Computer And Technologies

Computer And Technologies: 06/09

Saturday 27 June 2009

Basic Shell Scripting Interview Questions!!!

  1. How do you find out what’s your shell? - echo $SHELL
  2. What’s the command to find out today’s date? - date
  3. What’s the command to find out users on the system? - who
  4. How do you find out the current directory you’re in? - pwd
  5. How do you remove a file? - rm
  6. How do you remove a - rm -rf
  7. How do you find out your own username? - whoami
  8. How do you send a mail message to somebody? - mail somebody@techinterviews.com -s ‘Your subject’ -c ‘cc@techinterviews.com
  9. How do you count words, lines and characters in a file? - wc
  10. How do you search for a string inside a given file? - grep string filename
  11. How do you search for a string inside a directory? - grep string *
  12. How do you search for a string in a directory with the subdirectories recursed? - grep -r string *
  13. What are PIDs? - They are process IDs given to processes. A PID can vary from 0 to 65535.
  14. How do you list currently running process? - ps
  15. How do you stop a process? - kill pid
  16. How do you find out about all running processes? - ps -ag
  17. How do you stop all the processes, except the shell window? - kill 0
  18. How do you fire a process in the background? - ./process-name &
  19. How do you refer to the arguments passed to a shell script? - $1, $2 and so on. $0 is your script name.
  20. What’s the conditional statement in shell scripting? - if {condition} then … fi
  21. How do you do number comparison in shell scripts? - -eq, -ne, -lt, -le, -gt, -ge
  22. How do you test for file properties in shell scripts? - -s filename tells you if the file is not empty, -f filename tells you whether the argument is a file, and not a directory, -d filename tests if the argument is a directory, and not a file, -w filename tests for writeability, -r filename tests for readability, -x filename tests for executability
  23. How do you do Boolean logic operators in shell scripting? - ! tests for logical not, -a tests for logical and, and -o tests for logical or.
  24. How do you find out the number of arguments passed to the shell script? - $#
  25. What’s a way to do multilevel if-else’s in shell scripting? - if {condition} then {statement} elif {condition} {statement} fi
  26. How do you write a for loop in shell? - for {variable name} in {list} do {statement} done
  27. How do you write a while loop in shell? - while {condition} do {statement} done
  28. How does a case statement look in shell scripts? - case {variable} in {possible-value-1}) {statement};; {possible-value-2}) {statement};; esac
  29. How do you read keyboard input in shell scripts? - read {variable-name}
  30. How do you define a function in a shell script? - function-name() { #some code here return }
  31. How does getopts command work? - The parameters to your script can be passed as -n 15 -x 20. Inside the script, you can iterate through the getopts array as while getopts n:x option, and the variable $option contains the value of the entered option.

Michael Jackson’s life cut shockingly short


‘King of Pop’ had been spending many hours preparing for comeback tour

Image: Michael Jackson Dies At 50
Gareth Cattermole / Getty Images file
Michael Jackson had been planning to start a series of comeback concerts in London and had been rehearsing in the Los Angeles area for the past two months. Promoters of the shows said in March that he had passed a lengthy physical examination.
Slideshow
Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley at Neverland Ranch
Michael Jackson: 1958 - 2009
Click to see pictures from the highs and lows of Michael Jackson's career.
Michael Jackson
Michael Jackson's health
June 26: L.A. Times reporter Andrew Blankstein talks with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann about the latest details being learned about the state of Michael Jackson's health before he died.

updated 8:51 a.m. ET June 26, 2009

LOS ANGELES - Michael Jackson, defined in equal parts as the world’s greatest entertainer and perhaps its most enigmatic figure, was about to attempt one of the greatest comebacks of all time. Then his life was cut shockingly — and so far, mysteriously — short.

The 50-year-old musical superstar died Thursday, just as he was preparing for what would be a series of 50 concerts starting July 13 at London’s famed 02 arena. Jackson had been spending hours and hours toiling with a team of dancers for a performance he and his fans hoped would restore his tarnished legacy to its proper place in pop.

An autopsy was planned for Friday, though results were not likely to be final until toxicology tests could be completed, a process that could take several days and sometimes weeks. However, if a cause can be determined by the autopsy, they will announce the results, said Los Angeles County Coroner Investigator Jerry McKibben.

Jackson died at UCLA Medical Center after being stricken at his rented home in the posh Los Angeles neighborhood of Holmby Hills. Paramedics tried to resuscitate him at his home for nearly three-quarters of an hour, then rushed him to the hospital where doctors continued to work on him.

“It is believed he suffered cardiac arrest in his home. However, the cause of his death is unknown until results of the autopsy are known,” his brother Jermaine said.

Cardiac arrest is an abnormal heart rhythm that stops the heart from pumping blood to the body. It can occur after a heart attack or be caused by other heart problems.

Jackson’s death brought a tragic end to a long, bizarre, sometimes farcical decline from his peak in the 1980s, when he was popular music’s premier all-around performer, a uniter of black and white music who shattered the race barrier on MTV, dominated the charts and dazzled even more on stage.

His 1982 album “Thriller” — which included the blockbuster hits “Beat It,” “Billie Jean” and “Thriller” — is the best-selling album of all time, with an estimated 50 million copies sold worldwide.

As word of his death spread, MTV switched its programming to play videos from Jackson’s heyday. Radio stations began playing marathons of his hits. Hundreds of people gathered outside the hospital. In New York’s Times Square, a low groan went up in the crowd when a screen flashed that Jackson had died, and people began relaying the news to friends by cell phone.

Timeline
Image: Michael Jackson
A lifetime of music
Timeline of singer's life, from Jackson 5 to ‘Thriller’ to Neverland.

msnbc.com

“No joke. King of Pop is no more. Wow,” Michael Harris, 36, of New York City, read from a text message a friend had sent him. “It’s like when Kennedy was assassinated. I will always remember being in Times Square when Michael Jackson died.”

The public first knew him as a boy in the late 1960s, when he was the precocious, spinning lead singer of the Jackson 5, the singing group he formed with his four older brothers out of Gary, Ind. Among their No. 1 hits were “I Want You Back,” “ABC” and “I’ll Be There.”

He was perhaps the most exciting performer of his generation, known for his backward-gliding moonwalk, his feverish, crotch-grabbing dance moves and his high-pitched singing, punctuated with squeals and titters. His single sequined glove, tight, military-style jacket and aviator sunglasses were trademarks, as was his ever-changing, surgically altered appearance.

Slideshow
Image:
Fans react to loss
Fans gather to mourn and shed tears as news spreads that the “King of Pop” is dead at 50.

more photos

“For Michael to be taken away from us so suddenly at such a young age, I just don’t have the words,” said Quincy Jones, who produced “Thriller.” “He was the consummate entertainer and his contributions and legacy will be felt upon the world forever. I’ve lost my little brother today, and part of my soul has gone with him.”

Jackson ranked alongside Elvis Presley and the Beatles as the biggest pop sensations of all time. He united two of music’s biggest names when he was briefly married to Presley’s daughter, Lisa Marie. Jackson’s sudden death immediately evoked comparisons to that of Presley himself, who died at age 42 in 1977.

Slideshow
Image: Michael Jackson: The face of change
The face of change
During his brilliant career, Michael Jackson changed not only music, but also his appearance. See how his looks evolved over the course of his fame.
“I am so very sad and confused with every emotion possible,” Lisa Marie Presley said in a statement. “I am heartbroken for his children who I know were everything to him and for his family. This is such a massive loss on so many levels, words fail me.”

As years went by, Jackson became an increasingly freakish figure — a middle-aged man-child weirdly out of touch with grown-up life. His skin became lighter, his nose narrower, and he spoke in a breathy, girlish voice. He often wore a germ mask while traveling, kept a pet chimpanzee named Bubbles as one of his closest companions and surrounded himself with children at his Neverland ranch, a storybook playland filled with toys, rides and animals. The tabloids dubbed him “Wacko Jacko.”

“It seemed to me that his internal essence was at war with the norms of the world. It’s as if he was trying to defy gravity,” said Michael Levine, a Hollywood publicist who represented Jackson in the early 1990s. He called Jackson a “disciple of P.T. Barnum” and said the star appeared fragile at the time but was “much more cunning and shrewd about the industry than anyone knew.”

Jackson caused a furor in 2002 when he playfully dangled his infant son, Prince Michael II, over a hotel balcony in Berlin while a throng of fans watched from below.

In 2005, he was cleared of charges that he molested a 13-year-old cancer survivor at Neverland in 2003. He had been accused of plying the boy with alcohol and groping him, and of engaging in strange and inappropriate behavior with other children.

The case followed years of rumors about Jackson and young boys. In a TV documentary, he acknowledged sharing his bed with children, a practice he described as sweet and not at all sexual.

Despite the acquittal, the lurid allegations that came out in court took a fearsome toll on his career and image, and he fell into serious financial trouble.

Michael Joseph Jackson was born Aug. 29, 1958, in Gary. He was 4 years old when he began singing with his brothers — Marlon, Jermaine, Jackie and Tito — in the Jackson 5. After his early success with bubblegum soul, he struck out on his own, generating innovative, explosive, unstoppable music.

Slideshow
2002 MTV Video Music Awards - Backstage
Jackson and famous friends
Michael Jackson mingled with everyone from world leaders to actresses during his long career. Many of them spoke out about his loss.
The album “Thriller” alone mixed the dark, serpentine bass and drums and synthesizer approach of “Billie Jean,” the grinding Eddie Van Halen guitar solo on “Beat It,” and the hiccups and falsettos on “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.”

The peak may have come in 1983, when Motown celebrated its 25th anniversary with an all-star televised concert and Jackson moonwalked off with the show, joining his brothers for a medley of old hits and then leaving them behind with a pointing, crouching, high-kicking, splay-footed, crotch-grabbing run through “Billie Jean.”

The audience stood and roared. Jackson raised his fist.

During production of a 1984 Pepsi commercial, Jackson’s scalp sustains burns when an explosion sets his hair on fire.

He had strong follow-up albums with 1987’s “Bad” and 1991’s “Dangerous,” but his career began to collapse in 1993 after he was accused of molesting a boy who often stayed at his home. The singer denied any wrongdoing, reached a settlement with the boy’s family, reported to be $20 million, and criminal charges were never filed.

Jackson’s expressed anger over the allegations on the 1995 album “HIStory,” which sold more than 2.4 million copies, but by then, the popularity of Jackson’s music was clearly waning even as public fascination with his increasingly erratic behavior was growing.

Slideshow
A woman views gloves belonging to the fo
Jackson memorabilia
A collection of Michael Jackson memorabilia is up for auction in Las Vegas. Here's a look at Jackson’s crystal gloves and his life-sized statue of Darth Vader made entirely of LEGOs.

more photos

Jackson married Lisa Marie Presley in 1994, and they divorced in 1996. Later that year, Jackson married Deborah Rowe, a former nurse for his dermatologist. They had two children together: Michael Joseph Jackson Jr., known as Prince Michael, now 12; and Paris Michael Katherine Jackson, 11. Rowe filed for divorce in 1999.

Jackson also had a third child, Prince Michael II. Now 7, Jackson said the boy nicknamed Blanket as a baby was his biological child born from a surrogate mother.

Billboard magazine editorial director Bill Werde said Jackson’s star power was unmatched. “The world just lost the biggest pop star in history, no matter how you cut it,” Werde said. “He’s literally the king of pop.”

Jackson’s 13 No. 1 one hits on the Billboard charts put him behind only Presley, the Beatles and Mariah Carey, Werde said.

“He was on the eve of potentially redeeming his career a little bit,” he said. “People might have started to think of him again in a different light.”

Thursday 25 June 2009

Basic Unix @sed Interview Questions!!!!

  1. What is sed? - sed is stream editor, a Unix tool for working with streams of text data. See the awful truth about sed.
  2. How do you substitute strings with sed? - Use ’s/old/new’ command, so sed ’s/hello/goodbye/’ would substitute the occurrence of the word hello to goodbye.
  3. How do you inject text with sed? - & in the substitution string defines the pattern found in the search string. As an example, here’s us trying to find a word ‘hello’ and replacing it with ‘hello and how are you’:
    echo ‘hello there’ | sed ’s/^hello/& and how are you/’
  4. Can I find several patterns and refer to them in the replacement string? - Yes, use (pattern) and then refer to your patterns as \1, \2, \3 and so on.
  5. If the string is ‘old old old’ and I run ’s/old/new’, I get ‘new old old’ as the result. I need ‘new new new‘. - You forgot the global modifier, which would replace every occurrence of the pattern with the substitution. ’s/old/new/g‘ will work.
  6. But I want ‘old old new’ from the previous example. - Just use the numeric modifier saying you want the third occurrence to be replaced. ’s/old/new/3‘ will work.
  7. I wrote a rather complex sed script. How do I save and run it? - Assuming that your file is named myscript1.sed, you can invoke sed -f myscript1.sed.
  8. How do I delete trailing whitespaces from each line? - sed ’s/[ \t]*$//’ Here we’re replacing any occurrence of a space or a tab with nothing. Check sed one-liners for more examples.
  9. How do you print just a few first lines of the file? - sed 1q will give you just the first line, sed 10q the first 10 lines.
  10. How do you replace a pattern only if it’s found, so that it’s executed faster? - Nest the replacement statement: sed ‘/old/ s/old/new/g’ file.txt

Unix Interview Questions and Answers!!!



1. You need to see the last fifteen lines of the files dog, cat and horse. What command should you use?
tail -15 dog cat horse
The tail utility displays the end of a file. The -15 tells tail to display the last fifteen lines of each specified file.
2. Who owns the data dictionary?
The SYS user owns the data dictionary. The SYS and SYSTEM users are created when the database is created.
3. You routinely compress old log files. You now need to examine a log from two months ago. In order to view its contents without first having to decompress it, use the _________ utility.
zcat
The zcat utility allows you to examine the contents of a compressed file much the same way that cat displays a file.
4. You suspect that you have two commands with the same name as the command is not producing the expected results. What command can you use to determine the location of the command being run?
which
The which command searches your path until it finds a command that matches the command you are looking for and displays its full path.
5. You locate a command in the /bin directory but do not know what it does. What command can you use to determine its purpose.
whatis
The whatis command displays a summary line from the man page for the specified command.
6. You wish to create a link to the /data directory in bob’s home directory so you issue the command ln /data /home/bob/datalink but the command fails. What option should you use in this command line to be successful.
Use the -F option
In order to create a link to a directory you must use the -F option.
7. When you issue the command ls -l, the first character of the resulting display represents the file’s ___________.
type
The first character of the permission block designates the type of file that is being displayed.
8. What utility can you use to show a dynamic listing of running processes? __________
top
The top utility shows a listing of all running processes that is dynamically updated.
9. Where is standard output usually directed?
to the screen or display
By default, your shell directs standard output to your screen or display.
10. You wish to restore the file memo.ben which was backed up in the tarfile MyBackup.tar. What command should you type?
tar xf MyBackup.tar memo.ben
This command uses the x switch to extract a file. Here the file memo.ben will be restored from the tarfile MyBackup.tar.
11. You need to view the contents of the tarfile called MyBackup.tar. What command would you use?
tar tf MyBackup.tar
The t switch tells tar to display the contents and the f modifier specifies which file to examine.
12. You want to create a compressed backup of the users’ home directories. What utility should you use?
tar
You can use the z modifier with tar to compress your archive at the same time as creating it.
13. What daemon is responsible for tracking events on your system?
syslogd
The syslogd daemon is responsible for tracking system information and saving it to specified log files.
14. You have a file called phonenos that is almost 4,000 lines long. What text filter can you use to split it into four pieces each 1,000 lines long?
split
The split text filter will divide files into equally sized pieces. The default length of each piece is 1,000 lines.
15. You would like to temporarily change your command line editor to be vi. What command should you type to change it?
set -o vi
The set command is used to assign environment variables. In this case, you are instructing your shell to assign vi as your command line editor. However, once you log off and log back in you will return to the previously defined command line editor.
16. What account is created when you install Linux?
root
Whenever you install Linux, only one user account is created. This is the superuser account also known as root.
17. What command should you use to check the number of files and disk space used and each user’s defined quotas?
repquota
The repquota command is used to get a report on the status of the quotas you have set including the amount of allocated space and amount of used space.



Thanks,
-Amar

Monday 8 June 2009

17 People Who Changed the Internet Forever!!!

From its birth in the labs of Tim Berners-Lee back in 1992, to its interaction with the Napster in 1999, and its 2004 induction of Wikipedia: the Internet as we know it, has evolved drastically, been around the world literally, and changed the way humans live permanently.

Nothing can replace it, nothing is like it, and it has no alternative. The internet is like a diamond mine for the people who wish to acquire wealth, a profound lake of information for those who have an insatiable appetite for knowledge, and an eternal form of entertainment for those wish to amuse themselves.

With the passage of time, people from amongst us have emerged with the craziest of ideas to test and enhance the potential of this God’s gift to mankind. And it is due to the efforts of these noble souls, that we have the entire world at the simple tap of our fingers.

In no particular order, Skidzopedia provides you with a list of those people who have influenced the Internet greatly.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin - Google Inc.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Two PhDs from Stanford University started work in the garage of a friend’s. And they were defiantly not building steam engines!

They were, however, creating the internet’s most powerful search engine. Sergey Brin and Larry Page are arguably the world’s most successful Internet entrepreneurs and developers in history. This enabled them to earn billions, while assisting everyone from high school students to particle physicists have an easy time searching for information over the internet.

Google was first launched on Stanford’s website (google.stanford.edu) and then finally on Google.com in 1997. It is estimated that GOOGLE is worth about a staggering $25 billion dollars.

David Filo and Jerry Yang - Yahoo! Inc.

David Filo and Jerry Yang

Yahoo! too is the creation of two Stanford University’s Electrical Engineer graduates, called Jerry Yang and David Filo. Yang started by listing web pages on the Internet and named it “Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web”. Then, he decided to switch it to Yahoo! and the initial URL was at akebono.stanford.edu/yahoo

In December 1994, that particular website had already received over a million hits. Realizing its potential, David Filo and Jerry Yang got serious and diversified Yahoo! as a web portal.

David Filo’s net worth is $2.9 billion dollars and Jerry Yang’s is $2.3 billion dollars.

Bill Gates - Microsoft

bill-gates

William Henry “Bill” Gates III, is an American business magnate, philanthropist, the world’s third richest person (as of February 8, 2008), and chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen.

Gates is one of the best-known entrepreneurs of the personal computer revolution. In the later stages of his career, Gates has pursued a number of philanthropic endeavors, donating large amounts of money to various charitable organizations and scientific research programs through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, established in 2000.

Gates also holds the record of being the Richest Person in the world for 15 consecutive years.

Steven Paul Jobs - Apple Inc.

steven-paul-jobs

Steven Paul Jobs is the co-founder, Chairman, and CEO of Apple Inc. and former CEO of Pixar Animation Studios.

In the late 1970s, Jobs, with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, created one of the first commercially successful personal computers. In the early 1980s, Jobs was among the first to see the commercial potential of the mouse-driven GUI (Graphical User Interface)

After losing a power struggle with the board of directors in 1985, Jobs resigned from Apple and founded NeXT, a computer platform development company specializing in the higher education and business markets.

Jobs is currently the Walt Disney Company’s largest individual shareholder and a member of its Board of Directors. He is considered a leading figure in both the computer and industries.

Mark Zuckerberg - Facebook

mark-zuckerberg

One of the most admired and successful youngster of the 21st century is a 24 years old Harvard graduate - the world’s youngest billionaire, with an estimated net worth of $1.5 billion

He founded Facebook, the online social networking website. Zuckerberg launched The Facebook (FaceMatch) from his Harvard dorm room in 2004 and started promoting it to all Ivy League schools and some Boston institutions.

Soon, he bought over Facebook.com domain name. Facebook is now a household name with people of all ages, groups and interests, interacting with each other. Its business and pleasure at the same time!

Kevin Rose - Digg

kevin-rose1

You all know Kevin, don’t you? Perhaps one of the most respected internet idealist and TV show host, Kevin Rose has definitely placed a huge impacts among all Digg users.

He became well known as an on-air talent and later as a co-host working on TechTV’s popular show The Screen Savers (which later became Attack of the Show! ) until his departure from the network on May 2005.

He also co-founded Pownce and Revision3 besides his popular Digg.com, social-bookmarking website. He created Digg in 2004 by hiring a freelance programmer who Kevin Rose paid $12 per hour through eLance.

Kevin Rose later bought Digg.com domain name for $1,200 and then went on to buy larger server space. Digg received an ultra boost of capitals when they received $2.8 million of venture capital from Omidyar Network, Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen and Greylock Partners.

Bram Cohen - BitTorrent

bram-cohen

Best known as the developer, co-founder and author behind peer-to-peer sharing, Bram Cohen is the inventor of BitTorrent. The other day a cousin of mine said “Bit Torrent has made life easier!” That’s how easily we can sum up the achievements of this man.

Bram Cohen is also the co-founder of CodeCon and co-author of Codeville. In 2001, he quit his job at MojoNation to work in BitTorrent. He firstly revealed his ideas in a CodeCon conference and started luring beta testers by collecting free pornography.

He then spent some time working with Valve, but quit his job later to work in BitTorrent Inc. with his brother and business partner Mike Morhaime - Blizzard Entertainment

Mike Morhaime - Blizzard Entertainment

mike-morhaime

Mike Morhaime is the president and a co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, a video game developer located in Irvine, California and currently owned by Activision Blizzard.

He is best know for his creation of a popular online gaming fantasy, World of Warcraft (WoW). It has over 10 million online gamers, raking Morhaime at least $1.5 billion every year.

Jimmy Wales - Wikipedia

jimmy-wales

Jimmy Wales is the co-founder of Wikipedia: a free and open content encyclopedia launched in 2001. He is also the co-founder of Wikia, a privately own web hosting company set up in 2004.

Jimmy Wales at first started a peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia which is Nupedia. He then utilized the ideas of Nupedia with his “wiki” software to form today’s Wikipedia.

His work with Wikipedia, which has become the world’s largest encyclopedia, prompted Time magazine to name him in its 2006 list of the world’s most influential people.

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen - YouTube

chad-hurley-and-steve-chen

Chad Hurley (aged 28) and Steve Chen (aged 27) became the founders of the popular San Bruno, California-based video sharing website YouTube, one of the biggest providers of videos on the Internet.

Chad Hurley used to work for eBay’s PayPal in the designing department where he designed their logo. Together with PayPal colleagues, Jared Karim and Steve Chen, Chad founded YouTube in 2005.

Google later acquired YouTube at $1.65 billion dollars.

Jeff Preston Bezos - Amazon

Jeff Bezos is the founder, chairman of board, president and the chief executive officer of Amazon.com, a major e-commerce company that sells goods through the Internet. His net worth is currently at $8.2 billion dollars.

He was named Time magazine Person of the Year in 1999.

Shawn Fanning - Napster, Rupture

shawn-fanning1

Inventor of Napster, the first popular peer-to-peer file sharing platform, Shawn Fanning is a computer programmer who developed Napster when he was still pursuing his studies in Northeastern University, Boston.

Soon after, however, Napster was the target of several music industry-backed lawsuits, which ultimately ended up causing the cessation of the service.

In December 2006, Fanning developed Rupture, a social networking tool that facilitates profiles and communications of online gamers in World of Warcraft.

Pierre Omidyar - eBay

pierre-omidyar1

Pierre Omidyar is the founder of eBay, an online auctioning marketplace that connects buyers and sellers. With a net worth of about $7.7 billion dollars, Omidyar and his wife Pam, are one of those entrepreneurs that go beyond doing profits, which is by contributing to non-profits organizations and aiding start-ups.

He wrote the source code of eBay when he was 28 years old in 1995. Initially, he decided to name his auction site after his consulting firm, Echo Bay but unfortunately, echobay.com was already taken. To save up his Internet service provider cost, he registered eBay.com.

Jack Ma - Alibaba

jack-ma1

A similar site like ebay, was founded by Jack Ma, in 1999. It is basically a China-based business marketplace site that serves international businesses.

Alibaba Group then founded TaoBao.com, which is an online auction website that is pretty much similar to eBay and instead of paying through PayPal, TaoBao’s currency is AliPay. Yahoo Inc. then acquires 40% stocks worth over $1 billion dollars.

Craig Newmark - Craigslist

craig-newmark1

Craig Newmark is an Internet entrepreneur that invented the Craigslist, with over 14.1 million page-views a month, Craigslist.org is one of the most visited website on the Internet.

Craigslist is a centralized network of communities, featuring free advertisements and forums on various topics.

Matt Mullenweg - WordPress

If it weren’t for Matt Mullenweg creating WordPress, I would not have been here writing at this blog and you all wouldn’t have been reading this article.

At the age of 19, he invented the core of Wordpress, and later on when he turned 24, quit his job at CNET to fully focus on developing WordPress - a blogging platform.

He is also the founder of Automattic, the business behind WordPress as well as famous spam fighter, Akismet.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee - World Wide Web

sir-tim-berners-lee

Sir Tim Berners-Lee; the father of World Wide Web. On 25 December 1990 he implemented the first successful communication between an HTTP client and server via the Internet with the help of Robert Cailliau and a young student staff at CERN.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee is also the founder of World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) at Massachusetts Institute of Technology which comprises of companies that are willing to create standards and improvements of the Web.

From my point of view, if it wasn’t for him, none of the above mentioned personalities existed.

UPDATE (24/11/08)

Thomas Anderson - MySpace

thomas-anderson
Thomas “Tom” Anderson is the President of the social networking website, MySpace. He is one of the people identified as a founder of the site, along with CEO Chris DeWolfe.

Since newly created MySpace accounts include Tom as a default “friend,” he has become known as the face of MySpace. As of November 20, 2008, Tom has over 250 million “friends”, a number which is constantly increasing due to new MySpace accounts being created.

In 2003, working for eUniverse under the preview of Brad Greenspan he and a few other eUniverse employs set up the first pages of MySpace and the site grew from there. It is currently the most popular social networking website in the United States, and is the most popular website for teenagers as well.

Interesting Fact: According to several sources, in 1985 then 14-year-old San Pasqual High School (Escondido, California) student Tom Anderson was a computer hacker operating under the alias Lord Flathead“.

He was known for leading a team that broke into Chase Manhattan Bank computers, altered records and left a message saying that unless he was given free use of the system he would destroy records. He was never charged.

Garrett Camp - StumbleUpon

garrett-camp

Garrett Camp is the co-founder as well as the chief architect of Stumbleupon, a social bookmarking site that lets you discover and share new websites from all over the world. StumbleUpon took-off in November 2001, and continued, until late 2005 when it was moved to San Francisco.

To be more precise, StumbleUpon was founded by Garrett Camp, Geoff Smith, Justin LaFrance, and Eric Boyd during Garrett’s time in post-graduate school (in Calgary, Alberta, Canada).

The popularity of the software attracted Silicon Valley investor Brad O’Neill to take notice of the company and assist with a move to San Francisco. Garrett Camp and Geoff Smith now reside in San Francisco, where StumbleUpon is headquartered.

According to its About page, Stumble Upon has over 6,443,266 users.The majority of which are between the ages of 18 and 45 (in English-speaking countries). Half in the United States, half abroad, and the majority using Firefox.

Linus Torvalds - Linux

linus-torvalds

Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer best known for having initiated the development of the Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project’s coordinator.

Initially Torvalds wanted to call the kernel he developed “Freax” - a combination of “free”, “freak”, and the letter X to indicate that it is a Unix-like system, but his friend Ari Lemmke, who administered the FTP server where the kernel was first hosted for downloading, named Torvalds’ directory linux.

Since Linux has had thousands of contributors, such a percentage represents a significant personal contribution to the overall amount of code. Torvalds remains the ultimate authority on what new code is incorporated into the standard Linux kernel.

UPDATE (25/11/08)

Jon Postel - Internet Pioneer

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Jonathan Bruce Postel made many significant contributions to the development of the Internet, particularly in the area of standards. He is principally known for being the Editor of the Request for Comment (RFC) document series, and for administering the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority until his death.

The Internet Society’s Postel Award is named in his honor, as is the Postel Center at Information Sciences Institute. His obituary was written by Vint Cerf and published as RFC 2468 in remembrance of Postel and his work.

In its infancy, Jon worked on its development, from its early protocols, to the creation of TCP/IP. Documenter and co-developer many of the key Internet standards, including TCP/IP (basic Internet protocols), SMTP (email transfer), and DNS (name servers).

Jon’s influence is felt throughout the Internet, in its protocols, in their documentation, in the DNS names we use and the ‘dot’ we use to separate them, and, in no small way, in the ‘good engineering’ that helped the Internet thrive from its inception in 1969 to today.

Caterina Fake - Flickr

Fake is best known as the co-founder, with her husband Stewart Butterfield, of Flickr, a photo-sharing service developed by Ludicorp in Vancouver and acquired by Yahoo! in 2005.

Flickr ushered in the so-called Web 2.0 integrating features such as social networking, community open APIs, tagging, and algorithms that surfaced the best, or more interesting content. Prior to founding Ludicorp she was Art Director at Salon.com and heavily involved in the development of online community, social software and personal publishing. She joined the board of directors of Creative Commons in August of 2008.

Stewart Butterfield

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General Manager of Flickr In 2005. Butterfield was named one of Businessweek’s Top 50 Leaders in the entrepreneur category and was awarded a TR35 award as one of 35 top innovators under the age of 35 by MIT’s Technology Review. On 2006 he was named to the Time 100, Time Magazine’s list of the 100 most influential people in the world.

Marc Andreessen - Netscape

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Marc Andreessen is known as an entrepreneur, investor, startup coach, blogger, and a multi-millionaire software engineer best known as co-author of Mosaic, the first widely-used web browser, and founder of Netscape Communications Corporation.

He was the chair of Opsware, a software company he founded originally as Loudcloud, when it was acquired by Hewlett-Packard. He is also a co-founder of Ning, a company which provides a platform for social-networking websites.

As of June 30, 2008, he is said to be joining the Board of Directors of Facebook. On September 30, 2008, it was announced that he had joined the Board of Directors of eBay.

Jack Dorsey - Twitter

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Jack Dorsey is an American software architect and businessperson best known as the creator of Twitter - a free social networking and micro-blogging service. BusinessWeek called him one of technology’s best and brightest. MIT’s Technology Review named him to the TR35, an outstanding innovator under the age of 35.

Dorsey, Stone and Williams co-founded Obvious which then spun off Twitter Inc. As chief executive officer, Dorsey saw the startup through two rounds of funding by the venture capitalists who back the company. In October 2008 Williams took over the role of CEO, and Dorsey became chairman of the board.

As the service grew in popularity, Dorsey had to choose improving uptime as top priority— even over creating revenue, which as of 2008, Twitter was not designed to earn.


Source:--www.stubleupon.com