That’s right! The rapidly picking up social networking website, Facebook launched on February 4, 2004 is said to have users writing to each other using a feature called as Wall of Facebook and it seems that this site could have a pricy wall after all.

Facebook was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and the membership was initially restricted to students of Harvard College which got expanded to other Boston area schools, Rochester, Stanford, NYU, Northwestern, and all Ivy League schools within two months.

As of July 2007, the website had the largest number of registered users among college-focused sites with over 34 million active members worldwide and it also became one of the most visited websites taking a place of 7th ranking.

The name of the site refers to the paper facebooks depicting members of the campus community that U.S. colleges and preparatory schools give to incoming students, faculty, and staff as a way to get to know other people on campus.

The site is free to users and generates revenue from advertising including banner ads and sponsored groups and revenues were said to be around $1.5 million per week at one point of time.

In May 2005, Facebook raised $12.7 million in venture capital from Accel Partners and on August 23, 2005, Facebook bought the domain name facebook.com from the Aboutface Corporation for $200,000 and dropped “the” from its name.

On May 2007, Facebook launched an API that allows the development of applications to be used on the site, known as Facebook Platform.

In June, the partnership begun the previous year between iTunes and Facebook continued, with the download service again offering free music samplers through the Apple Students group.

In July, Facebook announced its first acquisition, purchasing Parakey, Inc. from Blake Ross and Joe Hewitt. To top it all off the great wall then also hired YouTube’s former CFO Gideon Yu on July 24, 2007.

The original big wall, the Wall street Journal reports that software giant Microsoft wants to buy a stake in Facebook before Google does and to top the icing is the pricing which is valued at around $10 billion.

The article seems to further add fuel to the fire by stating that this social networking site might hold out for a higher valuation than Microsoft is willing to agree on as much as $15 billion. Now that is one heavily priced Wall, isn’t it?

Facebook’s appeal to the massive audience out from every corner of the globe is that huge today. With growing internet users worldwide in billions, companies want to take advantage of such huge social media marketing opportunities on the site.

It has come to levels where people have started saying that this could be the next GOOGLE in the making.

It has all the great qualities of reach, rapidly increasing awareness, innovative style and loads of novel ideas for the growing users. It is definitely raking in all the big bucks with $30 million in profits on $150 million in revenue.

Well for the day, Facebook has a long way to go to be the next Google.

The question is whether Microsoft or Google, who would get their hands on Facebook first. With the big gates fighting page to page for a stake in the Wall the stakes only seem to be looking better for the newest face in the world of social networking.

With the increasing revenues and the millions of new user’s every day, let us watch who gets their hands on first on this quickly growing wall of FACEBOOK.

Via source: searchview

Pure innovation from IBM: Better, cheaper, denser, faster, more reliable and simpler.

The New memories: Two possible configurations of a novel type of memory. The vertical arrangement (left) is more difficult to make, so researchers will probably create the horizontal device (bottom) first. In both, bits of data are stored as domain walls–boundaries between adjacent magnetic regions oriented in different directions. The domain walls can be shuttled along the nanowire past a reading device (purple) that detects magnetic fields, and a writing device (green) that generates them.
A new nanowire-based memory device being created by the researchers at IBM may well coalesce the finest qualities of the different types of memory used today.

With innovation comes in better products at cheaper costs and quicker results.

Even now, the work is in the very beginning phase of development. But the prospects of it could serve as a universal memory, substituting for the different types that are being used now.

This is termed as a Nanowire memory. This magnetic nanowire (thin line at top) made of iron and nickel is expanded linking electrical contacts to test properties that could direct to improved memory devices.

The device stores bits in the form of domain walls which are areas where two magnetic regions in the nanowire meet.

Stuart Parkin, an experimental physicist at IBM’s Almaden Research Center, in San Jose, CA, says that

The memory, which would pack a hundred bits of data on a single nanowire, could potentially store 10 to 100 times more data than flash–the type of memory used in digital cameras and other small portable devices–while operating at much faster speeds. And because it’s solid-state memory, it would be far sturdier than magnetic hard drives, which require mechanical devices to read and write data. In principle, we could be cheaper than flash would be, denser than flash would be, and orders of magnitude faster. And there’s no wear-out mechanism, so it’s totally reliable.

Parkin’s earlier discoveries and inventions have led to a thousand-fold increase in the storage density of magnetic hard drives, paving the way for the massive data-storage centers crucial to today’s Internet, as well as making possible the immense storage capacity of portable devices such as iPods.

The different combinations and technological applications that seem to be going to the making of this brilliant memory also adds in that it would not require a mobile head and spinning disks to read and write these bits.

Thus, there would be no mechanical parts, making Parkin’s memory much more strong than a hard drive. These devices could also be more compact and cheaper than conventional solid-state memory.

So as we keep awaiting our future to get better and cheaper, it seems it is going to bring in lots of such good memories.

In depth view of a memory ‘Nanowire’(image below)

Via Source: technologyreview

Image Source: eurekaalert
blog

Everything is ready for this historic removal. God willing and weather permitting the removal will start on Sunday, Oct. 14. A trial run will be held next week.

The start would be a 2 1/2-ton marble block from the Parthenon frieze which is a 2,500-year-old sculpted strip depicting a religious procession that ran around the ancient temple just below roof level.

This will be the first to make the 400 meter journey to the new place.

To this the senior conservator Dimitris Maraziotis told The Associated Press,

This is one of the biggest and the least fragmented of all the blocks in the frieze

Supervising engineer Costas Zambas said,

The transfer will take at least a month and a half, although bad weather could prolong the operation. It will cost $3.55 million.

There will be a team of 35 workers and it will be done using three cranes each upto 17 feet high.

The shift would be done from the Acropolis hill into the intentionally built new museum that would have the glory of having such ancient works of art.

Zambas, a veteran of the long-running Acropolis restoration project who was involved in removing the remaining sculptures from the Erechtheion and Parthenon temples for display in the old museum said,

Every single part of the operation will be difficult and requires great care

The sculptures will be hoisted into styrofoam-filled boxes made of plywood and metal by wearing padded harnesses. According to Zambas upto four crates will make the trip each day.

Looking at the massive structures, their weight and their priceless nature the total operation for each is planned at 2 1/2 hours each.

Around 4500 such works have to be shifted in the whole process.

The uniquely designed building by the U.S.based architect Bernard Tschumi in collaboration with Greece’s Michalis Photiadis will be capped by a glass hall that will allow visitors a direct view of the ancient temple.

Although the new museum is expected to open in sections next year, the complete artifacts will probably take somewhere by 2009 to get completely settled in.

So until then let’s wait and watch the stunningly glorious works through the looking glass.

Via source: msnbc

Image source:
msnbc
msnbcid

The saga of dreams and destiny wherein the possibility and ability to challenge every obstacle was literally larger than life, such is the chronicle of the legend who lives perpetuall...
More

In real life, that translates to the fact that when something impactful comes in tune with somethin...
More