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Yashica Vashishtha

Yashica is a Software Engineer turned Content Writer, who loves to write on social causes and expertise in writing technical stuff. She loves to watch movies and explore new places. She believes that you need to live once before you die. So experimenting with her life and career choices, she is trying to live her life to the fullest.

Marc Andreessen : The Computer Scientist Who Founded Netscape

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Inventor, entrepreneur and a super angel investor; Marc Andreessen is a complete package. The former had explored the world of computers and taught himself the basic of the programming language when he was in school. He became bored with computers even before he finished the high school, and when the interest in computers sparked again, he conquered the world of technology. He is the one who introduced the world to the first consumer-based web browser, Netscape Navigator.

Early Life

Marc was born in Cedar Falls, Iowa, on 9 July 1971, to Lowell Andreessen and Patricia Andreessen. Both his parents worked in a seed company, in New Lisbon, Wisconsin. He became familiar with computers at the age of nine. When he was in the last year of his school he was influenced by the fact that how the scientists at his school, used to send their piece of work to other Universities over the internet.

Marc became more interested in computers and went to pursue a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. After graduating the college, in 1993, he started an internship at IBM in Austin, Texas and later, took a job with the AIX graphics software development group. At the time Tim Berners-Lee’s had recently launched the World Wide Web.

Invention of Netscape

Marc, living in California started working at Enterprise Integration Technologies. There, he constituted a team including Eric Bina, to create a web browser. After constantly working for almost two months, Marc developed a graphical and user-friendly browser that was compatible with a wide range of computers. He named it Mosaic Web browser. In the beginning, he gave away the browser for free and it earned over 2million users, within a few months.

Marc Andreessen
Image Source: forbesimg.com

A former employee of the same company, Jim Clark, suggested Marc start his own software company. Following the suggestion, Marc started Mosaic Communications Corporation, that was later renamed to Netscape Communications. Also, the Mosaic web browser was renamed to Netscape Navigator.

Soon after the launch, the browser became quite popular. The browser was easy to use and pointed through information using mouse clicks and pictures. Many bigger companies bought the web server software and the related tools for their websites raising $56 million in the year of its initial release.

In 1999, AOL acquired Netscape for $4.2 billion, and Marc became the Chief Technology Officer of the company.

Other Ventures

In 1998, Andreessen along with Ben Horowitz, Tim Howes, and In Sik Rhee, founded another software company, named Loudcloud. The company was renamed as Opsware in 2003. In 2007, Hewlett-Packard acquired the company for $1.6 billion. Marc also co-founded another IT firm, Ning, that was acquired by Mode Media for $150 million, in September 2011.

In July 2007, Andreessen, with his partner Horowitz, started a capital venture, Andreessen Horowitz. Before this venture, they had already funded many start-ups. They together financed the major startups including Facebook, GitHub, Pinterest, Skype Twitter, and Honor, etc.

Andreessen serves as the advisor to Asana and director of CollabNet. He also sits on the board of directors of Facebook, eBay, Anki, Kno, Stanford Hospital, TinyCo, Bump Technologies, Dialpad, Oculus VR, and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.

Personal Life

In 2006, Marc married Laura Arrillaga, the daughter of Silicon Valley real estate billionaire John Arrillaga. She is also an entrepreneur and a philanthropist. The two have a son together.

Apple Announces an Online Portal to Cooperate with the Law Officials

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apple
Image Source: marketexclusive.com

Since our lives have been so attached to our smartphones and we have stored almost every personal data in our phones, the data security has become the main concern. Over the past few years, the cyber-crime has also made the law enforcement officials to request the user’s private data from the top tech companies. The tech companies also respond to those queries with a sense of responsibility.

On September 4, Apple wrote a letter to Sheldon Whitehouse, the Democrat from Rhode Island, regarding a web portal that will help the police to request the user data stored in the iCloud. Apple is going to launch the web portal by the end of the year. It will constitute a team of trainers that will train the police about which data to be obtained and how it can be obtained.

Apple said in the letter that last year it answered to 14000 law enforcement requests. Among which 231 requests were regarding the domestic emergency and were addressed within 20 minutes. Until now, the law enforcement officials requested the data through emails to an Apple law enforcement email account.

The online portal will be a more convenient and a centralized hub. It will help the police officials to make and track requests, easily. Apple has created a set of strict guidelines on how and which data can be obtained. Apple has already trained over 1000 law enforcement officials that were trained in its training institutes. Now for further training, Apple is going to develop an online training program. The trainers from Apple will help the officials in the training and the training portals will be available globally.

Japan is All Set to Test World’s First Space Elevator

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space elevator
Image Source: dazeddigital.com

The old fantasy story of the celestial castle has been the base of many famous sci-fi movies. In the past century, many scientists have also given their theories, on how a ladder can be placed between the earth and space. But, until now, nobody has come with a real plan for such an experiment.

Even with a low rate of success, the scientists from the Shizuoka University Japan, have announced that they are going to test a miniature elevator in the space, in the coming week. Japan is all set to send two tiny, 4-inch cubic satellites, to the International Space Station (ISS), with an H-2B rocket. The 2.4 inches elevator, will be contained in one of the satellites, and after, reaching into the orbit, the motors will power the satellites with a 33-foot steel cable. The elevator will then travel from one satellite to another through the cable, having a camera attached to it, that will record the whole experiment.

This experiment is going to be the first of its kind. Many scientists have thought of carrying out such experiments, but it is difficult to achieve the favourable conditions for one. First of all, no material has been found that is as strongest that can be used to build the elevator and the cable to hold the elevator throughout the travelling.

The geo station to launch the elevator must be nearby the equator of the earth, where the possibility of hurricanes and tornadoes is scarce. Also, the gravity and wind in the upper atmosphere can be a hurdle for such an experiment. If such experiment is succeeded, not only the astronauts but also tourists can go up in the space in the time of approximately eight days.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin : The Intellectual Friendship Behind Google

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It is a bit difficult to imagine that a college research project can land you to own one of the biggest companies in the world. But, why not? If you are applying your knowledge and efforts in the right direction, unusual things can happen to you. Same goes for the success story of two college mates, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who joined their hands for a college project and are now leading the most powerful company in the world together.

Early Life

Larry Page was born on March 26, 1973, to Carl Victor Page Sr., a computer science professor, and Gloria Page, a computer programming instructor. He lived with his parents and elder brother in East Lansing, Michigan. He grew among the people, who loved computers, and eventually, developed an interest in the same, at an early age. After graduating from East Lansing High School in 1991, he joined the University of Michigan, and did a degree in Computer Science, followed by a master’s degree in the same from Stanford University.

On the other hand, Sergey Brin was just 6 years old when his parents brought him to the US, from the Soviet Union, in 1978. At that time his family has faced a tough time. He joined the Montessori School in Adelphi, Maryland for some time, but left the school to continued his education at home. Later, in 1993, Brin attended the University of Maryland and received a Bachelor’s degree in Science. In 1994, he went to the Stanford University to study Computer Science.

The BackRub Project

After his post-graduation, Larry enrolled in the PhD program, at the Stanford University. At the time he became interested in exploring the mathematical properties of the World Wide Web. Larry met Brin during the orientation program for the new students and became close friends.

page_brin
Image Source: vox-cdn.com

Brin was looking for a topic for his PhD thesis project and found Larry’s project the most convincing. He joined Larry for the research and both published a research paper, “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine”. Ultimately they developed BackRub a web crawler to crawl the backlinks on the web, along with the PageRank algorithm.

In the beginning, both turned their hostel rooms into their lab and office, to create a search engine, based on the PageRank algorithm. The search engine became very popular among the internet users at the university. In 1996, they released the initial version of Google for the users at the Stanford University.

Founding Google

Page admits that he understood the importance of the project only in mid-1998. The popularity of the search engine made him buy more servers to handle the searches. Brin and Larry received their first investment from Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Sun Microsystems, who wrote them a cheque in the name of Google, Inc., worth $100,000. At the time, they did not have a registered company with that name.

In 1998, they finally officially registered Google, Inc. as their company, Larry becoming the CEO of the company and Brin the President of the company. By June 2000, Google became the most comprehensive search engine, indexing one billion Internet URLs. It grabbed the attention of many angel capitalists and raised funding in millions.

New Ventures & Acquisition

In 2005, Google acquired Android for $50 million. This acquisition mainly aimed at the convenience for the user to use Google at any place at any time. In 2008, Larry and Brin with T-Mobile launched the first phone embedded with Android OS, named G1. By 2010, Android became the most popular OS for smartphones beating Apple’s iOS.

Following the lead of Facebook, the team launched a social media platform Google+. The most important products of Google includes the AdWords, YouTube and Gmail. It also owns the Google Chrome web browser and unveiled a Chromebook laptop in 2012. Google as a company has also launched a series of smartphones that are as popular as its rival companies Apple and Samsung.

Personal Life

Both Page and Brin, live in Palo Alto, California, U.S. Page is married to Lucinda Southworth since the year 2007 and have two children with her. Brin was married to Anne Wojcicki for 8 years (from 2007 to 2015). They also have two children together.

Currently, Page is serving as the chief executive officer and Brin is the President in the Google’s parent company Alphabet Inc, that they co-founded in 2015.

After Apple Amazon Also Joins the $1 Trillion Club

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amazon
Image Source: marketwatch.com

It is quite difficult to believe that once a non-profit online bookstore, that was founded in a small garage, has hit the $1 trillion mark in business, after 21 years. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, is one of the biggest beneficiaries of Amazon’s growth and under his leadership, Amazon has become the second tech company that has hit the $1 trillion valuations.

Noticeably, Amazon valued $600 billion in January 2018, and in just 165 days of trading, it has joined the 1 trillion club, as the second member, just after Apple. In the past, Jeff Bezos has done a few massive investments that have led Amazon to reach this position. In the beginning, Amazon was an online bookstore but now it has its hand in various other fields too.

Amazon has excelled in AI and has acquired a pharmaceutical store PillPack for $1 billion. It has revolutionised the way of shopping and its retail unit has added a lot of revenue to its growth. The main contributing industry that has helped Amazon to achieve the $1 trillion mark is AWS. The Amazon Web Services has been contributing as of 65% to the company’s growth, providing a $25 billion in revenue annually. Also, its fastest-growing ad business has generated $2 billion in quarterly sales recently.

No wonder that Amazon has become the number one retailer in the US that captures nearly half of all U.S. dollars spent online. Some analysts have even mentioned that soon Amazon can overtake Apple if it keeps growing at such pace.

Twitter is Preparing to Roll Out New Features Presence & Threading

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Image Source: bgr.in

Facebook, Instagram and many other social media platforms have included the status feature to their inbox that shows if the user is currently active or not. Facebook also allows the user to choose between showing its status to its followers or not.

On 1 September 2018, Jack Dorsey the CEO of Twitter also talked about some new features like Presence, to be added to Twitter, through one of his tweets. He wrote, “Playing with some new Twitter features: presence (who else is on Twitter right now?) and threading (easier to read convos)”.

As he has talked about Presence and Threading, it clearly shows that those two features are somewhat similar to the Facebook’s Messenger’s features. With Presence, you will be able to see all the online users and you can easily engage with them. Also, Threading will help you follow or stick to a particular thread of conversation, in an easier way as compared to the current embed and click-through method.

Most of the Twitter users have given positive feedback to the threading feature as they mentioned that with the present thread it is difficult to go through all the tweets using the @reply and is a bit annoying. But, most of the users disliked the Presence feature as showing the other users the online status can be disturbing. Upon which the Twitter’s head of product Sara Haider replied, “would definitely want you to have full control over sharing your presence.”

It means that the user will be able to update its status according to one’s will. According to Dorsey’s tweet, Twitter is only performing the test right now and he has not mentioned the particular date when the new features will roll out on Twitter.