Monday, September 6, 2010

The Forbidden City of China — Zijin Cheng

The Chinese name of the Forbidden City is Zijin Cheng. From the Ming Dynasty to the end of Qing Dynasty the “Forbidden City” was the Chinese imperial palace. It is situated in the centre of Beijing. It was served as the home of emperors and their households for almost five hundred years. It was also the political centre of Chinese government. More images after the break...
The Forbidden City is the largest palace which covers 72 ha and it is a rectangle 753 metres from east to west and 961 metres from north to south. It was designed to be the middle of the ancient, city of Beijing. The Forbidden City consists of 980 buildings with 8,707 rooms. In 1987, it was declared a world heritage site. This post features a collection of  some incredible photographs of Zijin Cheng city.

Selena Gomez — Music Video Promos

Selena Gomez – “A Year Without Rain” Music Video Promos... More images after the break...

Top 10 most creative people in business

This year’s 100 Most Creative People offers our own, idiosyncratic perspective on business. The selections reflect the breadth of news ideas and new pursuits at play in our business landscape. Here we present the top 10 from list of innovators.

10. Qi Lu – President of Online Services, Bing; Microsoft
It’s hard to imagine software giant Microsoft in the role of David, but up against the search Goliath Google, the casting fits. Spurning the antiquated practice of releasing new updates every couple of years, Lu is creating an environment where live-cycle updates and product improvements are constant. Bing’s share of the search business is still only about 12%, but if anyone can turn a pebble into a deadly stone, Lu is the man. More after the break...
9. James Cameron – Filmmaker, Lightstorm Entertainment
Not only did Avatar become the highest-grossing film in history (nearly $2.7 billion worldwide) — surpassing Cameron’s previous record setter, Titanic — but its visual spectacle and technical mastery also laid to rest any doubts about 3-D as a profound medium for live action and artistic ambition. When it comes to the business of Hollywood, Avatar cemented his place in the realm of the gods.

8. Hannah Jones – VP of Sustainable Business and Innovation, Nike
Jones says she joined Nike’s sustainability team to test whether it was “more effective to shout from the outside or work from the inside.” Her conclusion: The creative combination of both is the most potent. She has paired Nike with NASA and venture capitalists to address water shortages; with Creative Commons to launch GreenXchange, a platform for companies to share green intellectual property; and with PopTech to create an Open Collaboration Lab for scientists and engineers.

7. Chris Anderson – Curator, TED Conferences
As chief curator of TED — the Long Beach, California, conference of multidisciplinary luminaries turned viral-video phenomenon turned cultural juggernaut — the Brit has guided it into a newly global, open-source phase this year. Volunteers have translated thousands of videos into 76 languages and introduced TEDx, independently organized events that in the first year has produced an astonishing 500 gatherings in 70 countries and 35 languages.

6. Steve Burd – CEO, Safeway
Steve Burd played a crucial role in the recent health-care debate. The exec appeared repeatedly on Capitol Hill to describe the health and financial benefits of the grocery chain’s unconventional wellness program, which includes lower insurance premiums for nonunion employees who maintain healthy blood-pressure and cholesterol levels and don’t smoke. Burd insists that the company’s health-care costs rose just 2% from 2005 to 2009 compared to a nearly 40% increase for most companies. “The Safeway amendment” — a provision that increases the incentives companies can pay healthy employees — is now law.

5. Ryan Murphy – Creator and Producer, Glee
The Peabody-winning Fox series Glee, his satire about a high-school show choir, has become a ratings rock star. It’s the No. 1 show among female teens and the top new show among women 18 to 49, and more of its viewership is made up of 18- to 49-year-olds in households making $100,000-plus than any other broadcast-network show.Glee has also spawned more than 50 iTunes singles — Murphy picks all the songs himself — as well as three soundtracks and a sold-out concert tour.

4. Shiro Nakamura – Chief Creative Officer, Nissan
 With the zero-emissions Leaf — which goes on sale later this year and is the first global mass-market electric car — he has tried to put his finger on the consumer pulse and make a car that will sell. “We did not want to make something very strange for just the niche buyer,” Nakamura said last year. That hews to his belief that creativity at its best isn’t about just doing whatever you want: “More designers have to understand the values of society and the people they are creating the vehicles for.”

3. Elizabeth Warren – Consumer advocate, Congressional Oversight Panel
By calling the likes of Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit on the carpet, jawboning with Jon Stewart, and pushing to create a consumer financial protection agency, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Warren has taken what could have been a paper-pushing position as chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel on the bank bailout to the forefront of the public conversation over financial reform.

2. Eddy Cue – VP of Internet services, Apple
Steve Jobs may own the limelight, but Eddy Cue holds the key to the Apple kingdom. Cue runs arguably the most disruptive 21st-century Web businesses: iTunes and the App Store, the latter of which is poised to create a $4 billion app economy by 2012. Cue’s next campaign will be challenging Amazon’s Kindle dominance, with the Cupertino cocktail of the iPad and the iBook store.

1. Lady Gaga – Pop Artist
Gaga broke through last year as a global phenomenon, musing on “disco sticks,” channeling Madonna’s glitter-glam fashion, and cribbing shock-rock performance notes from Alice Cooper. Gaga has done something unprecedented, melding her inspirations with au courant dance pop and Web savvy to build a business empire notable for both the speed of its creation and the diversity of its platforms.

Via — Link

World’s 10 Most Colorful Chinatowns

1. Singapore
Singapore’s Chinatown, once home to the first Chinese settlers in what’s now a heavily Westernized city-state, is one of its few distinctly Asian neighborhoods. The enclave was home to the area’s earliest Chinese settlers. Several of its institutions, such as the Heritage Centre, Food Street, and Night Market, preserve the culture of its original inhabitants, while some areas of the district are designated national heritage sites. Many historic buildings remain as relics of the past, as well as to complement the otherwise modern landscape. More after the break...
We have compile a list of most colorful Chinatowns in the world. Take a look at the some wonderful photos of these world’s  great Chinatowns. Please feel free to drop your comments.

2. Melbourne
Melbourne boasts the oldest Chinatown in the world, established during Victoria’s Gold Rush in 1854. Catch the world’s longest Chinese dragon– the Millennium Dai Loong Dragon tops 100 meters — in action as it is brought to life by 200 people during the Chinese New Year parade.

3. Kuala Lumpur
The capital of Malaysia was actually founded by Chinese tin prospectors in the 1850s, who played a pivotal role in the city’s transformation from a jungle settlement to a center for the tin mining industry. The Chinese remain the city’s dominant ethnic group and control a large proportion of the country’s commerce. Chinatown, known locally as Petaling Street or Jalan Petaling, is famous for its food stalls and night market, where shoppers can load up on fresh produce and counterfeit DVDs, watches and purses (don’t forget to haggle).

4. Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia
Arriving in Georgetown, Penang, off the west coast of Malaysia after a long journey from Thailand, you may almost think that you accidentally traveled all the way to China. The city’s Chinatown is one of the largest and best preserved in the world, with everyday sights and sounds reminiscent of a small city in China. Most residents are descended from Chinese immigrants who arrived in Penang during the colonial era and made their fortunes as traders and shopkeepers. Many of their original shops are still intact today.

5. Toronto
In the most ethnically diverse city in the world, residents have their pick of seven Chinatowns. The city’s main Chinatown was formed in the late 1960s, when many businesses in the original Chinatown were forced to move. Since the 1980s, the Greater Toronto Area’s Chinese community has migrated to the suburbs of Scarborough, Mississauga, Richmond Hill, Markham, and North York, where shopping centers are reminiscent of Hong Kong’s malls and street stalls.

6. New York
New York’s first Chinese residents began arriving in Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the late 19th century to escape discriminatory measures on the West Coast. In the 1980s, the neighborhood eclipsed San Francisco’s as the largest Chinatown outside Asia. But don’t overlook the city’s other Chinese enclaves – in Elmhurst and Flushing in Queens, and along Avenue U and 8th Avenue in Brooklyn. In fact, Flushing’s Chinatown has now surpassed Manhattan’s in size.

7. Vancouver
There’s a reason this city has been nicknamed “Hongcouver.” In the years leading up to Hong Kong’s 1997 handover to China, waves of wealthy immigrants flooded the city. The mayor, Sam Sullivan, even speaks Cantonese. Vancouver’s Chinatown dates back to the early 20th century, although recent arrivals have headed for the suburb of Richmond, where many of the Chinese restaurants are considered the best outside of Hong Kong.

8. San Francisco
The city’s Chinese New Year parade, an annual event since the 1860s, is the largest Asian cultural celebration outside of Asia. Chinatown may seem like a tacky tourist trap, but one cannot ignore the history and significance of one of the world’s best-known Chinese quarters, once the stomping grounds of Sun Yat-Sen and Amy Tan. The original enclave, built in the 1850s by settlers who had arrived during the gold rush and railroad days, would be the world’s oldest had it not been destroyed in the 1906 earthquake. Since the 1960s, much of the city’s Chinese community has moved into the Sunset and Richmond districts, while newer immigrants often settle in the suburbs around the Bay Area.

9. Yokohama, Japan
Yokohama Chinatown is the largest throughout Asia, in developing the environment when the Port of Yokohama was opened to foreign trade in 1859 because many of the Chinese traders and settled here. The roads and streets of Chinatown is marked by nine flashy colors, but the gate was found at all.

10. Bangkok, Thailand
Bangkok Chinatown is famous just as Yaowarat or Sampeng, after the strolling nearby, Bangkok’s Chinatown is as old as the city itself. In the late 1700s, as a young Bangkok city expanded, Chinese merchants were asked to move. They settled here near the river where they have since that time will be quick to this point. The tourists will be fast to show the “Traimit Wat temple”, which the largest houses gold Buddha, weighing in more than five tons. Do not miss the great shopping opportunities, especially the items on display in the old Chinese pharmacy.

Shraddha Das latest stills

South Indian actress Shraddha Das latest gallery, more images after the break...
Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...

Followers

Powered by Blogger.
Follow Me on Pinterest Follow smilecampus on Twitter