Bill Gates' House

A couple weeks ago in class, we talked about Bill Gates' house. I personally, find that type of technology very interesting. The thing that I find most interesting is the way that whenever you go from room to room, it senses you. And with that, it will change the room temperature to whatever your personal preference is. Also, it will play what type of music you enjoy best, and the lighting that you enjoy. This type of technology is called ubiquitous computing, which means that it follows you where ever you go. To me, learning about this type of computing was very interesting.

Ubiquitous computing can be used in some very interesting ways. One way that I found very interesting was The Coffee Robot. This type of ubiquitous computing made a robot out of Lego's and it monitors the coffee pot, like the last time made, the temperature, etc. This, to me, shows that anything and everything can be made or used with ubiquitous computing.

With ubiquitous computing being used not only to make coffee pot robots, but used in some one's house, I think we are looking at the future. I could just imagine when the rooms in every one's house, no matter how rich, regulate themselves like the one's in Bill Gates'. This is just one example how far human innovation has come. We started off with simple basic computers, that at first, were barely portable, and now, computers are following us around. What a world we live in.

Microsoft

Microsoft is one of the largest and most diverse industries in the world. They provide a broad range of goods and services withing the computer technology industry. Founded by William Henry Gates (Bill Gates) in 1975, it has grown into a premier company. Listed as the 49th largest public company in the world by Forbes.com, it has made currently made Mr. Gates the worlds 2nd richest man(although 60% of his assets are now outside of Microsoft.). Microsoft has a spectacular balance sheet, with 77 billion in assets(2009) and about 27 billion in liabilities(2009), this gives them a stockholders equity of almost 40 billion, and an estimated profit of close to 18 billion for the fiscal year.


As stated earlier Microsoft was founded in 1975 by Bill Gates, in order to sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 1800, one of the first microcomputers ever created. Gates struck a deal with Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems(MITS), to implement the BASIC programming language for the Altair. This move helped launch the Altair Basic, which marked the beginning of Gates career. He moved to New Mexico where MITS was located and founded Microsoft. After initial success Gates moved the company to the Seattle area of Washington State, and in 1980 hired Steve Balmer, his 24th employee and first business manager, who would succeed Gates as CEO of Microsoft in 2000. Together the two men have worked together to become two of the most successful men on the planet.


Over the last 30 years the company has seen tremendous, and somewhat unprecedented success. Although it has not come without criticism as many lawsuits and claims have come against the software giant for everything from monopolistic practices to environmentally damaging policies. The company currently has a hand in almost every aspect of the computer technology industry. Some of its most popular products/services include; MSN(web portal), the Microsoft Office Suite, Windows Live, Windows Vista, the Zune, MSNBC, the Xbox/Xbox 360, and the newly developed Windows 7. These are just a few of the examples of currently used products and services, as they have designed hundreds of products over their 35 year history. With this said the future of Microsoft seems bright, with no signs of the industry slowing down Microsoft is firmly in position to continue dominance of all things technological.

Blog #1

Hello all. My name is Evan Hammontree. I am a junior here at EMU, and I work for dining services in the Student Center so some you may recognize me from there. I am currently pursuing an Accounting degree. After changing my major three times in as many years, I finally settled on accounting after realizing how much I like to count money, whether it belongs to me or someone else. After graduating with my MSA I plan to pass the CPA exam and begin to establish my career. Once I have a few years of experience, I will return to school for an MBA degree. My ultimate goal is for my business card to say, "Evan C. Hammontree, C.F.O." The company name at the top of the card is yet unknown.

With aspirations like these, I am immediately drawn to the success stories of the world's most powerful people. So when our class discussion briefly covered Bill Gates, I decided to investigate his background and discover how he became the richest man in the world. It turns out, as one might guess, Gates is an extremely smart man. He scored a 1590 on his SAT, and has an approximate IQ of 170. Since I don't have that level of intelligence, I can only hope to use his business tactics to achieve success of my own. Bill has always been very blunt and outspoken, so board meetings with him are said to be tense, but his manner ensures that people put the utmost care and effort into their projects. Apparently, Bill knows what he wants and doesn't settle for anything less, which I think is great. If someone has a distinct vision as he does, it is important to do everything possible to produce that vision as accurately as possible.

Now it is important to remember that Microsoft wasn't created over night. Gates spent years working with computers and programming to gain the experience necessary to create such a company. I wonder what he could've accomplished had he put his efforts into a different field of study.(I like to imagine his parents as farmers and picture the agriculture revolutions that would've occurred in the last thirty years.) Bill's story is also a great reminder for everyone to jump on any opportunity that they feel passionate about. He had the chance to leave his conventional upbringing to pioneer a new technology. I'm not condoning dropping out of school, but I think it's important that we pay attention to the paths are available for us to take. That way, one of us may pioneer the next big thing.