounted to more than $160 billion based on the trading prices of 2000. The new firm AOL TimeWarner had an estimated combined value of over $350 billion. The merger was so huge, that word of the two companies merging skyrocketed Time Warner's stock to $90.06, a 39 percent increase. AOL's stock rose and then fell $1.88 (2 percent) by the end of the day. This merger gave AOL the opportunity to have a broadband explosion, cutting deals with satellite delivery firms and telecommunications companies that offer digital subscriber line (DSL) services. AOL also has focused on gaining access to cable services controlled by AT&T and other cable companies. The Time Warner deal gives AOL access to those services (Article). The new company will have more than 100 million paying subscribers, including AOL's dial-up customers and Time Warner's cable and magazine subscribers (Article). AOL soon reached over 35 million members in July of 2002 (Washington Post, 35 million).

AOL Time Warner Decline and rebuilding

The highest value AOL TimeWarner had was then they fist merged and since 2002 there has been no quarterly growth for its subscriber basis. Since AOL TimeWarner seemed to fail, they have tried to make themselves something different, more like Yahoo! in a way. It seemed that every year or twice a year AOL TimeWarner was releasing a new version of AOL to compete with the competition. It started in September of 2001 with AOL 6.0.2 for XP and has gone as far as AOL 9.5 Refresh compatible with XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Between these two versions, there have been 17 different versions of AOL released. In 2007, AOL got with the times and and released "McAfee VirusScan Plus: Special Edition from AOL (VSP). This allowed users to browse while making sure their computers had no viruses and their internet experience was perfect. However this did not help increase their members. On May 28, 2009, AOL and TimeWarner announced they would end their 8 year marriage. In the time that AOL TimeWarner existed, Time Warner's stock plunged nearly 80% from $99.49 on Jan 10, 2001 to $23 on May 28th, 2009 (Split Article).

America Online's importance to computers

Since 1983, Steve Case, Jim Kimsey and their vision which soon became AOL has transformed the way we use computers today. I think that at one point or another, every person who has ever used a computer in America has heard the static dial-up connection of AOL and finally after many minutes of waiting for AOL to load were always hoping to hear the wonderful phrase "Welcome, You've Got Mail!" It was AOL that started the first instant messenger service and now there are tens of different types of messengers that people can use. AOL was the first to develop chat rooms that were not for the use of gamers so differently people who share a similar interest could find new friends or a group of people who lived in all different parts of the country could communicate in an easy manner. Now there is gmail, email at colleges, yahoo, MSN, and all other sorts of websites where you can have an email address. However, none of this would have been possible without AOL. AOL has revolutionized almost every aspect of the internet we use today. Today there are browsers that when you open them up immediately bring you the daily news from around the globe. You can thank America Online for that as well. When they connected with Internet Explorer, their homepage would show the latest news from all over. Thanks to AOL, we have all the new and updated email providers, browsers, and instant messengers. Sadly AOL has fallen off the map a little with the tough competition over the past few years, but with their history of making technological history, AOL will soon be back at the top of its game.

Works Cited

Wiki#1


Barrett, Lindsay, and Matthew Connell. "Jevons and the Logic 'Piano'" The Rutherford Journal 1 (2005): 1-10. Therutherfordjournal.org. Web. 27 May 2010. <http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article010103.html>.


"William Stanley Jevons." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 21 May 2010. Web. 27 May 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Stanley_Jevons>.

Wiki #2

"Paul Allen to Take on New Role As Senior Strategy Adviser to Microsoft Board." Microsoft.com. Microsoft, 28 Sept. 2000. Web. 10 June 2010. <http://www.microsoft.com/Presspass/press/2000/sept00/allenhackbornpr.mspx>.

"Paul Allen." Wikipedia. Wikipedia Foundations Inc., 10 June 2010. Web. 10 June 2010. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Allen>.

Paul G. Allen. (2010). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved June 10, 2010, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/16187/Paul-G-Allen

Pelline, Jeff. "Paul Allen to Buy Marcus Cable." CNET News. CBS Interactive, 6 Apr. 1998. Web. 10 June 2010. <http://news.cnet.com/Paul-Allen-to-buy-Marcus-Cable/2100-1023_3-209861.html>.


"The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation." Paul G. Allen Family Foundations : Home. The Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, 2010. Web. 10 June 2010. <http://www.pgafoundations.com/>.

"The World's Billionaires: #37 Paul Allen." Http:www.forbes.com. Forbes.com LLC, 2010. Web. 10 June 2010. <http://www.forbes.com/lists/2010/10/billionaires-2010_Paul-Allen_1217.html>.

"Welcome to the World of Paul Allen." PaulAllen.com. Vulcan Inc., 2010. Web. 10 June 2010. <http://www.paulallen.com/>.


Wiki #3