Issue link: https://read.uberflip.com/i/1146286
About the Author Steve Souders holds down the job of Chief Performance Yahoo! at Yahoo! He's been at Yahoo! since 2000, working on many of the platforms and products within the company. He ran the development team for My Yahoo! before reaching his current position. As Chief Performance Yahoo!, he has developed a set of best practices for making web sites faster. He builds tools for performance analysis and evangelizes these best practices and tools across Yahoo!'s product teams. Prior to Yahoo!, Steve worked at several small to mid-size startups, including two companies he cofounded: Helix Systems and CoolSync. He also worked at General Magic, WhoWhere?, and Lycos. In the early 1980s, Steve caught the Artificial Intelli- gence bug and worked at a few companies doing research on Machine Learning. He received a B.S. in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia and an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University. Steve's interests are varied. He sits on the board of Freehand Systems and Fremont Hills Country Club, and he teaches Sunday School. He's played basketball with several NBA and WNBA players, but has recently retired and switched to Ultimate Frisbee. He was a member of the Universal Studios Internet Task Force, has rebuilt a 90-year-old carriage house, and participated in setting a Guinness world record. He has a wonderful wife and three daughters. Colophon The animal on the cover of High Performance Web Sites is a greyhound. The fastest dog in the world, a greyhound can reach speeds of up to 45 miles per hour, enabled by its streamlined, narrow body; large lungs, heart, and muscles; double suspension gallop (two periods of a gait when all four feet are off the ground); and the flexibility of its spine. Although greyhounds are incredibly fast, they are actually low-energy dogs and lack endurance, requiring less exercise time than most dogs. For this reason, they're often referred to as "45-mile-per-hour couch potatoes" because when not chasing smaller prey (such as rabbits and cats), they are content to spend their days sleeping. Greyhounds are one of the oldest breeds of dogs, appearing in art and literature throughout history. In ancient Egypt, greyhounds were often mummified and buried with their owners, and hieroglyphics from 4000 B.C.E. show a dog closely resem- bling the modern greyhound. In Greek and Roman mythology, greyhounds were often depicted with gods and goddesses. Greyhounds appeared in the writings of Homer, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, and they are the only type of dog mentioned in the Bible. They've long been appreciated for their intelligence, graceful form, athleticism, and loyalty.