Project Wonderful
Project Wonderful was an advertising service created by programmer and webcomic author Ryan North in late 2006. Headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, the service supported up thousands of webcomics and blogs with auctioned online advertisements, until it was shut down in 2018. Concept and development In early 2006, Ryan North was talking with a friend about how they severely disliked existing online advertisement services such as Google ads and AdSense, because advertisements on those platforms are priced based on user clicks or displays, and "the Internet isn't really designed to keep track of who clicked where, when, and who viewed what page when." Project Wonderful launched 8 months later. Rather than paying for clicks, Project Wonderful allowed websites to auction advertisement space. Advertisers were able to bid on a particular ad block on a particular website and, as long as their bid was the highest, they got to decide what is shown on it. Being invite-only, Project Wonderful ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ryan North
Ryan North (born October 20, 1980) is a Canadian writer and computer programmer. He is the creator and author of ''Dinosaur Comics'', and has written for the comic series of ''Adventure Time'' and Marvel Comics' '' The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl''. His works have won multiple Eisner Awards and Harvey Awards and made ''New York Times'' Bestseller lists. Comics Webcomics North started the webcomic ''Dinosaur Comics'' in 2003, during the last year of his undergraduate degree. ''Dinosaur Comics'' is a fixed-art webcomic which uses the same base art for every strip. North has produced over 3,500 strips. ''Dinosaur Comics'' was named one of the best webcomics of 2004 and 2005 by The Webcomics Examiner. '' Wired'' listed ''Dinosaur Comics'' as one of "Five Webcomics You Can Share With Your Kids" and '' PC Magazine'' included the comic in its "10 Wicked Awesome Webcomics" list. Cracked.com named ''Dinosaur Comics'' one of the 8 funniest webcomics on the internet. In 2005, it won "O ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
''Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal'' (''SMBC'') is a webcomic by Zach Weinersmith. The gag-a-day comic features few recurring characters or storylines, and has no set format; some strips may be a single panel, while others may go on for ten panels or more. Recurring themes in ''SMBC'' include science, research, superheroes, religion, romance, dating, parenting and the meaning of life. ''SMBC'' has run since 2002 and is published daily. Weinersmith's webcomic was recognized in 2006 and 2007 with the Web Cartoonists' Choice Award for ''Outstanding Single Panel Comic'', and received nominations in 2003 and 2008. History Weinersmith's first version of ''SMBC'' was a character-based three-panel strip done while he was in college. This version of the comic focused on the romantic and academic endeavors of several college students. This version (referred to as ''Classic SMBC'' on the site's archives) ran from January 28, 2002 to September 3, 2002. Weinersmith then switched to single-p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Closed Platform
A closed platform, walled garden, or closed ecosystem is a software system wherein the carrier or service provider has control over applications, content, and/or media, and restricts convenient access to non-approved applicants or content. This is in contrast to an open platform, wherein consumers generally have unrestricted access to applications and content. Overview For example, in telecommunications, the services and applications accessible on a cell phone on any given wireless device were formerly tightly controlled by the mobile operators. The operators limited the applications and developers that were available on users' home portals and home pages. Thus, a service provider might restrict user access to users whose account exhausted the pre-paid money on their account. This has long been a central issue constraining the telecommunications sector, as developers face huge hurdles in making their applications available to end-users. In a more extreme example, the regulate ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Facebook
Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz, and Chris Hughes, its name comes from the face book directories often given to American university students. Membership was initially limited to Harvard students, gradually expanding to other North American universities and, since 2006, anyone over 13 years old. As of July 2022, Facebook claimed 2.93 billion monthly active users, and ranked third worldwide among the most visited websites as of July 2022. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s. Facebook can be accessed from devices with Internet connectivity, such as personal computers, tablets and smartphones. After registering, users can create a profile revealing information about themselves. They can post text, photos and multimedia which are shared w ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Verge
''The Verge'' is an American technology news website operated by Vox Media, publishing news, feature stories, guidebooks, product reviews, consumer electronics news, and podcasts. The website launched on November 1, 2011, and uses Vox Media's proprietary multimedia publishing platform Chorus. In 2014, Nilay Patel was named editor-in-chief and Dieter Bohn executive editor; Helen Havlak was named editorial director in 2017. ''The Verge'' won five Webby Awards for the year 2012 including awards for Best Writing (Editorial), Best Podcast for ''The Vergecast'', Best Visual Design, Best Consumer Electronics Site, and Best Mobile News App. History Origins Between March and April 2011, up to nine of ''Engadget''s writers, editors, and product developers, including editor-in-chief Joshua Topolsky, left AOL, the company behind that website, to start a new gadget site. The other departing editors included managing editor Nilay Patel and staffers Paul Miller, Ross Miller, Joanna ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Comics Reporter
Thomas Martin Spurgeon (December 16, 1968 – November 13, 2019) was an American writer, historian, critic, and editor in the field of comics, notable for his five-year run as editor of ''The Comics Journal'' and his blog ''The Comics Reporter''. Early life Spurgeon was born December 16, 1968, in Muncie, Indiana. He was one of three sons of Sandra "Sunny" McFarren and Wiley W. Spurgeon, Jr. His mother was a senior manager in the health care industry, and his father was the executive editor of the sister newspapers ''The Muncie Star'' and ''The Muncie Evening Press'', a role that included curating the newspapers' comics pages. Spurgeon was his class president in high school, and attended college at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, where he was a lineman on the football team, and graduated with a BA in History and Politics in 1991. He spent the next two years in Evanston, Illinois, studying at the Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary before leaving in ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Modern Tales
Modern Tales was a webcomics subscription service active from 2002 to 2012. Joey Manley was the website's publisher and original editor. The site featured a roster of approximately 30 professional webcomic artists. Shaenon Garrity, one of the site's original artists, took over as the publication's editor in 2006. Other Modern Tales artists included Gene Luen Yang, James Kochalka, Dorothy Gambrell, Harvey Pekar and Will Eisner. In the first four years of Modern Tales' run, its most recent webcomic pages and strips were free, and the site's archives were available by subscription. The website's archives eventually became free to read as well, as online advertisement rates improved. Modern Tales did solid business and Manley spun off a number of similar subscription services, including Serializer.net, Girlamatic, and Kochalka's ''American Elf'', which together became known as the "Modern Tales family". Concept Working in San Francisco for Streaming Media in the early 2000s, Joey ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Shaenon Garrity
Shaenon K. Garrity is a webcomic creator and science-fiction author best known for her webcomics '' Narbonic'' and ''Skin Horse''. She collaborated with various artists to write webcomics for the Modern Tales-family of webcomic subscription services in the early 2000s, and write columns for various comics journals. Since 2003, Garrity has done freelance editing for Viz Media on various manga translations. Early life Garrity was born in Pittsburgh in 1978. She enjoyed drawing and writing at a young age, and she began drawing comics in high school. As a youth correspondent, Garrity drew a comic strip for the kids' section of the ''Cleveland Plain Dealer''. She studied English at Vassar College, where she ran a comic strip in the college newspaper. Once out of college, Garrity worked as a front-desk secretary at Viz Media for three years while simultaneously creating ''Narbonic''. Webcomics Shaenon Garrity conceived her daily webcomic '' Narbonic'' in college, after watching the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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ComicSpace
ComicSpace was an online social network and webcomic hosting service created and managed by Josh Roberts and Joey Manley between 2006 and 2012. The website was inspired by MySpace and was intended as a place where writers, artists, publishers, and fans could interact and share their work. Though ComicSpace was highly successful upon launch, it never fully took off. Roberts and Manley expanded the scope of the project with the help of investment firm E-Line Ventures in 2007, and Manley began merging his existing websites into ComicSpace, starting with Webcomics Nation. By 2012, interest in ComicSpace had waned, and Roberts and Manley abandoned the project. Concept and early development Josh Roberts had created and run the webcomic directory OnlineComics.net since 2001, and began restructuring its codebase in the early summer of 2006. Robert had registered the domain name ComicSpace.com on a whim in 2005. In November 2006, shortly after being introduced to the social media website M ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bleeding Cool
Bleeding Cool is an Internet news site, focusing on comics, television, film, board games, and video games. Owned by Avatar Press, it was launched by Rich Johnston on March 27, 2009. Avatar Press also publishes an associated magazine, ''Bleeding Cool''. Content Among Bleeding Cool's features are a power list detailing the most influential people in the comics industry. In 2012, Bleeding Cool covered sexual harassment accusations leveled against DC Comics editor Eddie Berganza, beginning with an incident at WonderCon in Anaheim, California. Though that initial article was a blind item that did not name the victim or accused, four years later, Bleeding Cool named Berganza when it accused him of sexual harassment, and detailed how he had risen in the ranks at DC even after the accusations became known to his employers. This was followed by a November 2017 BuzzFeed report on accusations leveled against Berganza by several women that led to his termination from DC. In November 20 ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sinfest
''Sinfest'' is a long-running American webcomic by Tatsuya Ishida. Updating daily, ''Sinfest'' started as a black comedy strip in January 2000. It covers such topics as American politics, organized religion, and radical feminism. Overview It follows the characters of Slick, Monique, and pig person Squigley. Supporting characters include religious figures such as God, the Devil, Buddha, and Jesus, as well as personifications of Time and the United States. ''Sinfest'' originated as a four-panel comedy strip relying on dark humor with frequent pop culture references. It evolved into a more serious work covering such issue as American exceptionalism., slut-shaming, misogyny, and street harassment. ''Wired.com'' stated that ''Sinfest'' "takes a very irreverent view of organized religion". Ishida uploads a new black and white strip of ''Sinfest'' every day of the week, and publishes a larger, full-color page every Sunday. Development In an interview with ''Publishers Weekly'', Ish ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |