Cozi was co-founded by Robbie Cape and Jan Miksovsky after the two of them left Microsoft. Most of the company’s employees worked previously at Amazon.com, Expedia, or Microsoft. The company’s first product was called Cozi Central and released on September 25, 2006, and includes a family calendar, shopping lists, family messaging, and a photo collage screensaver. Cozi was relaunched as a web-oriented company on June 3, 2008.

Corporate Culture

Cozi uses Tupperware-style events called Mom’s parties to conduct market research.

The company is unusual among technology start-ups in that it employs a roughly equal balance of men and women.

From Cozi Website

Cozi is a free web service that helps families manage crazy schedules, track shopping and to do lists, organize household chores, stay in communication and share memories—all in one place.

People have accused us of being fanatically family focused, and you know what? They’re right. From our very beginning in 2005, we’ve been all about families. When we started Cozi, we were just a small group of Microsoft, Expedia, and Amazon veterans—all with kids of our own—looking for a way to balance our busy schedules and create more harmony at home. So we pooled our collective knowledge and experience to create something special. Something that would make it easy and fun for families to juggle everything they have to do. Not just our families, but families everywhere.

We know every family is different, but we all have one thing in common: we’re crazy-busy. Cozi is designed to make it easier to manage everything we have to do. Cozi tracks appointments and activities, simplifies shopping lists and chores, and makes it easy for everyone to communicate with each other. Even when schedules change, Cozi is there making sure all the moving pieces fit together at the end of the day.

Other Information

• Founded March 2005
• Headquarters : 506 2nd Ave, Suite 710, Seattle, WA, 98104, USA
• Key People : Robbie Cape – CEO & Co-Founder, Jan Miksovsky – Chief Product Officer & Co-Founder
• Official Website :

Articles in Yahoo! News come from news services, namely Associated Press (AP), Reuters, Agence France-Presse (AFP), Christian Science Monitor, NPR, USA Today, CNN.com, CBC News, Seven News, BBC News, and others.

Yahoo! has for a long time had message boards for discussions of each news article but on December 19, 2006, closed them.

Ranking

In April 2009, Yahoo! News ranked second among global news sites in U.S. users, after msnbc.com and ahead of CNN, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.

As a technology and product innovator, HostGator is able to provide its more than 150,000 customers with innovative products and services designed to complement their existing businesses. HostGator serves customers ranging from individual freelancers to Fortune 500 companies in more than 170 countries.

Because of the nature of reseller hosting, HostGator customers are frequently web designers and or developers who have chosen to provide hosting services to their clients. Businesses of all sizes and shapes frequently make use of HostGator’s affordable, but still powerful shared, reseller, and dedicated hosting services. Customers range from complete novices to computer and technology experts.

The site debuted in November 2003 and has since grown greatly in popularity. The main page has a file selection field, where the user may select the image file to upload. The image file format must be either JPEG (JPG), PNG, GIF, TIFF (TIF), BMP, or SWF, and the file must be smaller than or equal to 5 megabytes. Uploaded BMP and TIFF (TIF) images are automatically converted to PNG format.

After the file is uploaded, the user is redirected to a page containing different versions of URLs to the uploaded image. These URLs are preformatted in a variety of HTML and Bulletin Board code snippets, which can be used to hotlink them on websites and message boards. These URLs are not listed publicly, therefore only the user and the people the user gives the URL to can know the file location. In mid-2008, Imageshack began ‘hiding’ the direct link to images, in an attempt to reduce the number of directly-linked images, as they provide no advertising revenue. After receiving feedback from users Imageshack discontinued ‘hiding’ the direct links and place them on the top of the page.

Images are stored on ImageShack indefinitely unless the image or the user who uploaded it abuses the Terms of Service. The image will be rendered inaccessible if the image uses over 300 megabytes of bandwidth in a one-hour period. If the image in question is not accessed a single time in one year, they will remove it.

There is also a free registration service that gives the user the ability to see and delete their previously uploaded images.

In May 2006 it was reported that ImageShack serves 100,000 concurrent user requests during peak operation.

Torrent service

ImageShack’s torrent service, also known as Torrent Drive or ImageShack Drive, offers server side torrent downloads through a web-based interface. Torrents are downloaded and automatically seeded by ImageShack servers, and kept for 30 days. Once finished, an HTTP download link is provided. It is provided for non-paying registered users, but limited to a quota that all such users combined can download, measured by the amount of use of the servers by paying users.

Other Information

• Commercial? : Yes
• Type of site : Image Hosting Service
• Registration : Optional
• Available language(s) : English
• Owner : ImageShack, Corp.
• Created by  : Alexander Levin
• Launched : November 2003

Notable changes include the addition of related searches (called “Explorer pane” on the left side of search results), based on semantic technology from PowerSet, a search company Microsoft purchased in 2008, search suggestions as you type, and the ability to keep track of your search history.

Name origin

The word “bing” is onomatopoeic. It typically represents a sound of arrival or conclusion, such as the sound made when an elevator arrives. Microsoft indicated that the name Bing “was memorable, short, easy to spell, and that would function well as a URL around the world” and reminded people of the sound made during “the moment of discovery and decision making.” Steve Ballmer recently revealed in an interview with Wired magazine that his original inspiration for the name came from the character Chandler Bing from the popular US sitcom “Friends”.

Qi Lu, president of Microsoft Online Services, also announced that Bing’s official Chinese name is bì yìng (simplified Chinese: 必应; traditional Chinese: 必應), which literally means “very certain to respond” or “very certain to answer” in Chinese.

While being tested internally by Microsoft employees, Bing’s codename was Kumo, which came from the Japanese word for spider as well as cloud, referring to the manner in which search engines “spider” Internet resources to add them to their database, as well as cloud computing.

Originally, Yahoo! Search started as a web directory of other websites, organized in a hierarchy, as opposed to a searchable index of pages. In the late 1990s, Yahoo! evolved into a full-fledged portal with a search interface and, by 2007, a limited version of selection-based search.

Yahoo! Search, originally referred to as Yahoo! provided Search interface, would send queries to a searchable index of pages supplemented with its directory of sites. The results were presented to the user under the Yahoo! brand. Originally, none of the actual web crawling and storage/retrieval of data was done by Yahoo! itself. In 2001 the searchable index was powered by Inktomi and later was powered by Google until 2004, when Yahoo! Search became independent. Yahoo! Search major competitors are: Google Search, Live Search and Ask Search.

From Yahoo.com Website

Who We Are

• Founded in 1994 by Stanford Ph.D. students David Filo and Jerry Yang, Yahoo! began as a hobby and has evolved into a leading global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, conduct transactions and access, share, and create information. Today, Yahoo! Inc. has become the world’s largest global online network of integrated services with more than 500 million users worldwide. The company is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with a presence in more than 20 markets and regions around the globe.

What We Do

• Yahoo! powers and delights our communities of users, advertisers, and publishers – all of us united in creating indispensable experiences, and fueled by trust.

How We Make a Difference

• Yahoo! is also committed to empowering its users and employees through programs, products, and services that inspire people to make a positive impact on their communities. Yahoo! for Good connects people with causes through our products and services, as well as through partnerships with nonprofits such as Global Green, Network for Good, and DonorsChoose. Yahoo! also channels the generosity of its employees through the Yahoo! Employee Foundation, a grassroots philanthropic organization that brings together the talents, time, and financial resources of Yahoo! employees. The foundation has given millions of dollars in grants to organizations around the world.

Other Information

• Type : Public (NASDAQ: YHOO)
• Founded : Santa Clara, California, (March 1, 1995)
• Headquarters : 701 First Avenue, Sunnyvale, California, USA
• Key people :  Carol Bartz, CEO,  Roy J. Bostock, Chairman, Jerry Yang, Co-founder,  David Filo, Co-founder
• Industry :  Internet, computer software

Beyond the original word-search capability, Google Search provides more than 22 special features, such as: weather forecasts, time zones, stock quotes, maps, earthquakes, movie showtimes, airports, home listings, sports scores, etc. There are special features for numbers: prices; money/unit conversions (“10.5 cm in inches”); calculations ( 3*4+sqrt(6)-pi/2 ); package tracking; patents; areas codes; plus rudimentary language translation of displayed pages.

A Google search-results page is ordered by a priority rank called “PageRank” which is kept secret to avoid spammers from forcing their pages to the top. Google Search provides many options for customized search, such as: exclusion (“-xx”), inclusion (“+xx”), alternatives (“xx OR yy”), and wildcard matching (“*”).

From the Website

Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.

As a first step to fulfilling that mission, Google’s founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin developed a new approach to online search that took root in a Stanford University dorm room and quickly spread to information seekers around the globe. Google is now widely recognized as the world’s largest search engine — an easy-to-use free service that usually returns relevant results in a fraction of a second.

When you visit www.google.com or one of the dozens of other Google domains, you’ll be able to find information in many different languages; check stock quotes, maps, and news headlines; lookup phonebook listings for every city in the United States; search billions of images and peruse the world’s largest archive of Usenet messages — more than 1 billion posts dating back to 1981.

What’s a Google?

“Googol” is the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. The term was coined by Milton Sirotta, nephew of American mathematician Edward Kasner, and was popularized in the book, “Mathematics and the Imagination” by Kasner and James Newman. Google’s play on the term reflects the company’s mission to organize the immense amount of information available on the web.

Other Information

• Type :  Public
• Founded : Menlo Park, California (September 4, 1998)
• Founder(s) : Sergey M. Brin, Lawrence E. Page,
• Headquarters : Googleplex, Mountain View, California, United States
• Area served : Worldwide
• Key people : Dr. Eric E. Schmidt, Ph.D. (Chairman) & (CEO) Sergey M. Brin (Technology President),  Lawrence E. Page (Products President)
• Industry : Internet, Computer software

Contact Information

• Google Inc.
  1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
  Mountain View, CA 94043
  Phone: +1 650-253-0000
  Fax: +1 650-253-0001

The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in Tel Aviv and New York. Metacafe is privately held and its investors include Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.

Metacafe is similar to other video viewing websites such as YouTube or Dailymotion, but with several differences. Core differentiators include duplication elimination, a different type of Adult content filtering, a community member reviewer panel, VideoRank, and Producer Rewards. Its VideoRank system gauges viewer reactions to videos in order to feature those that prove most popular to its viewers. Additionally, Metacafe pays video creators for original work that has exceeded a certain threshold of both total views and VideoRank score through its Producer Rewards Program.
The site features short-form videos in a variety of categories, including Animation, Comedy, Entertainment, How To, News and Events, People and Stories, Sports, Video Games and others. Original content is uploaded to the site by independent video creators, small to mid-sized production groups, and major media companies.

From the Website

Metacafe is one of the world’s largest video sites, attracting more than 40 million unique viewers each month (comScore Media Metrix). We specialize in short-form original content – from new, emerging talents and established Hollywood heavyweights alike. We’re committed to delivering an exceptional entertainment experience, and we do so by engaging and empowering our audience every step of the way.

Since 2003 Metacafe has been one of the top independent online video sites, and we’re a leader in the evolution of digital entertainment. The company is headquartered in Palo Alto, California, with offices in Tel Aviv and New York. Metacafe is privately held and investors include Accel Partners, Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Highland Capital Partners.

How is Metacafe different?

Metacafe is not a video sharing and hosting site that allows any and every video to be posted. Instead, Metacafe is a video entertainment site that focuses on:

1. Short-form – Metacafe specializes in short-form original video – content that is made for the interactive Internet medium. We don’t have full-length television episodes or movies chopped into pieces. The average video on our site is just over 90 seconds long. People come to Metacafe looking for an entertainment break in their day – and we deliver.
2. Entertainment – We’re all about entertaining a large audience by featuring only those videos that amaze, inspire and make viewers laugh. This means you won’t find hard news stories, personal videos or webcam chatter on Metacafe.
3. Audience-driven – The Metacafe experience is determined entirely by our community. Videos are user-generated, user-selected, user-reviewed and user-rewarded. At Metacafe, we put the audience in the driver’s seat, empowering viewers in a much more meaningful way than other video sites.
   • Community Auditions – A community review panel of more than 80,000 volunteers takes a first look at each of the thousands of videos submitted to the site every day.
   • Community Rankings – Our VideoRank™ system identifies and exposes the most popular videos by automatically gauging every interaction each viewer has with a video.
   • Community Rewards – Our Producer Rewards™ program pays video creators for their best original work, as determined by the viewers.

What does this all add up to? A better entertainment experience. We consistently hear from our viewers that it’s easier to find videos they like on our site as compared to others – and that keeps them coming back for more.

Other Information

• Type : Private
• Founded : July 2002
• Headquarters : Palo Alto, CA, United States
• Key people : Erick Hachenburg, CEO, Eyal Hertzog, Founder and CCO
  Eran Pilovski, CFO Jack Rotherham, SVP of Strategic Sales and
• Partnerships :  David Rice, VP of Product, Yaron Finkel, VP of R&D, Scott Bushman, VP of Business Development
• Industry : Online video entertainment
• Slogan : Video Entertainment, Powered by You
• Registration : Optional (required to upload, comment on, rate, and review videos)
• Available in : English, Spanish

On August 22, 2007, CBS SportsLine.com changed its name to CBSSports.com to better unify the CBS Sports brand across its television, online and mobile platforms.

On January 15, 2008, the website and message boards were updated, including blogs for registered members, and the post rating system has been revamped.

One of the special features of CBSSports.com is the member profile feature, which allows registered users to easily interact with one another.

• Visit CBSSports.com

Sky Sports 1, 2, 3, and Xtra are available as a premium package on top of the basic Sky package. These channels are also available as premium on nearly every satellite, cable and IPTV broadcasting system in the UK and Ireland. Unlike the other channels, Sky Sports News is provided as part of basic packages and also broadcasts on Freeview. Sky Sports is perhaps best known for its football coverage, due to this it suffers a loss of viewers in the summer when no football is played.

Links

• Sky Sports – official site