You know what? There's actually a blogger who shares same interest with me. Very interesting indeed.
Universal Facts (http://www.universalfacts.blogspot.com)
But instead of posting all about facts, I prefer to post wider range of interesting topics. Just wait for more ;)
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Company Name Etymologies
I'm sure you all know that famous brands and company names have stories behind it. Some never even cross our mind.
For a full list, visit :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_name_etymologies
I took some that I think pretty interesting :
20th Century Fox — film studio formed in 1935 following the merger of William Fox's Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures.
7-Eleven — this chain of convenience stores started in 1927 as U-Tote'm (so called because customers "toted" away their purchases). In 1946, U-Tote'm became 7-Eleven to reflect the stores' new, extended hours — 7am until 11pm, seven days a week. (The store hours are now different around the world. For example, the 7-Eleven stores in the USA, Hong Kong, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey and Australia operate 24 hours a day.)
A&W — In 1919, Roy Allen set up a roadside stand to offer a new drink, root beer. He went into partnership with Frank Wright, and in 1922, they combined their initials to name the beverage A&W Root Beer.
Adidas — from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.
Adobe — from the name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the houses of founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke.
Alfa Romeo — the company was originally known as ALFA, an acronym for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili. When Nicola Romeo bought ALFA in 1915, his surname was appended.
Amazon.com — founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company Amazon (from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online (as opposed to a bricks and mortar) bookstore. (Alternative: Amazon was chosen to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo, which listed entries alphabetically.)
Apple — for the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. Apple wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time — which had names such as IBM, DEC, Cincom and Tesseract — in order to get people to use them at home. They looked for a name that supported a brand positioning strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different. Note: Apple had to get approval from the Beatle's Apple Corps to use the name 'Apple' and paid a one-time royalty of $100,000 to McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., a maker of high-end audio equipment, to use the derivative name 'Macintosh' ('Mac').
ASICS — an acronym for Anima Sana In Corpore Sano, which, translated from Latin, means "Healthy soul in a healthy body". Originally the citation is mens sana in corpore sano, but MSICS does not sound as good. (This is a shoe brand, just in case you don't know)
Aston Martin — from the "Aston Hill" races (near Aston Clinton) where the company was founded, and the surname of Lionel Martin, the company's founder.
Audi — Latin translation of the German name 'Horch'. The founder August Horch left the company after five years, but still wanted to manufacture cars. Since the original 'Horch' company was still there, he called his new company Audi, the Latin form of his last name. In English it is: "hark!".
BenQ — Bringing Enjoyment and Quality to life
Bridgestone — named after founder Shojiro Ishibashi. The surname Ishibashi (石橋) means "stone bridge", or "bridge of stone".
Carrefour — chain of supermarkets and hypermarkets which started with a store near a crossroads (carrefour in French) in Annecy. (That's also why they make Carrefour stores near crossroads)
Casio — from the name of its founder, Kashio Tadao, who had set up the company Kashio Seisakujo as a subcontractor factory.
Coca-Cola — derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' to make the name look better.
Daewoo — company founder Kim Woo Chong called it Daewoo which means "Great House" or "Great Universe" in Korean.
Daihatsu — from Japanese Kanji, where Dai means "first" and Hatsu means "car".
DHL — named after its founders, Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, and Robert Lynn.
Eidos — named from a Greek word meaning "species". The company became well known for its Tomb Raider series of games.
Epson — Epson Seiko Corporation, the Japanese printer and peripheral manufacturer, was named from "Son of Electronic Printer"
Hitachi — old place name, literally "sunrise"
IKEA — A composite of the first letters in the Swedish founder Ingvar Kamprad's name in addition to the first letters of the names of the property and the village in which he grew up: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.
Kia Motors — The name "Kia" (起亞) roughly translates as "Rising from Asia" in Hanja.
LEGO — combination of the Danish "leg godt", which means to "play well." Lego also means "I put together" in Latin, but LEGO Group claims this is only a coincidence and the etymology of the word is entirely Danish. Years before the little plastic brick was invented, LEGO manufactured wooden toys.
Mazda Motor Corporation — the company was founded as Toyo Kogyo, started manufacturing Mazda brand cars in 1931, and changed its name to Mazda in 1984. The cars were named after Ahura Mazda, the chief deity of the Zoroastrians. It is also said that Mazda coincides with the anglicized pronunciation of the founder's name, Jujiro Matsuda.
Nero — Nero Burning ROM named after Nero burning Rome.
Nintendo — Nintendo is composed of three Japanese Kanji characters, Nin-ten-do. The first two can be translated to "Heaven blesses hard work"; do is a common ending for any store.
Nike — named for the Greek goddess of victory.
Nikon — the original name was Nippon Kogaku, meaning "Japanese Optical".
Nissan — the company was earlier known by the name Nippon Sangyo which means "Japanese industry".
Nokia — started as a wood-pulp mill, the company expanded into producing rubber products in the Finnish city of Nokia. The company later adopted the city's name.
Pepsi — named from the digestive enzyme pepsin.
Samsung — meaning three stars in Korean.
SEGA — Service Games of Japan was founded by Marty Bromley (an American) to import pinball games to Japan for use on American military bases.
Seiko — Seiko, now referred to in katakana as セイコー("seiko"), was originally named in kanji as 精工(also "seiko"). The two characters were taken from the phrase 「精巧で精密な時計の生産に成功する工場」, the company's vision which roughly translates to "a factory（工場:kojyo）that successfully（成功:seiko）produces（生産:seisan）exquisit（精巧:seiko）and precise（精密:seimitsu）watches." — According to Seiko's official company history, titled A Journey In Time: The Remarkable Story of Seiko (2003), Seiko is a Japanese word for "exquisite" or "minute" (both spelled 精巧), as well as a word for "success" (spelled 成功).
Shell — Royal Dutch/Shell was established in 1907, when the Royal Dutch Petrol Society Plc. and the Shell Transport and Trading Company Ltd. merged their operations. The Shell Transport and Trading Company Ltd had been established at the end of the 19th century by commercial firm Samuel & Co (founded in 1830). Samuel & Co were already importing Japanese shells when they set up an oil company, so the oil company was named after the shells.
Sony — from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang word used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster, "since we were sonny boys working in sound and vision", said Akio Morita. The company was founded as Tokyo Tsoshiu Kogyo KK (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation) in 1946, and changed its name to Sony in 1958. Sony was chosen as it could be pronounced easily in many languages.
Subaru — from the Japanese name for the constellation known to Westerners as Pleiades or the Seven Sisters. Subaru was formed from a merger of seven other companies, and the constellation is featured on the company's logo.
Verizon — A portmanteau of veritas (Latin for truth) and horizon.
Volvo — from the Latin word volvo, which means "I roll". It was originally a name for a ball bearing being developed by SKF.
Yahoo! — a backronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. The word Yahoo was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and barely human. Yahoo! founders David Filo and Jerry Yang jokingly considered themselves yahoos. It's also an interjection sometimes associated with United States Southerners' and Westerners' expression of joy, as alluded to in Yahoo.com commercials that ends with someone singing the word "yahoo".
For a full list, visit :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_company_name_etymologies
I took some that I think pretty interesting :
20th Century Fox — film studio formed in 1935 following the merger of William Fox's Fox Film Corporation and Twentieth Century Pictures.
7-Eleven — this chain of convenience stores started in 1927 as U-Tote'm (so called because customers "toted" away their purchases). In 1946, U-Tote'm became 7-Eleven to reflect the stores' new, extended hours — 7am until 11pm, seven days a week. (The store hours are now different around the world. For example, the 7-Eleven stores in the USA, Hong Kong, Canada, Norway, Denmark, Malaysia, Singapore, Turkey and Australia operate 24 hours a day.)
A&W — In 1919, Roy Allen set up a roadside stand to offer a new drink, root beer. He went into partnership with Frank Wright, and in 1922, they combined their initials to name the beverage A&W Root Beer.
Adidas — from the name of the founder Adolf (Adi) Dassler.
Adobe — from the name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the houses of founders John Warnock and Chuck Geschke.
Alfa Romeo — the company was originally known as ALFA, an acronym for Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili. When Nicola Romeo bought ALFA in 1915, his surname was appended.
Amazon.com — founder Jeff Bezos renamed the company Amazon (from the earlier name of Cadabra.com) after the world's most voluminous river, the Amazon. He saw the potential for a larger volume of sales in an online (as opposed to a bricks and mortar) bookstore. (Alternative: Amazon was chosen to cash in on the popularity of Yahoo, which listed entries alphabetically.)
Apple — for the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. Apple wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time — which had names such as IBM, DEC, Cincom and Tesseract — in order to get people to use them at home. They looked for a name that supported a brand positioning strategy that was to be perceived as simple, warm, human, approachable and different. Note: Apple had to get approval from the Beatle's Apple Corps to use the name 'Apple' and paid a one-time royalty of $100,000 to McIntosh Laboratory, Inc., a maker of high-end audio equipment, to use the derivative name 'Macintosh' ('Mac').
ASICS — an acronym for Anima Sana In Corpore Sano, which, translated from Latin, means "Healthy soul in a healthy body". Originally the citation is mens sana in corpore sano, but MSICS does not sound as good. (This is a shoe brand, just in case you don't know)
Aston Martin — from the "Aston Hill" races (near Aston Clinton) where the company was founded, and the surname of Lionel Martin, the company's founder.
Audi — Latin translation of the German name 'Horch'. The founder August Horch left the company after five years, but still wanted to manufacture cars. Since the original 'Horch' company was still there, he called his new company Audi, the Latin form of his last name. In English it is: "hark!".
BenQ — Bringing Enjoyment and Quality to life
Bridgestone — named after founder Shojiro Ishibashi. The surname Ishibashi (石橋) means "stone bridge", or "bridge of stone".
Carrefour — chain of supermarkets and hypermarkets which started with a store near a crossroads (carrefour in French) in Annecy. (That's also why they make Carrefour stores near crossroads)
Casio — from the name of its founder, Kashio Tadao, who had set up the company Kashio Seisakujo as a subcontractor factory.
Coca-Cola — derived from the coca leaves and kola nuts used as flavoring. Coca-Cola creator John S. Pemberton changed the 'K' of kola to 'C' to make the name look better.
Daewoo — company founder Kim Woo Chong called it Daewoo which means "Great House" or "Great Universe" in Korean.
Daihatsu — from Japanese Kanji, where Dai means "first" and Hatsu means "car".
DHL — named after its founders, Adrian Dalsey, Larry Hillblom, and Robert Lynn.
Eidos — named from a Greek word meaning "species". The company became well known for its Tomb Raider series of games.
Epson — Epson Seiko Corporation, the Japanese printer and peripheral manufacturer, was named from "Son of Electronic Printer"
Hitachi — old place name, literally "sunrise"
IKEA — A composite of the first letters in the Swedish founder Ingvar Kamprad's name in addition to the first letters of the names of the property and the village in which he grew up: Ingvar Kamprad Elmtaryd Agunnaryd.
Kia Motors — The name "Kia" (起亞) roughly translates as "Rising from Asia" in Hanja.
LEGO — combination of the Danish "leg godt", which means to "play well." Lego also means "I put together" in Latin, but LEGO Group claims this is only a coincidence and the etymology of the word is entirely Danish. Years before the little plastic brick was invented, LEGO manufactured wooden toys.
Mazda Motor Corporation — the company was founded as Toyo Kogyo, started manufacturing Mazda brand cars in 1931, and changed its name to Mazda in 1984. The cars were named after Ahura Mazda, the chief deity of the Zoroastrians. It is also said that Mazda coincides with the anglicized pronunciation of the founder's name, Jujiro Matsuda.
Nero — Nero Burning ROM named after Nero burning Rome.
Nintendo — Nintendo is composed of three Japanese Kanji characters, Nin-ten-do. The first two can be translated to "Heaven blesses hard work"; do is a common ending for any store.
Nike — named for the Greek goddess of victory.
Nikon — the original name was Nippon Kogaku, meaning "Japanese Optical".
Nissan — the company was earlier known by the name Nippon Sangyo which means "Japanese industry".
Nokia — started as a wood-pulp mill, the company expanded into producing rubber products in the Finnish city of Nokia. The company later adopted the city's name.
Pepsi — named from the digestive enzyme pepsin.
Samsung — meaning three stars in Korean.
SEGA — Service Games of Japan was founded by Marty Bromley (an American) to import pinball games to Japan for use on American military bases.
Seiko — Seiko, now referred to in katakana as セイコー("seiko"), was originally named in kanji as 精工(also "seiko"). The two characters were taken from the phrase 「精巧で精密な時計の生産に成功する工場」, the company's vision which roughly translates to "a factory（工場:kojyo）that successfully（成功:seiko）produces（生産:seisan）exquisit（精巧:seiko）and precise（精密:seimitsu）watches." — According to Seiko's official company history, titled A Journey In Time: The Remarkable Story of Seiko (2003), Seiko is a Japanese word for "exquisite" or "minute" (both spelled 精巧), as well as a word for "success" (spelled 成功).
Shell — Royal Dutch/Shell was established in 1907, when the Royal Dutch Petrol Society Plc. and the Shell Transport and Trading Company Ltd. merged their operations. The Shell Transport and Trading Company Ltd had been established at the end of the 19th century by commercial firm Samuel & Co (founded in 1830). Samuel & Co were already importing Japanese shells when they set up an oil company, so the oil company was named after the shells.
Sony — from the Latin word 'sonus' meaning sound, and 'sonny' a slang word used by Americans to refer to a bright youngster, "since we were sonny boys working in sound and vision", said Akio Morita. The company was founded as Tokyo Tsoshiu Kogyo KK (Tokyo Telecommunications Engineering Corporation) in 1946, and changed its name to Sony in 1958. Sony was chosen as it could be pronounced easily in many languages.
Subaru — from the Japanese name for the constellation known to Westerners as Pleiades or the Seven Sisters. Subaru was formed from a merger of seven other companies, and the constellation is featured on the company's logo.
Verizon — A portmanteau of veritas (Latin for truth) and horizon.
Volvo — from the Latin word volvo, which means "I roll". It was originally a name for a ball bearing being developed by SKF.
Yahoo! — a backronym for Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. The word Yahoo was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and barely human. Yahoo! founders David Filo and Jerry Yang jokingly considered themselves yahoos. It's also an interjection sometimes associated with United States Southerners' and Westerners' expression of joy, as alluded to in Yahoo.com commercials that ends with someone singing the word "yahoo".
RSS Feed
If you love browsing the net, I'm pretty sure that you will encounter lots of links nams RSS feed, XML syndication, or just simply RSS. It is usually displayed with following icons.
If you try to open the RSS link from Internet Explorer, it will only show article data in XML format. We have to use RSS feeder or RSS aggregator program to actually view those data in more presentable way. There are lots of free RSS reader around the web, and I use one that I think pretty easy to use, Snarfer. This program supports tabbed browsing, like when you’re reading a news or article and you want to open links or anything on different tab (same with IE 7, Firefox and others), nice looking interface. More over, Snarfer is a freeware. For more information on Snarfer, head to http://www.snarfware.com
First, what is RSS? RSS is abbreviated from Really Simple Syndication. What does RSS do? It usually provides list of articles and updates in simplified format, whether it is a full article or only summary. So why should we utilize the RSS feed? Well, you can view article updates on certain websites without needing to open the web itself. Thus you can save time reading the article update and you can select the article you wish to read thoroughly. Moreover, the RSS feed usually does not use fancy web designs, which of course requires less bandwidth to open and is generally very fast.
If you try to open the RSS link from Internet Explorer, it will only show article data in XML format. We have to use RSS feeder or RSS aggregator program to actually view those data in more presentable way. There are lots of free RSS reader around the web, and I use one that I think pretty easy to use, Snarfer. This program supports tabbed browsing, like when you’re reading a news or article and you want to open links or anything on different tab (same with IE 7, Firefox and others), nice looking interface. More over, Snarfer is a freeware. For more information on Snarfer, head to http://www.snarfware.com
This is a screenshot of my Snarfware in action.
Monday, January 15, 2007
The Pirate Bay
How many of you know The Pirate Bay (TPB)? It’s one of the most popular torrent tracking website which was raided by police sometime ago eventhough they hosted in Sweden. It seems that they are eyeing a new place to host the website. Want to know where? Here’s an article I quoted from Engadget
"While Sweden (and Russia, to name a few) has long been a country of choice when it came to hosting less-than-upstanding websites, the head honchos around the globe looking out for their precious content have somehow reached The Pirate Bay, and now the popular torrent tracking site is eying the micronation of Sealand as a safe haven for its dubious hosting needs. Sealand, which is loosely claimed as a principality, features its own flag, coat of arms, currency, stamps, passports, and most importantly, a quasi-coat of armor from any nation's laws. Although the background of 5,920-square foot man-made installation off the shore of Suffolk, England is quite remarkable, TPB sees its two massive columns as a perfect place for future hosting duties. Formerly the home of HavenCo, an off-shore hosting company that housed gambling sites, money transferring liaisons, and any other operation looking for internet freedom, Sealand could be a potential sanctuary from the claws of the RIAA, MPAA, and other content "owners." Although a principality can't legally (saywha?) be "sold," the family in possession of it recently began accepting offers "upwards of eight figures" for a transfer of ownership after (quite literally) holding down the fort since 1967, and while we highly doubt a fundraiser can scrape up that kind of loot anytime soon, nor do we believe it'd stop the barrage of content guardians, we must say the location looks like an excellent place to just get away from it all (including lawyers) -- if only for awhile.”
Here's a picture of the actual Sealand :
Nice, eh?
For more information on this Sealand, visit this link :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sealand
Pac-Man
Who in the world have never played Pac-man? Eventhough Pac-man is not the oldest game, but hey, it’s one of the greatest hits in 80’s.Pac-man was originally came from the word “Pakku-man” where it was inspired by the word “Paku-Paku” in Japanese, meaning the sound / noise : Chomp chomp. It was developed by Midway (Namco), and published in Japan on 1979 with the name “Puck-Man”. When it was released in United States, the name was changed to Pac-Man, fearing that by simply replacing P with an F will create a mockery.
If you’re willing to develop a clone of Pac-Man game, for your assignments or anything, head on to the Wiki page of Pac-Man. You can find various rules and ghost’s behaviour, as well as bonus, scores, and other stuff.
Inset : Original poster of Puck-Man, back in 80's
Compiled from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man
Compiled from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pac-Man
Myers-Briggs Personality Type Test
As I was browsing to my friend's blog today. I found an interesting psychological test known as "Myers Briggs Personality Type Test".
Taken from his blog :
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a personality test designed to assist a person in identifying some significant personal preferences. Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers developed the Indicator during World War II, and its criteria follow from Carl Jung's theories in his work Psychological Types.
After taking the test, my result is :
ESTJ- Military, business administrators, managers, police/detective work, judges, financial officers, teachers, sales representatives, government workers, insurance agents, underwriters, nursing administrators, trade and technical teachers, mafia dons. Natural leaders, they work best when they are in charge and enforcing the rules.
For those of you who wants to take the test, visit the following link and don't forget to share your result.
Take the test
Taken from his blog :
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a personality test designed to assist a person in identifying some significant personal preferences. Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter Isabel Briggs Myers developed the Indicator during World War II, and its criteria follow from Carl Jung's theories in his work Psychological Types.
After taking the test, my result is :
ESTJ- Military, business administrators, managers, police/detective work, judges, financial officers, teachers, sales representatives, government workers, insurance agents, underwriters, nursing administrators, trade and technical teachers, mafia dons. Natural leaders, they work best when they are in charge and enforcing the rules.
For those of you who wants to take the test, visit the following link and don't forget to share your result.
Take the test
Sunday, January 07, 2007
What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?
Do you know the word "cat got your tongue"? It's being said when someone are unable to talk or will not talk. Have you ever wondered where this idiom comes from?
As usual, I did my homework and I found some interesting facts behind it. It appears that during the middle ages, when witches were feared, the witch's cat were doing all the dirty works. It was back then where the witch hunts became popular, when those who marked as witches are ment to be dead. It was believed that if you saw a witch, his/her cat will steal your tongue or otherwise control it to prevent you from spilling the secrets. Interesting, eh?
From the references that I have found, there are also some interesting story behind why the cats are said to have 9 lives, why there's a word scaredey cat. Have a look by your self :)
http://www.penmarric.ns.ca/cattails/prose.htm
http://www.trussel.com/jap/cats.htm
http://www.word-detective.com/110598.html
As usual, I did my homework and I found some interesting facts behind it. It appears that during the middle ages, when witches were feared, the witch's cat were doing all the dirty works. It was back then where the witch hunts became popular, when those who marked as witches are ment to be dead. It was believed that if you saw a witch, his/her cat will steal your tongue or otherwise control it to prevent you from spilling the secrets. Interesting, eh?
From the references that I have found, there are also some interesting story behind why the cats are said to have 9 lives, why there's a word scaredey cat. Have a look by your self :)
http://www.penmarric.ns.ca/cattails/prose.htm
http://www.trussel.com/jap/cats.htm
http://www.word-detective.com/110598.html
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