Ze Frank (born Hosea Frank on March 31, 1972, first name IPA: ['ze], rhymes with "say") is an online performance artist, humorist and public speaker based in Brooklyn, New York. Born to German-American parents, Ze was raised in Upstate New York and later graduated from Brown University in 1995 with a degree in neuroscience. Beginning at Brown and until their dissolution in 1998, he played guitar and sang lead vocals for a funk/jam band called Dowdy Smack. In 2001, Ze created an online birthday invitation and sent it to seventeen of his closest friends. Forwarded wildly, the invitation soon generated millions of hits and over 100 gigabytes of daily web traffic to Ze's personal Web site zefrank.com. The site grew to include interactive group projects, short films, animations, and video games, many Flash-based, including children's educational videos featuring handy tips such as "Don't vacuum your face". Ze won a 2002 Webby Award for Best Personal Website and was featured in Time Magazine's "50 Coolest Websites" in 2005. He was a featured speaker at the TED Conference in 2004 and 2005. On March 17, 2006, Ze began a daily webcast-style program called "the show", combining humor and news commentary in a fast-paced, tightly-edited format, and his group of "Sports Racers" make him arguably one of the foremost artists in the budding videoblog era. On June 9, 2006, Ze Frank aired a show created entirely by viewers using the Fabuloso Friday Wiki, letting everyone see just what happens when you allow users to generate collaborative web content. Presently he serves as an adjunct professor at Parsons School of Design and SUNY Purchase. Ze Frank is also very fond of duckies.