There are many companies / brands / products whose names were derived from strange circumstances.
Mercedes
This was actually the financier's daughter's name.
Adobe
This came from name of the river Adobe Creek that ran behind the house of founder John Warnock.
Apple Computers
It was the favourite fruit of founder Steve Jobs. He was three months late in 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.
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 Page presented 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'. Kapoor 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.
ORACLE
Larry Ellison and Bob Oats were working on a consulting project for the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency). The code name for the project was called Oracle (the CIA saw this as the system to give answers to all questions or some such). The project was designed to help use the newly written SQL code by IBM. The project eventually was terminated but Larry and Bob decided to finish what they started and bring it to the world. They kept the name Oracle and created the RDBMS engine. Later they kept the same name for the company.
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 for Stanford 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.
Yahoo!
The word was invented by Jonathan Swift and 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 and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.
Friday, March 26, 2010
Origin of brand names
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Whom to Blame - A real Thought Provoking Story
A Boy was born to a couple after eleven years of marriage. They were a loving couple and the boy was the gem of their eyes. When the boy was around two years old, one morning the husband saw a medicine bottle open.
He was late for office so he asked his wife to cap the bottle and keep it in the cupboard. His wife, preoccupied in the kitchen totally forgot the matter.
The boy saw the bottle and playfully went to the bottle fascinated by its colour and drank it all. It happened to be a poisonous medicine meant for adults in small dosages. When the child collapsed the mother hurried him to the hospital, where he died. The mother was stunned. She was terrified how to face her husband.
When the distraught father came to the hospital and saw the dead child he looked at his wife and uttered just five words.
QUESTIONS:
1. What were the five words?
2. What is the implication of this story?
ANSWER :
The husband just said, "I am with you Darling."
The husband's totally unexpected reaction is a proactive behavior. The child is dead. He can never be brought back to life. There is no point in finding fault with the mother. Besides, if only he had taken time to keep the bottle away, this would not have happened.
No one is to be blamed. She had also lost her only child. What she needed at that moment was consolation and sympathy from the husband. That is what he gave her.
If everyone can look at life with this kind of perspective, there would be much fewer problems in the world. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiven, selfishness, and fears. And you will find things are actually not as difficult as you think.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Sometimes we spend time in asking who is responsible or whom to blame, whether in a relationship, in a job or with the people we know. By this way we miss out some warmth in human relationship.
He was late for office so he asked his wife to cap the bottle and keep it in the cupboard. His wife, preoccupied in the kitchen totally forgot the matter.
The boy saw the bottle and playfully went to the bottle fascinated by its colour and drank it all. It happened to be a poisonous medicine meant for adults in small dosages. When the child collapsed the mother hurried him to the hospital, where he died. The mother was stunned. She was terrified how to face her husband.
When the distraught father came to the hospital and saw the dead child he looked at his wife and uttered just five words.
QUESTIONS:
1. What were the five words?
2. What is the implication of this story?
ANSWER :
The husband just said, "I am with you Darling."
The husband's totally unexpected reaction is a proactive behavior. The child is dead. He can never be brought back to life. There is no point in finding fault with the mother. Besides, if only he had taken time to keep the bottle away, this would not have happened.
No one is to be blamed. She had also lost her only child. What she needed at that moment was consolation and sympathy from the husband. That is what he gave her.
If everyone can look at life with this kind of perspective, there would be much fewer problems in the world. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Take off all your envies, jealousies, unforgiven, selfishness, and fears. And you will find things are actually not as difficult as you think.
MORAL OF THE STORY: Sometimes we spend time in asking who is responsible or whom to blame, whether in a relationship, in a job or with the people we know. By this way we miss out some warmth in human relationship.
Monday, March 15, 2010
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Quick Memory Training to Memorize a List of Items
Hi Friends,
Here I am going to share a self test and interesting memory training. .
OK take a paper and write down the list as shown below.
01.Dog
02.Shoes
03.Cinema
04.Dragon
05.Cycle
06.Telephone
07.Pen
08.Juice
09.Tiger
10.Music
OK now you have written them all. Now you have just have to test your memory power. Take a blank paper and try to write as much as you can recall from this list. Don't bother about the order of the item. The item is numbered to show you a magic that will be coming after sometime and follow the instructions me will tell here. You have just read and write once these items in order and see that how much you can recall.
Now see that in your mind screen some of the visuals that I am going to say. So visualize a Dog a big fat dog and now see that this dog is going to put two big shoes in its leg. Now have to see that this Dog wearing these shoes going to watch a Cinema. In the Cinema there is a Dragon starring who is riding a Cycle. Suddenly this Cycle hit a big Telephone and dragon fell down from the cycle. See that the Telephone is now got repaired by you with a Pen. Pen is filled with Juice instead of ink. Now a small black out, see that you are serving some glass of Juice to a Tiger. Now see that this Tiger is dancing with Music...yeah That's it.
Now you just take a paper and think of Dog, what you will get Shoes, then next what? yeah ? Cinema...yeah Just like that...So thinking that this will be a small help from me for your memory enhancement then I am happy. :)
Riaz
Here I am going to share a self test and interesting memory training. .
OK take a paper and write down the list as shown below.
01.Dog
02.Shoes
03.Cinema
04.Dragon
05.Cycle
06.Telephone
07.Pen
08.Juice
09.Tiger
10.Music
OK now you have written them all. Now you have just have to test your memory power. Take a blank paper and try to write as much as you can recall from this list. Don't bother about the order of the item. The item is numbered to show you a magic that will be coming after sometime and follow the instructions me will tell here. You have just read and write once these items in order and see that how much you can recall.
Now see that in your mind screen some of the visuals that I am going to say. So visualize a Dog a big fat dog and now see that this dog is going to put two big shoes in its leg. Now have to see that this Dog wearing these shoes going to watch a Cinema. In the Cinema there is a Dragon starring who is riding a Cycle. Suddenly this Cycle hit a big Telephone and dragon fell down from the cycle. See that the Telephone is now got repaired by you with a Pen. Pen is filled with Juice instead of ink. Now a small black out, see that you are serving some glass of Juice to a Tiger. Now see that this Tiger is dancing with Music...yeah That's it.
Now you just take a paper and think of Dog, what you will get Shoes, then next what? yeah ? Cinema...yeah Just like that...So thinking that this will be a small help from me for your memory enhancement then I am happy. :)
Happy Memorizing
Regards,Riaz
Thursday, March 4, 2010
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