information for life

Politrics minister Srimathi teacher's funny English speech at US

2010-07-14T22:58:00.000-07:00

Twitter 100

2010-02-17T11:52:00.000-08:00

The 100 most popular sites mashing up and remixing Twitter as measured by the number of bookmarks at del.icio.us. Currently more than 1,900 sites (in and out of beta) are tracked. This list will be updated biweekly.

twitter

tweetdeck
twitterfeed
wefollow
twitter-search (6762 overall)
twitpic (5644 overall)
twhirl (5075 overall)
twittervision (5048 overall)
screenr (4972 overall)
tweetmeme (4471 overall)
hootsuite (4411 overall)
tweetstats (3989 overall)
hashtags (3976 overall)
monitter (3822 overall)
twistori (3794 overall)
twellow (3630 overall)
twittercounter (3481 overall)
twitscoop (3405 overall)
friendorfollow (3337 overall)
twitter-grader (3304 overall)
tweetscan (3275 overall)
hellotxt (3207 overall)
twitterholic (3087 overall)
twitterfall (3005 overall)
twtpoll (2778 overall)
twitturly (2764 overall)
trendsmap (2741 overall)
screenjelly (2583 overall)
tweetlater (2486 overall)
whatthetrend (2237 overall)
topsy (2183 overall)
tweetbeep (2156 overall)
tweetgrid (2135 overall)
twitter-karma (2101 overall)
grouptweet (2098 overall)
twitterrific (2008 overall)
visibletweets (1887 overall)
freetwitterdesigner (1854 overall)
cotweet (1837 overall)
qwitter (1818 overall)
twitalyzer (1790 overall)
tweetburner (1788 overall)
twubble (1753 overall)
listorious (1746 overall)
twitterlocal (1694 overall)
peoplebrowsr (1667 overall)
twittearth (1619 overall)
twazzup (1593 overall)
nambu (1500 overall)
nearby-tweets (1498 overall)
backtweets (1483 overall)
tweetvolume (1472 overall)
twitterfriends (1439 overall)
twitthis (1382 overall)
twitcam (1379 overall)
twitbacks (1376 overall)
twist (1367 overall)
twuffer (1362 overall)
twinfluence (1362 overall)
scoopler (1357 overall)
cursebird (1356 overall)
exectweets (1355 overall)
oneforty (1345 overall)
tweetie-for-mac (1341 overall)
quotably (1297 overall)
twittermail (1259 overall)
twitbin (1249 overall)
twitteranalyzer (1241 overall)
twitterjobsearch (1199 overall)
retweetist (1186 overall)
mrtweet (1165 overall)
xpenser (1156 overall)
tweetake (1144 overall)
twitterpatterns (1139 overall)
twistory (1139 overall)
yfrog (1119 overall)
twittersnooze (1115 overall)
splitweet (1112 overall)
tweetree (1082 overall)
tweeteffect (1072 overall)
twemes (1070 overall)
twtvite (1041 overall)
twibes (996 overall)
spy (984 overall)
whoshouldifollow (982 overall)
twibs (981 overall)
stocktwits (976 overall)
twittersheep (955 overall)
twittercal (950 overall)
spreadtweet (944 overall)
tinker (937 overall)
strawpoll (929 overall)
tweetboard (901 overall)
twitxr (896 overall)
tweetingtoohard (879 overall)
remember-the-milk-for-twitter (863 overall)
retweetradar (859 overall)
twilert (841 overall)
tweetag (839 overall)
muckrack (833 overall)
tweepml (822 overall)

cool crazy links of smart websit's on internet

2010-02-14T23:36:00.000-08:00

else where you on internet?
http://socializedcard.com

Socialized Card holds your entire social identity. By sharing the card, your friends can access all your internet profiles. Thus they can connect with you on all social networks which you belong to. [ Example Card ]

Buzzing Bookmarks

001 del.icio.us popular
002 stumbleupon buzz
003 BuzzFeed
004 Agglom
005 iambored popular
006 diigo
007 propeller
008 furl popular
009 coRank
010 simpy
011 blogmarks
012 netvous
013 linkroll
014 feedmelinks mile
015 linkagogo
016 connectedy hot topics
017 chipmark recent
018 syncone
019 BlinkList.com
020 mylinkvault
021 linkarena recent
022 linkdump
023 WireFan
024 maple
025 >> more social

shopping

026 wists
027 stylehive
028 naturalshopper

Top List Sites

029 alexa top 500
030 internet 100
031 zippa 10

Books and Papers

032 gutenberg 100
033 citeulike
034 bibsonomy
035 LT Zeitgeist
036 connotea pop
037 penntags
038 lulu 100
039 reader2 popular
040 amazon 100
041 >> more books

bookmark tools

042 AddThis
043 Add to Any
044 socialmarker
045 socialposter
046 HelloTxt

trends

047 Google Trends
048 trendwatching
049 Springwise

Blogs that start Buzzing

050 lifehacker
051 mashable
052 huffington
053 makeusof
054 growabrain
055 techcrunch
056 Ars Technica
057 attu
058 America.gov
059 stuffwhitepeoplelike
060 BloggingStocks
061 lifehack
062 googleblog
063 Cinematical
064 readwriteweb
065 waxy
066 lookatthis
067 opticalpoptitude
068 presurfer
069 PostSecret
070 dailywtf
071 inventorspot
072 alttext
073 neatorama
074 workhappy
075 centernetworks
076 beertjes
077 flabber
078 doshdosh
079 beppegrillo
080 sethgodin
081 Edward de Leau
082 Photo Journal
083 The Frame
084 Wired
085 TreeHugger
086 sCommerce.com

Webdesign Blogs

087 smashingmagazine
088 Noupe
089 A list apart
090 Sitepoint
091 net.tutsplus
092 Six Revisions
093 >> more webdesign

Entertainment and Celebs

094 gawker
095 tmz

Real American Blogs

096 boingboing
097 dailykos

Vibrating Feed Nodes

098 blogs.com
099 bloglines
100 syndic8
101 2rss
102 urlfan

Wuzzing Weblog Posts and Wiezing Weblogs

103 blogpulse
104 technorati
105 slashdot
106 blogcritics
107 blogstreet
108 bloghop
109 blogorama
110 weblogalot
111 hotlinks
112 ttlb

News, Stories and Smalltalk

113 digg 24hrs
114 metafilter front
115 fark top links
116 reddit
117 shoutwire
118 monkeyfilter
119 yahoo buzz
120 changethis
121 ekudos
122 dzone
123 newsvine
124 topix
125 4chan
126 Suite101
127 >> more news

Pliggers

128 buddymarks
129 Socialogs
130 Bringr
131 searchallinone
132 GetIgadget
133 IndianPad
134 PostOnFire
135 PlugIM
136 Tagza
137 Pixelmo
138 Dropjack
139 Business Planet

Hot and Popular Videoz

140 youtube top favs
141 googlevideo 100
142 yahoo video
143 spike top 100
144 metacafe top
145 dailymotion
146 break top rated
147 myspace top
148 putfile top 50
149 vidilife most fav
150 >> more video

How and why Gadgets

151 instructables fav
152 dpreview top
153 cnet top 100
154 engadget
155 gizmodo
156 t3
157 trendhunter
158 geek
159 anandtech
160 daytipper
161 coolhunting
162 >> more gadgets

Music

174 lastfm
175 mog
176 mystrands
177 download
178 amiestreet
179 magnatune
180 sellaband
181 jamendo

Nuclear weapons

2009-03-06T21:41:00.000-08:00

Fission weapons

Nuclear weapons exploit two principle physical, or more specifically nuclear, properties of certain substances: fission and fusion.

Fission is possible in a number of heavy elements, but in weapons it is principally confined to what is termed slow neutron fission in just two particular isotopes: ²³⁵U and ²³⁹Pu. These are termed fissile, and are the source of energy in atomic weapons. An explosive chain reaction can be started with relatively slight energy input (so-called slow neutrons) in such material.

An actual ²³⁹Pu ingot, alloyed with gallium for improved physical properties

Isotopes are 'varieties' of an element which differ only in their number of neutrons. For example, hydrogen exists as¹H ²H and ³H -- different isotopes of the same chemical element, with no, one, and two neutrons respectively. All the chemical properties, and most of the physical properties, are the same between isotopes. Nuclear properties may differ significantly, however.

The fission, or 'splitting' of an atom, releases a very large amount of energy per unit volume -- but a single atom is very small indeed. The key to an uncontrolled or explosive release of this energy in a mass of fissile material large enough to constitute a weapon is the establishment of a chain reaction with a short time period and high growth rate. This is surprisingly easy to do.

Fission of ²³⁵U (uranium) or ²³⁹Pu (plutonium) starts in most weapons with an incident source of neutrons. These strike atoms of the fissile material, which (in most cases) fissions, and each atom in so doing releases, on average, somewhat more than 2 neutrons. These then strike other atoms in the mass of material, and so on.

If the mass is too small, or has too large a surface area, too many neutrons escape and a chain reaction is not possible; such a mass is termed subcritical. If the neutrons generated exactly equal the number consumed in subsequent fissions, the mass is said to be critical. If the mass is in excess of this, it is termed supercritical.

Fission (atomic) weapons are simply based on assembling a supercritical mass of fissile material quickly enough to counter disassembly forces.

The majority of the energy release is nearly instantaneous, the mean time from neutron release to fission can be of the order of 10 nanoseconds, and the chain reaction builds exponentially. The result is that greater than 99% of the very considerable energy released in an atomic explosion is generated in the last few (typically 4-5) generations of fission -- less than a tenth of a microsecond.*

This tremendous energy release in a small space over fantastically short periods of time creates some unusual phenomena -- physical conditions that have no equal on earth, no matter how much TNT is stacked up.

Plutonium (²³⁹Pu) is the principal fissile material used in today's nuclear weapons. The actual amount of this fissile material required for a nuclear weapon is shockingly small.

Below is a scale model of the amount of ²³⁹Pu required in a weapon with the force that destroyed the city of Nagasaki in 1945:

In the Fat Man (Nagasaki) weapon design an excess of Pu was provided. Most of the remaining bulk of the weapon was comprised of two concentric shells of high explosives. Each of these was carefully fashioned from two types of explosives with differing burn rates. These, when detonated symmetrically on the outermost layer, caused an implosion or inward-moving explosion.

The two explosive types were shaped to create a roughly spherical convergent shockwave which, when it reached the Pu 'pit' in the center of the device, caused it to collapse.

The Pu pit became denser, underwent a phase change, and became supercritical.

A small neutron source, the initiator, placed in the very center of this Pu pit, provided an initial burst of neutrons -- final generations of which, less than a microsecond later, saw the destruction of an entire city and more than 30,000 people..

Nearly all the design information for weapons such as these is now in the public domain; in fact, considering the fact that fission weapons exploit such a simple and fundamental physical (nuclear) property, it is no surprise that this is so. It is more surprising that so much stayed secret for so long, at least from the general public.

A neutron reflector, often made of beryllium, is placed outside the central pit to reflect neutrons back into the pit. A tamper, often made of depleted uranium or ²³⁸U helps control premature disassembly. Modern fission devices use a technique called 'boosting' (referred to in the next section), to control and enhance the yield of the device.

Today's nuclear threat lies mostly in preventing this fissile special nuclear material (often referred to as SNM) from falling into the wrong hands: once there, it is a very short step to construct a working weapon.

What we do now to keep these devices out of the hands of groups like Al-Qaeda is vital to civilized peoples.

A schematic of a hypothetical 'boosted' fission weapon
(showing unnecessary ²³⁵U)

The gadget device used in the Trinity test: the world's first nuclear weapon test.
Note spherical geometry and the HE detonator arrangement. New Mexico, 21KT, 1945.



	Typical fission weapon, shortly after detonation at the Nevada test site, with roughly the same yield as the weapon that destroyed Hiroshima. Reddish vapor surrounding the plasma toroid includes intensely radioactive fission fragments and ionized nitrogen oxides from the atmosphere. (Grable, 15KT, 1953)

Fusion weapons

Fission weapons discussed above are ultimately limited in their destructive capability by the sheer size a subcritical mass can assume -- and be imploded quickly enough by high explosives to form a supercritical assembly. The largest known pure fission weapon tested had a 500 kiloton yield. This is some thirty-eight times the release which destroyed Hiroshima in 1945. Not satisfied that this was powerful enough, designers developed thermonuclear (fusion) weapons.

Fusion exploits the energy released in the fusing of two atoms to form a new element; e.g. deuterium atoms fusing to form helium, ²H + ²H = ⁴He₂ , as occurs on the sun. For atoms to fuse, very high temperatures and pressures are required. Only fusion of the lightest element, hydrogen, has proven practical. And only the heavy isotopes of hydrogen, ²H (deuterium) and ³H (tritium), have a low enough threshold for fusion to have been used in weapons successfully thus far.

The first method tried (boosting) involved simply placing ³H in a void within the center of a fission weapon, where tremendous temperatures and high pressures were attendant to the fission explosion. This worked; contributing energy to the overall explosion, and boosting the efficiency of the Pu fissioning as well (fusion reactions also release neutrons, but with much higher energy).

Because ³H is a gas at room temperature, it can be easily 'bled' into the central cavity from a storage bottle prior to an explosion, and impact the final yield of the device. This is still used today, and allows for what is termed 'dial-a-yield' capability on many stockpiled weapons.

Multistage thermonuclear weapons -- the main component of today's strategic nuclear forces -- are more complex. These employ a 'primary' fission weapon to serve merely as a trigger. As mentioned above, the fission weapon is characterized by a tremendous energy release in a small space over a short period of time. As a result, a very large fraction of the initial energy release is in the form of thermal X-rays.

These X-rays are channeled to a 'secondary' fusion package. The X-rays travel into a cavity within a cylindrical radiation container.

The radiation pressure from these X-rays either directly, or through an intermediate material often cited as a polystyrene foam, ablates a cylindrical enclosure containing thermonuclear fuel (shown in blue at left); this can be Li²H (lithium deuteride).

Running along the central axis of this fuel is a rod of fissile material, termed a 'sparkplug'.

The contracting fuel package becomes denser, the sparkplug begins to fission, neutrons from this transmute the Li²H into ³H that can readily fuse with ²H (the fusion reaction ³H + ²H has a very high cross-section, or probability, in typical secondary designs), heat increases greatly, and fusion continues through the fuel mass.

A final 'tertiary' stage can be added to this in the form of an exterior blanket of ²³⁸U, wrapping the outer surface of the radiation case or the fuel package. ²³⁸U is not fissionable by the slower neutrons which dominate the fission weapon environment, but fusion releases copious high energy neutrons and this can fast fission the ordinary uranium.

This is a cheap (and radiologically very dirty) way to greatly increase yield. The largest weapon ever detonated -- the Soviet Union's 'super bomb', was some 60 MT in yield, and would have been nearer 100MT had this technique been used in its tertiary. Again, to control the yield precisely, ³H may be bled from a separate tank into the core of the primary, as shown in the hypothetical diagram on the left of a modern thermonuclear weapon.

This primary/secondary/tertiary or multistage arrangement can be increased -- unlike the fission weapon -- to provide insane governments with any arbitrarily large yield.



	Rare photo of the actual shrimp device used in Castle Bravo. Note the cylindrical geometry, and the emergent spherical fission trigger on the right. Light pipes leading to ceiling are visible near the fission trigger and at two points along the secondary for transmitting early diagnostic information to remote collection points, before they themselves are destroyed. Note the 'danger, no smoking' sign at lower left. 15MT, 1954.

Fusion, or thermonuclear weapons, are not simple to design nor are they likely targets of construction for would-be terrorists today.

Many aspects of the relevant radiation transport, X-ray opacities, and ultra-high T and D equations-of-state (EOS) for relevant materials are still classified to this day (though increasing dissemination of weapons-adaptable information from the inertially-confined fusion (ICF) area may change this in time). Keeping such information classified makes good sense.

Typical appearance of a thermonuclear weapon detonation -- from many miles away.
(Castle Romeo, 7MT, 1954)

*Special techniques were required to record the fleeting moments of a weapon's initial detonation. One such method was the Rapatronic camera, developed by Dr. Harold Edgerton. The images it created are bizarre

17 People Who Changed the Internet Forever!

2009-03-03T02:09:00.000-08:00

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, we provides you with a list of those people who have influenced the Internet greatly.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin - Google Inc.

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.

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

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 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

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

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

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 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 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 (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

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 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

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 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; 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 “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 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 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

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

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

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

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 ainternet,Google Inc,Twitter,Netscape,Flickr,Internet Pioneer,Linux,StumbleUpon,MySpace,WordPress,Craigslist,Alibaba,eBay,Rupture,Amazon,YouTube,Wikipedia,BitTorrent,Digg,Faceboos of 2008, Twitter was not designed to earn.

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