Omkumar's blog

This Intel Ad was forwarded to me by one of my colleagues. Very funny and thoughtful. The "Ajay Bhatt" that they show is not the real inventor. See Intel's real Ajay Bhatt who was the co-inventor of USB here . According to NYTimes , Intel decided to pose actors vs. real inventors in their commercial so that there won't be any argument among employees as to who should be featured. The NYTimes article further says that, the Ad agency - Venables Bell & Partners - helped modify Intel's "we are in your everyday life and the world would stop revolving without Intel" motto to "Sponsors of Tomorrow". I think "Sponsors of tomorrow" is more pleasing than what Intel proposed. Hence the agency came up with ads like how Intel is technology oriented and promoting that. There is even going to be a billboard asking people to text msg answers for "What do you hope to see in the future?". The article is a good read as well.

Very Interesting read... The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England , and English expatriates built the US railroads. Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used. Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing. Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts. So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (and England ) for their legions. T...