THOMAS EDISON’S DYING BREATH IS PRESERVED IN A TEST TUBE

The celebrated inventor’s last breath is said to be held in a test tube at the Henry Ford Museum near Detroit, US. The automobile magnate, Henry Ford, was a great friend and admirer of Edison and, when the latter was on his death bed in 1931, Ford persuaded Edison’s son Charles to catch his father’s last breath in a glass of bottle and cork it. Some believe that the bizarre request was due to Ford’s apparent belief that the soul leaves the body in the last breath. The test tube went missing, but was rediscovered and is now on display in Ford’s Michigan-based museum.

WHY DO WE TOSS AND TURN IN OUR SLEEP?

While we dream, the nerves that control our muscles, especially those of the back, neck, arms and legs, are completely disabled. This process is called atonia and has evolved specifically to prevent us from acting out our dreams. The mechanism isn’t completely reliable and sometimes dreams will begin or end outside of the duration of atonia, leaving you thrashing about beneath the sheets. Also, when you aren’t dreaming, you retain muscle tone so you can move to a more comfortable position or steal the bed covers.

First Mover Advantage

The idea of first-mover advantage is similar to the old adage, "the early bird gets the worm." In business, being the first company to sell a new product may provide long-lasting benefits or competitive advantages. Most researchers use the term, "first mover" to refer to the first company to enter a market, not the first company to develop a product (the inventor). First movers are also called market pioneers. The benefits of pioneering may result in market dominance and higher-than-average profitability over time. There are several reasons why these benefits may develop, but research has shown that being the first mover does not always provide advantages. Sometimes there are even first-mover disadvantages, where companies that enter a market later can achieve superior results to those attained by the first-mover firm.

India's Per Capita income per Year

India’s per capita income, $3,400 a year, remains much lower than in developed countries, say the US—$47,400 a year.

(Data as per April 2011)

What does 'cookie cutter' mean?

 "Cookie cutter" has two meanings. First, it is a metal frame in any number of designs used to cut raw cookie dough. Second, it is used to describe items that are exactly the same, such as "cookie-cutter houses," and is typically invoked to suggest that something lacks imagination or uniqueness

Wikipedia : Jimmy Wales

Jimmy Wales founded the world’s largest encyclopaedia which carries articles that can easily be edited by anyone who can access the website. It was launched in 2001 and is currently the most popular general reference work on the Internet

Twitter : Jack Dorsey

Jack Dorsey created Twitter to allow friends and family know what he was doing. The world’s fastest-growing communications medium let users broadcast their thoughts in 140 characters or less and repost someone else’s informative or amusing message to their own Twitter followers by Retweeting. No one thought people would want to follow strangers, or that celebrities would use Twitter to tell fans of their activities, or that businesses would use Twitter to announce discounts or launch new products.

Facebook : Mark Zuckerberg

Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook to help students in universities keep in touch with friends. The “status update” started its rebirth in Facebook, where user after user tell their extended network of trusted friends what they’re doing. They also show off photos, upload videos, chat, make friends, meet old ones, join causes, groups, have fun and throw virtual sheep at one another. The site, which is believed to have 500 million registered users worldwide, has only four remaining countries left to conquer: Russia, Japan, China and Korea, according to Zuckerberg. Facebook is now twice as huge as Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace.

Bit Torrent : Bram Cohen

If Napster started the first generation of file sharing , Bram Cohen changed the face of file sharing by developing BitTorrent which has a massive following of users almost instantly. It uses the Golden Rule principle: the faster you upload, the faster you are allowed to download. BitTorrent breaks up files into many little portions, and as soon as a user has a piece, they instantly start uploading that part to other users. So almost everybody who is sharing a given file is simultaneously uploading and downloading pieces of the same file.

Yahoo : David Filo and Jerry Yang

David Filo and Jerry Yang started Yahoo! as a pastime and evolved into a universal brand that has changed the way people communicate with each other, find and access information and purchase things. The name Yahoo! is an acronym for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle,” but Filo and Yang insist they selected the name because they liked the general definition of a yahoo: “rude, unsophisticated, uncouth.”

Google : Larry Page and Sergey Brin

Larry Page and Sergey Brin changed the way we search and use the Internet. They worked as a seamless team at the top of the search giant. Their company grew rapidly every year since it began. Page and Brin started with their own funds, but the site quickly outgrew their own existing resources. They later obtain private investments through Stanford. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and their company Google, continue to favor engineering over business.

Hotmail : Sabeer Bhatia

Sabeer Bhatia founded Hotmail in which the uppercase letters spelling out HTML-the language used to write the base of a webpage. He got in the news when he sold the free e-mailing service , Hotmail to Microsoft for $400 million. He was awarded the “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Draper Fisher Jurvertson in 1998 and was noted by TIME as one of the “People to Watch” in international business in 2002. His most exciting acquisition of 2009 was Jaxtyr which he believes is set to overtake Skype in terms of free global calling.

The first Wiki : Ward Cunningham

American programmer Ward Cunningham developed the first wiki as a way to let people collaborate, create and edit online pages together. Cunningham named the wiki after the Hawaiian word for “quick.”

First Worm Virus : Robert Tappan Morris

The concept of a worm virus is unique compare to the conventional hacking. Instead of getting into a network themselves, they send a small program they have coded to do the job. From this concept, Robert Tappan Morris created the Morris Worm. It’s one of the very first worm viruses to be sent out over the internet that inadvertently caused many thousands of dollars worth of damage and “loss of productivity” when it was released in the late 80s.

Internet Relay Chat, IRC : Jarkko Oikarinen

Jarkko Oikarinen developed the first real-time online chat tool in Finland known as Internet Relay Chat. IRC’s fame took off in 1991. When Iraq invaded Kuwait and radio and TV signals were shut down, thanks to IRC though up-to-date information was able to be distribute.

Marc Andreessen - Netscape Navigator

Marc Andreessen revolutionized Internet navigation. He came up with first widely used Web browser called Mosaic which was later commercialised as the Netscape Navigator. Marc Andreessen is also co-founder and chairman of Ning and an investor in several startups including Digg, Plazes, and Twitter

The first emoticon : Scott Fahlman

Scott Fahlman is credited with originating the first ASCII-based smiley emoticon, which he thought would help to distinguish between posts that should be taken humorously and those of a more serious nature. Now, everybody uses them in messenger programs, chat rooms, and e-mail.

The first Email spam : Gary Thuerk

Spamming is an old marketing technique. Gary Thuerk, sent his first mass e-mailing to customers over the Arpanet for Digital’s new T-series of VAX systems. What he didn’t realize at the time was that he had sent the world’s first spam.

The birth of eBooks : Michael Hart

Michael Hart started the birth of eBooks and breaks down the bars of ignorance and illiteracy. He created the Project Gutenberg and was considered world’s first electronic library that changed the way we read. The collection includes public domain works and copyrighted works with express permission.

Father of Email : Ray Tomlinson

Programmer Ray Tomlinson, the Father of Email made it possible to exchange messages between machines in diverse locations; between universities, across continents, and oceans. He came up with the “@” symbol format for e-mail addresses. Today, more than a billion people around the world type @ sign every day

Inventor of WWW : Tim Berners-Lee

Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He wrote the first web client and server and designed a way to create links, or hypertext, amid different pieces of online information. He now maintains standards for the web and continues to refine its design as a director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)

Father of the Internet : Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn

The Father of Internet Vint Cerf, together with Bob Kahn created the TCP/IP suite of communication protocols. a language used by computers to talk to each other in a network. Vint Cerf once said that the internet is just a mirror of the population and spam is a side effect of a free service.

You Tube : Brief History

YouTube was founded by Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim, who were all early employees of PayPal. Hurley had studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, while Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

When creating YouTube, the three divided work based on skills: Chad Hurley designed the site’s interface and logo. Steve Chen and Jawed Karim divide technical duties making the site work. They later split management tasks, based on strengths and interests: Chad Hurley became CEO; Steve Chen, Chief Technology Officer.

According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred, while Hurley commented that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party "was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible."

 In November 2006, YouTube, LLC was bought by Google Inc. for $1.65 billion, and now operates as a subsidiary of Google.

Up Selling / Down Selling / Cross Selling

Up Selling
A sales strategy where the seller will provide opportunities to purchase related products or services, often for the sole purpose of making a larger sale. A popular example of upselling happens when a fast-food customer orders a hamburger, and they are asked by their cashier “Do you want fries with that?”, in an attempt to get them to purchase more food. Other examples of products that are upsold are warranties on electronics purchases, and the purchase of a carwash after you purchased gas at the gas station.

Down Selling
A technigue often used to prevent a non-sale situation by suggesting a less expensive or alternative product.

Cross Selling

Cross-selling is a strategy of providing existing customers the opportunity to purchase additional items offered by the seller. Often, cross-selling involves offering the customer items that complement the original purchase in some manner. The idea behind cross-selling is to capture a larger share of the consumer market by meeting more of the needs and wants of each individual customer.

The idea of cross-selling translates well into just about any business situation. In the fast food industry, customers are often invited to try new products or established complementary items. For example, when an individual orders a hamburger at a local fast food restaurant, the server will often ask the customer if her or she would like a side item to go with the hamburger. If the restaurant is offering a new dessert, the server may also suggest to the customer that the new item may be a desirable complement to the hamburger. By employing this simple approach, the server may entice the customer into making another purchase above and beyond the one originally intended.

Baby Boomers / Gen X / Gen Y

Baby Boomer
People born between the end of World War 2 (1945) and the late 1960s, period during which the populations and economies of certain nations (particularly the US) boomed. This term was coined in 1974 when the advertisers recognized the spending power and very different demands of these (then) youngsters.

Gen X
A label attributed to people born during the 1960s and 1970s. Members of Generation X are often described as cynical or disaffected, though this reputation obviously does not apply to all people born during this era. This generation has an increased understanding of technology, having grown up during the age of computers. Sometimes also shortened to Gen X. See also baby boomers, Generation Y.

Gen Y
A label attributed to people born during the 1980s and early 1990s. Members of Generation Y are often referred to as “echo boomers” because they are the children of parents born during the baby boom (“baby boomers”). Because children born during this time period have had constant access to technology (computers, cell phones) in their youth, they have required many employers to update their hiring strategy in order to incorporate updated forms of technology. Also called millenials, echo boomers, internet generation, iGen, net generation.

"Blue" blooded : its meaning and Origin

"Blue" blooded

Blue blood is an English idiom recorded since 1834 for noble birth or descent; it is a translation of the Spanish phrase sangre azul, which described the Spanish royal family and other high nobility who claimed to be of Visigothic descent, in contrast to the Moors. It is likely that the idiom originates from ancient and medieval societies of Europe and distinguishes an upper class (whose superficial veins appeared blue through their untanned skin) from a working class of the time. The latter consisted mainly of agricultural peasants who spent most of their time working outdoors and thus had tanned skin, through which superficial veins appear less prominently.

Robert Lacey explains the genesis of the blue blood concept:
It was the Spaniards who gave the world the notion that an aristocrat's blood is not red but blue. The Spanish nobility started taking shape around the ninth century in classic military fashion, occupying land as warriors on horseback. They were to continue the process for more than five hundred years, clawing back sections of the peninsula from its Moorish occupiers, and a nobleman demonstrated his pedigree by holding up his sword arm to display the filigree of blue-blooded veins beneath his pale skin—proof that his birth had not been contaminated by the dark-skinned enemy.

Portfolio / Program Management

PORTFOLIO :

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A portfolio refers to a collection of projects or programs and other work that are grouped together to

facilitate effective management of that work to meet strategic business objectives. The projects or programs

of the portfolio may not necessarily be interdependent or directly related.

It refers to the centralized management of one or more portfolios, which includes identifying, prioritizing, authorizing, managing, and controlling projects, programs, and other related work, to achieve specific strategic business objectives. Portfolio management focuses on ensuring that projects and programs are reviewed to prioritize resource allocation, and that the management of the portfolio is consistent with and aligned to organizational strategies.

PROGRAM :

=========

A program is defined as a group of related projects managed in a coordinated way to obtain benefits and

control not available from managing them individually. Programs may include elements of related work outside

the scope of the discrete projects in the program. A project may or may not be part of a program but a program will always have projects.

Program management is defined as the centralized coordinated management of a program to achieve

the program’s strategic objectives and benefits. Projects within a program are related through the common

outcome or collective capability. If the relationship between projects is only that of a shared client, seller,

technology, or resource, the effort should be managed as a portfolio of projects rather than as a program.

Living Wills

Every person who wants to make known his desires for medical treatmentwhether he agrees or refuses to undergo suchcan do so by preparing a document called the living will. Also called the advance directive or health directive, this document clearly states an adults wishes concerning life-prolonging medical treatments should he becomes incapacitated to speak for himself.

It is also possible to express your wishes verbally to your doctor, but it would be better if you put them into writing to make things clearer for the doctor and your family. While advance directives are not legally binding, health careprofessionals take the statements into consideration when making a decision about your health and the possible treatments for you. In addition, your family or friends can use your advance directive as a proof of your desires for medicaltreatment.

Euthanasia - Mercy Killing

The term Euthanasia has been derived from Greek word meaning 'Good Death' which refers to the practice of ending a life in a manner which relieves pain and suffering.

Earthquake in Japan on 11 March 2011

As per Italy's National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology said the earth's axis shifted 25 cm as a result of the earthquake, and the U.S. Geological Survey said the main island of Japan had shifted 2.4 metres.

The earthquake was the fifth most powerful to hit the world in the past century.