CAROLINA NATURALLY

Saturday, April 20, 2013

Ridiculous Startup Company Ideas That Were Completely Successful

What are some of the most ridiculous startup ideas that eventually became successful?

That question was posted on Quora. Michael Wolfe, an entrepreneur, responded by pointing out that some of the most successful startup companies and projects of the past 20 years seem pretty stupid at first:

Ask yourself, if you were a venture capitalist pitched one of these ideas, what would your reaction have been?

Facebook - the world needs yet another Myspace or Friendster except several years late. We'll only open it up to a few thousand overworked, anti-social, Ivy Leaguers. Everyone else will then join since Harvard students are so cool. [...]

iOS - a brand new operating system that doesn't run a single one of the millions of applications that have been developed for Mac OS, Windows, or Linux. Only Apple can build apps for it. It won't have cut and paste. [...]

Instagram - filters! That's right, we got filters!

LinkedIn - how about a professional social network, aimed at busy 30- and 40-somethings. They will use it once every 5 years when they go job searching.

Siri keeps data for "up to two years", but only anonymously

Robert McMillan explains what happens to the data generated and stored with Siri queries: "Once the voice recording is six months old, Apple “disassociates” your user number from the clip, deleting the number from the voice file. But it keeps these disassociated files for up to 18 more months for testing and product improvement purposes."

FedEx Invented the Tracking Number

The tracking number, that string of digits that tell you where your package is and when it's going to be delivered, is so ubiquitous today that you'd probably never believe that there was a time before its existence.
Yet, this obvious piece of information didn't exist before FedEx (then Federal Express) created it forty years ago:

One of FedEx’s great contributions was the tracking number, which has become a standard in shipping. By entering a numeric string into FedEx.com, you can find out exactly where your package is as it works it way toward you. It’s immensely convenient, but that is but a pleasant side-effect. The tracking number was initially an internal process for quality control.
The system, launched in the late 1970s, was created to improve efficiencies. It worked so well that, in 1979, the system was offered to customers as COSMOS (Customers, Operations and Services Master Online System). When the system went online it included early prototypes of handheld computers that scanned package barcodes with wands. FedEx was aware that of the importance of all this data. FedEx founder Fred Smith is famous for saying, “The information about the package is as important as the package itself.”

Roberto Baldwin of Wired has the post: Here.

Elephantine Colossus

Brooklyn's Most Unusual Hotel

The Elephantine Colossus, otherwise known as the Elephant Hotel, was a tourist attraction located on Coney Island that was built in the shape of an elephant. The hotel opened in 1885, a 12-storey pachyderm with 31 organ-themed guest rooms that faced the ocean and featured an observation deck and a cigar store in its leg.

An example of novelty architecture, the seven-story tall structure designed by James V. Lafferty stood above Surf Avenue and West 12th Street from 1885 until 1896, when it burnt down in a fire. During its lifespan, the thirty-one room building acted as a hotel, concert hall, and amusement bazaar.

Ghostly 1970s couple haunt woman's photo of nephew

A Texas woman said a failed attempt to snap a cellphone photo of her nephew instead captured the images of two figures she believes to be ghosts. Marcella Davis took the photo on April 15 at Cleveland High School, Cleveland, where she was trying to get a shot of her nephew, who attends the school. "He spun around so I couldn't take his picture, so I got the back of his head," she said.

"I didn't try to take no more because he didn't let me." Davis, the mother of two teenagers, said she doesn't understand much about the smart phone she used to take the photos, so that evening, her daughter was showing her how she could zoom in and out. As her daughter zoomed in on the photo of her nephew, she could see more detail. "She goes, 'Mom, look at this.' I was like, 'What?' and she showed me the picture of the ghost," Davis said. "You could see straight through it."

A man in a light-colored suit with bell-bottom pants and a dark shirt is standing near the chain-link fence, and a woman, who is less distinct, can be seen behind him. Because of the man's clothing and hair style, he appears to be from the 1970s, Davis said. A life-long resident of the Cleveland area, Davis said she has never had any other encounters with ghosts, but believes it could be possible. "To me, it's not something that's not normal," she said.

"People pass away all the time. Until you're the one who passes away, you don't honestly know what happens to you." While some people might think she made up the story, Davis said she wouldn't know how to alter the photo. "I can promise you I did not make that picture up," she said.

A resurgence in LSD research

It's drug week at Popular Science and Shaunacy Ferro would like you to know why doctors can't give you LSD — and why they maybe ought to be.

Tidbits for hypochondriacs

If you would like to avoid catching somebody's cold, you should attempt to remain at least six feet away from them. That is the distance respiratory droplets can travel through air.

Health News

Community Gardening May Lower BMI

Community gardeners have lower BMIs and a smaller chance of being overweight or obese, a new study suggests.

Why Is China's So-called Bird Flu Spreading?

The virus is spreading to people who haven't had contact with birds or poultry, report Chinese health officials.

Ahem ...

Threat to Brazil tribe not lifted

The Brazilian government is accused of ignoring a legal deadline to remove settlers from the territory of a highly endangered tribe.

Scientists sequence the coelacanth genome

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSOcgxLxOZiw1bhxqkw9evAHzSCWo-U8Xd-irTkCfYDqxKyJIh5I74yRK5bqLpGeLv_Ix_4P05MQvNvziTM1rw6DOVWioLdu6lj2wqcrQ_1j0cKvT8m38tyr2uSKQBxQ9ASy6VM612zTDS3Ey5/s1600/segefossil.jpg

The coelacanth is one of a small handful of living fishes that are probably closely related much more ancient, extinct creatures — including, the first fish to haul itself up onto land. Now scientists have sequenced its genes and are digging through the data in search of genetic clues to how fish and land-dwelling animals are connected to one another. Among the finds so far, a gene that seems to be connected to how animals grow placentas. Coelacanths don't have placentas, but they do have eggs that hatch inside their own bodies.

Yellowstone's Volcano Bigger Than Thought

Yellowstone's underground volcanic plumbing is bigger and better connected than scientists thought, geologists reported at the Seismological Society of America's annual meeting.

The Gulf Stream in Infrared

It looks like an abstract painting or layers of oil, but that's the Gulf Stream, the swift Atlantic ocean current that originates at the tip of Florida, follows the eastern coastlines of the United States, then crosses the Atlantic Ocean towards Europe and then dipping down to the east coast of Africa.
The image above is infrared photo by NASA's Suomi NPP Satellite:

The infra-red image, covering an area about 180 miles east of Atlantic City, New Jersey, shows the warmest waters in dark orange. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says the temperature of these waters is an astounding 86 degrees F. Lighter colors indicate cooler waters, as low as 50 degrees. And the black areas in the image are clouds.

Tom Yulsman of Discover Magazine's ImaGeo blog has the post: Here.

Kepler 62, a planetary system like our own

Two of the five planets seen circling a distant star may be capable of supporting life, reports the team operating the Kepler Space Telescope. Relatively close to Earth's size and within their sun's habitable zone, the worlds—1200 light years away—are the most tantalizing yet in a search that began in 2009. [The Atlantic]

Monster Hawaiian Telescope Approved

The summit of Mauna Kea on Big Island, Hawaii, already plays host to 13 observatories -- now a new, monster addition the telescopic family is one step closer to reality.

Astronomical News

Herschel captures a 'cosmic horse'

Europe's Herschel space telescope has imaged one of the most popular subjects in the sky - the Horsehead Nebula - and its environs.

'Most Earth-like' worlds detected

Scientists say Nasa's Kepler space telescope has found distant planets that may be the most Earth-like it has yet discovered. 369

Alien hunters: What if ET ever phones our home?

Random Photo

Couple greeted by 12-foot, 1,000 lb alligator on front porch

A 12-foot alligator kept a South Carolina couple practically hostage in their home for nearly five hours on Saturday before it was captured and taken away. Diana Andrews opened the front door of the Hilton Head Island home she shares with her husband, Arthur, at around 5:30am to take the couple's Scottish Terrier for a walk. Instead, she found herself face-to-snout with an alligator.

"I was in bed and heard her open the door and then scream and then heard the door slam," Arthur Andrews said. "I went running out and looked outside. The dog couldn't have been two feet from the gator's mouth when my wife grabbed him by his tail and pulled him back into the house, so she had to get that close too," he said. The Andrews called the security officer of their gated community who arrived in his pickup truck and attempted to scare the gator back into the lagoon that neighbors the couple's home. When that only made the gator more agitated the guard told the Andrews they'd have to "Call the professionals."

For the next two hours the Andrews watched the gator from the safety of their front window, as he continued to "kind of case the house," according to Andrews, until "professionals" from Critters Management Inc. arrived. Believing that Andrews' over-the-phone description of the gator as "about 10 feet" would be a typical situation, in which the gator is actually about two feet but the homeowner is scared, the company only sent one man, Joe Maffo, to chase the gator away. "When he saw it, he said there was no way," Andrews recalled, adding that Maffo estimated the gator to weigh about 1,000 pounds.

YouTube link.

Maffo first used a snare to try to coax the gator but when the gator snapped the steel cable he turned to a second approach, using both a snare and ropes to secure the gator to a nearby tree. He then left and came back to the couple's home with reinforcement - six additional colleagues - who taped and tied the gator's mouth and legs shut so they could remove the animal from the Andrews' lawn. "It was five hours minimum from the time we saw him to the time they took him away," Andrews said. Andrews believes the alligator was euthanized because its size and aggression prevented it from being released. A representative for Critter Management confirmed that the alligator was harvested by the company.