Jeffrey Preston Bezos is the founder, president, chief executive officer, and chairman of the board of Amazon.com. Bezos, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Princeton University, worked as a financial analyst for D. E. Shaw & Co. before founding Amazon in 1994. He was TIME magazine’s Person of the Year in 1999.

Today, at a press conference in New York, Jeff unveiled Amazon’s latest trick up its sleeve, an electronic book reader, the Kindle. It comes equipped with a 6-inch 800 x 600 display, 256MB internal storage, smallish two-thumb keyboard cursor bar, scroll wheel, standard mini USB port, 3.5mm headphone jack, SD slot, and EV-DO data.

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Tim Westergren founded Pandora in January 2000 and now serves as its Chief Strategy Officer. Tim is an award-winning composer, an accomplished musician and a record producer with 20 years of experience in the music industry. He has recorded with independent labels, managed artists, owned a commercial digital recording studio, scored feature films, produced albums, and performed extensively. His main instrument is the piano, but over the years he has played the bassoon, drums and clarinet and his musical background spans such genres as rock, blues, jazz and classical music.

Tim received his B.A. from Stanford University, where he studied computer acoustics and recording technology. A musician’s musician, he is obsessed with helping talented emerging artists connect with the music fans most likely to appreciate their music. In addition to guiding Pandora’s overall strategy and vision, Tim now spends most of his time as Pandora’s chief evangelist - traveling the country to meet with listeners to collect feedback, research local music, and spread the word of the Music Genome Project.

Pandora lets you explore this vast trove of music to your heart’s content. Just drop the name of one of your favorite songs or artists into Pandora and let the Genome Project go. It will quickly scan its entire world of analyzed music, almost a century of popular recordings - new and old, well known and completely obscure - to find songs with interesting musical similarities to your choice. Then sit back and enjoy as it creates a listening experience full of current and soon-to-be favorite songs for you.

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Matt is the founding developer of WordPress, the blogging software that runs much of this site and thousands of other blogs around the world. He also writes a popular blog Photo Matt. After quitting his job at CNET, he has devoted the majority of his time to developing a number of open source projects and is a frequent speaker at conferences. In late 2005, he founded Automattic, the business behind WordPress.com and Akismet, a spam-filtering service.

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Sarah Meyers streams live from New York City in Justin.tv. Sarah has been running a channel on Justin.TV, where she’s both its cast and crew, together with many other live broadcasters (or lifecasters, as they call it). She holds a Sony camera at arm’s length from her head, streaming live video of herself to the Web over a Verizon Wireless-based connection. Lifecasting her every move, she has amassed a loyal following from fans crazy about her beautiful looks and a charming personality!

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The Brazilian beauty, and the world’s richest model,  Gisele Bündchen recently declared that she won’t get out of bed for US Dollars! She insisted that she be paid in Euros rather than US dollars. With the dollar hitting an all time low against the Euro and British pound, the 27 year old catwalk queen has demanded the currency change. The statuesque blonde is reportedly the richest model in the world - a distinction she is clearly keen to hang onto. Her sister and manager Patricia revealed she was avoiding being paid in dollars because of uncertainty over its strength. When Bündchen signed a contract in August to represent Pantene hair products for Procter & Gamble, she demanded payment in euros, according to Veja, the biggest weekly magazine in Brazil.

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Unlike many people who have been getting attention online, John Chow has amassed loyal followers through his personal blog JohnChow.com by simply talking about anything from how to make money online to how delicious the food was at a restaurant he ate last night. People tend to find his unique perspective on every bits and pieces of things he does and shares very amusing. He himself has claimed that it is his personal blog where he talks about whatever he prefers. For example, as I check his blog right now, he has a post titled “No Sex Allowed on A380 Airborne Double Beds” where he talks about how Singapore Airlines, the first operator of the new Airbus A380 super jumbo jet, does not allow sex in their first-class double-bed suites. However, his blog is titled ”I Make Money Online by Telling People How Much Money I Make Online” and considers himself a Dot Com mogul. His miscellaneous ramblings, sometimes not necessarily grammatically fascinating, combined with interesting pictures and musings, have definitely won his readers hearts.

You can read more about him here.

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Cyan Banister is the Chief Strategy Officer and Co-Founder of Zivity.com, an online social networking community for connoisseurs of pinup photography that offers a secure environment for adults only. Zivity celebrates sexuality and free markets by rewarding models and photographers.

Zivity is Cyan’s brainchild. Her dream to connect the social web with sexy photos is the kernel that became Zivity. Cyan’s idea is a damn good one; that’s why Zivity is the first company in the “adult space” to be backed by Silicon Valley investment.

Cyan brings more than ten years of management experience to Zivity; from scaling operational infrastructure to building teams and championing company culture. Cyan held a senior management role at IronPort where she supervised throngs of employees and oversaw a slew of departments. Her mission for Zivity is putting models first and creating an environment that nurtures artistic freedom. “Freedom of expression without judgment” is her motto.

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Ashley Qualls, 17, of Detroit, runs a Web site called Whateverlife.com from her home. Whateverlife.com, basically a free MySpace layouts website, helps other teenagers decorate their MySpace pages. The site attracts more than 7 million visitors and 60 million page views a month, mostly teen girls, a very niche audience. In just two years it has generated more than $1 million in ad revenue. FastCompany recently published a fascinating feature article titled ‘Girl Power’ on Ashley, which you can read here.

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 Mitch Cohen, an undergraduate studying business at McGill University, started his latest company, ClixConnect, to help online retailers improve customer service on their Web sites. Cohen, who started his first business when he was 16, got the idea after watching his parents become frustrated whenever they shopped online, often turning to a brick-and-mortar shop, where they relished being able to talk to a human and getting questions answered quickly.

ClixConnect enables web-merchants to emulate the personalized service and attention given to customers in traditional brick-and-mortal retail outlets on their websites.

ClixConnect combines an online sales and support team with a proprietary live-chat application. When you sign up for ClixConnect, you will receive both the application and the sales and support team.

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Nathaniel is the founder of Yodle.com which helps “Your Business Get Found Online”. Yodle helps your company generate new business by connecting you with customers searching online for the services you offer. First, Yodle advertises your business online to customers in your local area. Second, Yodle directs these customers to your website so they can learn about your business and view your offers. Third, interested customers call into your business to set an appointment.

Nathaniel was featured on BusinessWeek as one of the best young entrepreneurs under 25. According to the story:

A few years ago, Wharton undergraduate Nathaniel Stevens was home trying to help his parents drum up prospects for their car dealership but became frustrated with the lead generation companies he contacted. He knew plenty of customers ventured online to shop but thought it was too difficult for small businesses to develop a presence there. So Stevens took a leave of absence from Wharton and started Yodle, an advertising services company that serves local businesses that lack the time or expertise to advertise online.

Stevens says the 55-employee company, which uses the tagline “Clicks Are Great, Calls Are Better,” makes money from clients who pay Yodle when their advertising results in customer phone calls. He says the company, which launched in August, 2005, expects to have approximately 1,000 customers by end of the year. Stevens received venture funding in November, 2006, and plans to open six to eight additional offices around the country within the next 12 months.

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