It’s interesting to think about what a million Facebook fans might really mean to a brand, of course, that will change from brand to brand in itself, but it’s great to see the “Million Fan Thankyou” trend emerging of late, and to give you an example, here are two videos. The first from Heineken, who sent out a hug team in Amsterdam the day they reached the big one million. Meanwhile, Porsche created a specific car covered in everyone of the million Facebook Fans…
Sunday, February 27, 2011
1 Million Facebook Likes: The Celebrations
It’s interesting to think about what a million Facebook fans might really mean to a brand, of course, that will change from brand to brand in itself, but it’s great to see the “Million Fan Thankyou” trend emerging of late, and to give you an example, here are two videos. The first from Heineken, who sent out a hug team in Amsterdam the day they reached the big one million. Meanwhile, Porsche created a specific car covered in everyone of the million Facebook Fans…
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Bar Inside a Tree in Africa
A bar inside the trunk of a Baobab tree has tourists flocking from far and wide just to drink a cold brew in the amazing tavern. It was fashioned inside a massive 72 foot (22 meters) high tree in a garden in Limpopo, South Africa, for thirsty locals.
The amazing Big Baobab Pub, complete with a phone and dartboard, hollowed into a tree.
Grown in the grounds of Sunland Farm, the tree trunk is so wide it takes 40 adults with outstretched arms to encircle its 155 foot (48 meters) circumference. The trunk is hollow, but its walls are still up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) thick.
The tree has its own cellar, with natural ventilation to keep the beer cold.
Carbon-dating has determined the ancient tree to be about 6,000 years old. “This tree is likely to be older than the Giza Pyramids of Egypt.” said Heather van Heerden, owner of Sunland Farm.
“It is phenomenal to have such a magnificent tree in your back garden. It is possibly the biggest living thing on earth.” she adds.
More than 7,000 visitors come from all over the world to see the grandiose Baobab every year and have a drink in its pub, which has 13 foot (4 meter) high ceilings and comfortably seats up to 15 people.
“One year we had a party and squashed 54 people inside, but I wouldn’t recommend that.” said Mrs. van Heerden.
She and her husband Doug came up with the brainchild to set a bar up inside when they found a natural hollow in the Baobabb shortly after they bought the farm in the late 1980’s.
“When Baobabs are more than 1,000 years old, they hollow naturally.” said Mrs. van Heerden.
The pub has surprisingly plenty of space for customers to sit.
While clearing out the hollow centre of the tree trunk, the van Heerdens found historical evidence of Bushmen — indigenous people of the Kalahari desert — who may have once lived in the tree, and artifacts belonging to the Voortrekkers, the Dutch pioneers who travelled through South Africa in the mid-1800’s.
“We found the remains of a Bushmen bed made from rocks, possibly in the 1700’s.” says van Heerden. “We could also gather that a Voortrekker once lived here who repaired ox wagons for the Great Trek because we found tools and wagon pieces.”
The Bushmen of the Kalahari have long had a unique relationship with the peculiar looking tree, which stands leafless for the better part of the year, with its branches resembling a mass of roots pointing upwards to the sky.
The amazing Big Baobab Pub, complete with a phone and dartboard, hollowed into a tree.
Grown in the grounds of Sunland Farm, the tree trunk is so wide it takes 40 adults with outstretched arms to encircle its 155 foot (48 meters) circumference. The trunk is hollow, but its walls are still up to 6.5 feet (2 meters) thick.
The tree has its own cellar, with natural ventilation to keep the beer cold.
Carbon-dating has determined the ancient tree to be about 6,000 years old. “This tree is likely to be older than the Giza Pyramids of Egypt.” said Heather van Heerden, owner of Sunland Farm.
“It is phenomenal to have such a magnificent tree in your back garden. It is possibly the biggest living thing on earth.” she adds.
More than 7,000 visitors come from all over the world to see the grandiose Baobab every year and have a drink in its pub, which has 13 foot (4 meter) high ceilings and comfortably seats up to 15 people.
“One year we had a party and squashed 54 people inside, but I wouldn’t recommend that.” said Mrs. van Heerden.
She and her husband Doug came up with the brainchild to set a bar up inside when they found a natural hollow in the Baobabb shortly after they bought the farm in the late 1980’s.
“When Baobabs are more than 1,000 years old, they hollow naturally.” said Mrs. van Heerden.
The pub has surprisingly plenty of space for customers to sit.
While clearing out the hollow centre of the tree trunk, the van Heerdens found historical evidence of Bushmen — indigenous people of the Kalahari desert — who may have once lived in the tree, and artifacts belonging to the Voortrekkers, the Dutch pioneers who travelled through South Africa in the mid-1800’s.
“We found the remains of a Bushmen bed made from rocks, possibly in the 1700’s.” says van Heerden. “We could also gather that a Voortrekker once lived here who repaired ox wagons for the Great Trek because we found tools and wagon pieces.”
The Bushmen of the Kalahari have long had a unique relationship with the peculiar looking tree, which stands leafless for the better part of the year, with its branches resembling a mass of roots pointing upwards to the sky.
Thursday, January 6, 2011
How Companies Got their Name
Mercedes:
This was actually financier's daughter's name
Adobe:
This came from the name of the riverAdobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock
Apple Computers:
It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobbs. He was three months late for filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock that day
CISCO:
It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San Francisco .
Compaq:
This name was formed by using COMp, for computer and PAQ to denote a small integral object
Corel:
The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland Research Laboratory.
Google:
The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol',a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Pagepresented their project to an angel investor; they received a cheque made out to 'Google'.
Hotmail:
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters"html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing
Hewlett Packard :
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
Intel:
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ' Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.
Lotus (Notes) :
Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana' . Kapor used to be a teacher of transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Microsoft:
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.
Motorola:
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.
Sony:
It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.
SUN:
Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym forStanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer;Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.
Apache:
It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon.. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server --thus, the name Apache Jakarta (project from Apache):A project constituted by SUN and Apache to create a web server handling servlets and JSPs. Jakarta was name of the conference room at SUN where most of the meetings between SUN and Apache took place.
C:
Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it 'New B'.He later called it C. Earlier B was created by Ken Thompson as a revision of the Bon programming language (named after his wife Bonnie).
C++:
Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language 'C with Classes' and then 'newC'. Because of which the original C began to be called 'old C' which was considered insulting to the C community. At this time Rick Mascittisuggested the name C++ as a successor to C.
Java:
Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree that stood outside his window, the programming team had to look for a substitute as there was no other language with the same name. Java was selected from a list of suggestions. It came from the name of the coffee that the programmers drank.
LG:
Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.
Linux:
Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which here placed by his OS. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). He thought the name to be too egotistical and planned to name it Freax(free+ freak + x).His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory called linux on his FTP server, as he did not like the name Freax.(Linus' parents named him after two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling) .
Mozilla:
When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace Mosaic (also developed by him), it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla) .The marketing guys didn't like the name however and it was re-christened Netscape Navigator.
Red Hat:
Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!
SAP:
"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applicatio ns/Projects' group of IBM.
SCO (UNIX):
From Santa Cruz Operation. The company's office was in Santa Cruz .
UNIX:
When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and Computing System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project, KenThompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version of the OS.They needed the OS to run the game Space War which was compiled underMULTICS. It was called UNICS - UNIplexed operating and Computing System by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.
Xerox:
The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say `dry' (asit was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying). The Greek root `xer' means dry.
Yahoo!:
The word was invented by Jonathan Swiftand used in his book 'Gulliver's Travels' . It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang andDavid Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.
3M:
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company started off by mining the material corundum used to make sandpaper.
This was actually financier's daughter's name
Adobe:
This came from the name of the riverAdobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock
Apple Computers:
It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobbs. He was three months late for filing a name for the business, and he threatened to call his company Apple Computers if the other colleagues didn't suggest a better name by 5 o'clock that day
CISCO:
It is not an acronym as popularly believed. It is short for San Francisco .
Compaq:
This name was formed by using COMp, for computer and PAQ to denote a small integral object
Corel:
The name was derived from the founder's name Dr. Michael Cowpland. It stands for COwpland Research Laboratory.
Google:
The name started as a joke boasting about the amount of information the search-engine would be able to search. It was originally named 'Googol',a word for the number represented by 1 followed by 100 zeros. After founders - Stanford graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Pagepresented their project to an angel investor; they received a cheque made out to 'Google'.
Hotmail:
Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service, he tried all kinds of names ending in 'mail' and finally settled for hotmail as it included the letters"html" - the programming language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective uppercasing
Hewlett Packard :
Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard tossed a coin to decide whether the company they founded would be called Hewlett-Packard or Packard-Hewlett.
Intel:
Bob Noyce and Gordon Moore wanted to name their new company ' Moore Noyce' but that was already trademarked by a hotel chain so they had to settle for an acronym of INTegrated ELectronics.
Lotus (Notes) :
Mitch Kapor got the name for his company from 'The Lotus Position' or 'Padmasana' . Kapor used to be a teacher of transcendental Meditation of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Microsoft:
Coined by Bill Gates to represent the company that was devoted to MICROcomputer SOFTware. Originally christened Micro-Soft, the '-' was removed later on.
Motorola:
Founder Paul Galvin came up with this name when his company started manufacturing radios for cars. The popular radio company at the time was called Victrola.
Sony:
It originated from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster.
SUN:
Founded by 4 Stanford University buddies, SUN is the acronym forStanford University Network. Andreas Bechtolsheim built a microcomputer;Vinod Khosla recruited him and Scott McNealy to manufacture computers based on it, and Bill Joy to develop a UNIX-based OS for the computer.
Apache:
It got its name because its founders got started by applying patches to code written for NCSA's httpd daemon.. The result was 'A PAtCHy' server --thus, the name Apache Jakarta (project from Apache):A project constituted by SUN and Apache to create a web server handling servlets and JSPs. Jakarta was name of the conference room at SUN where most of the meetings between SUN and Apache took place.
C:
Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it 'New B'.He later called it C. Earlier B was created by Ken Thompson as a revision of the Bon programming language (named after his wife Bonnie).
C++:
Bjarne Stroustrup called his new language 'C with Classes' and then 'newC'. Because of which the original C began to be called 'old C' which was considered insulting to the C community. At this time Rick Mascittisuggested the name C++ as a successor to C.
Java:
Originally called Oak by creator James Gosling, from the tree that stood outside his window, the programming team had to look for a substitute as there was no other language with the same name. Java was selected from a list of suggestions. It came from the name of the coffee that the programmers drank.
LG:
Combination of two popular Korean brands Lucky and Goldstar.
Linux:
Linus Torvalds originally used the Minix OS on his system which here placed by his OS. Hence the working name was Linux (Linus' Minix). He thought the name to be too egotistical and planned to name it Freax(free+ freak + x).His friend Ari Lemmke encouraged Linus to upload it to a network so it could be easily downloaded. Ari gave Linus a directory called linux on his FTP server, as he did not like the name Freax.(Linus' parents named him after two-time Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling) .
Mozilla:
When Marc Andreesen, founder of Netscape, created a browser to replace Mosaic (also developed by him), it was named Mozilla (Mosaic-Killer, Godzilla) .The marketing guys didn't like the name however and it was re-christened Netscape Navigator.
Red Hat:
Company founder Marc Ewing was given the Cornell lacrosse team cap (with red and white stripes) while at college by his grandfather. He lost it and had to search for it desperately. The manual of the beta version of Red Hat Linux had an appeal to readers to return his Red Hat if found by anyone!
SAP:
"Systems, Applications, Products in Data Processing", formed by 4 ex-IBM employees who used to work in the 'Systems/Applicatio ns/Projects' group of IBM.
SCO (UNIX):
From Santa Cruz Operation. The company's office was in Santa Cruz .
UNIX:
When Bell Labs pulled out of MULTICS (MULTiplexed Information and Computing System), which was originally a joint Bell/GE/MIT project, KenThompson and Dennis Ritchie of Bell Labs wrote a simpler version of the OS.They needed the OS to run the game Space War which was compiled underMULTICS. It was called UNICS - UNIplexed operating and Computing System by Brian Kernighan. It was later shortened to UNIX.
Xerox:
The inventor, Chestor Carlson, named his product trying to say `dry' (asit was dry copying, markedly different from the then prevailing wet copying). The Greek root `xer' means dry.
Yahoo!:
The word was invented by Jonathan Swiftand used in his book 'Gulliver's Travels' . It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang andDavid Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.
3M:
Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company started off by mining the material corundum used to make sandpaper.
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