Interesting Origins of Names of Famous Companies/ Brands/ Products

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 favorite 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 something 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.

Play Online Games

Inside Visit of Nuclear Power Plant

One Russian blogger has paid a visit to the modern Russian nuclear plant. Normally it is forbidden to take photos there, but they have made an exception for him. So now we have a rare chance to see what’s inside of the Russian most modern power plant.

This power plant is situated near Smolensk city. Its power generation potential is 3 Megawatt and it was build for 8 years, from 1982 to 1990. There were planned to be four nuclear reactors, but because of the panic after the Chernobyl accident the forth block has not been completed, so there are three of them for now.

In Russia there are now 10 active power plants. This one produces 1/7 of the overral electricity outcome of Russian nuclear powerplants, so it is a big one.

Because this powerplant was completed after the Chernobyl, they paid a special attention to secure it from alike accidents. There is even a saying that “The sci-fi writers are on the second place by richness of imagination, the first place is occupied by the nuclear plant security engineers”, meaning that they need to make it safe just for some unimaginable events that not very likely to happen, but still the security system should be ready for them.

The outside structure that secures reactors themselves can stand the blast that exceeds ten times the power of atomic bomb blast, just imagine.

There is a 30km (18 miles) security zone around the plant itself. It’s literary filled with all sorts of sensors and monitoring devices that measure the condition of the environment and should report any smallest deviation from normal radiation doses. There is also a water pound, the normal thing on such an object, that stores strategic reserve of water, which is said to be very clean and is fishing there is the big dream for every local - it doesn’t freezes in winter and has plenty of different fish species.

The entrance to the station has a few protection levels, including palm scan, checking weight (it shouldn’t) differ from the number on profile.

Everyone should be dressed into uniform.

Everyone gets personal radiation checker.

The main reactor hall, the reactor itself is in the concrete reactor cavity

The nuclear fuel used is Uranium255

It is placed in those green tubes.

One can see the blue glow at 2.5 meteres (8 feet) deep. It is because of Cerenkov effect “electromagnetic radiation emitted when a charged particle (such as an electron) passes through an insulator at a speed greater than the speed of light in that medium”.

The main control point.

That’s it!

In-Car Steering Wheel Laptop Idea

In-car computers are nothing new, but a fully-functional laptop is not something you’d expect (or even want) to see the driver using in the car next to you. But designer Anna Lopez has come up with an interesting new portable computer that’s actually designed to be used in the car. Cario, the slimline, borderless concept computer is light, portable and made to fit just right in the car’s interior. The laptop’s system connects to the car’s system, providing a streamlined way to control your driving experience.

As dangerous as an in-car laptop may sound, the Cario’s purpose isn’t to cause accidents or distract drivers. In fact, it’s meant to make your commute a bit easier. The computer hooks up to your car’s system, letting you control the interior environment and settings. But you can’t use all of the laptop’s functions while the car is moving; it works only as a heads-up display projection unless you’re stationary. When the car stops, the computer hooks over the car’s steering wheel to provide a convenient workspace. Sounds great for those long ferry rides or for when you’re stuck in the car waiting for your companion to grab some coffee.

Construct An Eye

See how major parts of human eye are re-constructed in this video.