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Founded in februrary 2004, faebook is a social utility that helps people communicate more efficitively with their friends, family and coworkers

What was Google doing before it became this big?

Google began as a research project in 1996 by Larry Page and Sergey Brin, who were both PhD students at Stanford University. They thought that a search engine that could analyze the relationships between websites would product better results than other search engines. They called their new creation "BackRub", because it checked the backlinks to estimate a site's importance (by the way, this method is still used today in the infamous Google PageRank algorithm, which rates sites on a 1 to 10 basis based on backlinks, and several other variables, such as site layout, and keywords. Page and Brin would test their thesis as part of their studies at Stanford, and would later house their newly created engine at google.stanford.edu. The logo they had then was much different from today's logo, and the name was changed n September 7, 1998, when Larry Page and Sergey Brin bought the domain Google.com, and officially changed the name to Google - A play on the world Googol, (The number one followed by one-hundred zeros). Perhaps this was because Google has endless sites indexed (almost 800 trillion), or has endless possibilites to expand as it has into the internet dominating search engine and company.

Today, Google is a publicly traded company that handles one of the most used search engines in the world, with a stock price that was originally the highest in its class. The company currently employs 8,000 employees, and is based in Mountain View, California. It also has several other headquarters in places like Seattle, Washington. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Novell, is the new Google's CEO. Google was recently named a verb by two major dictionaries (Merriam Webster and Oxford), its meaning defined as "to use the Google search engine to obtain information on the Internet". Almost 60% of the market in search engine usage is controlled by Google, and most analysts, and I myself, expect this to increase. But don't expect this increase to come easy, as Microsoft and Ask.com compete with Windows Live Search and Ask Search.

Google offers many innovative services, such as Blogger, Orkut, and Gmail, and since its introduction in 1996, it offers a wide variety of services, not just search anymore. I use Gmail, Orkut, AND Blogger, and I run a tech blog and a video blog using blogger.

Yahoo! Overview

Yahoo was founded in 1994 by Stanford University graduate students Jerry Yang and David Filo. Yahoo provides internet services around the world, including search engine, web portal, Yahoo mail, directory services and more. The company was incorporated in 1995 and went public in April, 1996 (YHOO on the NASDAQ). Yahoo is headquartered in Sunnyvale, CA. As of this writing, Yahoo is the most visited website on the internet.
When Yahoo was originally founded, it was called Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web. When the founders decided to change the company name, they could not get a trademark for the name Yahoo, so they added the exclamation point, thus the trademarked version of the name Yahoo!
Yahoo! Media Relations has a great description of the History of Yahoo – How it All Started. as well as Key Milestones which only appears to go through 2003.

The History of Yahoo! - How It All Started...

Yahoo! began as a student hobby and evolved into a global brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The two founders of Yahoo!, David Filo and Jerry Yang, Ph.D. candidates in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, started their guide in a campus trailer in February 1994 as a way to keep track of their personal interests on the Internet. Before long they were spending more time on their home-brewed lists of favorite links than on their doctoral dissertations. Eventually, Jerry and David's lists became too long and unwieldy, and they broke them out into categories. When the categories became too full, they developed subcategories ... and the core concept behind Yahoo! was born.
The Web site started out as "Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" but eventually received a new moniker with the help of a dictionary. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle," but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: "rude, unsophisticated, uncouth." Yahoo! itself first resided on Yang's student workstation, "Akebono," while the software was lodged on Filo's computer, "Konishiki" - both named after legendary sumo wrestlers.
Jerry and David soon found they were not alone in wanting a single place to find useful Web sites. Before long, hundreds of people were accessing their guide from well beyond the Stanford trailer. Word spread from friends to what quickly became a significant, loyal audience throughout the closely-knit Internet community. Yahoo! celebrated its first million-hit day in the fall of 1994, translating to almost 100 thousand unique visitors.
Due to the torrent of traffic and enthusiastic reception Yahoo! was receiving, the founders knew they had a potential business on their hands. In March 1995, the pair incorporated the business and met with dozens of Silicon Valley venture capitalists. They eventually came across Sequoia Capital, the well-regarded firm whose most successful investments included Apple Computer, Atari, Oracle and Cisco Systems. They agreed to fund Yahoo! in April 1995 with an initial investment of nearly $2 million.
Realizing their new company had the potential to grow quickly, Jerry and David began to shop for a management team. They hired Tim Koogle, a veteran of Motorola and an alumnus of the Stanford engineering department, as chief executive officer and Jeffrey Mallett, founder of Novell's WordPerfect consumer division, as chief operating officer. They secured a second round of funding in Fall 1995 from investors Reuters Ltd. and Softbank. Yahoo! launched a highly-successful IPO in April 1996 with a total of 49 employees.
Today, Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet communications, commerce and media company that offers a comprehensive branded network of services to more than 345 million individuals each month worldwide. As the first online navigational guide to the Web, www.yahoo.com is the leading guide in terms of traffic, advertising, household and business user reach. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and reaches the largest audience worldwide. The company also provides online business and enterprise services designed to enhance the productivity and Web presence of Yahoo!'s clients. These services include Corporate Yahoo!, a popular customized enterprise portal solution; audio and video streaming; store hosting and management; and Web site tools and services. The company's global Web network includes 25 World properties. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo! has offices in Europe, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and the United States.

Computer Networking Information

Computer Networking

Computer Networking is a focus within engineering that deals with communication between computer systems or devices. Computer networking is often considered a sub-discipline of a few areas: telecommunications, computer science, information technology and/or computer engineering. Computer networks rely heavily on the theoretical and practical application of each of these engineering disciplines.
A computer network is any set of computers or devices connected to each other with the ability to exchange data.

Hardware

The hardware are the parts of computer itself including the Central Processing Unit (CPU) and related microchips and micro-circuitry, keyboards, monitors, case and drives (hard, CD, DVD, floppy, optical, tape, etc...). Other extra parts called peripheral components or devices include mouse, printers, modems, scanners, digital cameras and cards (sound, colour, video) etc... Together they are often referred to as a personal computer.

Central Processing Unit - Though the term relates to a specific chip or the processor a CPU's performance is determined by the rest of the computer's circuitry and chips.

Currently the Pentium chip or processor, made by Intel, is the most common CPU though there are many other companies that produce processors for personal computers. Examples are the CPU made by Motorola and AMD

With faster processors the clock speed becomes more important. Compared to some of the first computers which operated at below 30 megahertz (MHz) the Pentium chips began at 75 MHz in the late 1990's. Speeds now exceed 3000+ MHz or 3 gigahertz (GHz) and different chip manufacturers use different measuring standards (check your local computer store for the latest speed). It depends on the circuit board that the chip is housed in, or the motherboard, as to whether you are able to upgrade to a faster chip. The motherboard contains the circuitry and connections that allow the various component to communicate with each other.

Though there were many computers using many different processors previous to this I call the 80286 processor the advent of home computers as these were the processors that made computers available for the average person. Using a processor before the 286 involved learning a proprietary system and software. Most new software are being developed for the newest and fastest processors so it can be difficult to use an older computer system.

Keyboard - The keyboard is used to type information into the computer or input information. There are many different keyboard layouts and sizes with the most common for Latin based languages being the QWERTY layout (named for the first 6 keys). The standard keyboard has 101 keys. Notebooks have embedded keys accessible by special keys or by pressing key combinations (CTRL or Command and P for example). Ergonomically designed keyboards are designed to make typing easier. Hand held devices have various and different keyboard configurations and touch screens.

Some of the keys have a special use. There are referred to as command keys. The 3 most common are the Control or CTRL, Alternate or Alt and the Shift keys though there can be more (the Windows key for example or the Command key). Each key on a standard keyboard has one or two characters. Press the key to get the lower character and hold Shift to get the upper.

Removable Storage and/or Disk Drives - All disks need a drive to get information off - or read - and put information on the disk - or write. Each drive is designed for a specific type of disk whether it is a CD, DVD, hard disk or floppy. Often the term 'disk' and 'drive' are used to describe the same thing but it helps to understand that the disk is the storage device which contains computer files - or software - and the drive is the mechanism that runs the disk.

Digital flash drives work slightly differently as they use memory cards to store information so there are no moving parts. Digital cameras also use Flash memory cards to store information, in this case photographs. Hand held devices use digital drives and many also use memory cards.

Mouse - Most modern computers today are run using a mouse controlled pointer. Generally if the mouse has two buttons the left one is used to select objects and text and the right one is used to access menus. If the mouse has one button (Mac for instance) it controls all the activity and a mouse with a third button can be used by specific software programs.

One type of mouse has a round ball under the bottom of the mouse that rolls and turns two wheels which control the direction of the pointer on the screen. Another type of mouse uses an optical system to track the movement of the mouse. Laptop computers use touch pads, buttons and other devices to control the pointer. Hand helds use a combination of devices to control the pointer, including touch screens

Monitors - The monitor shows information on the screen when you type. This is called outputting information. When the computer needs more information it will display a message on the screen, usually through a dialog box. Monitors come in many types and sizes. The resolution of the monitor determines the sharpness of the screen. The resolution can be adjusted to control the screen's display..

Most desktop computers use a monitor with a cathode tube or liquid crystal display. Most notebooks use a liquid crystal display monitor.

To get the full benefit of today's software with full colour graphics and animation, computers need a color monitor with a display or graphics card.

Printers - The printer takes the information on your screen and transfers it to paper or a hard copy. There are many different types of printers with various levels of quality. The three basic types of printer are; dot matrix, inkjet, and laser.
*Dot matrix printers work like a typewriter transferring ink from a ribbon to paper with a series or 'matrix' of tiny pins.
*Ink jet printers work like dot matrix printers but fires a stream of ink from a cartridge directly onto the paper.
*Laser printers use the same technology as a photocopier using heat to transfer toner onto paper.

Modem - A modem is used to translate information transferred through telephone lines, cable or line-of-site wireless.

The term stands for modulate and demodulate which changes the signal from digital, which computers use, to analog, which telephones use and then back again. Digital modems transfer digital information directly without changing to analog.

Modems are measured by the speed that the information is transferred. The measuring tool is called the baud rate. Originally modems worked at speeds below 2400 baud but today analog speeds of 56,000 are standard. Cable, wireless or digital subscriber lines can transfer information much faster with rates of 300,000 baud and up.

Modems also use Error Correction which corrects for transmission errors by constantly checking whether the information was received properly or not and Compression which allows for faster data transfer rates. Information is transferred in packets. Each packet is checked for errors and is re-sent if there is an error.

Anyone who has used the Internet has noticed that at times the information travels at different speeds. Depending on the amount of information that is being transferred, the information will arrive at it's destination at different times. The amount of information that can travel through a line is limited. This limit is called bandwidth.

There are many more variables involved in communication technology using computers, much of which is covered in the section on the Internet.

Scanners- Scanners allow you to transfer pictures and photographs to your computer. A scanner 'scans' the image from the top to the bottom, one line at a time and transfers it to the computer as a series of bits or a bitmap. You can then take that image and use it in a paint program, send it out as a fax or print it. With optional Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software you can convert printed documents such as newspaper articles to text that can be used in your word processor. Most scanners use TWAIN software that makes the scanner accessable by other software applications.

Digital cameras allow you to take digital photographs. The images are stored on a memory chip or disk that can be transferred to your computer. Some cameras can also capture sound and video.

Case - The case houses the microchips and circuitry that run the computer. Desktop models usually sit under the monitor and tower models beside. They come in many sizes, including desktop, mini, midi, and full tower. There is usually room inside to expand or add components at a later time. By removing the cover off the case you may find plate covered, empty slots that allow you to add cards. There are various types of slots including IDE, ASI, USB, PCI and Firewire slots.

Depending on the type notebook computers may have room to expand . Most Notebooks also have connections or ports that allows expansion or connection to exterior, peripheral devices such as monitor, portable hard-drives or other devices.

Cards - Cards are components added to computers to increase their capability. When adding a peripheral device make sure that your computer has a slot of the type needed by the device.

Sound cards allow computers to produce sound like music and voice. The older sound cards were 8 bit then 16 bit then 32 bit. Though the human ear can't distinguish the fine difference between sounds produced by the more powerful sound card they allow for more complex music and music production.

Colour cards allow computers to produce colour (with a colour monitor of course). The first colour cards were 2 bit which produced 4 colours [CGA]. It was amazing what could be done with those 4 colours. Next came 4 bit allowing for 16 [EGA and VGA ] colours. Then came 16 bit allowing for 1064 colours and then 24 bit which allows for almost 17 million colours and now 32 bit and higher allow monitors to display almost a billion separate colours.

Video cards allow computers to display video and animation. Some video cards allow computers to display television as well as capture frames from video. A video card with a digital video camera allows computers users to produce live video. A high speed connection is required for effective video transmission.

Network cards allow computers to connect together to communicate with each other. Network cards have connections for cable, thin wire or wireless networks. For more information see the section on Networks.

Cables connect internal components to the Motherboard, which is a board with series of electronic path ways and connections allowing the CPU to communicate with the other components of the computer.

Memory - Memory can be very confusing but is usually one of the easiest pieces of hardware to add to your computer. It is common to confuse chip memory with disk storage. An example of the difference between memory and storage would be the difference between a table where the actual work is done (memory) and a filing cabinet where the finished product is stored (disk). To add a bit more confusion, the computer's hard disk can be used as temporary memory when the program needs more than the chips can provide.

Random Access Memory or RAM is the memory that the computer uses to temporarily store the information as it is
processed. The more information being processed the more RAM the computer needs.

One of the first home computers used 64 kilobytes of RAM memory (Commodore 64). Today's modern computers need a minimum of 64 Mb (recommended 128 Mb or more) to run Windows or OS 10 with modern software.

RAM memory chips come in many different sizes and speeds and can usually be expanded. Older computers came with 512 Kb of memory which could be expanded to a maximum of 640 Kb. In most modern computers the memory can be expanded by adding or replacing the memory chips depending on the processor you have and the type of memory your computer uses. Memory chips range in size from 1 Mb to 4 Gb. As computer technology changes the type of memory changes as well making old memory chips obsolete. Check your computer manual to find out what kind of memory your computer uses before purchasing new memory chips.

Formatting a Hard Disk Drive

When do you need to be concerned with formatting hard disk drive? If you're installing a new hard drive for the first, removing errors from your drive, trying to get rid of a nasty virus, or even cleaning your hard drive because you are selling or donating your computer are just a few of the many reasons why one might consider formatting a hard drive.
Format actually means to prepare a storage medium, usually a disk, for reading and writing. When you format a disk, the operating system erases all bookkeeping information on the disk, tests the disk to make sure all sectors are reliable, marks bad sectors (that is, those that are scratched or otherwise damaged), and creates internal address tables that it later uses to locate information. You must format a disk (floppy or hard disk) before you can use it.
Formatting or Reformatting?Some people say they are going to format their drive, while others call it reformatting. The correct terminology is goes like this:
The first time the procedure is performed on a drive it is called formatting. When you take a disk that has been previously formatted and run it through the format process again, it is referred to, logically, as reformatting.

Key Steps to Formatting
Back it Up!

Before the format process, you want to make sure that if your goal is hard drive recovery, you back up as much personal data and information from your hard drive as you need. In some instances where a virus has caused serious system damage, this may not be possible, but if your format is planned ahead of time you certainly can copy and archive data off your hard drive before you start the format process.

How to Format

If you purchased your computer from systems vendor such as a Dell, HP Compaq or Gateway system, you most likely will have a set-up or a restore-and-recovery CD (also referred to as a master CD) that came with the system. If this is the type of system you use, then a format is an easy process as the master CD will format the hard drive, reinstall your Windows operating system, and install any software and programs that came with the system. If you no longer have your master set-up CD, you should contact the manufacturer to get a replacement.

Key Terms To Understanding Hard Disk Formatting:
formatTo prepare a storage medium, usually a disk, for reading and writing.
hard driveA magnetic disk on which you can store computer data. The term hard is used to distinguish it from a soft, or floppy, disk.
volumeA fixed amount of storage on a disk or tape.
partition To divide memory or mass storage into isolated sections. In DOS systems, you can partition a disk, and each partition will behave like a separate disk drive.
Related Articles on Webopedia:
What Does Your Windows System Registry Do?
How to Completely Erase a Hard Disk Drive
Preventative Maintenance Tips for Your PC
How to Deal With Pop-Ups
If you aren't using this type of mass-market system, then a hard drive format will consist of you formatting the hard drive manually, installing your Windows OS from CD, then installing your software programs and hardware drivers. Before you begin the formatting process, it is important to make sure you have all your driver CDs located, Windows CD and your software CDs to ensure a smooth set-up.
It's also important to know about your operating system before you format. For example, if you're going to be reinstalling an older version of the operating such as Windows 98 or Windows ME then you should have a Windows 98 or ME start-up disk to complete the procedure. In this instance, you would restart the system with the start-up floppy in the drive. Upon system boot, you will choose to have CD-ROM support. Once the files load you can then choose to run the format command on your main drive (usually C drive). If you are using Windows 2000, Windows XP or Windows Vista the Windows installation process offers "format your hard drive" as an option. Here you would ensure your computer is set to boot from CD-ROM (a setting in your system BIOS), insert the Windows CD and restart the computer. From there you will be on your way to reformatting.

Type Of Memory

There are many types of memory available in market, Before purchasing any memory or considering purchasing memory it is important that you distinguish the type of memory that is required. Below is a listing of some of the configurations of computer memory.

Memory type: SIMM, DIMM, RIMM,
Amount of Pins: 72-Pin, 30-Pin, etc..
Speed of memory: 10ns, 60ns, 70ns, etc..
Below is a listing of additional considerations to look out when purchasing computer memory.