Microsoft Corporation
Microsoft is a software and hardware company headquarted in Seattle, USA. It was founded in 1975 by Paul Allen and Bill Gates.
Key Points
- first company to popularize the Graphical User Interface for personal computer users with Windows 1.0 in 1985
- generates a lot of criticism for alledgedly copying and refining ideas from outside the company
- initiated the “browser wars” by making Internet Explorer available for free in 1995 and destroying the market share of the most popular browser of the time, Netscape Navigator which was not free
Current Products
- Windows
- Office
- Internet Explorer
- Xbox 360
- Zune
- Halo, Age of Empires
- Mouse, Keyboard
- Bing
- Hotmail
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Videos
Windows 7
Office 2010
Links
Facebook is a social networking website that enables people to connect with other.
People can display photos and news about themselves which informs their “friends” about their lives.
Key points
- there are more than 350 millions users worldwide
- Mark Zuckerberg was 20 years old when he launched Facebook
- concerns over the privacy of user content has attracted a lot of publicity
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Video
Mark Zuckerberg interviewed on US 60 Minutes in January 2008 -- two parts.
Part 1
Part 2
Links
Google is an American company headquartered in California, USA. It was founded in 1998 by Sergey Brin and Larry Page.
Key points:
- the first product (Google search) produced faster and higher quality WWW search results than previous search engines
- has a philosophy of “don’t be evil”
- makes more than 90% of their revenue from advertising by placing ads relevant to a search term when search results are returned. If a person clicks on that ad, Google gets some cash from the identity who placed the ad.
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Video
Search
See how to use the Google search engine like a pro.
GMail
Three videos about how to use GMail
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Links
iPhone
The iPhone is a mobile (cell) phone from Apple. It is classified as a smartphone. It was launched in the USA in June 2007.
Key points
- easier to use than most other mobile phones
- simple to connect to the internet
- poor battery life
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