Amazing: Finding taste-buddies just a click away!

Internet, which for years now has helped link people through e-mails, chat rooms and matrimonial services, will now enable those with similar tastes to come together and share their gourmet preference.

Future Today Inc, a new media company founded and run by an Indian origin Columbia University graduate Alok Ranjan, has launched a new online video community, iFood.tv aimed at bringing together food lovers of the world to a single platform.

The formal launch of the community follows a four-month experiment with a Beta edition of iFood.tv, which incidentally received most of the traffic from the US, India, Canada and the UK.

The service would help people find friends with similar eating habits--such as those who prefer 'gulab jamun' over 'chaats'.

"Food is a common thread which binds people across the globe. More individuals want to discuss their food habits or get cooking tips by leveraging the web as a medium," Future Today CEO Alok Ranjan said in a statement announcing the launch of the website.

With a mission to 'Serve food lovers simply' this website is a one-stop platform for food-related information, entertainment and social networking, the company said.

"Food is one of the most distinguishing aspects of the Indian culture and we have received extremely enthusiastic response from foodies in India," Ranjan said.

Going forward, iFood.tv will successfully address the need for a single food television network and personal food community in India, he added.

Source: Expressindia.com

Fun Facts: How Tech Companies Got Their Names

Here’s some fun facts: A list of how companies got their names. The list isn’t exclusively tech companies, but some of the more interesting stories are from web-tech leaders.

Keep in mind that this is from Wikipedia, so I wouldn't want bet the farm on the veracity of them all, but it's still some good trivia for the boring work party this evening.

Apple - for the favourite fruit of co-founder Steve Jobs and/or for the time he worked at an apple orchard. Apple wanted to distance itself from the cold, unapproachable, complicated imagery created by other computer companies at the time.

eBay - Pierre Omidyar, who had created the Auction Web trading website, had formed a web consulting concern called Echo Bay Technology Group. “Echo Bay” didn’t refer to the town in Nevada, “It just sounded cool,” Omidyar reportedly said. Echo Bay Mines Limited, a gold mining company, had already taken EchoBay.com, so Omidyar registered what (at the time) he thought was the second best name: eBay.com.

Google - a deliberate misspelling of the word googol, reflecting the company’s mission to organize the immense amount of information available online.

Hotmail - Founder Jack Smith got the idea of accessing e-mail via the web from a computer anywhere in the world. When Sabeer Bhatia came up with the business plan for the mail service he tried all kinds of names ending in ‘mail’ and finally settled for Hotmail as it included the letters “HTML” — the markup language used to write web pages. It was initially referred to as HoTMaiL with selective upper casing.

Yahoo - a backronym for ‘Y’et Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle. The word Yahoo was invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver’s Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and barely human. Yahoo! founders David Filo and Jerry Yang jokingly considered themselves yahoos

And my personal favorite and most fitting: Lycos - from Lycosidae, the family of wolf spiders.

Source: wired.com

Some Interesting Facts

Here are some interesting, but true facts, that you may or may not have known.

1. The Statue of Liberty's index finger is eight feet long

2. Rain has never been recorded in some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile

3. A 75 year old person will have slept about 23 years.

4. A Boeing 747's wing span is longer than the Wright brother's first flight.(the Wright brother's invented the airplane)

5. There are as many chickens on earth as there are humans.

6. One type of hummingbird weighs less than a penny

7. The word "set " has the most number of definitions in the English language - 192

8. Slugs have four noses

9. Sharks can live up to 100 years

10. Mosquitos are more attracted to the color blue than any other color.

11. Kangaroos can't walk backwards

12. About 75 acres of pizza are eaten in in the U.S. everyday

13. The largest recorded snowflake was 15in wide and 8in thick. It fell in Montana in 1887

14. The tip of a bullwhip moves so fast that the sound it makes is actually a tiny sonic boom.

15. Former president Bill Clinton only sent 2 emails in his entire 8 year presidency

16. Koalas and humans are the only animals that have finger prints

17. There are 200,000,000 insects for every one human

18. It takes more calories to eat a piece of celery than the celery had in it to begin with.

19. The world's largest Montessori school is in India, with 26,312 students in 2002

20. Octopus have three hearts

21. If you ate too many carrots, you'd turn orange

22. The average person spends two weeks waiting for a traffic light to change.

23. 1 in 2,000,000,000 people will live to be 116 or old

24. The body has 2-3 million sweat glands

25. Sperm whales have the biggest brains; 20 lbs

26. Tiger shark embroyos fight each other in their mother's womb. The survivor is born.

27. Most cats are left pawed

28. 250 people have fallen off the Leaning Tower of Pisa

29. A Blue whale's tongue weighs more than an elephant

30. You use 14 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Keep Smiling!

31. Bamboo can grow up to 3 ft in 24 hours

32. An eyeball weighs about 1 ounce

33. Bone is five times stronger than steel.