If you need to start a fire do you rub sticks together or break out your handy flint? Probably not. Most people would use a lighter or a match to start a fire. Matches allow for a portable, easy-to-use source of fire. Many chemical reactions generate heat and fire, but matches are a fairly recent invention. Matches are also an invention you probably wouldn't choose to duplicate if civilization ended today or you were stranded on a desert island. The chemicals involved in modern matches are generally safe, but that wasn't always the case:

• 1669 [Hennig Brand or Brandt, also known as Dr. Teutonicus]
  Brand was an Hamburg alchemist who discovered phosphorus during his attempts to turn base metals into gold. He allowed a vat of urine to stand until it putrified. He boiled the resulting liquid down to a paste, which he heated to a high temperature, so that the vapors could be drawn into water and condensed into... gold. Brand didn't get gold, but he did obtain a waxy white substance that glowed in the dark. This was phosphorus, one of the first elements to be isolated other than those which exist free in nature. Evaporating urine produced ammonium sodium hydrogenphosphate (microcosmic salt), which yielded sodium phosphite upon heating. When heated with carbon (charcoal) this decomposed into white phosphorus and sodium pyrophosphate: (NH₄)NaHPO₄ —› NaPO₃ + NH₃ + H₂O
  8NaPO₃ + 10C —› 2Na₄P₂O₇ + 10CO + P₄
  Although Brand tried to keep his process a secret, he sold his discovery to a German chemist, Krafft, who exhibited phosphorus throughout Europe. Word leaked out that the substance was made from urine, which was all Kunckel and Boyle needed to work out their own means of purifying phosphorus.
  
• 1678 [Johann Kunckel]
  Successfully made phosphorus from urine.
  
• 1680 [Robert Boyle]
  Boyle coated a piece of paper with phosphorus, with a separate splinter of sulfur-coated wood. When the wood was drawn through the paper, it would burst into flame. Phosphorus was difficult to obtain at that time, so the invention was only a curiosity. Boyle's method of isolating phosphorus was more efficient than Brand's: 4NaPO₃ + 2SiO₂ + 10C —› 2Na₂SiO₃ + 10CO + P₄
  
• 1826/1827 [John Walker, Samuel Jones]
  Walker serendipitously discovered a friction match made from antimony sulfide, potassium chlorate, gum, and starch, resulting from a dried blob on the end of a stick used to stir a chemical mixture. He didn't patent his discovery, though he did show it to people. Samuel Jones saw the demonstration and started to produce 'Lucifers', which were matches marketed to the Southern and Western U.S. states. Lucifers reportedly could ignite explosively, sometimes throwing sparks at a considerable distance. They were known to have a strong 'firework' odor.
• 1830 [Charles Sauria]
  Sauria reformulated the match using white phosphorus, which eliminated the strong odor. However, the phosphorus was deadly. Many people developed a disorder known as 'phossy jaw'. Children who sucked on matches developed skeletal deformities. Phosphorus factory workers got bones diseases. One pack of matches contained enough phosphorus to kill a person.
• 1892 [Joshua Pusey]
  Pusey invented the matchbook, however, he placed the striking surface on the inside of the book so that all 50 matches would ignite at once. The Diamond Match Company later purchased Pusey's patent and moved the striking surface to the exterior of the packaging.
• 1910 [Diamond Match Company]
  With a worldwide push to ban the use of white phosphorus matches, the Diamond Match Company got a patent for a non-poisonous match which used sesquisulfide of phophorous. U.S. President Taft requested that Diamond Match give up their patent.
• 1911 [Diamond Match Company]
  Diamond yielded their patent on January 28, 1911. Congress passed a law placing a prohibitively high tax on white phosphorus matches.
• Present Day
  Butane lighters have largely replaced matches in many part of the world, however matches are still made and used. The Diamond Match Company, for example, makes more than 12 billion matches a year. Approximately 500 billion matches are used annually in the United States.

Casio is a Japanese founded electronic company best known for its cameras, watches, calculators, musical instruments and PDA systems. It was established in 1946 (founded in 1957) and since then has achieved multinational success.
Casio was first established through the success of a cigarette pipe. In 1946 Tadao Kashio, the founder of Casio invented a yubiwa pipe that, after the World War II, turned quite valuable. With the success of his pipe, Kashio created Japan’s first electro-mechanical calculators in 1954.
Although technically Kashio began operations in 1946, the company dates 1957 as their founding year. He continued to design more calculators including the 001 series and the Casio “Mini” and in 1980 turned his attention elsewhere.
They moved into the realm of wrist watches which achieved instant success with popular GPS position displays, LDC screens and atomic clocks. The first G-shock watch was released in 1983 followed by the CZ-101 in 1985. In 2002 Casio released the first Exilim digital camera and this escalated into more camera inventions in 2007.
Today Casio is still known for their reliable watches, easy to use calculators and state of the art cameras.
Casio now operates all over the world in North America (Canada and the USA), Latin America (Brazil), Africa, Middle East, Europe (UK, Sweden, Germany, France, Norway, and Italy), Asia (Japan, China, South Korea, India, and Taiwan) and Oceania (Australia). Casio’s headquarters are in Tokyo, Japan.
Essentially, Casio specializes in 6 different types of products- Electronic devices; timepieces; mobile network solutions; system equipment; electronic components and others. Their electronic devices include their electronic calculators, PDA’s, electronic dictionaries, electronic diaries, label printers, digital cameras and electronic musical instruments. Some of their popular digital cameras include the Casio EX S600 and the Qv-10 models. 
Casio’s timepieces include digital watches, analog watches and clocks. Some of their most popular watches include the “G Shock” range, the desk clock and the “Pro Trek Triple Sensor” watch.
Casio also makes a range of mobile phone and handy terminals including the AU WC1 model of mobile flip phone. In the system equipment area Casio also makes electronic cash registers, office computers, page printers and data projectors for easy busy solutions. Other electronic components include LCD’s, Bump processing consignments, TCP assembly and processing consignment and carrier tape. They also make factory automation and molds.
The future looks bright for Casio who recently set up a subsidiary company in Italy and are planning to continue to expand even more in the upcoming years. They are using state of the art technology to continue to make more reliable, waterproof and sleeker designed everyday objects. They are also looking into ways to make their calculator range easier to use, their mobile phones more durable, and their PDA systems more enhanced.  They are also using their revolutionary “G Shock” system in more products which allows for less damage and breakage in everyday life as well as Protrek Solar Powered technology to help the environment and save power.

Sogeti was founded in 1967 in Grenoble, France. The company then acquired 2 large IT service companies, CAP and Gemini Computer Systems and by 1975 it had become one of the top five IT services and consulting companies in the world.  Over the years, the company has placed an increased emphasis on local professional services and outsourcing. The company relies on offshore capabilities, utilizing people in India, Morocco, Argentina, Poland and Spain.
Headquartered in Paris, France, Capgemini operates in over 30 countries. And it has four key areas of focus; Consulting Services, Outsourcing Services, Technology Services, and Local Professional Services. Capgemini has formed Limited Partnerships with TXU, Intel, SAP, Quintiq, JDA and Teradata.
Capgemini has four fundamental objectives. The company encourages employees to strive to use their expertise to benefit the client, to ensure sustainable long-term growth, to provide a return on investments, and to promote employee development.
Capgemini helps their client deal with changing business and technology issues. They offer consulting services offering valuable guidance from strategy development to execution. Offering assistance in marketing, sales and service, where specialists draw from a wealth of experiences to guide the customer through acquisition, retention, and business results while ensuring that budget funding is used where it is most effective. Capgemini is able to formulate leading edge strategy to increase the effectiveness of company finance and Human Resource departments. They can also assist customers in developing supply chain priorities. They assist customers in building a supply chain to integrate supply and demand management. They also offer assistance in targeting high potential customers. Transformation consulting is also available to the customer. When attempting to change the face of a company it is important to rely on expert teams who can design a transformation strategy, implement it and utilize tested methods to bring innovation and flexibility as well as providing measurable results in a short time frame.
Industries that most frequently utilize the services of Capgemini include Automotive, Consumer Products, Distribution, Energy, Utilities and Chemicals, Financial Services, Healthcare, Life Sciences, Manufacturing, Public Sector, Retail, Telecom, Web Hosting, Media and Entertainment.
Capgemini offers many Retailer success stories from former clients including CAPSA, RAST S.A., Dufry, X5 Retail Group, Wickes, Albert Heijn, Schuitema N.V., Matalan, Bashas’, O2 Ireland, Vendex KBB IT Services, Dairy Farm International, Rautakirja, Smiths News, Vodafone UK plc, and Meijer.
Capgemini was honored with a 2008 Pinnacle Aware for Showcase Leadership for Service Partners. They also won Vodafone’s Corporate Responsibility Engagement Award in 2008.
Capgemini suggests that companies attempting to weather today’s economy implement strategies to cut costs. For instance, assessing viable projects. Companies should keep projects, which enhance the system, and those, which have business sustainability and revenue growth.  Re-examine what is being sent outside; such as strength of partner companies and outsourcers. Fix things on paper; remove rules or goals, which no longer apply. Evaluate green solutions. Check out how web services can enhance your business. Utilize social networking.
Capgemini insights include suggestions that service providers transform how they do business, interact with the outside, respond to clients in real time, and create new levels of collaboration. Transform business processes, get smarter, build integrated processes and systems, and manage a cost effective operating model. Evolve new streams of revenue, get ready for the future, amplify new opportunities, focus on core services and share to innovate.

Facebook is a popular social network  that has grown to rank with MySpace has. But what is it about Facebook that has special appeal and makes it even more popular than MySpace? What makes Facebook Facebook? And what made it a mega hit?
It all got started back in 2003, as Facemash. Mark Zuckerberg created it, along with help of his friends and roommates Chris Hughes and Dustin Moskovitz. Zuckerberg was in his sophomore year at Harvard when opened it up, as a way to get his mind off his crush.
Facemash placed photos of undergraduate two side by side, and asking the viewers which one is “hotter”. The site was originally only for Harvard, but quickly grew to other colleges, then high schools and finally for anyone over age 13.
After it was initially started, it was forwarded to Harvard’s school admins and it was quickly shut down. Zuckerberg was charged and faced expulsion for breaching privacy.
Later on, Harvard dropped their charges against Zuckerberg. After the charges were dropped, the following semester he recreated Facemash, and opened The Facebook in February 2004.
In 2005, he dropped “the” from the name and URL. Also in September 2005, he launched the High School version of Facebook. When he first started the high school version, each high school had to be invited before being allowed to join the network. Shortly after launching the high school version he started allow companies to have their own networks on Facebook as well.

Now a group of  operators, a year after they launched their high school version, they opened it up to the public for everybody over the age of 13.
Syria and Iran have blocked Facebook from being accessed in their countries. Some companies have forbidden it from their offices. It has also been said that Zuckerberg had stolen the code and intellectual property from former classmates of his.
They have been sued more than once and have been the subject of criticism.
In Aug 2007, the code that normally creates the pages for Facebook showed instead of the content, leaving many to wonder if their data on Facebook is even safe. 
In February 2009, Facebook changed their privacy policy, causing an up roar along the way. They made it so that their users once upload data onto their servers, that they own all the rights. Even after the user deletes their account. Many users got upset by this, and entered a debate that was all over the internet.
EPIC filed a claim against Facebook with the FTC, while Zuckerberg tried to defend Facebook’s policy change. To do damage control they switched back to their old policies, though they are in the middle of rewriting them again. They will allow users to vote on the new terms, before they are adopted officially.
It has been rumored that a film about Facebook being made, though the Facebook spokesperson has said that they have not agreed to cooperate with anyone about making a film.
A 1.6% stake in Facebook had been sold to Microsoft Corp.  for $240 million in October 24th 2007.
Facebook’s history is a mixture of trouble and success from very early on. They have seen more than their share of legal issues and likely will as long as they exist. Currently it is the number one social network with MySpace and Twitter both behind it.
They have over 175 million active users worldwide currently and is growing every day. Though they may have had their share of issues, they still maintain a well kept site that hasn’t gotten lost through the Web 2.0 shuffle.

Founded in Taiwan, Acer is a multinational manufacturer of electronics. They also happen to own the largest franchised personal computer retail chain that exists in Taipei, Taiwan. It is also the 3rd larges personal computer manufacturer in the world behind Hewlett Packard and Dell Incorporated. Their product line incorporates a variety of personal computer products including laptops, desktop systems, as well as servers and storage, peripherals, displays, e-business services for business, government, education, and even home users, and personal digital assistants which are also commonly referred to as PDA’s. The company was originally called Multitech, and was founded in 1976 by Stan Shih, his wife Carolyn Yeh, along with a group of five other developers. By 1987 the company was known as Acer.
The company began small, with just eleven employees at a small capital of $25,000 dollars. Starting off, Acer was primarily a main consultant for the use of microprocessor technologies and a distributor of a wide variety of electronic parts, but it began developing into a personal computer manufacturer. Global headquarters of Acer are located in Taiwan in the Hsinchu City. In the year 2000, Acer decided to spin off its manufacturing operation into Winstron Corporation in order to focus itself on its branding business. Its labor force expanded, and Acer grew into a worldwide company who then decided to support the sales of its large product lines through the use of specific marketing strategies that best utilized the available distribution channels. By 2002, they were referred to as the pan Acer Group, and were employing nearly 40,000 people who provided support to distributors and dealers in over 100 different countries. That year, revenues began crawling into the $12.9 billion range. Acer continued to grow bigger and better, and by the year 2005, the company employed almost 8000 people throughout the world all while still maintaining a tight global service and sales network. The company is not without its problems though, and while market shares in Europe continue to go up, the market shares listed in North America have been slipping over the last few years.
Products include the Acer aspire desktop series, notebook series including Acer travel mate, Acer gemstone, tablet PC, Acer aspire, Acer aspire timeline, Acer Extensa, Acer Ferrari, the aspire one Netbook series, PDA series in S Series Palm OS PDA’s, Acer n series PDAs, automotive navigation systems including Acer e300 series travel companion with Destinator and Navteq maps, dedicated servers and storage including Acer altos series, workstations including Acer pica, computer displays, DLP projectors, digital cameras, and LCD TVs. 
The company continues to grow into a bigger and better corporation, and has even been getting into the sport sponsorship field, first by pondering the BAR-Honda formula one racing team back in 200, and in 2001 they provided a sponsorship for the Prost Grand Prix Formula one team and even the teams Ferrari engines had Acer badges. Currently, they are sponsoring the Ferrari Formula 1 team. In January of 2009, Acer became partnered in an agreement for the 2010 Vancouver Olympic Games and the 2012 London Summer Olympics that will enable Acer to be listed among the Worldwide Top Partners for each Olympic installment. The company will also continue to develop its computer products and services to take advantage of the newest technologies available today.

Firefox is a browser that is put out by Mozilla Application Suite and owned by Mozilla Corporation. It is one of the top web browsers in the world and has even given Microsoft’s Internet Explorer a run for their money. This mega browser that has become super popular overnight, may not have that much history yet, but it sure does keeps it fans happy. Here is a closer look at the short history of Mozilla Firefox.
Blake Ross and Dave Hyatt were experimenting at the Mozilla experimental branch to replace Mozilla’s (parent company Mozilla has been around since 1998) massive software called Mozilla Suite which was used prior to Firefox. Their browser had an IRC client, news, mail and WYSIWYG HTML editor built into one suite that was small and simple, unlike its older counterpart. It still has the cross-platform capabilities that the original browser held.
It was written in XUL user interface markup language. By using that language, it allowed the browser to be extended with themes and plug-ins. When Firefox 0.9 was released, many users were worried about the security of it. So Mozilla opened a website called Mozilla Update, with approved plug-ins and themes for users to download and use knowing that they were safe to use.
Back in 2002, when it came out for beta testing, they used the name Phoenix. In April of 2003, they changed the name to Firebird, because Phoenix was too close to the BIOS maker Phoenix Technologies. The name Firebird turned out also to used already, so they changed it yet again this time to Mozilla Firebird. But the company that already used the name kept pressure on them. So they changed their name yet again and the final time, to Mozilla Firefox.
Firefox had dozens of changed prior to it being released to the public as Firefox 1.0 in November of 2004. Shortly after the initial release, they soon put out Firefox 1.5 to take care of security issues. Originally with Firefox 1.5, it was to be Firefox 1.1, but they decided to merge Firefox 1.1 with and into Firefox 1.5. For release, instead of keeping them apart. In 2006, Firefox 2.0 came out. During Firefox 1.5, they stopped supporting MAC OS X v.10.1. Firefox 1.5.0.12 was the last Firefox that supported Win 95.
Firefox 2 was the first Firefox version with Gecko. With Firefox 2, came Tabbed browsing, extension manager, GUI, and more with the improved and updated version of Firefox 1.0. This is the version that made it gain notice across the globe. This was also the last version that supported Windows N.T4.0 and Win 98.
In December of 2007, Firefox Live Chat came out. Before Firefox 3 was released or even developed, they asked their users to request what they’d like added onto the popular web browser back in 2006.  With Firefox 3, they redesigned the layout and made it more Web 2.0 friendly. Firefox 3 was released in June of 2008.
Firefox has only been around for a short time (7 years in 2009) but that doesn’t make any of their history any less important than companies that have been around longer than Firefox. With Firefox being so young still, it likely will have much more history coming its way and will stay around for a long time, keeping customers happy with their hit browser. Mozilla is staying hard at work in their Firefox department, which keep it up to date and in tune with their users. This article cannot cover what will happen, but it does cover what made Firefox during its last 7 years.

When anyone hears the name Microsoft to think of one person: Bill Gates, the founder of  the company. It’s said that Bill Gates is one of the smartest programmers ever.  After reading an article on the Altair 8800 from the popular electronics magazine in 1975, Bill Gates called the creators of the Altair 8800, MITS, offering to demonstrate and importation of the BASIC programming language for the system. Gates had neither the Altair nor the interpreter. However, in only eight weeks, Bill and Paul Allen had created the interpreter. The interpreter worked without any glitches in the demo and MITS was located. On the basis of that, Microsoft was founded.
The name came from microcomputer and software coming up with Microsoft. The Microsoft name was registered with the secretary of state of New Mexico on November 26, 1976. Microsoft’s first international office was in Japan and found it on November 1, 1978. The name of the international office was ASCII, which is now known as Microsoft Japan. In January of 1979 the company packed up and moved its headquarters to Bellevue Washington. Steve Ballmer teamed up with Microsoft in June of 1980. The company had to restructure in June of 1981 in order to become an incorporated business in its new home state of Washington. This is when they changed the name to Microsoft Inc. As part of the restructuring, Bill Gates became the President of the Company and the Chairman of the Board and Paul Allen became the Executive VP.

Microsoft released their first operating system in 1980. It was a variant of  Unix. AT&T acquired the system through a distribution license, calling it Xenix. They then hired Santa Cruz operation to help to port/adapt the operating system to several platforms. This variant would become home to the first version of Microsoft’s word processor. The company went on to produce several other programs after this one. However, the disk operating system also known as DOS was the one to bring them true success. In August of 1981 IBM warded a contract to Microsoft to provide a version of the CP/M. clone called 86 -- TOS. This deal went down for less than 50,000. IBM then renamed 86-DOS to PC-dos. They changed the name due to the fact of copyright infringement problems. IBM then marketed both CP/M. and PC-DOS. CP/M. was sold for $240 and PC-DOS was sold for $40. PC-DOS became the standard edition because of its lower price.
In 1983 Microsoft created their very first own home computer system. They named it MSX. MSX contained its own version of  die DOS operation system. This very own system became very popular in South America, Japan, and Europe. Later on, the market was flooded with IBM PC clones after Columbia data products successfully cloned the IBM BIOS. This very deal allowed IBM to have total control of its own QDOS and MS-DOS. Soon powering this. Microsoft rose to one of the major software vendors in the home computer industry. Microsoft released a program called Microsoft Mouse in May of 1983 expanding its product line and other markets. Ever since then Microsoft has been the biggest largest player in the industry for creating top-of-the-line software, such as their most famous product Windows.
 In 2001 Microsoft entered the PC gaming world with their Xbox system. This was the first gaming console system to be released in the Gaming Market. The Xbox ranked second to Sony’s PlayStation 2. The console sold 24 million units compared to PlayStation 2 at 100 million units. The company took a $4 billion loss on the console.  It was then discontinued in late 2006. In May of 2005, Microsoft unveiled their Xbox 360 gaming console. The console had people standing out in the cold waiting to get their hands on one for hours. As soon as they hit the shelves they were sold out completely. As of January 20009  28,000,000 units have been sold worldwide.  Today the Xbox 360 is one of the hottest gaming system available on the market today.

Dell, Inc, which was ranked the 25th largest company on the Fortune 500 list by Forbes magazine, began its cosmic rise in 1984 when Michael Dell used a mere $1000 dollars to found PC’s Limited. Working in a college dorm room at the University of Texas, Michael Dell had a goal to produce IBM compatible computers from stock components to suit individual customer needs.
The company vision was to produce computers that could easily be fitted with individual components to build a computer system to accommodate individual requirements. The goal was to give the customer exactly what they needed or wanted. The computers were built from stock parts as they were ordered. In 1985, the founder dropped out of school, got a family loan for $300,000 dollars and began to give his full attention to the new company.
Later the same year the company introduced its first company designed computer, the Turbo PC.  The computer boasted an Intel 8088 processor that ran at an impressive speed of 8MHz. And it sold in the United States for $795 dollars. The computer systems, which were advertised in computer magazines nationally, were purchased through direct sales. Given a list of options, the customers choose the components they wanted and the computers were built as they were ordered. By ordering the components wholesale, they company was able to provide great pricing, which proved to be much lower than their competitors’. The company’s business formula proved to be a great success and the first year of trading they grossed more that $73 million dollars.
Ireland welcomed the new company in 1987, and became the first of many international operations. 1988 ushered in the new company name, Dell Computer Corporation and this company with humble beginnings grew from a $30 million dollar company to a company worth $90 million dollars. Although the company attempted to market their computers via warehouse club stores and superstores, the public, now used to having the ability to choose and build as they wanted, did not respond as hoped and the company returned to direct sales.
Dell’s 10th anniversary was celebrated in 1994 with the release of a brand new logo. And 1996 found the company selling the popular computer systems direct to the customer on Dell’s own internet website. When the company acquired Compaq in 1999 they became known as the top seller of personal computer systems in the United States.
2002 became the year of company expansion as Dell began to also provide such products as televisions, digital audio players and computer printers. The following year, 2003 the company became known as Dell Inc. in an effort to acknowledge the company’s expansion into other products. The year 2004 saw a new manufacturing assembly plant near Winston- Salem, North Carolina and Michael Dell while deciding to appoint Kevin Rollins as new CEO, decided to retain the position of Chairman of the Board. In 2007 CEO Kevin Rollins resigned and Michael Dell resumed his position as CEO. Dell is also one of the largest suppliers of dedicated servers to web hosting companies.
While true that Dell Inc. has experienced some trouble spots in the past few years, the company continues to be one of the largest computer manufacturers due mainly to the long record of customer satisfaction. While others have adopted the model of direct sales, Dell Inc. continues to be the most successful and the most popular.

Intel began in 1968. It was founded by Gordon E. Moore who is also a physicist and chemist. He was accompanied by Robert Noyce, also a fellow physicist and co-creator of integrated circuitry, after they both had left Fairchild Semiconductor. During the 1980’s Intel was run by a chemical engineer by the name of Andy Grove, who was the third member of the original Intel family. Many other Fairchild employees participated in other Silicon Valley companies. Andy Grove today is considered to be one of the company’s essential business and strategic leaders. As the 1990’s concluded, Intel had become one of the largest and by far the most successful businesses in the entire world. Intel has gone through many faces and phases. In the beginning Intel was set apart by its ability primarily to create memory chips or SRAM. 
When the firm was founded, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce had the idea to name their company Moore Noyce. However when the name is spoken it is heard as “More Noise” This idea was quickly abandoned and the pursuit of a more suitable name – one which was not associated with a bad interface. The name NM Electronics was shortly thereafter chosen and used for nearly a year, when the company experienced a name change to Integrated Electronics, or INTEL for short. The rights to the name however had to be purchased as it was already in use by a fairly well known hotel chain.

Though Intel had mastered the first microprocessor called the Intel 4004 in 1971 and also one of the worlds very first microcomputers in 1972, in the early 80’s the focus was primarily on Random Access Memory chips. A new client in the early 70’s from Japan wanted to enlist the services of Intel to design twelve chips for their calculators. Knowing that they did not have the manpower or the resources to complete this job effectively, Ted Hoff agreed to the job just the same. His idea was: What if we can design one computer chip which could function the same as twelve microchips?. Hoof’s idea was completely embraced by Moore and Noyce. If this project were successful the chip would have the ability to receive command functions. This is where the 4004 model came from. After a painstaking 9 months. It measured 1/8th inch by 1/6th inch long and contained 2,300 transistors. History was made and changed that day.
The Pentium Pro processor had 5.5 million transistors, making the chip so affordable that it could be imbedded in common household appliances. After this success Intel decided to completely embrace this and to pursue its production. Some notable dates in the history of Intel are:
1968  Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore incorporate NM Electronics
1970  The development of DRAM and dynamic RAM
1971  The world’s first microcomputer is introduced
1974  The first general purpose microprocessor is introduced to the world
1980   The Intel microprocessor is chosen by IBM for the first ever personal computer.  1992  Intel’s net income tops the one billion dollar point
1993   The Pentium is introduced, a fifth generation chip
1996  Intel’s revenue exceeds twenty billion dollars and the net income surpasses five billion dollars
1997, The Pentium 11 microprocessor is introduced to the world
1999 Intel is added to Dow Jones Averages.
2000 The world’s very first Intel 1 gigahertz processor  hits the shelves.
To this day Intel continues to make strides in the computing and micro computing world.

Blogger was first launched on August 23, 1999.  It was created by Pyra Labs. Blogger is one of the earliest blog publishing tools.  It has been credited for helping to popularize the format.   At first Blogger was entirely free and there was no income model.  When Pyra Lab’s money was diminished, the employees worked without pay for weeks, even months.  This caused a lot of employees to leave the company. Evan Williams, who is the co founder of Blogger, ran the company solely by himself after the loss of income.  He then was lucky to seal an investment by Trellix. Soon after, advertising started supporting Blogger, and Blogger Pro emerged.
Pyra Labs was bought out by Google in February of 2003. The acquisition to Google was done subtly.  The acquisition allowed premium features, which were once charged for, to become free.  Then, around a year later, Evan Williams left Google.  In 2004 Google purchased Picasa.  When they did this they incorporated Picasa and its photo sharing utility into Blogger.  This movement brought in more users because it allowed them to post photos to their blogs. 
In 2004 Blogger completed a significant redesign.  They added multiple features.  These features included individual archive pages for posts, comments, posting by email, and web templates. On August 14, 2006, Blogger brought forth its latest and more advanced version in beta.  This version’s code name was Invader.  Invader attracted even more users to Google servers and included some new features. However, at the end of 2006 Blogger was removed from beta. By May 2007, Blogger had entirely moved over to Google operated dedicated servers. 
Blogger was ranked 16 on the list of the top 50 domains in conditions of numbers of visitors in the year 2007. Blogger has been redesigned multiple times through out its existence.  Its most drastic redesign took place in 2006.  All blogs, which were associated with a user’s Google account, were automatically moved to Google servers.  This made Blogger claim that the service was more reliable due to the quality of the servers provided by Google.  Along with the movement to Google servers, there were new features introduced.  These features included, a drag and drop template-editing interface, label organization, and new web feed options.  In addition the blogs were updated enthusiastically, as opposed to rewriting HTML files.
Additional Facts:
The Google toolbar has a feature that is called BlogThis.  This tool bar allows users that have blogger accounts to post links directly to their blogs no matter the size.
“Blogger for Word” is a completely free add in for Microsoft Word.  This  add in enables users to save a MS word document right onto a Blogger blog.  They can also edit their post any time on and offline.  However, in January 2007, Google stated that Blogger Word is not compatible with the new version of blogger coming out, and they do not know if they will support it in the future. 
Blogger is extremely supportive of Google's AdSense service as a means of income from running a blog.
Blogger offers multiple author support.  This support makes it possible to set up group blogs.
Blogger also offers a template-editing feature that allows users to modify the Blogger template.
Windows live Writer, which is a standalone application of the Windows Live suite, publishes straight to Blogger.
The only two countries which have sworn off blogger and have blocked it is, Turkey and Pakistan.  The reasons for this have never been explained. 
Bloggers main website is www.blogger.com.  The blogs which it host are all from blogspot.com.

Yahoo Inc, is the owner of famous search engine and email client, Yahoo.com. Yahoo is the second most popular visited website in the world and the U.S.. It is thriving and has been around for 10+ years, but how did Yahoo! get started and who was behind this sensational site? Here is the history of Yahoo Inc.
The year 1994 was a promising year for Yahoo Inc.’s founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo. They were graduate students at Stanford University studying Electrical Engineering,  when in April they renamed their “Jerry and David's Guide to the World Wide Web" to “Yahoo!”.
They renamed it because it was a part of the expansion for “Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle".  They picked that name, because they liked what it meant. When the end for 1994 rolled around, Yahoo! already had one million hits.
They finally bought the domain, Yahoo.com in January 1995 and switched the site to that URL instead of their older one. Filo and Yang noticed that they were on to something and quickly had it incorporated. In April of 1995, Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz gave Yang and Filo them $3 million help them in raising capital for their venture. By 1996, they were able to start public trading.
In the late 1990’s, Yahoo! became a Web portal. With the growth of Web portals, many companies got absorbed and Yahoo was one of the absorbers. Here is the break down of sites Yahoo acquired. Four11:They owed rocket mail email service. When Yahoo bought them, they changed it to Yahoo mail.
Classicgames: Yahoo changed it to Yahoo Games.
Yoyodyne Entertainment Inc: Yahoo Pager(later on, became Yahoo Messenger)
GeoCities: It became Yahoo GeoCities
eGroups: Yahoo called Yahoo Groups.
During the dotcom bubble’s highest point, Yahoo!’s shares were worth a lot of money. Even though in 2000, at one point Yahoo!’s domain was under a distributed denial of service attack, the next day their shares rose. Also during 2000, eBay and Yahoo! thought about a 50/50 merger, though they never did happen. Instead 6 years later, they partnered with each other for advertising. The summer of 2006, Google and Yahoo! both signed an agreement, so Google could stay the default search engine and Yahoo! could go into BETA.
During the dot-com bubble burst, Yahoo was one of the few lucky ones, meaning though they lost a lot of money, they didn’t go out of business. In 2002, Yahoo! wanted to compete with mega internet service provider and web portal AOL. They partnered with SBC, BT Openworld, and Verizon to offer internet service. Later on in 2002, Yahoo! started to acquire search engines and left the contract with Google and started using their own technology in 2004.
Also in 2004, Yahoo! felt threatened by Google’s release of Gmail, so they upgraded all free email accounts to 3 more Gigabytes then they initially offered. For their paid users, they offered 2 more GB. Though later on, they did take the meter out, giving all users unlimited storage.
In 2005, Microsoft and Yahoo! agreed on allow both of their instant messengers to work together. Yahoo Launchcast became Yahoo Music. They bought Flickr, blo.gs, Upcoming.com, webjay and del.icio.us in 2006.
Also in 2005 they launched Yahoo 360 social network to compete with MySpace and Facebook.
Yahoo! has had many offers to be bought up by Microsoft for the last three years and all have failed.
Yahoo! has been around for a long time and if they have it their way, they will stay independent as long as they t. And it just might live for another 10+ years.

The History of IBM goes back further than the development of computers. It was originally a Tabulating Machine Company founded in 1896 by Herman Hollerith. It specialized in developing punched card data processing equipment. The patent for this technology was initially applied for in 1884. It began as a means for Hollerith to meet the demands in tabulating the 1890 Census. Punch cards introduced in 1896 laid the foundation for generations of equipment which would one day be known as IBM. The business was sold to Charles Flint in 1911 for 2.3 million dollars of which he received 1.2 million dollars to create Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation or CRT. Incorporation took place on June 16, 1911 in Endicott, New York.
There were three companies which merged. The computing Scale Corporation, the Time Recording Company and finally the Tabulating Machine Company. Flint was the key financier behind the merger and remained a member until 1930. In 1914 Thomas J. Watson Sr. became General Manager of CTR and in 1917 CTR entered the Canadian market using the name International Business Machines Co., Limited. Watson played an essential and key role in establishing what would later be known as IBM.
In 1928, IBM introduced a new 80 column rectangular-hole punched card, which became the standard IBM card used by tabulators and computers for many years to come. Later in the 1950’s IBM became the primary contractor in developing computers for the United States Air Force automated defense systems. While working on the SAGE interceptor control system IBM gained information critical to work being performed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This information spearheaded advancements for the company by learning information on digital data transition, algebraic computer language, light guns, integrated video display, analog to digital and digital to analog conversion. IMB built fifty six SAGE computers totaling thirty million dollars each and in its heyday employed more than seven thousand employees.
The 1980’s found IBM consolidating its mainframe business and expanding the breadth of mainframes with the ESA/390 and the S/390.  To create the illusion that IBM’s revenues and profits were much stronger than they really were in the mid to latter part of the decade, IBM embarked upon the practice of converting its large rental base of mainframes to lease arrangements. This spending shift caused management to scramble, which threatened the monopoly which IBM had enjoyed in the technology business.
Don Estridge was hired in the IBM Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton Florida. It was at this point that he along with his team known as “Project Chess” developed the IBM PC which was then introduced to the world on August 12 1981. Initially these systems were not affordable to the average person for personal use. The hefty price tag of $1.565 left the equipment primarily in the business sector, although these were not seen as a viable computers by the corporate computer departments. Often the purchases were made by middle management as they could see the value these systems had in relation to business.
IBM operating systems have paralleled hardware development. On earlier systems, operating systems represented a modest level of investment, and were typically viewed as an addition to the hardware. By the time of the System/360,  operating systems had assumed a much greater role, in terms of cost, complexity, value, and risk. IBM has widely been known for its dominant computer business. However, it has had major roles in many other industries. Today IBM enjoys continued success with systems easily applicable to businesses as well as personal use.

Everyone knows the name Google. Whether young or old, computer smart or not this name will pop up in any conversation about computers. Google has created some very impressive milestones of its time and continues to grow rapidly every day.  It all started when Larry Page and Sergey Brin met in Stanford. Larry was 22 and a graduate of University of Michigan was there considering attending the school. And low and behold Sergey, who was 21, was there to show him around. Talk about a match made in heaven!
However,  according to some they disagreed on just about everything during their first meeting. In 1996, now firm friends and both of them computer science grad students, began developing a search engine called BackRub. This search engine had operated on Stanford servers for just a little over a year when it started taking up to much bandwidth to suite Stanford. So they decided to switch servers and renamed the search engine in 1997, calling it Google. The name comes from a mathematical term for the number 1 followed by 100 zero’s. The use of the term reflects their mission to organize a seemingly infinite amount of information on the web.
In august of 2008, Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim writes them a check for $100,000 to a company that didn’t even exist yet. It was at this very moment that they realized what they had  and went and incorporated the name Google Inc. Their knowledge was great, but not great enough to impress the money boys or the major internet portals. Oh how they wish they invested in them now! So they began struggling for financial support. Andy was one of the few to see true potential of what these boys had created. During their presentation to him, Andy said he had to duck out for another meeting and offered to write them a check. The check was for $100,000 and that indeed had got things moving for them. 

In September the boys moved into the their workspace in Susan Wojcicki’s garage at 232 Santa Margarita, Menlo Park, CA. They then went on to file for incorporation in California on September 4 1998.  Shortly after completing this important task, the boys went an opened a bank account in the name of Google Inc., their newly established company, and deposited the $100,000 dollar check Andy Bechtolsheim had given them. Shortly after they have established there new business they began hiring employees. There first one was Craig Silverstein, a fellow grad student from Stanford as well.
In December of 1998 PC Magazine wrote: “The 25 million pages currently catalogued seem to be good choices. The site has uncanny knack for returning extremely relevant results. There’s much more to come from Google, but even in its prototype form it’s a great search engine.” .  They went on to say that Google had made its mark as one off the Top 100 websites for 1998. Even at the very beginning they received only the best reviews.
They then went on to become the most successful internet company ever. Early in 1999 they struck a deal with Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins for $25 million. In November 1999 Charlie Ayers joined Google as the company’s first  chef.  In April of 2000. Google announced the MentalPlex program, which envisages the software’s ability to read your mind as you visualize the search results you want. In June of 2000, Google partnered with Yahoo! to become their default search provider. Also in June they announced the first billion URL index, making Google become the world’s largest search engine. In September of 2000 they started offering searches in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean , bringing their total number of supported languages to 15. In December 2000 Google toolbar was released.
They have been going strong ever since, making them the largest and best search engine site today, with multiple enhancements. They will continue to be at the top of their game for years to come.