Branson decided to mold his face and design an ice cube with his facial characteristics and looks. So yes; now you are going to be able to see a couple of ‘Little Richards’ in your bar drink going forward.

The cubes were designed so the Virgin boss could travel ‘in spirit’ with his passengers and they in turn could experience what it may be like to have a drink with the billionaire entrepreneur and business magnate.

It took a team of 4 skilled designers 6 weeks to create the moulds for Richard’s cubes. They got exact measurements of Sir Richard’s head using detailed photographic techniques and laser scanning technology.

The ice cubes are uncannily life-like, depicting the airline owner’s goatee beard, grinning teeth and lustrous mane. So you decide, cocky or cool?

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In 1960, brothers Tom and James Monaghan bought DomiNick’s, a small pizza place in Ypsilanti, Michigan. They gave a $75 down payment and borrowed $900 to pay for the store. After 8 months, James traded his half of the business to Tom for an used Volkswagen Beetle. Tom then changed the name of the pizza place to Domino’s Pizza, Inc in 1965.

Extra Trivia: The company logo was originally planned to add a new dot with the addition of every new store, but this idea quickly faded as Domino’s experienced rapid growth. The 3 dots represent the stores that were open at the time in 1969. By 1978, the franchise opened its 200th store.

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Since most of us missed the event, here is a video by Bloomberg showing the exact moment of Mark ringing the opening bell from the Facebook HQ:

In 1998, the United States Department of Justice and 20 states filed a consolidated set of civil actions against Microsoft. A case now known as United States v. Microsoft.

It was alleged that Microsoft held a monopoly in the personal computer sector, and that it was abused by Microsoft bundling their operating system, Microsoft Windows, and their web browser Internet Explorer. It was alleged that because of this bundling, rival browsers Netscape and Opera were muscled out of the “Browser Wars.”

The federal judge presiding over Microsofts antitrust trial shook his head and laughed during portions of Bill Gates denying that his company targeted a jihad against the Internet browser of rival Netscape Communications. Enjoy the videos:

The list include many devices that greatly influenced life around the world and a few of the 1,093 US patents under his name. He is credited with numerous inventions that contributed to mass communication and telecommunications. These included: a stock ticker, a mechanical vote recorder, a battery for an electric car, electrical power, recorded music and motion pictures.

Enjoy the images:

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On 02/02/2012, Microsoft uploaded a video to its Youtube account, a Google-owned property by the way. The video is called “Gmail Man” and is intended to show you just how much Google cares more about advertising revenue than privacy.

Microsoft makes fun of a few Gmail features such as “Gmail Ads learning from your inbox” by poking fun at how Google scans your email content as a part of its advertising system. Take a look at the video below, enjoy:

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Forrest Mars, Sr., the founder of the Mars Company, got the idea for the M&M’s chocolate in the 1930s during the Spanish Civil War when he saw soldiers eating chocolate pellets with a hard shell of tempered chocolate surrounding the inside, preventing the candies from melting.

Forrest Mars received a patent for his own process on March 3, 1941 and production began on the same year in a factory located in New Jersey. Their popularity and their shell were so popular that they, in turn, were used by U.S. soldiers during World War II. During the war, the candies were exclusively sold to the military.

What a violent origin!

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I have a lot of respect for Bill Gates. Not just because he is been wildly successful, but because as far as I can understand, he has kept a steady head about him in spite of his success. As one of the wealthiest men in the world, he is also making a name for himself as one of the most philanthropic.

Read the following infographic to find out more about the powerful things happening at the hands of Bill Gates, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the legacy of philanthropy started by some of America’s most successful and most innovative figures:

Source: (frugaldad.com)

Google - http://www.google.com/

Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Craigslist – http://www.craigslist.org

Wired – http://www.wired.com/

Reddit – http://www.reddit.com

Mozilla – http://www.mozilla.org/

Hacker News – http://news.ycombinator.com/

Twitpic – http://twitpic.com/

WordPress - http://wordpress.com/

Cheezburger Network - http://cheezburger.com/

Source (The Freedom of the Internet)

In the 1920s, Adolf Dassler, a soft-spoken sports fanatic who spent hours working on shoe designs in his workshop, and Rudolf Dassler, a great salesman, started a small shoemaking business in Herzogenaurach. They were focusing on hand-sewn athletic footwear. But as their business took off, the two brothers grew increasingly frustrated with each other. They disagreed on everything from politics, the future of the company and one another’s choice in wives.

After fighting and disagreeing for about 20 years, Rudolf left the company and set up a rival shop across the river named Puma in 1948. Adolf remained in the initial plant and renamed the company Adidas.

In addition, the two brothers had links with the Nazi Party. Back then, it was very difficult for any German company during those times to continue to operate without having some kind of links with the Nazi Party, especially if it involved sports, which was very much at the heart of the Nazi propaganda machine. The Dasslers had ties with the sports hierarchy. It certainly helped in gaining access to the Olympic grounds in 1936 when they had this superb linkup with Jesse Owens, an American track and field athlete.

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“The Apple Boogie” is a collection of 8 tracks that are sure to inspire something in you, whether it is laughter, nostalgia, or wonder at how simply weird it is to listen to this music 24 years later.

The Apple Boogie  appears to have been handed out to attendees at another Apple sales conference in 1987.

You can download all the tracks here: Album
And lyrics to the songs here: Lyrics

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In September 1956 IBM launched the 305 RAMAC, the first ‘super’ computer with a hard disk drive. The hard disk weighed over a ton and stored only 5 MB of data. A single picture in your iPhone occupies a little less than 5 MB of space.

It now seems like Microsoft can also be funny. Not funny in the sense that their OS presentations can fail
in front of thousands of viewers all the time, but funny in the sense that they can make funny videos that make us all laugh.

In case you missed it, here is the funny mini-movie Bill Gates showed at his last CES keynote in 2008, Gates’ last full-time year at Microsoft:

This only adds to the fact that Facebook is one of the best places to work in the world. In what other company do you get to beat up your CEO?

Two of the company’s executives, George Campbell and Alexander Wilson, got so drunk and rowdy on a flight from Toronto to Beijing that the pilot had to make an unscheduled stop in Vancouver, disrupting travel plans of more than 300 people. Apparently they were so disruptive and non-compliant that it was worth it for the pilot to turn around after heading north of Alaska.

The incident began Monday night aboard Air Canada Flight 31, a non-stop flight from Toronto to Beijing, where the unruly passengers consumed “too much alcohol” and “disobeyed” the flight crew. The Boeing 777 aircraft, carrying 314 passengers and 17 crew members was already north of Alaska, when the pilots decided to turn the plane around to unload the passengers.

The two executives were arrested after deplaning in Vancouver. Each was fined $35,878, given a year’s probation, and banned from any contact with Air Canada crew during the probation time.

What did RIM said after the incident?: “Based on the limited information available at this time, RIM has suspended the individuals involved pending further investigation.”

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The NeXT computer wasn’t as successful as Apple is now, but it was a key ingredient to help Apple survive in the late 90s. The creation of NeXT and the sequential pivoting of the company from hardware to software to acquisition is one of the most fascinating episodes in the career of Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, it is also one of the least documented.

The following video is from a series called Entrepreneurs, that documents the creation of NeXT. The real gems here are the way that Steve interacts with the team, shooting down what he feels are silly ideas and encapsulating several minutes of brainstorming with explicit goals. Enjoy!

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The recording session for the first album from Mick Jagger’s new band “SuperHeavy” had to be top secret to protect the tracks from music pirates and such, and apparently no recording studio on this planet was secure enough. So Mick and friends went to the high seas and laid down some tracks aboard Microsoft billionaire co-founder Paul Allen’s mega-yacht named Octopus (the world’s 12th largest yacht).

One of the rooms on the enormous 414 ft. vessel is already a music studio and so served as a haven for Jagger and company. This amazing creature features 2 helicopters, 2 submarines, 7 tenders, a swimming pool and a basketball court.

Jagger, who is worth an estimated $280 million, could not afford such a big yacht but super-nerdy and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen can. Naturally, Allen is a music fan, so it was a reward for him to have such a legend on his floating palace.

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In 2004, Felix Sockwell, an illustrator and identity consultant, found himself working for Apple to design a logo for a new piece of software called iTunes. As you will notice, Apple ultimately went a different direction, but these sketches represent an interesting look at what could have been:

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Here is how he described the experience:

“Next day we went in search of Great White Sharks. Beautiful, clear, pristine waters. Gently lowered in water covered in shark repellent. Had to manage the sub into the water then down, down, down waiting for the Great White Sharks to come out of the shadows.

Suddenly the biggest set of teeth were only feet away from me. Well fuck I shouted! Before realising the teeth were a reflexion of my own in the glass dome around us. Great Whites indeed!”

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