The Googleplex: Every Employee’s Dream

Yes, I know, the Googleplex has been functioning for several years by now, but come on let’s be honest, who wouldn’t like to have a gym in their office, two swimming pools, free laundry, beach volleyball courts, ping-pong tables, child nursery, massage salon, pool tables, restaurants and cafeterias with free meals and above all be able to take your dog to work?

It seems like a dream, but no, it is the mere reality for the Google employees in Mountain View, California.

And here, the Googleplex (click the image for a bigger view):

The solar panels in the roofs provide 30% of the Googleplex’s electric needs.

Some wonders of Google’s organizational culture:

• Every person has their own work rhythm depending on their personal interests and life style. For this reason, there are no specific work timetables in the company, anyone is free to arrive and leave at any given time.
• Everybody is equal in Google, there are no hierarchical, religious or social differences.
• Training and learning are permanent. To work in this company, you have to stay up to date and willing to learn something new everyday.
• If you don’t want to wear a tie it doesn’t make you less professional. I mean, have you ever seen Sergey Brin or Larry Page wearing a tie? I haven’t.

It’s easy to see that Google is trying to make their employees want to stay as much time as possible in their facilities. They have created a little city from which nobody has to get out. They provide 3 payed gourmet meals per day per employee, they do their laundry, take care of their children, offer exercise facilities, I guess bedrooms are the only thing that is measing, or are there?

And now, the million dollar question: can google keep giving their employees these privileges? keep giving free lunches? free recreational activities?

It seems easy now that the company is doing great, it keeps on growing year after year, their revenues keep raising. I don’t want to sound pessimistic, but what will happen when the market gets more competitive or stops growing at the pace that is growing now? Will their privileges be the same?

Carousel

Ok,  this is quality, emotion, originality and suspense…

I looooove this photos

All-in-one card stamp

With this card stamp you can kill more than two birds with just one stone : ) .

Link here.

How Naive I Was

Question:

How much time  do you think it took me to make this banner?

and this one?

what about this one?

and?

Answer:

The four of them: 23 seconds.

Everytime I saw one of this banners I thought about how dedicated, patient and full of spare time had the people who made them. How naive… I discovered this site which makes all the hard work. You can choose between more than 200 typographies, enter the text and voilá the work is done.

If you want to impress somebody, you now know.

The Fountain of Life

I recommend this video, it is perfectly done with 3D Studio Max and the execution is excellent which generates suspense from the beginning to the end.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Moral nº 1: Be careful what you wish for.

Moral nº 2: Live well the time you are meant to live.

Test your hearing sense

If you love to hear music really loud and when you sleep nothing can wake you up. I suggest you to take this little test to see how good or bad your hearing sense is.

Just click the play button.

Did you hear it?

If you did, congratulations!! Specially if you are over 25 years old because supposedly only people younger than this age can hear it. This tone has been used in shopping malls and stores as a deterrent device to keep teenagers from loitering, as it seems, the longer you listen to it, the more annoying it gets.

Note: I’ve applied this test to my mom (she’s 53 years old) and she didn’t hear it, I also tried it on one of my sisters (19 years old) and she did hear it. So far the hypothesis is true.

Importance of Punctuation

Seen in: http://sabino.tumblr.com/post/76007615

15 things you didn’t know

1. St. John was the only one of the 12 Apostles to die a natural death.
2. St. Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland, was not Irish.
3. Sliced bread was patented by a jeweler, Otto Rohwedder, in 1928. He had been working on it for 16 years, having started in 1912.
4. The Nobel Prize resulted from a late change in the will of Alfred Nobel, who did not want to be remembered after his death as a propagator of violence – he invented dynamite.
5. Coffee is the second largest item of international commerce in the world. The largest is petrol.
6. The magic word “Abracadabra” was originally intended for the specific purpose of curing hay fever.
7. Albert Einstein was once offered the Presidency of Israel. He declined saying he had no head for problems.
8. The “Hundred Years War” lasted 116 years.
9. One of Queen Victoria’s wedding gift was a 3 meter diameter, half ton cheese.
10. Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, never phoned his wife or his mother, they were both deaf.
11. Some Eskimos have been known to use refrigerators to keep their food from freezing.
12. Marie Curie, who twice won the Nobel Prize, and discovered radium, was not allowed to become a member of the prestigious French Academy because she was a woman.
13. The national flag of Italy was designed by Napoleon Bonaparte.
14. More money is spent each year on alcohol and cigarettes than on life insurance.
15. There are no clocks in Las Vegas casinos.

Source: http://home.bitworks.co.nz/trivia/human.htm

Sometimes I just don’t get it… but…

Einstein said it:

“The most incomprehensible thing about the world is that it is at all comprehensible.”