Wednesday, March 18, 2020

How 3 Former PayPal Employees Created YouTube

How 3 Former PayPal Employees Created YouTube What in the world did we do before YouTube was created? Or, rather,  know how to do? Everything from how to put on false eyelashes to the proper way to skin a deer to the chord progressions for your favorite rock songs is now just a click away, thanks to this video-sharing invention by a trio of former PayPal employees. It was February 2005 when Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karin, working out of a garage in Menlo Park, California, debuted their invention. In November 2006, the investors became millionaires when they sold YouTube for $1.65 billion to the search engine Google.   A Virtual Encyclopedia According to Jawed Karim, the inspiration for YouTube came from the halftime faux pas committed by Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, when Janet’s breast was  accidentally  exposed to millions of viewers on live television. Karim could not find the video clip anywhere online, so the idea to found a destination to watch and share videos on the World Wide Web was born. Today, YouTube users can create, upload, and share video clips on the site, www.YouTube.com, and also embed them for further sharing on any number of non-YouTube pages, including  Facebook  and  Twitter. Not only that, users can access millions of other videos, both amateur and professional, including music videos, how-tos, product reviews, and political rants- even entire movies and television programs. YouTube even has a satellite television station. And its all mostly free, although there is a subscription component that allows you to customize your use. While almost anything goes on YouTube, there are a few things that dont. Content that is sexually explicit, hateful, violent, or that is threatening or bullying will be removed. Likewise, YouTube does not permit spam, scams, or misleading metadata, and they have strict rules against copyright infringement as well. Users are fully able to flag anything they see as inappropriate, and it will be brought to YouTubes attention immediately. About the Founders Co-founder Steve Chen was born in 1978 in Taiwan and immigrated to the United States when he was 15. He was educated at the University of Illinois and after graduation found employment at PayPal, where he met his fellow YouTube co-inventors and co-founders Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim. In August 2013, he and Chad Hurley also launched MixBit, a smartphone video editing company. Currently, Chen is with GV (formerly Google Ventures), a venture capital firm that focuses on technology companies. Born in 1977, Chad Hurley received a bachelors degree in fine art from the University of Pennsylvania and was later employed by eBay’s PayPal division (Hurley designed PayPals trademark logo). In addition to founding MixBit with Steve Chen in 2013, Hurley is also an investor in several major sports teams. Jawed Karim (born in 1979) also worked at Paypal, where he met his future YouTube founders. Karim also pursued an advanced degree at Stanford University and is considered the most elusive member of the threesome. He was the first person ever to post a video on YouTube, a 19-second video of his visit to the elephant exhibit at the San Diego Zoo. As of this writing, the video has had over 72 million views.

Monday, March 2, 2020

Writing First Drafts for Law School Essays

Writing First Drafts for Law School Essays In previous posts of this blog, we have discussed the importance of creating both a work calendar to suit your admissions essay writing schedule as well as an outline for your composition. Now, I would like to move on to what I believe is the next crucial phase of this writing process: the first draft. Whether you are writing undergraduate essays or Law school essays, you must write a first draft. Writing the first draft of your school essay should not be a difficult task. Since it is only a draft, you should not be concerned with the number of errors and/or grammatical mistakes in this version of your composition. Instead, feel free to write your first draft without any editing whatsoever. Write whatever comes to mind and then fix it later. I like to think of a first draft as an exercise in free association. Lets say, for instance, that your focus is on law school essays. Like any other admissions composition, law school essays must be compelling and carefully written. That is why a first draft is so important! When you are writing the first draft of your law school essay, dont worry about organization and/or structure. Instead, just get all of your thoughts and points of view out on paper. Then, once that is done, you can take all the time you need to go back, systematize your arguments, fix any grammatical errors, and work towards the completion of a perfect law school essay. Attempting to write a perfect law school essay (or any other type of admissions composition) in one draft is like trying to pencil sketch an intricate image without an eraser. It simply isnt a good idea! The more drafts you write, the more mistakes you can make. . .and later correct. So if you are writing an admissions essay, do yourself a favor and create as many drafts as possible. Trust me when I tell you that you wont regret it! In the meanwhile, if you would like additional information on law school essays and/or law school personal statements, then I encourage you to read on!