Meebo.com - Instant Messaging Made Easy

Posted on November 20th, 2007 in Start-up by P. G.

Meebo Team

Today, the online world is abuzz with an instant messaging service called Meebo.

Meebo.com is a website for instant messaging from absolutely anywhere. Whether you’re at home, on campus, at work, or traveling foreign lands, hop over to meebo.com on any computer to access all of your buddies (on AIM, Yahoo!, MSN, Google Talk, ICQ and Jabber) and chat with them, no downloads or installs required, for free!

Today we have decided to feature the dedicated team behind this amazing service who have been making our online interaction and chat easier and more convenient.

In their own words:

seth Biz Guy (Officially uninsurable). Seth majored in Political Science at Yale. He then worked at IBM in the M&A group before he went to Stanford’s Business School. Seth flies airplanes (less than he’d like to, but it’s expensive!), rides motorcycles, and rollerblades.
elaine AJAX Girl (The Prosopagnosiac). Elaine majored in Symbolic Systems at Stanford. After Stanford, she worked at Synaptics as the Manager of Usability. Elaine plays the violin and migrated west to California, after growing up on a goat farm.
sandy Server Chick (Where’s the candy?). Sandy majored in Computer Science at Stanford and after graduation, went on to work for Xilinx in San Jose for a couple of years. She plays ultimate frisbee a couple times a week, and occasionally dabbles in volleyball.
andrea Jill of all Trades (Mother Bear). Andrea is everything administrative, married, and the Mom of 2 teens, which she thinks keeps her cool (but they don’t believe it!). She spent a lot of time in start-ups and venture capital (that’s how she met Seth). Andrea likes to boat, ski and is a sun worshiper.
jian Mr. Sparkle (In stereo where available). Jian majored in Computer Science at Stanford. He worked at Bell Labs and Expedia while in school and then joined Blazent after graduation. He likes practicing taiji, playing frisbee, mixing/djing and is a big fan of cartoons and animation.
simon Ops Guy (Are you going to finish that?). Simon majored in Computer Science & Engineering at UCLA, and Computer Science at Stanford grad school. Since school, he worked for a number of companies including Nortel, BBN Planet, Gigabeat, Loudcloud, and EDS. He plays golf, is a home theater enthusiast, and loves watching movies.
andreas

Dr. Debugger (It has a brake?). Andreas majored in Computer Engineering at UC Santa Cruz. After school, he went to work for Thuridion where he learned the ins and outs of AJAX. When not working on exciting new features for meebo, you might catch him flying (the speed limit) down the freeway on his motorcycle or meditating by the water in Santa Cruz.

mark The Gaim Guy (Rocket king). Mark majored in Computer Science at North Carolina State University. He worked at SAS for a few years after graduation, then moved across the country to work for meebo. He cycles some and rock climbs when he has time. And his fiancee is awesome.
aj Comments Guru (Better than autoreply). AJ answers all the email that meebo receives. Prior to meebo, he spent a few years doing cancer research and then worked for the Stanford Alumni Association. AJ plays ultimate frisbee and the cello and participates in crazy-long bicycle races. He also enjoys long, moonlit walks on the beach.
danny Marketing Dude (Phone sewn to ear). Danny majored in Political Science at UC Davis. He then worked at Bite Communications, spending half his time in BD and the other half consulting to technology companies. When he’s not talking up meebo to potential partners, you can usually find him heckling the Dodgers, teaching himself guitar or reading a geeky business book.
paul Tea Solves Everything (JavaScript historian). Paul studied computer engineering at the University of Southampton. He recently moved to the Mission District of San Francisco, but had been growing his hair and beard for several months in preparation. He digs The Beatles, like, a lot.
david Agent Icon (The artist formerly known as ). David majored in Computer Science at Università di Bologna. When he’s not traveling the world (David lives in Italy), he enjoys spending quality time with friends and family. He loves Brazilian music and is proud of the fact that he squandered away two years of college designing icons for open source projects.
martin “M” (Actually…). Martin majored in Commerce at Queen’s University, Canada and studied economics at Kansai Gakuin in Japan. After graduation, he worked at Morgan Stanley in New York and in 1996 became an early member of the CNET Networks management team. Martin eats, cycles, runs and loves chatting with his wife and two children.
bob “The Count” (One with data). Bob joins us from Apple after spending 4-1/2 years doing a bunch of really complicated things with network traffic analysis. At meebo, Bob helps the team understand statistics and what users really and truly want. In his free time, Bob rides motorcycles, climbs large rocks (and mountains) and does yoga.
brendan “Coast Hopper” (D.C. to shining sea). Originally a hardware geek (his concentration at the University of Virginia was digital design), Brendan learned everything “Web 2.0-y” at his first job before journeying cross-country to join meebo. Fill it with petrol and vulcanize the tires post haste, because if it has wheels and a motor he’ll drive it. He can also communicate entirely in sitcom and movie quotes.
kathy

“Staffing Elf” (Right deployment goes first). Kathy has been in the recruiting biz for over 20 years, but doesn’t look (or feel) (or act) a day over 20. She’s extremely passionate about bringing in great candidates to help meebo grow. On the weekends, find Kathy climbing in the great outdoors or skydiving out of a PAC 750XL. She’s jumped over 1700 times!
renaud “Le Car” (not Peugeot…). Renaud majored in Image Processing and Physics at ENSPS in France. He was at Synaptics for 7 yrs working on pattern recognition and developing GUI software. In his spare time, he enjoys rock climbing, traveling and photography, but above all he loves road trips in the desert, exploring canyons in Utah or hiking up sand dunes in Death Valley.
vijay “Dog Whisperer” (With knee pads). Vijay joins us from Yahoo where he worked on crazy-large systems. Prior to that he was at Motorola, Berkeley, and was one of the original signers of the Declaration of Independence. When he’s not chasing a bug or strapping on his body armor for 4^2, he’s actively training for the software engineering triathlon: table tennis, foosball and pool.
jim “Mr. Roboto” (With a spatula). Jim majored in Computer Science at Stanford, and loved it. He did research in artificial intelligence, teaching computers to recognize objects and understand images – a task that is simple for people, but far more challenging for computers. Jim enjoys spending time outdoors, swing dancing, cooking, and just hanging out.

If you haven’t, go ahead and give Meebo a shot and see what the buzz is all about.

Tim Westergren - From Music Genome To Pandora

Posted on November 19th, 2007 in Music, Entrepreneur, Start-up by P. G.

Tim Westergren

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 WestergrenTim 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.

Cyan Banister : Celebrating Models and Photographers - Zivity.com

Posted on November 2nd, 2007 in Modeling, Entrepreneur, Start-up by P. G.

Cyan Banister - Zivity.com

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.