Mickey Mouse Creation

This article discusses the creation behind Mickey Mouse in which i obtained from http://www.mickeypedia.com/articles/Disney/Mickey_Mouse.html

Mickey Mouse - Creation and Debut

Mickey was originally created as a replacement for Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, an earlier star created by the Disney studio. Oswald had been created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks for Charles Mintz of Universal Studios. In fact, Mickey closely resembled Oswald in his early appearances. However, Disney received an unpleasant lesson when he asked Mintz for a larger budget for his popular Oswald series; in reply, Mintz fired Disney and Iwerks and hired others to draw Oswald, to which Mintz and Universal owned the rights. From that point on, Disney made sure that he owned all rights to the characters produced by his company.
In order for Walt and his older brother and business partner Roy to keep their company active, new characters had to be created to star in their subsequent animated shorts. One day, during a train ride, Walt desperately wanted to come up with a money-making character to replace the one he lost, Oswald, whom he loved dearly. He had visions of a mouse in the back of his head (he had previously made silent cartoon shorts with animated mice). He wanted to name his new creation Mortimer Mouse, but his wife Lillian Marie Bounds thought the name was too pretentious, so he changed it to Mickey Mouse. The name Mortimer would later be used for a character in a Mickey cartoon.
It has been suggested that Walt Disney was influenced by an actual mouse that he almost tamed by feeding it crumbs on his desk at the Laugh-O-Gram Studio.
Mickey and Minnie Mouse (Mickey's flapper girlfriend) debuted in the cartoon short Plane Crazy, first released on May 15, 1928. The short was co-directed by Walt Disney and Iwerks. Iwerks was also the main animator for this short, and reportedly spent six weeks working on it. Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising were credited for assisting him; these two had already signed their contracts with Charles Mintz, but he was still in the process of forming his new studio and so for the time being they were still employed by Disney. This short would be the last they animated under this somewhat awkward situation.
The plot of Plane Crazy was fairly simple. Mickey is apparently trying to become an aviator in emulation of Charles Lindbergh. After building his own aircraft, he proceeds to ask Minnie to join him for its first flight, during which he repeatedly and unsuccessfully attempts to kiss her, eventually resorting to force. Minnie then parachutes out of the plane. While distracted by her, Mickey loses control of the plane. This becomes the beginning of an out-of-control flight that results in a series of humorous situations and eventually in the crash-landing of the aircraft. A non-anthropomorphic cow that briefly becomes a passenger in the aircraft is believed to be Clarabelle Cow making her debut.
Mickey as portrayed in Plane Crazy was mischievous, amorous, and has often been described as a rogue. Modern audiences have occasionally commented on this version of Mickey as being somewhat more complex and consequently more interesting than his later self. At the time of its first release, however, Plane Crazy apparently failed to impress audiences, and to add insult to injury, Walt could not find a distributor. Though understandably disappointed, Walt went on to produce a second Mickey short: The Gallopin' Gaucho.

Walt Disney World History&Development

The following is an article discussing the history and development of Walt Disney World which i obtained from http://www.mickeypedia.com/articles/Disney/Walt_Disney_World_Resort.html

Walt Disney World History and Development

In 1959, the Walt Disney Company, under the leadership of Walt Disney, began looking for land for a second resort to supplement Disneyland, which had opened in 1955. Market surveys revealed that only 2% of Disneyland's visitors came from east of the Mississippi River, where 75% of the population of the United States lived. Additionally, Walt Disney disliked the businesses that had sprung up around Disneyland, and wanted control of a much larger area of land for the new project.
Walt Disney first flew over the Orlando, Florida site, one of many, on November 22, 1963. He saw the good road network, including Interstate 4 and Florida's Turnpike, with McCoy Air Force Base, soon to become Orlando International Airport, to the east, and immediately fell in love with the site. When later asked why he chose it, he said, "the freeway routes, they bisect here."
However, the decision had not been made yet; no land had been purchased. If the news of Disney's new resort was leaked, land prices would soar. Thus everything was to be done in complete secrecy. To avoid a burst of land speculation, Disney used various dummy corporations and cooperative individuals to acquire 27,400 acres (111 km²) of land. The first five-acre (20,000 m²) lot was bought on October 23, 1964 by the Ayefour Corporation (a pun on Interstate 4). In May 1965, major land transactions were being recorded a few miles southwest of Orlando in Osceola County. Two large tracts totalling $1.5 million were sold, and smaller tracts of flatlands and cattle pastures were purchased by exotic-sounding companies such as the Latin-American Development and Management Corporation and the Reedy Creek Ranch Corporation. In addition to three huge parcels of land were many smaller parcels, referred to as "outs". Much of the land had been platted into five-acre (20,000 m²) lots in 1912 by the Munger Land Company and sold to investors. In most cases, the owners were happy to get rid of the land, being mostly swampland. Yet another problem was the mineral rights to the land, owned by Tufts College. Without the transfer of these rights, Tufts could come in at any time and demand the removal of buildings to obtain minerals.
After most of the land had been bought, the story was leaked to the Orlando Sentinel on October 20, 1965. A press conference was soon organized for November 15. At the conference, Walt Disney explained the plans for the site, including EPCOT, the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, which was to be a futuristic city.
The Reedy Creek Drainage District was incorporated on May 13, 1966 under Florida State Statutes Chapter 298, which gives powers including eminent domain to special Drainage Districts. To create the District, only the support of the landowners within was required.
Walt Disney died on December 15, 1966. From then on, his brother Roy Disney headed the project. For the past few years that the project had been in pre-production, it had been known simply as Disney World, but Roy Disney added "Walt" to the name to make it Walt Disney World. In his own words: "Everyone has heard of the Ford cars. But have they all heard of Henry Ford, who started it all? Walt Disney World is in memory of the man who started it all, so people will know his name as long as Walt Disney World is here."
On February 2, 1967, Roy Disney held a press conference in Winter Park, Florida. The role of EPCOT was emphasized in the film that was played, the last one recorded by Walt Disney before his death. After the film, it was explained that, for Walt Disney World to succeed, a special district would have to be formed: the Reedy Creek Improvement District with two cities inside it, the City of Bay Lake and the City of Reedy Creek (now the City of Lake Buena Vista). In addition to the standard powers of an incorporated city, which include tax-free bonds, the Improvement District would have total immunity from any current or future county or state land-use laws. The only areas where the District had to submit to the county and state would be property taxes and elevator inspections.
The laws forming the District and the two Cities was signed into law on May 12, 1967. The Florida Supreme Court ruled in 1968 that the District was allowed to issue tax-exempt bonds for public projects within the district, despite the sole beneficiary being The Walt Disney Company.
Construction of drainage canals was soon begun by the Improvement District, and Disney built the first roads and the Magic Kingdom. Disney's Contemporary Resort, Disney's Polynesian Resort, and Disney's Fort Wilderness Resort and Campground were also completed in time for the park's opening on October 1, 1971.
On opening day, Roy Disney gave an opening dedication, after which he asked Walt's widow Lillian what she thought of Walt Disney World. She replied, "I think Walt would have approved."

Facebook VS Blog

Blog or Facebook?

The following is a comparison of facebook and blogs and i obtained it from http://menga.net/13732

Some people think there's no difference between Facebook and a blog save for they believe (incorrectly) that a blog is more difficult to use.

The main difference between Facebook and a blog is that the blog content is in your control while Facebook content is out of your control.

"That's not true! I have complete control over all the stuff on my FB account!"

Do you really?

On FB, you cannot:

• Search your own stuff.
• Change the status of any of your posts.
• Get any information on how much content you've posted to the system.
• Sort your content.
• Mass-delete your content.
• Categorize your content.

Let's not forget that when you're viewing your own FB wall, go to the bottom and click "older posts", the content shown is added to the existing page and not broken into multiple pages like, oh, I dunno, every other content posting system on the internet? Heck, even MySpace was smart enough to at least break up content by page. And that's really sad when you can say MySpace is actually better at content handling than FB is, given MySpace is such a piece of crap.

I feel most sorry for those using IE with Facebook, because when you hit "older posts" and go 7 or 8 levels deep (which is really easy to do by the way), the browser s-l-o-w-s.. d-o-w-n.. a-n-d... crash. Yes, this means that a whole bunch of people can't even get to their older wall posts. And being you can't sort at all, there's no way to sort by reverse date so the old stuff for most people using FB is buried.. forever? Pretty much.

Blogs on the other hand can do every single thing in the list above with absolutely no threat of hosing your browser at all.

So there you have it. The difference between a blog and Facebook is control of content. With blogs you have total control. With FB you have little to none.

The only advantage with FB is the social aspect - but everything (and I mean everything) else about the system is absolute garbage.