- published: 29 Aug 2009
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Firefly.com (1995–1999) was a community website featuring collaborative filtering.
The Firefly website was created by Firefly Network, Inc.(originally known as Agents Inc.) The company was founded in March 1995 by a group of engineers from MIT Media Lab and some business people from Harvard Business School, including Pattie Maes (Media Lab professor), Upendra Shardanand, Nick Grouf, Max Metral, David Waxman and Yezdi Lashkari. At the Media Lab, under the supervision of Maes, some of the engineers built a music recommendation system called HOMR (Helpful Online Music Recommendation Service; preceded by RINGO, an email-based system) which used collaborative filtering to help navigate the music domain to find other artists and albums that a user might like. Firefly's core technology was based on the work done on HOMR.
The Firefly website was launched in October 1995. It went through several iterations but remained a community throughout. It was initially created as a community for users to navigate and discover new musical artists and albums. Later it was changed to allow users to discover movies, websites, and communities as well.
The Lampyridae are a family of insects in the beetle order Coleoptera. They are winged beetles, and commonly called fireflies or lightning bugs for their conspicuous use of bioluminescence during twilight to attract mates or prey. Fireflies produce a "cold light", with no infrared or ultraviolet frequencies. This chemically produced light from the lower abdomen may be yellow, green, or pale red, with wavelengths from 510 to 670 nanometers.
About 2,000 species of fireflies are found in temperate and tropical environments. Many are in marshes or in wet, wooded areas where their larvae have abundant sources of food. Their larvae emit light and often are called "glowworms", in particular, in Eurasia. In the Americas, "glow worm" also refers to the related Phengodidae. In many species, both male and female fireflies have the ability to fly, but in some species, the females are flightless.
Fireflies tend to be brown and soft-bodied, often with the elytra, or front wings, more leathery than those of other beetles. Although the females of some species are similar in appearance to males, larviform females are found in many other firefly species. These females can often be distinguished from the larvae only because they have compound eyes. The most commonly known fireflies are nocturnal, although there are numerous species that are diurnal. Most diurnal species are not luminescent; however, some species that remain in shadowy areas may produce light.
Shawn Michael McDonald (born September 4, 1977) is a Contemporary Christian music (CCM) singer, songwriter and guitarist.
As a child, McDonald lived with his grandparents because his parents could not take care of him. Not really understanding the situation, he became rebellious. He would sneak out of the house, drink alcohol, get intoxicated, and later use drugs. He ended up living on the streets where he grew up and sold drugs for money.
After getting in trouble with the law, McDonald wanted to get his life in order and a boy named Chris and his grandmother started inviting him to church. He did not attend church, but one day as he was sitting, he picked up a Bible that his grandmother had given him and read a scripture which talked about cleaning out the demons in your house. Relating "demons" to his drugs, he decided to get rid of all his drugs. A couple days later, the police came to his home with a search warrant but did not find anything. This caused him to really get his life back on track and he asked Chris to bring him to church.