Need a new shoes ? here we go!

Skateboard

A skateboard is typically a specially designed plywood board combined with a polyurethane coating used for making smoother slides and stronger durability, used primarily for the activity of skateboarding. The first skateboards to reach public notice came out of the surfing craze of the early 1960s, developed to help surfers practice when waves were unfavorable. The first prototypes were simple wooden boards with roller-skate wheels attached, and the practice was sometimes referred to as "sidewalk surfing." The surfing group Jan and Dean even had a minor hit called "Sidewalk Surfing" in 1964. By the mid-1980s skateboards were mass produced and sold throughout the United States.

A skateboard is propelled by pushing with one foot while the other remains on the board, or by pumping one's legs in structures such as a pool or half pipe. A skateboard can also be used by simply standing on the deck while on a downward slope and allowing gravity to propel the board and rider. If the rider positions their right foot forward, he/she is said to ride "goofy"; if the rider positions their left foot forward, he/she is said to ride "regular." If the rider is normally regular but chooses to ride goofy, he/she is said to be riding "switch," and vice versa. A skater is typically more comfortable pedaling with their back foot; choosing to pedal with the front foot is commonly referred to as riding "mongo."

Recently, electric skateboards have also appeared. These no longer require the propelling of the skateboard by means of the feet; rather an electric motor propels the board, fed by an electric battery.

There is no governing body that declares any regulations on what constitutes a skateboard or the parts from which it is assembled. Historically, the skateboard has conformed both to contemporary trends and to the ever evolving array of stunts performed by riders/users, who require a certain functionality from the board. Of course, the board shape depends largely upon its desired function. Longboards are a type of skateboard with a longer wheelbase and larger, softer wheels.

source : wikipedia.com

History of Java, Indonesia

Javanese History

Java is the 13th largest island in the world and was formed as the result of volcanic actions. It is made up of a chain of volcanic mountains forming an east-west spine along the island. There are three primary languages but most of the people speak Indonesian as their second language. The majority of the Javanese people are Muslim, however, there is a mixture of different religious beliefs caused by Java’s diverse history.

The earliest archeological artifact is a Hindu statue of Ganesha (1st century AD) found on the summit of Mount Raksa in Panaitan Island in West Java.

The earliest written records, in Sanskrit, mention the kingdom of Tarumanagara in the 5th century A.D. It lay to east of modern day Jakarta and one King Purnawarman was its ruler. He began the construction of irrigation canals for rice fields. He also inscribed his name and made a carving of his footprints, as well as his elephant's footprints on a huge black boulder. The inscription reads, "Here are the footprints of King Purnawarna, the heroic conqueror of the world".

However, Java and other Indonesian islands were mentioned by Indian scholars before this time and there was a continuous migration of Indian settlers between the 1st and 7th century AD. Like many other Southeast Asian kingdoms of that age Tarumanagara was influenced by the civilization of India. The blending Hindu literature and philosophy together with local culture enabled Hindu religion to spread throughout all layers of society in Java.

The Tarumanagara kingdom disappeared sometime within the next three centuries perhaps because of the rise of the Buddhist kingdom of Sriwijaya in south Sumatra but no one knows for sure.

From about the 8th century central Java was ruled by the Sailendra princes. Their small kingdoms were rich and the center of commercial and naval power. They built enormous religious monuments the largest of which is the Buddhist temple of Borobudur. Soon after the completion of Borobudur (built between 750-850 AD) the Temple to Siva at Prambanan was begun although this temple was not constructed by the Sailendras. Then some unknown disaster seems to have occurred at the beginning of the 10th century because there was a sudden end to the production of monuments, inscriptions and other artifacts in central Java.

The last of the major Hindu kingdoms was The Majapahit Empire in eastern Java (1293 to about 1500 AD). Then in the sixteenth century the power of coastal Muslim kingdoms began to grow and the remnants of the Majapahits fled to Bali which still has a Hindu majority today.

The earliest Muslim missionaries were called the Wali Sanga (the nine saints) they are the founders of Islam in Java and some of their tombs are still well-preserved. The type of Islam in Java is mixed with long-standing local beliefs.

The Dutch arrived in the early sixteen hundreds and established the Dutch East India Company with its trading and administrative headquarters in Batavia (now the capital city of Jakarta). By the nineteenth century the Dutch government had taken control of Indonesia and in the mid-nineteenth century endorsed policies to increase the profitability of the colony which increased the production of cash crops. This led to famine and widespread poverty in Java and by the beginning of the twentieth century there were protests which succeeded in changing this policy to one of increased investment and gave the Javanese elites access to a Dutch education. The later Indonesian nationalist leaders came from these western educated people formed the government, when Indonesia became an independent Republic after the end of World War II.

Source : http://java.eyelid.co.uk/

History of Surabaya, Indonesia

The city of Surabaya is the capital ofEast Java province, Indonesia.Surabaya is Indonesia's second largest city after Jakarta. With a total population of 3 million inhabitants, Surabaya was the center of business, commerce, industry, and education in eastern Indonesia. Surabaya well known as City of Heroes because its history is very calculated in the struggle for Indonesian independence from the colonizers.

History of Surabaya

Surabaya name emerged during the early growth of Majapahit kingdom. Surabaya name is taken from Sura and Crocodile fish symbol. The symbol is in fact to describe the heroic events that occurred in the area of Ujung Galuh (name of Surabaya in the past), the battle between the army led by Raden Widjaja Tar Tar with army troops on May 31, 1293. That date is then set as the day of birth of the city of Surabaya.

Originally Surabaya is a slum or rural areas on the riverside. The names of villages that are still there like Kaliasin, Kaliwaron, Kalidami, Ketabangkali, Kalikepiting, Darmokali, and so is evidence suggesting that the Surabaya area is the area that has many streams / rivers. Geographically it makes sense, because it's the Surabaya region is a region near the sea and large rivers flow (Brantas)

Location Surabaya is located on the seashore, is an area that became the path back and forth humans from various regions. Surabaya, a meeting between the interior of the island of Java with people from outside. Surabaya in 1612 is already a bustling trading port. The role of the port city of Surabaya as very important since long. When the river is a river filled Kalimas boats that sail toward the corners of Surabaya.

Many Portuguese traders bought spices from indigenous traders. Under the ruleTrunojoyo, Surabaya became a transit port and dump the goods from the fertile regions, namely the Brantas delta. Meanwhile, Kalimas into "rivers of gold" that carry valuables from the interior.

Surabaya City is also strongly associated with the revolution of independence of the Republic of Indonesia. Since the Dutch and Japanese occupation, the people of Surabaya (Arek Suroboyo) fought desperately to win independence. The peak on November 10, 1945, Arek Suroboyo occupied Orange Hotel (now Hotel Mojopahit) who was a symbol of colonialism. Because of his perseverance, then every On 10 November, Indonesia commemorate Heroes Day. Until now ex-colonial times are still pretty much visible with historic old buildings here.

Origin The word "Surabaya" is a symbol of "Sura and Buaya". Sura is name of fish, and Buaya is Alligator in the indonesian languange.

Source : http://hubpages.com

Early History of Lego

The Lego Group began in the workshop of Ole Kirk Christiansen (7 April 1891 – 11 March 1958), a carpenter from Billund, Denmark, who began making wooden toys in 1932. In 1934 his company came to be called "Lego", from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means "play well".

It expanded to producing plastic toys in 1947. In 1949 Lego began producing the now famous interlocking bricks, calling them "Automatic Binding Bricks". These bricks were based largely on the patent of Kiddicraft Self-Locking Bricks, which were released in the United Kingdom in 1947. Lego modified the design of the Kiddicraft brick after examining a sample given to it by the British supplier of an injection-moulding machine that the company had purchased. The bricks, manufactured from cellulose acetate, were a development of traditional stackable wooden blocks that locked together by means of several round studs on top and a hollow rectangular bottom. The blocks snapped together, but not so tightly that they required extraordinary effort to be separated.

The Lego Group's motto is det bedste er ikke for godt which means 'only the best is good enough'. This motto was created by Ole Kirk to encourage his employees never to skimp on quality, a value he believed in strongly. The motto is still used within the company today. The use of plastic for toy manufacture was not highly regarded by retailers and consumers of the time. Many of the Lego Group's shipments were returned after poor sales; it was thought that plastic toys could never replace wooden ones.

By 1954 Christiansen's son Godtfred Kirk Christiansen had become the junior managing director of the Lego Group. It was his conversation with an overseas buyer that struck the idea of a toy system. Godtfred saw the immense potential in Lego bricks to become a system for creative play but the bricks still had some problems from a technical standpoint: their locking ability was limited and they were not very versatile. In 1958 the modern brick design was developed but it took another five years to find the right material for it. The modern Lego brick was patented at 1:58 p.m on January 28, 1958;bricks from that year are still compatible with current bricks.

Total Lunar Eclipse

About half of the UK will have the opportunity to see a total lunar eclipse this evening (15 June) with the event expected to be the longest and most striking in a decade.

The eclipse will begin at 6.24pm (BST), but will be not be visible from the UK until sunset at roughly 9.13pm when the eclipse is predicted to reach its darkest phase or ‘totality’.

Totality is the time when Earth's shadow completely covers the moon, which is expected to end at 10.03pm.

The moon is set to rise whilst in eclipse across Europe, Middle East, Africa, southern Asia and Australia turning from grey to an extraordinary blood-red.

But for the most spectacular views of the lunar phenomenon, British stargazers are urged to head to the south coast – looking south east towards a clear horizon and across the sea.

Clear night skies allow the best views of the total lunar eclipse. However, the Met Office predicts that many southern areas will start off cloudy this evening.

Unfortunately observers in the north of Scotland and north west Ireland will miss out as the moon will rise after totality has ended.

On 1 June, Scots were treated to a partial eclipse of the moon whereas the rest of the UK didn’t get the chance to see it.

According to NASA, the total phase itself will last 100 minutes. The last eclipse to exceed this duration was in July 2000.

Dr John Mason, a leading astronomer from the British Astronomical Association explained the eclipse: “Lunar eclipses occur when the Earth passes exactly between the Sun and the Moon preventing the Sun’s light from reaching the moon surface directly. The only illumination of the moon is by light refracted through the Earth’s atmosphere and under these conditions the moon becomes a red colour.”

Unlike solar eclipses, lunar eclipses are perfectly safe to view without any special glasses or equipment.

All you need is your own two eyes.

We want to see the best pictures from the event. Upload your snaps to Flickr and tag them as ‘lunar eclipse 15 June 2011’.

iMac

iMac

iMac (Aluminum Unibody)
Manufacturer	Apple
Type	Desktop
Operating system	Mac OS X (currently v10.6.7)
Power	205 or 310 Watts
CPU	Intel Core i5 Intel Core i7
Storage capacity	500 Gigabyte 1 TB or 2 TB SATA HDD Secondary 256GB SSD
Memory	4 GB - 16 GB 1333 MHz DDR3 RAM
Connectivity	802.11n (a/b/g compatible) Wi-Fi 10/100/1000BASE-T Gigabit Ethernet Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR FireWire 800 port 4 USB 2.0 ports SD/SDXC card slot 1 Thunderbolt port (21.5" iMac) 2 Thunderbolt ports (27" iMac) IR receiver
Online services	MobileMe
Dimensions	"21.5 inch" ("54.61 cm"): 17.75 × 20.8 × 7.42 in (45.09 × 52.83 × 18.85 cm) "27 inch" ("68.58 cm"): 20.4 × 25.6 × 8.15 in (51.82 × 65.02 × 20.70 cm)
Weight	"21.5 inch" ("54.61 cm"): 20.5 pounds (9.30 kg) "27 inch" ("68.58 cm"): 30.5 pounds (13.84 kg).
Website	apple.com/imac

iMac Updates

The original "Bondi Blue" iMac G3, was introduced in 1998.

The iMac G4 was the first major case redesign of the iMac line.

This is the current case that houses Intel iMacs. The last two models look alike although they sport respectively Intel Core 2 Duo and i3/i5 chips

History of Foursquare

Foursquare is a location-based social networking website based on software for mobile devices. This service is available to users with GPS-enabled mobile devices, such as smartphones. Users "check-in" at venues using a mobile website, text messaging or a device-specific application by running the application and selecting from a list of venues that the application locates nearby. Each check-in awards the user points and sometimes "badges".

The service was created in 2009 by Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai. Crowley had previously founded the similar project Dodgeball as his graduate thesis project in the Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP) at New York University. Google bought Dodgeball in 2005 and shut it down in 2009, replacing it with Google Latitude. Dodgeball user interactions were based on SMS technology, rather than an application.

Foursquare is the second iteration of the same idea, that people can use mobile devices to interact with their environment. As of April 2011, the company reported it had 8 million registered users.

Features

Foursquare is a web and mobile application that allows registered users to connect with friends and update their location. Points are awarded for "checking in" at venues. Users can choose to have their check-ins posted on their accounts on Twitter, Facebook, or both. In version 1.3 of their iPhone application, foursquare enabled push-notification of friend updates, which they call "Pings". Users can also earn badges by checking in at locations with certain tags, for check-in frequency, or for other patterns such as time of check-in. The company has stated that users will be able to add their own custom badges to the site in the future.

Users can create a "To Do" list for their private use and add "Tips" to venues that other users can read, which serve as suggestions for great things to do, see or eat at the location.

Mayorship

If a user has checked-in to a venue on more days (meaning only one check-in per day qualifies for calculating mayorship) than anyone else in the past 60 days, the check-ins are valid under foursquare's time and distance protocols, and they have a profile photo, they will be crowned "Mayor" of that venue, until someone else earns the title by checking in more times than the previous mayor. On August 26, 2010, foursquare rolled out a new feature which notifies users of the number of days left before he or she is crowned "Mayor". When a user "checks in" to a venue on Foursquare via a mobile app, if he or she is within 10 check-ins of becoming the mayor, foursquare alerts the user of the days left before becoming mayor on the check-in confirmation screen.

Badges

Badges are earned by checking into various venues. Some cities have city-specific badges that can only be earned in a specific city. Foursquare has, however, changed the way they handle badges, and now when a user gains a badge, he or she has the same badges across all cities. Once a badge is earned by a player, it will remain on that user's profile indefinitely.

The foursquare staff are very secretive about how to unlock many badges. There are a handful of introductory badges that are earned as milestones in usage. Some badges are tied to venue "tags" and the badge earned depends on the tags applied to the venue. Other badges may be specific to a city, venue, event, or date. Some badges use identical icons, but are earned differently. There are a few badges that are named similarly, but applied differently, specifically Far Far Away, Trifecta, and I'm on a Boat. There is no official foursquare badge list available from foursquare.com, yet a few start up companies have tried to keep up-to-date the lists.

On September 23, 2010, foursquare announced that users can now earn badges for completing tasks as well as checking in. On October 22, 2010, astronaut Douglas H. Wheelock unlocked the NASA Explorer badge by checking into Foursquare from the International Space Station.

Keep Smile! You're in the picture

Unique Home

LOL ! Awesome Bathroom ^^

 

Cute and Unique bedroom

Interior Design

History of twitter

Twitter is the brainchild of a programmers who worked at the podcasting company Odeo Inc. in San Francisco.
The founders are Jack Dorsey (@Jack), Evan Williams (@Ev) and Biz Stone (@Biz).
They were looking for a way to send text on their cellphones and a way to reinvent a dying company.

More related to this story

• Twitter founder returns to company
• Online glimpses of war from a Benghazi hotspot
• The powers that be are not in the social media vanguard

Media

Reader feedback: How has twitter changed your life?

Small business success 140 characters at a time

On March 21, 2006, @Jack sent the first tweet: “just setting up my twttr.”
And thus a communications revolution was born, one renown for brevity and bad spelling.
Dom Sagolla (@Dom), in tweet 38, typed these prescient words: “Oh, this is going to be addictive.”

THAT NAME
The name Twitter was inspired by Flickr, a photo-sharing service. Other names considered: FriendStalker and Dodgeball.
The dictionary definition of twitter is “a short burst of inconsequential information.”
A perfect name, said @Jack because “that’s exactly what the product was.”

TWITTER TODAY
Almost 200 million users worldwide. About 460,000 new Twitter accounts are opened daily.
More than 140 million tweets are sent daily. That’s one billion weekly.
In 2008, Twitter had eight employees; today it has more than 400. And they’re hiring (twitter.com/jobs)

WHY 140 CHARACTERS?
At the heart of Twitter are small bursts of information called tweets. Each tweet is 140 characters in length, maximum.
Initially, there was no limit to message length. When it went public, the 140 character limit was adopted.
Why? Because 160 characters was the SMS carrier limit and the founders wanted to leave room for a username.
Struggling with brevity? You can purchase 140 Characters: A Style Guide for the Short Form by @Dom.

HOW TWITTER MAKES MONEY
Twitter lists its revenues at a modest $150-million annually. It is a private company so the sources of revenue are unclear.
Twitter also licenses its stream of tweets to Microsoft, Google and Yahoo.
There are constant rumours that Twitter will be purchases by Facebook or Google. It could also go public like LinkedIn.
Twitter is said to be worth more than $4.5-billion. The value comes from its potential to exploit its base of hundreds of millions of users.
Twitter could sell traditional ads (not likely) and to start charging for premium accounts that push business to their sites (very likely).

HOW TWITTER HAS CHANGED THE MEDIA
Twitter is not just your friends telling you what they ate for breakfast.
Increasingly, news stories that arise – a tsunami, a plane crash, the score of a hockey game, the latest Charlie Sheen gossip – arrive in tweets from people we follow on Twitter.
This allows everyone to essentially create their own newspaper or newscast, and to do so instantaneously.

HOW TWITTER HAS CHANGED POLITICS
Social media and microblogging like Twitter has changed political communication profoundly.
Political messages used to be controlled by a handful of powerful gatekeepers. Now the messengers, and hence the messages, are more diffuse and diverse.
In Canada, Industry Minister Tony Clement is one of the most prolific and popular Twitterers.

HOW TWITTER HAS CHANGED BUSINESS
Beyond its social function, Twitter is used increasingly by business to communicate with employees and customers.
The one-way transmission of information is morphing quickly into two-way interaction.
Business can communicate real-time message to the customers they want to reach.
Conversely, when customers are unhappy with a product or service, they can spread the word quickly – and do damage – with a few tweets.

MOST FOLLOWED
According to Twitaholic.com, the five most followed people on Twitter worldwide are:
Lady Gaga (@ladygaga): 8.9 million followers
Justin Bieber (@justin bieber): 8.2 million
Britney Spears (@britneyspears): 7.1 million
Barack Obama (@BarackObama): 7.0 million
Kim Kardashian (@KimKardashian): 6.8 million

CANADA’S MOST FOLLOWED
According to Twitaholic.com, the five most followed people on Twitter based in Canada are:
Jeremy Jack Bieber (@LordBieber): 185,000 followers (yes, he’s Justin Bieber’s dad)
Gemstar (@Gemstars): virtual art gallery, 182,500
James Rivers (@JamesRivers): expert on Twitter marketing, 105,000
Sharon Hayes (@SharonHayes): e-entrepreneur, 104,000 
Jaydon Wale (@jeyounit11): self-described “YouTube legend,” 101,000

TWITTER QUOTES
“The qualities that make Twitter seem inane and half-baked are what makes it so powerful” –Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain
“Who ever said things have to be useful?” –Twitter co-founder Evan Williams
“This is what the naysayers fail to understand: it's just as easy to use Twitter to spread the word about a brilliant 10,000-word New Yorker article as it is to spread the word about your Lucky Charms habit.” –Steven Johnson, author of The Invention of Air

Apple Inc Products

Mac and accessories

• Mac mini, consumer sub-desktop computer and server introduced in 2005
• iMac, consumer all-in-one desktop computer introduced in 1998
• Mac Pro, workstation-class desktop computer introduced in 2006, replacing the Power Macintosh
• MacBook, consumer notebook introduced in 2006, replacing the iBook
• MacBook Pro, professional notebook introduced in 2006, replacing the PowerBook
• MacBook Air, ultra-thin, ultra-portable notebook introduced in 2008

iPad

On March 2, 2011, Apple introduced an updated iPad model which had a faster processor and two cameras on the front and back respectively. The iPad 2 also added support for optional 3G service provided by Verizon in addition to the existing offering by AT&T. However, the availability of the iPad 2 has been limited as a result of the devastating tsunami and ensuing earthquake in Japan in March 2011. 

 

iPod

• iPod Classic (previously named iPod from 2001 to 2007), portable media player first introduced in 2001, currently available in a 160 GB model.
• iPod Nano, portable media player first introduced in 2005, currently available in 8 and 16 GB models. The newest generation has a FM radio, a pedometer, and a new multi-touch interface that replaced the traditional iPod click wheel.
• iPod Shuffle, digital audio player first introduced in 2005, currently available in 2 and 4 GB models.
• iPod Touch, portable media player that runs iOS, first introduced in September 2007 after the iPhone went on sale. Currently available in 8, 32, and 64 GB models. The latest generation features the Apple A4 processor, a Retina Display, and dual cameras on the front and back. The back camera allows video recording at 720p.

iPhone

At the Macworld Conference & Expo in January 2007, Steve Jobs revealed the long anticipated iPhone, a convergence of an Internet-enabled smartphone and iPod. The original iPhone combined a 2.5G quad band GSM and EDGE cellular phone with features found in hand held devices, running scaled-down versions of Apple's Mac OS X (dubbed iOS, formerly iPhone OS), with various Mac OS X applications such as Safari and Mail. It also includes web-based and Dashboard apps such as Google Maps and Weather. The iPhone features a 3.5-inch (89 mm) touch screen display, 4, 8, or 16 GB of memory, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi (both "b" and "g"). The iPhone first became available on June 29, 2007 for $499 (4 GB) and $599 (8 GB) with an AT&T contract.

Apple TV

At the 2007 Macworld conference, Jobs demonstrated the Apple TV, (previously known as the iTV), a set-top video device intended to bridge the sale of content from iTunes with high-definition televisions. The device links up to a user's TV and syncs, either via Wi-Fi or a wired network, with one computer's iTunes library and streams from an additional four. The Apple TV originally incorporated a 40 GB hard drive for storage, includes outputs for HDMI and component video, and plays video at a maximum resolution of 720p.

History of Apple Inc.

1976–1980: The early years

Apple was established on April 1, 1976 by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne, to sell the Apple I personal computer kit. They were hand-built by Wozniak and first shown to the public at the Homebrew Computer Club. The Apple I was sold as a motherboard (with CPU, RAM, and basic textual-video chips)—less than what is today considered a complete personal computer. The Apple I went on sale in July 1976 and was market-priced at $666.66 ($2,572 in 2011 dollars, adjusted for inflation.)

Apple was incorporated January 3, 1977 without Wayne, who sold his share of the company back to Jobs and Wozniak for $800. Multi-millionaire Mike Markkula provided essential business expertise and funding of $250,000 during the incorporation of Apple.

1981–1985: Lisa and Macintosh

Steve Jobs began working on the Apple Lisa in 1978 but in 1982 he was pushed from the Lisa team due to infighting, and took over Jef Raskin's low-cost-computer project, the Macintosh. A turf war broke out between Lisa's "corporate shirts" and Jobs' "pirates" over which product would ship first and save Apple. Lisa won the race in 1983 and became the first personal computer sold to the public with a GUI, but was a commercial failure due to its high price tag and limited software titles.

In 1984, Apple next launched the Macintosh. Its debut was announced by the now famous $1.5 million television commercial "1984". It was directed by Ridley Scott, aired during the third quarter of Super Bowl XVIII on January 22, 1984, and is now considered a watershed event for Apple's succes and a "masterpiece".

1986–1993: Rise and fall

Having learned several painful lessons after introducing the bulky Macintosh Portable in 1989, Apple introduced the PowerBook in 1991, which established the modern form factor and ergonomic layout of the laptop computer. The Macintosh Portable was designed to be just as powerful as a desktop Macintosh, but weighed 17 pounds with a 12-hour battery life. The same year, Apple introduced System 7, a major upgrade to the operating system, which added color to the interface and introduced new networking capabilities. It remained the architectural basis for Mac OS until 2001.

The success of the PowerBook and other products brought increasing revenue. For some time, it appeared that Apple could do no wrong, introducing fresh new products and generating increasing profits in the process. The magazine MacAddict named the period between 1989 and 1991 as the "first golden age" of the Macintosh.

1994–1997: Attempts at reinvention

By the early 1990s, Apple was developing alternative platforms to the Macintosh, such as the A/UX. Apple had also begun to experiment in providing a Mac-only online portal which they called eWorld, developed in collaboration with America Online and designed as a Mac-friendly alternative to other online services such as CompuServe. The Macintosh platform was itself becoming outdated because it was not built for multitasking, and several important software routines were programmed directly into the hardware. In addition, Apple was facing competition from OS/2 and UNIX vendors like Sun Microsystems. The Macintosh would need to be replaced by a new platform, or reworked to run on more powerful hardware.

In 1994, Apple allied with IBM and Motorola in the AIM alliance. The goal was to create a new computing platform (the PowerPC Reference Platform), which would use IBM and Motorola hardware coupled with Apple's software. The AIM alliance hoped that PReP's performance and Apple's software would leave the PC far behind, thus countering Microsoft. The same year, Apple introduced the Power Macintosh, the first of many Apple computers to use IBM's PowerPC processor.

1998–2005: Return to profitability

On August 15, 1998, Apple introduced a new all-in-one computer reminiscent of the Macintosh 128K: the iMac. The iMac design team was led by Jonathan Ive, who would later design the iPod and the iPhone. The iMac featured modern technology and a unique design, and sold almost 800,000 units in its first five months.

Through this period, Apple purchased several companies to create a portfolio of professional and consumer-oriented digital production software. In 1998, Apple announced the purchase of Macromedia's Final Cut software, signaling its expansion into the digital video editing market. The following year, Apple released two video editing products: iMovie for consumers and, for professionals, Final Cut Pro, which has gone on to be a significant video-editing program, with 800,000 registered users in early 2007. In 2002 Apple purchased Nothing Real for their advanced digital compositing application Shake, as well as Emagic for their music productivity application Logic, which led to the development of their consumer-level GarageBand application. iPhoto's release the same year completed the iLife suite.

2005–2007: The Intel transition

At the Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address on June 6, 2005, Steve Jobs announced that Apple would begin producing Intel-based Mac computers in 2006. On January 10, 2006, the new MacBook Pro and iMac became the first Apple computers to use Intel's Core Duo CPU. By August 7, 2006 Apple had transitioned the entire Mac product line to Intel chips, over one year sooner than announced. The Power Mac, iBook, and PowerBook brands were retired during the transition; the Mac Pro, MacBook, and MacBook Pro became their respective successors. On April 29, 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple was building its own team of engineers to design microchips.

2007–present: Post-PC era

Delivering his keynote speech at the Macworld Expo on January 9, 2007, Jobs announced that Apple Computer, Inc. would from that point on be known as Apple Inc., because computers were no longer the main focus of the company, which had shifted its emphasis to mobile electronic devices. The event also saw the announcement of the iPhone and the Apple TV. The following day, Apple shares hit $97.80, an all-time high at that point. In May, Apple's share price passed the $100 mark.
In an article posted on Apple's website on February 6, 2007, Steve Jobs wrote that Apple would be willing to sell music on the iTunes Store without DRM (which would allow tracks to be played on third-party players) if record labels would agree to drop the technology. On April 2, 2007, Apple and EMI jointly announced the removal of DRM technology from EMI's catalog in the iTunes Store, effective in May. Other record labels followed later that year.
On January 17, 2011, an internal Apple memo from Jobs announced that he will once again take a medical leave of absence, for an indefinite period, to allow him to focus on his health. Chief operating officer Timothy D. Cook will take up Jobs' day-to-day operations at Apple, although Jobs will still remain "involved in major strategic decisions for the company."
After Apple Inc. surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization in 2010, Apple Inc. has also become the most valuable consumer-facing brand in the world with a 246 percent increased to $19.1 billion.






sources : www.wikipedia.com

 

Mini Cooper

The Mini is a small car that was made by the British Motor Corporation (BMC) and its successors from 1959 until 2000. The original is considered a British icon of the 1960s, and its space-saving front-wheel-drive layout (which allowed 80% of the area of the car's floorpan to be used for passengers and luggage) influenced a generation of car-makers. The vehicle is in some ways considered the British equivalent to its German contemporary, the Volkswagen Beetle, which enjoyed similar popularity in North America. In 1999 the Mini was voted the second most influential car of the 20th Century, behind the Ford Model T.

This distinctive two-door car was designed for BMC by Sir Alec Issigonis. It was manufactured at the Longbridge and Cowley plants in England, the Victoria Park / Zetland British Motor Corporation (Australia) factory in Sydney, Australia, and later also in Spain (Authi), Belgium, Chile, Italy (Innocenti), Portugal, South Africa, Uruguay, Venezuela and Yugoslavia. The Mini Mark I had three major UK updates: the Mark II, the Clubman and the Mark III. Within these was a series of variations including an estate car, a pickup truck, a van and the Mini Moke—a jeep-like buggy. The Mini Cooper and Cooper "S" were sportier versions that were successful as rally cars, winning the Monte Carlo Rally four times from 1964 through to 1967, although in 1966 the Mini was disqualified after the finish, along with six other British entrants, which included the first four cars to finish, under a questionable ruling that the cars had used an illegal combination of headlamps and spotlights. Initially Minis were marketed under the Austin and Morris names, as the Austin Seven and Morris Mini Minor, until Mini became a marque in its own right in 1969. The Mini was again marketed under the Austin name in the 1980s.

When production of the classic Mini ceased in 2000, BMW (the new owner of the brand) announced the successor to the Mini. The brand name for the new car is MINI (written in capital letters), and it is commonly called the "BMW MINI" or the "New MINI".

The new MINI is much larger than the original Mini. It is around 58 centimetres (23 in) longer, 50 centimetres (20 in) wider, 7 centimetres (2.8 in) higher, and weighs around 1,144 kg (2,522 lb) rather than 650 kg (1,433 lb). It is now classified as compact car rather than city car.

On 3 April 2007, the one millionth MINI rolled out of the Oxford Plant after six years of production, just one month longer than it took the classic Mini to reach the same total in March 1965.

History of Volkswagen

Volkswagen was originally founded in 1937 by the Nazi trade union, the German Labour Front (Deutsche Arbeitsfront). In the early 1930s German auto industry was still largely composed of luxury models, and the average German rarely could afford anything more than a motorcycle. Seeking a potential new market, some car makers began independent "peoples' car" projects – Mercedes' 170H, Adler's AutoBahn, Steyr 55, Hanomag 1,3L, among others. The trend was not new, as Béla Barényi is credited with having conceived the basic design in the middle 1920s. Josef Ganz developed the Standard Superior (going as far as advertising it as the "German Volkswagen"). Also, in Czechoslovakia, the Hans Ledwinka's penned Tatra T77, a very popular car amongst the German elite, was becoming smaller and more affordable at each revision. In 1933, with many of the above projects still in development or early stages of production, Adolf Hitler declared his intentions for a state-sponsored "Volkswagen" program. Hitler required a basic vehicle capable of transporting two adults and three children at 100 km/h (62 mph). The "People's Car" would be available to citizens of the Third Reich through a savings scheme at 990 Reichsmark, about the price of a small motorcycle (an average income being around 32RM a week).
Despite heavy lobbying in favour of one of the existing projects, Hitler chose to sponsor an all new, state owned factory. The engineer chosen for the task was Ferdinand Porsche. By then an already famed engineer, Porsche was the designer of the Mercedes 170H, and worked at Steyr for quite some time in the late 1920s. When he opened his own design studio he landed two separate "Auto für Jedermann" (car for everybody) projects with NSU and Zündapp, both motorcycle manufacturers. Neither project come to fruition, stalling at prototype phase, but the basic concept remained in Porsche's mind time enough, so on 22 June 1934, Dr. Ferdinand Porsche agreed to create the "People's Car" for Hitler.
Changes included better fuel efficiency, reliability, ease of use, and economically efficient repairs and parts. The intention was that ordinary Germans would buy the car by means of a savings scheme ("Fünf Mark die Woche musst Du sparen, willst Du im eigenen Wagen fahren" — "Five Marks a week you must put aside, If in your own car you want to ride"), which around 336,000 people eventually paid into. Volkswagen honoured its savings agreements in West Germany (but not in East Germany) after World War II. Prototypes of the car called the "KdF-Wagen" (German: Kraft durch Freude — "strength through joy"), appeared from 1936 onwards (the first cars had been produced in Stuttgart). The car already had its distinctive round shape and air-cooled, flat-four, rear-mounted engine. The VW car was just one of many KdF programs which included things such as tours and outings. The prefix Volks— ("People's") was not just applied to cars, but also to other products in Europe; the "Volksempfänger" radio receiver for instance. On 28 May 1937, the Gesellschaft zur Vorbereitung des Deutschen Volkswagens mbH (sometimes abbreviated to Gezuvor) was established by the Deutsche Arbeitsfront. It was later renamed "Volkswagenwerk GmbH" on 16 September 1938.

VW Type 82E

Erwin Komenda, the longstanding Auto Union chief designer, developed the car body of the prototype, which was recognizably the Beetle known today. It was one of the first to be evolved with the aid of a wind tunnel, in use in Germany since the early 1920s.
The building of the new factory started 26 May 1938 in the new town of KdF-Stadt, now called Wolfsburg, which had been purpose-built for the factory workers. This factory had only produced a handful of cars by the time war started in 1939. None was actually delivered to any holder of the completed saving stamp books, though one Type 1 Cabriolet was presented to Hitler on 20 April 1938 (his 49th birthday).
War meant production changed to military vehicles, the Type 82 Kübelwagen ("Bucket car") utility vehicle (VW's most common wartime model), and the amphibious Schwimmwagen which were used to equip the German forces.. As was common with much of the production in Nazi Germany during the war, slave labor was utilized in the Volkswagen plant. The company would admit in 1998 that it used 15,000 slaves during the war effort. German historians estimated the that 80% of Volkswagen's wartime workforce was slave labor. Many of the slaves were reported to have been supplied from the concentration camps upon request from plant managers. A lawsuit was filed in 1998 by survivors for restitution for the forced labor. Volkswagen would set up a voluntary restitution fund.

History of Vespa

Vespa is an Italian brand of scooter manufactured by Piaggio. The name means wasp in Italian. The Vespa has evolved from a single model motor scooter manufactured in 1946 by Piaggio & Co. S.p.A. of Pontedera, Italy—to a full line of scooters and one of seven companies today owned by Piaggio—now Europe's largest manufacturer of two-wheeled vehicles and the world's fourth largest motorcycle manufacturer by unit sales.

From their inception, Vespa scooters have been known for their painted, pressed steel unibody which combines a complete cowling for the engine (enclosing the engine mechanism and concealing dirt or grease), a flat floorboard (providing foot protection), and a prominent front fairing (providing wind protection) into a structural unit.

Post World War II Italy, in light of its agreement to cessation of war activities with the Allies, had its aircraft industry severely restricted in both capability and capacity.

Piaggio emerged from the conflict with its Pontedera fighter plane plant demolished by bombing. Italy's crippled economy and the disastrous state of the roads did not assist in the re-development of the automobile markets. Enrico Piaggio, the son of Piaggio's founder Rinaldo Piaggio, decided to leave the aeronautical field in order to address Italy's urgent need for a modern and affordable mode of transportation for the masses.

Concept

The inspiration for the design of the Vespa dates back to Pre-WWII Cushman scooters made in Nebraska, USA. These olive green scooters were in Italy in large numbers, ordered originally by Washington as field transport for the Paratroops and Marines. The US military had used them to get around Nazi defense tactics of destroying roads and bridges in the Dolomites (a section of the Alps) and the Austrian border areas.

History of Volkswagen Van

The concept for the Type 2 is credited to Dutch Volkswagen importer Ben Pon. (It has similarities in concept to the 1920s Rumpler Tropfenwagen and 1930s Dymaxion car by Buckminster Fuller, neither of which reached production.) Pon visited Wolfsburg in 1946, intending to purchase Type 1s for import to Holland, where he saw an improvised parts-mover and realized something better was possible using the stock Type 1 pan. He first sketched the van in a doodle dated April 23, 1947, proposing a payload of 690 kg (1,500 lb) and placing the driver at the very front. Production would have to wait, however, as the factory was at capacity producing the Type 1.

When capacity freed up a prototype known internally as the Type 29 was produced in a short three months. The stock Type 1 pan proved to be too weak so the prototype used a ladder chassis with unit body construction. Coincidentally the wheelbase was the same as the Type 1's. Engineers reused the reduction gear from the Type 81, enabling the 1.5 ton van to use a 25 hp (19 kW) flat four engine.

Although the aerodynamics of the first prototypes were poor (with an initial drag coefficient of 0.75), engineers used the wind tunnel at the Technical University of Braunschweig to optimize the design. Simple changes such as splitting the windshield and roofline into a "vee" helped the production Type 2 achieve a drag coefficient of 0.44, exceeding the Type 1's 0.48. Volkswagen's new chief executive officer Heinz Nordhoff (appointed 1 January 1948) approved the van for production on 19 May 1949 and the first production model, now designated Type 2, rolled off the assembly line to debut 12 November. Only two models were offered: the Kombi (with two side windows and middle and rear seats that were easily removable by one person), and the Commercial. The Microbus was added in May 1950, joined by the Deluxe Microbus in June 1951. In all 9,541 Type 2s were produced in their first year of production.

An ambulance model was added in December 1951 which repositioned the fuel tank in front of the transaxle, put the spare tire behind the front seat, and added a "tailgate"-style rear door. These features became standard on the Type 2 from 1955 to 1967. 11,805 Type 2s were built in the 1951 model year. These were joined by a single-cab pickup in August 1952, and it changed the least of the Type 2s until all were heavily modified in 1968.

Unlike other rear engine Volkswagens, which evolved constantly over time but never saw the introduction of all-new models, the Transporter not only evolved, but was completely revised periodically with variations retrospectively referred to as versions "T1" to "T5" (a nomenclature only invented after the introduction of the front-drive T4 which repaced the T25) However only generations T1 to T3 (or T25 as it is still called in Ireland and Great Britain) can be seen as directly related to the Beetle (see below for details).

The Type 2, along with the 1947 Citroën H Van, are among the first 'forward control' vans in which the driver was placed above the front roadwheels. They started a trend in Europe, where the 1952 GM Bedford CA, 1959 Renault Estafette, 1960 BMC Morris J4, and 1960 Commer FC also used the concept. In the United States, the Corvair-based Chevrolet Corvan cargo van and Greenbrier passenger van went so far as to copy the Type 2's rear-engine layout, using the Corvair's horizontally-opposed, air-cooled engine for power. Except for the Greenbrier and various 1950s–70s Fiat minivans, the Type 2 remained unique in being rear-engined. This was a disadvantage for the early "barndoor" Panel Vans, which couldn't easily be loaded from the rear due to the engine cover intruding on interior space, but generally advantageous in traction and interior noise.