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Priit Kasesalu (born 10 April 1972) [1] is an Estonian programmer and software developer best known for his participation in the development of Kazaa, Skype and, most recently, Joost. [2] He currently works for Ambient Sound Investments and lives in Tallinn, Estonia. [3]
He started off as programmer for a local hardware manufacturer in 1986 with his class-mate Jaan Tallinn. The company was assembling 8-bit computers for use in public schools.
In 1992 he studied computer science at Tallinn Technical University. [3]
On 7 June 1993, he and Jaan officially registered BlueMoon as a privately held Estonian software company. [4]
In 1989 he created the first Estonian commercial computer game with Ahti Heinla and Jaan Tallinn, Kosmonaut . [2] [3] This was later remade as SkyRoads and has been further remade/adapted by other companies numerous times.
In 2003 he helped develop Skype with Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström, as well as Heinla and Tallinn. These five also developed Kazaa and Joost.
He has made various contributions to SubSpace under the username PriitK, particularly the Continuum client.
The following is a list of projects participated in by Priit Kasesalu.
Kazaa Media Desktop. was a peer-to-peer file sharing application using the FastTrack protocol licensed by Joltid Ltd. and operated as Kazaa by Sharman Networks. Kazaa was subsequently under license as a legal music subscription service by Atrinsic, Inc., which lasted until August 2012.
Tallinn is the capital and most populous city of Estonia. Situated on a bay in north Estonia, on the shore of the Gulf of Finland of the Baltic Sea, Tallinn has a population of about 454,000 and administratively lies in the Harju maakond (county). Tallinn is the main governmental, financial, industrial, and cultural centre of Estonia. It is located 187 km (116 mi) northwest of the country's second largest city, Tartu; however, only 80 km (50 mi) south of Helsinki, Finland, also 320 km (200 mi) west of Saint Petersburg, Russia, 300 km (190 mi) north of Riga, Latvia, and 380 km (240 mi) east of Stockholm, Sweden. From the 13th century until the first half of the 20th century, Tallinn was known in most of the world by variants of its other historical name Reval.
FastTrack is a peer-to-peer (P2P) protocol that was used by the Kazaa, Grokster, iMesh and Morpheus file sharing programs. FastTrack was the most popular file sharing network in 2003, and used mainly for the exchange of music mp3 files. The network had approximately 2.4 million concurrent users in 2003. It is estimated that the total number of users was greater than that of Napster at its peak.
Niklas Zennström is a Swedish entrepreneur and technology investor. Zennström is also the co-founder of the charity organization Zennström Philanthropies.
Skype is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, debit-based calls to landline and mobile telephones, and other features. Skype is available on various desktop, mobile, and video game console platforms.
Janus Friis is a Danish entrepreneur best known for co-founding the file-sharing application Kazaa, and the peer-to-peer telephony application Skype. In September 2005, he and his business partner Niklas Zennström sold Skype to eBay for $2.6B. Friis has maintained ownership interest in Skype through Silver Lake Partners, which sold Skype to Microsoft for $8.5 billion, in May 2011.
Established in 1918, Tallinn University of Technology is the only technical university in Estonia. TalTech, in the capital city of Tallinn, is a university for engineering, business, public administration and maritime affairs. TalTech has colleges in Tartu and Kohtla-Järve. Despite the similar names, Tallinn University and Tallinn University of Technology are separate institutions.
Jaan Tallinn is an Estonian billionaire computer programmer and investor known for his participation in the development of Skype and file-sharing application FastTrack/Kazaa.
Skype Technologies S.A.R.L is a telecommunications company headquartered in Luxembourg City, Luxembourg, whose chief business is the manufacturing and marketing of the video chat and instant messaging computer software program Skype, and various Internet telephony services associated with it. Microsoft purchased the company in 2011, and it has since then operated as their wholly owned subsidiary; as of 2016, it is operating as part of Microsoft's Office Product Group. The company is a Société à responsabilité limitée, or SARL, equivalent to an American limited liability company.
Joost was an Internet TV service, created by Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis. During 2007–2008 Joost used peer-to-peer TV (P2PTV) technology to distribute content to their Mozilla-based desktop player; in late 2008 this was migrated to use a Flash-based Web player instead.
Estonia participated in the Eurovision Song Contest 2002 with the song "Runaway" written by Pearu Paulus, Ilmar Laisaar, Alar Kotkas and Jana Hallas. The song was performed by Sahlene. In addition to participating in the contest, the Estonian broadcaster Eesti Televisioon (ETV) also hosted the Eurovision Song Contest after winning the competition in 2001 with the song "Everybody" performed by Tanel Padar, Dave Benton and 2XL. ETV organised the national final Eurolaul 2002 in order to select the Estonian entry for the 2002 contest in Tallinn. Ten songs competed in the national final and "Runaway" performed by Sahlene was selected as the winner by an international jury panel.
Peeter Vähi is a classical Estonian composer. Vähi's work Relaxatio, written in 1992 and inspired by Asian intonal elements of Tibetan canticles, is a noted electronic work of psychotherapeutic music.
The following is an alphabetical list of articles related to the Republic of Estonia.
Ahti Heinla is an Estonian computer programmer and businessman. He is one of the developers of Skype.
Lingvist is an adaptive language-learning platform, available in an international public free beta version since 2014.
Weekdone is an internal communication service for teams founded in 2012 that is based in Tartu, Estonia. It enables the OKR goal-setting and Progress, plans, problems weekly reporting methodologies.
Starship Technologies is an Estonian company developing autonomous delivery vehicles. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with engineering operations in Tallinn, Estonia, and Helsinki, Finland. Starship also has offices in London, UK, Germany, Washington, DC, US, and Mountain View, California, US.
Anu Lamp is an Estonian stage, film, television and voice actress, stage director, translator and instructor.
Juss Haasma is an Estonian stage, film and television actor and musician.
Toivo Annus was an Estonian engineer and investor. He was one of the founders of Skype, an early internet telecommunications application, which became the first unicorn business founded in Estonia, and was sold to eBay for $2.6bn in September 2005. In 2010, Annus' contribution was recognised with the award of the Order of the White Star, 5th Class, by the president of Estonia.