History of the Amazon.com

Amazon was founded in 1995, spurred by what Bezos called "regret minimization framework", which he described as his effort to fend off regret for not staking a claim in the Internet gold rush.

The company began as an online bookstore. While the largest brick-and-mortar bookstores and mail-order catalogs might offer 200,000 titles, an online bookstore could sell far more. Bezos wanted a name for his company that began with "A" so that it would appear early in alphabetic order. He began looking through the dictionary and settled on "Amazon" because it was a place that was "exotic and different" and it was the river he considered the biggest in the world, as he hoped his company would be. Since 2000, Amazon's logotype is an arrow leading from A to Z, representing customer satisfaction (as it forms a smile). A goal was to have every product in the alphabet.

Amazon was incorporated in 1994, in the state of Washington. In July 1995, the company began service and sold its first book on Amazon.com — Douglas Hofstadter's Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. In 1996, it was reincorporated in Delaware. Amazon issued its initial public offering of stock on May 15, 1997, trading under the NASDAQ stock exchange symbol AMZN, at a price of US$18.00 per share ($1.50 after three stock splits in the late 1990s).

Amazon's initial business plan was unusual. The company did not expect a profit for four to five years. Its "slow" growth provoked stockholder complaints that the company was not reaching profitability fast enough. When the dot-com bubble burst, and many e-companies went out of business, Amazon persevered, and finally turned its first profit in the fourth quarter of 2001: $5 million or 1¢ per share, on revenues of more than $1 billion. The profit, although it was modest, served to demonstrate that the business model could be profitable. In 1999, Time magazine named Bezos the Person of the Year, recognizing the company's success in popularizing online shopping.

Barnes and Noble filed a lawsuit on 12 May 1997, alleging that Amazon's claim to be "the world's largest bookstore" was false. Barnes and Noble asserted, "[It] isn't a bookstore at all. It's a book broker." The suit was later settled out of court. Amazon continued to call itself "the world's largest bookstore." Walmart subsequently filed suit on 16 October 1998, alleging that Amazon had stolen trade secrets by hiring former Walmart executives. Although this suit was settled out of court, it caused Amazon to implement internal restrictions and reassignment of the former Walmart executives.

Acquisitions

• 1998: PlanetAll, a reminder service based in Cambridge, Massachusetts; Junglee, an XML-based data mining startup based in Sunnyvale; Bookpages.co.uk, a UK online book retailer, which became Amazon UK on October 15, 1998.
• 1999: Internet Movie Database (IMDb);; Alexa Internet, Accept.com, and Exchange.com
• 2003: Online music retailer CD Now.
• 2004: Joyo.com, a Chinese e-commerce website.
• 2005: BookSurge, a print on demand company, and Mobipocket.com, an eBook software company. CreateSpace.com (formerly CustomFlix), a distributor of on-demand DVDs, based in Scotts Valley, California. CreateSpace has since expanded to include on-demand books, CDs, and video.
• 2006: Shopbop, a retailer of designer clothing and accessories for women, based in Madison, Wisconsin.
• 2007: dpreview.com, a digital photography review website based in London; Brilliance Audio, the largest independent publisher of audiobooks in the United States.
• 2008: Audible.com; Fabric.com; Box Office Mojo; AbeBooks; Shelfari; (including a 40% stake in LibraryThing and whole ownership of BookFinder.com, Gojaba.com, and FillZ); Reflexive Entertainment, a casual video game development company.
• 2009: Zappos, an online shoe and apparel retailer Lexcycle , SnapTell, an image matching startup.
• 2010: Touchco., Woot, Quidsi, BuyVIP, Amie Street.
• 2011: Lovefilm, The Book Depository, Pushbutton

Investment

• 2008: Engine Yard, a Ruby-on-Rails platform-as-a-service (PaaS) company.
• 2010: LivingSocial, a local deal site.

Subsidiaries

• 2004: A9.com, a company focused on researching and building innovative technology.
• 2004: Lab126, developers of integrated consumer electronics such as the Kindle.
• 2007: Endless.com, an e-commerce brand focusing on shoes.
• 2007: Brilliance Audio, the largest independent audio book producer in the U.S.

Merchant partnerships

The website CDNOW is managed by Amazon. Until June 30, 2006, typing ToysRUs.com into a browser would similarly bring up Amazon.com's "Toys & Games" tab; however, this relationship was terminated due to a lawsuit. Amazon also hosted and managed the website for Borders bookstores but this ceased in 2008. From its inception until August 2011, Amazon hosted the retail website for Target. Benefit Cosmetics, another merchant partner of Amazon, has also launched a major E-Commerce platform of their own based on Hybris_(company) and arvato systems NA, in the US, EU and China.

Amazon.com operates retail web sites for Sears Canada, bebe Stores, Timex, Marks & Spencer, Mothercare, and Lacoste. For a growing number of enterprise clients, currently including the UK merchants Marks & Spencer, Benefit Cosmetics' UK entity, edeals.com, and Mothercare, Amazon provides a unified multichannel platform where a customer can seamlessly interact with some people that they call the retail website, standalone in-store terminals, or phone-based customer service agents. Amazon Web Services also powers AOL's Shop@AOL.

On October 18, 2011, Amazon.com announced partnership with DC Comics for the exclusive digital rights to many popular comics, including Superman, Batman, Green Lantern, the Sandman, and Watchmen. The partnership has caused well-known bookstores like Barnes & Noble to remove these titles from their shelves. These titles will be available for purchase exclusively through Amazon's new Kindle Fire tablet.

Locations

Amazon has offices, fulfillment centers, customer service centers and software development centers across North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/

Pele: I have edge over Messi

Brazil legend Pele has praised Barcelona star Lionel Messi, but noted that the 24-year-old still has a long way to catch the football legend.

Argentina international Messi became the second player in the history of the Ballon d’Or to win the prestigious award three times in a row when he lifted the title earlier this month in Zurich.

Pele acknowledged that he is a fan of Messi, but stressed that the diminutive attacker faces a hard task to equal him.

“Technically speaking, we are practically at the same level,” Pele told Le Monde. “We have both received a gift from God.”

“Records are made to be broken, but it will be hard to break mine. When Messi has scored 1,283 goals and won three World Cups, then we will talk.”

“People ask me all the time when there will be a new Pele. I tell them: ‘Never’. My parents shut down the factory.”

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sources:  soccernews.com

Fables and Fantasy Infuse 40th Hong Kong Arts Festival

Fables, fantasy and spirituality inspire many of the performances in the 40th annual Hong Kong Arts Festival, which runs through March 8. This year’s festival features over 160 productions, staged at 17 venues.

For  “Of Mountains and Seas,” a play by the Nobel laureate Gao Xingjian that draws heavily on ancient myths in a Chinese classical text, the Chinese director Lin Zhaohua infuses elements of Nuo opera, which is rooted in primitive religion. Mythology also takes center stage in Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” with Les Ballets de Monte-Carlo performing the fairy tale comedy.

Another show involves the work of Osamu Tezuka, often called “the god of manga,” who composed fantastical tales in comic form. His stories come to life in “TeZukA,’’ a multimedia show by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, a Belgian choreographer. “TeZukA’’ uses dancers’ movements as one would use a calligraphy brush in this video homage to the pioneering Japanese artist.

“Faith Healer,” by the Irish playwright Brian Friel, takes a deeper look at the nature of art and belief through the monologues of a traveling faith healer, Francis Hardy; his wife, Grace, and his manager, Teddy. Mr. Friel has described the play as “a metaphor for art, the craft of writing, and the great confusion we all have about it, those of us who are involved in it.”

The austere spirituality of the desert infuses the music of Tinariwen, whose members are Tuareg nomads from the Sahara. Tinariwen mixes African, Arabic and Western styles to produce haunting, rhythmic music whose lyrics recall the hardships of life in the desert and of political struggles.

And fantasy and fashion come together in “The World of WearableArt,” a New Zealand production that is making its international debut in Hong Kong. Each year, “The World of WearableArt” showcases more than 150 costumes by New Zealand designers in a two-hour theatrical extravaganza. The 70-minute event at the Hong Kong festival displays the best creations from past shows.

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sources: nytimes.com

RIM hits back at Apple’s ‘reality distortion field’

Jim Balsillie, chief executive of Research in Motion, the Canadian company behind the BlackBerry, believes there is a market for smaller tablet computers, despite Apple’s claims.

During a quarterly earnings call on Monday, Steve Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, provoked the ire of rivals by claiming that 7in tablet computers were so small as to be unusable, and that the category would be “dead on arrival”.

It prompted Jim Balsillie, Research in Motion’s chief executive, to respond with a blog post in which he criticised Apple’s “reality distortion field”. He said that the iPad’s lack of Flash support meant it didn’t fulfil the needs of customers, and that Apple was only telling people “half the story”.

RIM has recently unveiled the PlayBook, it’s answer to the iPad, which uses a 7in display and supports Adobe Flash.

“For those of us who live outside of Apple’s distortion field, we known that 7in tablets will actually be a big portion of the market, and we know that Adobe Flash support actually matters to customers who want a real web experience,” wrote Balsillie.

“We also know that while Apple’s attempt to control the ecosystem and maintain a closed platform may be good for Apple, developers want more options and customers want to fully access the overwhelming majority of websites that use Flash.

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sources: telegraph.co.uk

Morocco to host Club World Cup

Morocco is set to become the first African country to host the Club World Cup.

FIFA has confirmed that the 2013 and 2014 editions of the tournament will be held in the north African country.

The news comes after South Africa, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) all withdrewtheir bids, leaving the north Africans as the sole bidders for the tournament.

It means Morocco will have two chances to prepare for the 2015 African Cup of Nations as well as whiichever of their clubs are defending league champions in 2013 and 2014 will get to participate in the event.

“I think it’s great. It’s not only great for football in Morocco, but for football in Africa,” Moroccan Olympic team coach Pim Verbeek told the BBC.

“The fact that you can have such a prestigious tournament, if you see the interest from the media about a tournament like this.”

“In Morocco, they love football, and they love watching the best European teams playing against the other best teams in the world.”

“They have the African Cup of Nations in 2015, and now they have the best club teams in the world two years in a row.”

FIFA president Sepp Blatter said he was confident that Morocco would successfully host the event.

“We were given a presentation by the Moroccan Federation and I expect the tournament will be excellent in all aspects – logistical, cultural and financial,” he said.

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sources: soccernews.com