Mark Surfas
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Mark Surfas
Mark Surfas is a Canadian-American game developer and author who founded GameSpy,a gaming media company, online multiplayer platform, and middleware provider He also launched and currently leads multimedia communications company GroupFire and software company Robots and Rockets. He is also the author of the instructional books ''Running a Perfect Web Site with Windows'', ''Using Intranet HTML'', and ''Creating Your Own ActiveX Web Pages''. Career In the early 1990s, Surfas served as director of on-line communications at Coldwell Banker. Through Que Publishing, Surfas wrote and published the technology books ''Running a Perfect Web Site with Windows'' and ''Using Intranet HTML in 1996''. He also published the book ''Creating Your Own ActiveX Web Pages in 1997''. Surfas also founded and organized the Costa Mesa-based gaming event The Beatdown in 1998. He wrote an op-ed concerning video game ratings for the Los Angeles Times in 2000. Surfas initially formed GameSpy in 1995 as a ...
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GameSpy
GameSpy was an American provider of online multiplayer and matchmaking middleware for video games founded in 1996 by Mark Surfas. After the release of a multiplayer server browser for the game, QSpy, Surfas licensed the software under the GameSpy brand to other video game publishers through a newly established company, GameSpy Industries, which also incorporated his Planet Network of video game news and information websites, and GameSpy.com. GameSpy merged with IGN in 2004; by 2014, its services had been used by over 800 video game publishers and developers since its launch. In August 2012, the GameSpy Industries division (which remained responsible for the GameSpy service) was acquired by mobile video game developer Glu Mobile. IGN (then owned by News Corporation) retained ownership of the GameSpy.com website. In February 2013, IGN's new owner, Ziff Davis, shut down IGN's "secondary" sites, including GameSpy's network. This was followed by the announcement in April 2014 that G ...
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Programmer
A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/creates computer software or applications by providing a specific programming language to the computer. Most programmers have extensive computing and coding experience in many varieties of programming languages and platforms, such as Structured Query Language (SQL), Perl, Extensible Markup Language (XML), PHP, HTML, C, C++ and Java. A programmer's most often-used computer language (e.g., Assembly, C, C++, C#, JavaScript, Lisp, Python, Java, etc.) may be prefixed to the aforementioned terms. Some who work with web programming languages may also prefix their titles with ''web''. Terminology There is no industry-wide standard terminology, so "programmer" and "software engineer" might refer to the same role at different companies. Most typically, ...
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Multiplayer Video Game
A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system (couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, or via a wide area network, most commonly the Internet (e.g. ''World of Warcraft'', '' Call of Duty'', ''DayZ''). Multiplayer games usually require players to share a single game system or use networking technology to play together over a greater distance; players may compete against one or more human contestants, work cooperatively with a human partner to achieve a common goal, or supervise other players' activity. Due to multiplayer games allowing players to interact with other individuals, they provide an element of social communication absent from single-player games. History Non-networked Some of the earliest video games were two-player games, including early sports games (such as 1958's ''Tennis For Two'' and 1972's ''Pong''), ear ...
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Middleware
Middleware is a type of computer software that provides services to software applications beyond those available from the operating system. It can be described as "software glue". Middleware makes it easier for software developers to implement communication and input/output, so they can focus on the specific purpose of their application. It gained popularity in the 1980s as a solution to the problem of how to link newer applications to older legacy systems, although the term had been in use since 1968. In distributed applications The term is most commonly used for software that enables communication and management of data in distributed applications. An IETF workshop in 2000 defined middleware as "those services found above the transport (i.e. over TCP/IP) layer set of services but below the application environment" (i.e. below application-level APIs). In this more specific sense ''middleware'' can be described as the dash ("-") in '' client-server'', or the ''-to-'' in ''peer ...
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Coldwell Banker
Coldwell Banker Real Estate LLC is an American real estate franchise owned by Anywhere Real Estate, with headquarters in Madison, New Jersey. It was founded in 1906 in San Francisco, and has approximately 3000 offices in 49 countries and territories. It publishes an annual house price guide, ''Home Listing Report''. History After the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires, Albert Nion Tucker, Colbert Coldwell and John Conant Lynch formed Tucker, Lynch and Coldwell on August 27, 1906. Benjamin Arthur Banker joined the firm as a salesman in 1913, and became a partner in 1914. The company was renamed Coldwell Banker in the same year. Banker and Coldwell remained active in the company throughout their lives. In 1920, Coldwell Banker moved to a three-story building in San Francisco. It opened an office in Phoenix, Arizona, its first outside California, in 1952. In the 1970s the company expanded by acquiring firms in Atlanta, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. The first inte ...
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Pearson Education
Pearson Education is a British-owned education publishing and assessment service to schools and corporations, as well for students directly. Pearson owns educational media brands including Addison–Wesley, Peachpit, Prentice Hall, eCollege, Longman, Scott Foresman, and others. Pearson is part of Pearson plc, which formerly owned the ''Financial Times''. It claims to have been formed in 1840, with the current incarnation of the company created when Pearson plc purchased the education division of Simon & Schuster (including Prentice Hall and Allyn & Bacon) from Viacom and merged it with its own education division, Addison-Wesley Longman, to form Pearson Education. Pearson Education was rebranded to Pearson in 2011 and split into an International and a North American division. Although Pearson generates approximately 60 percent of its sales in North America, it operates in more than 70 countries. Pearson International is headquartered in London, and maintains offices across Eu ...
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Los Angeles Times
The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States. The publication has won more than 40 Pulitzer Prizes. It is owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong and published by the Times Mirror Company. The newspaper’s coverage emphasizes California and especially Southern California stories. In the 19th century, the paper developed a reputation for civic boosterism and opposition to labor unions, the latter of which led to the bombing of its headquarters in 1910. The paper's profile grew substantially in the 1960s under publisher Otis Chandler, who adopted a more national focus. In recent decades the paper's readership has declined, and it has been beset by a series of ownership changes, staff reductions, and other controversies. In January 2018, the paper's staff voted to unionize and final ...
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RealNetworks
RealNetworks, Inc. is a provider of artificial intelligence and computer vision based products. RealNetworks was a pioneer in Internet streaming software and services. They are based in Seattle, Washington, United States. The company also provides subscription-based online entertainment services and mobile entertainment and messaging services. History RealNetworks (then known as Progressive Networks) was founded in 1994 by Rob Glaser, an ex-Microsoft executive, and a management team including Phil Barrett, Andy Sharpless, and Stephen Buerkle. The original goal of the company was to provide a distribution channel for politically progressive content. It evolved into a technology venture to leverage the Internet as an alternative distribution medium for audio broadcasts. Progressive Networks became RealNetworks in September 1997, in advance of the company's initial public offering (IPO) in October 1997 when shares of the company started trading on Nasdaq as "RNWK". RealNetw ...
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OGPlanet
OGPlanet was a publisher of free-to-play, massively multiplayer online (MMO), downloadable PC games, based in Torrance, California, with offices in Vancouver, Berlin, London and Seoul. Although their games were free-to-play, OGPlanet offered "Astros", an in-game currency that players could purchase online through Xsolla using a variety of payment methods including credit and debit cards and PayPal; Astros were used for in-game enhancements. On 29 September 2017, the final game being published by OGPlanet, ''Uncharted Waters Online'', was shut down for transfer to Papaya Play and the OGPlanet website taken offline. History OGPlanet was established in 2005 with the goal of bringing MMO games from around the world to North American and global audiences. The company first established itself with the magical golf game ''Albatross18: Realms of Pangya'' in 2005. Albatross18 was well received by players. With the success of Albatross18, and its second season in 2006, OGPlanet began to expa ...
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GeekChicDaily
GeekChicDaily (founded in October, 2009) was a multi-platform publisher of pop culture based newsletters, founded by Peter Levin and Gareb Shamus and operated by CEO Peter Levin. Publication The now-defunct publisher had multiple newsletter publications including GeekChicDaily, GeekChic Los Angeles and GeekChicNYC. The targets for the newsletters were socially active consumers of genre fare. Rebranded as Nerdist News post merger with Nerdist Industries. History CEO Peter Levin and Gareb Shamus launched GeekChicDaily with Peter Guber and other advisors in October, 2009. The company launched GeekChic Los Angeles, a regional version of the newsletter, in April 2011. GeekChicNYC was later added in August 2011. The offices are based out of Santa Monica, California. Nerdist Comedian Chris Hardwick Christopher Ryan Hardwick (born November 23, 1971) is an American comedian, actor, television and podcast host, writer, and producer. He hosts ''Talking Dead'', an hourlong aftershow on AM ...
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Canadian Game Designers
Canadians (french: Canadiens) are people identified with the country of Canada. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or cultural. For most Canadians, many (or all) of these connections exist and are collectively the source of their being ''Canadian''. Canada is a multilingual and multicultural society home to people of groups of many different ethnic, religious, and national origins, with the majority of the population made up of Old World immigrants and their descendants. Following the initial period of French and then the much larger British colonization, different waves (or peaks) of immigration and settlement of non-indigenous peoples took place over the course of nearly two centuries and continue today. Elements of Indigenous, French, British, and more recent immigrant customs, languages, and religions have combined to form the culture of Canada, and thus a Canadian identity. Canada has also been strongly influenced by its linguistic, geographic, and e ...
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21st-century Canadian Male Writers
The 1st century was the century spanning AD 1 ( I) through AD 100 ( C) according to the Julian calendar. It is often written as the or to distinguish it from the 1st century BC (or BCE) which preceded it. The 1st century is considered part of the Classical era, epoch, or historical period. The 1st century also saw the appearance of Christianity. During this period, Europe, North Africa and the Near East fell under increasing domination by the Roman Empire, which continued expanding, most notably conquering Britain under the emperor Claudius (AD 43). The reforms introduced by Augustus during his long reign stabilized the empire after the turmoil of the previous century's civil wars. Later in the century the Julio-Claudian dynasty, which had been founded by Augustus, came to an end with the suicide of Nero in AD 68. There followed the famous Year of Four Emperors, a brief period of civil war and instability, which was finally brought to an end by Vespasian, ninth Roman emperor, a ...
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