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Tag: Ark

  • Noah’s Ark May Have Had A Round Shape

    Almost everyone knows the story of Noah’s ark and how Noah took two of every animal onboard the giant ship to save them from the great flood. While the story of the ark is pretty clear, nobody is sure exactly what the ark looked liked.

    For years, experts have said that the ark was long and pointed at the bow, but an ancient tablet that was recently deciphered, shows that the ark may have been shaped much differently.

    The tablet is believed to be over 4,000 years old and was found in Mesopotamia. The tablet shows the plans to build a giant, rounded ship called a coracle. It also says that animals should enter the ark two by two.

    The tablet is on display at the British Museum and was translated by Irving Finkel, the museum’s assistant keeper of the Middle East. Engineers at the museum plan to create a prototype of the ark by following the instructions on the tablet.

    “It was really a heart-stopping moment — the discovery that the boat was to be a round boat,” said Finkel. “That was a real surprise.”

    This doesn’t mean the actual ark had to be round. Most cultures will depict boats the way they know them to be. Coracles were common in Mesopotamia, so it’s natural that the culture would depict the ark as being a round coracle.

    We may never know what the real Noah’s ark looked like, unless the giant ship is ever found. Until then, engineers will continue to experiment with different ark shapes, sizes and designs to rule out which ones are logical and which ones are not.

    Do you think the real Noah’s ark will ever be found and what do you think it was shaped like?

    Image via Wikimedia Commons.

  • Noah’s Ark May Have Been Round Not Pointed

    I’m sure you have all heard the story surrounding Noah’s Ark. God told Noah to take two of each animal into a boat, known as the Ark, to save them from the great flood that God would be sending.

    Up until now, all pictures depicting the legendary Ark have shown a large boat that was pointed on each end. However, new research suggests that the boat may have, in fact, been rounded rather than pointed.

    Scientists have recently deciphered a 4,000-year-old clay tablet from ancient Mesopotamia that may give new information to the story of Noah’s Ark. The deciphered message tells a similar story to the one known in the Bible, with the only difference being that Noah was told to build a round ship known as a coracle. The message includes detailed instructions on how the coracle should be built, and included that the animals should enter two-by-two.

    The tablet was brought in by a man who claimed his father had acquired it after World War II while in the Middle East. The tablet went on display at a British museum on Friday. Architects will soon be taking on the challenge of building the round boat to see if it could have sailed. The translator of the table Irving Finkel also wrote a book about the tablet called The Ark Before Noah. Finkel describes the tablet as one of the greatest finds ever.

    “It was really a heart-stopping moment — the discovery that the boat was to be a round boat,” said Finkel. “That was a real surprise.”

    Image via Wikimedia Commons

  • Ark: More Evidence That Facebook Is Interested In Search?

    Ark, a new people search service, launched at TechCrunch Disrupt. It claims to let users search over a billion people bsaed on over 30 filters (such as location, high school, college, employment, interests, etc.). It indexes over a billion profiles across networks including: Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare, MySpace, Orkut, and others.

    This video shows what it does:

    While the product launch is interesting itself (it has even raised a $4.2 million seed round of funding), TechCrunch’s Josh Constine reports that Facebook expressed interest in a possible acquisition of the company at one point. There has been plenty of speculation that Facebook could get into the search game, and compete more directly with the likes of Google (not to mention the speculation around a potential AdSense-like ad network), and this will surely only fuel such speculation.

    Constine writes, “Facebook was so impressed with how Ark repurposed its data that the social network loosely discussed the possibility of buying the startup or at least acq-hiring its founders. There was no offer extended, but Riley [co-founder, Patrick] tells me, ‘We didn’t even take it that far. We weren’t interested. We wanted to build something bigger.’”

    Let’s not forget that Facebook was recently reported to have been working on an improved search engine. This may come as an internal search engine, but with over 900 million users, why would it have to be external to compete with Google? Let’s not forget that many Google users are using the search engine while signed in too.

    Ark itself, in addition to just letting you search for people, is planning on letting you search your own social data, similar to services like Wajam or Greplin, according to Constine. The service is currently open to sign ups until TechCrunch Disrupt ends on Wednesday.

    On a side note, it’s interesting that Ark has a Penguin for a logo, considering the connotation this bird carries in the search industry.

  • Ark People-Search Engine Raises $4.2 Million

    Liz Gannes over at All Things D is reporting that “people-search” engine Ark has just raised $4.2 million during its recent seed round. Ark is a website that promises to help searchers find old acquaintances and new friends based on search parameters. The site can currently only be joined by requesting an invitation from Ark. A Gmail-type invitation system is being used, though, so anyone who already has an Ark account can invite others. Gannes reported that more than 250,000 people have requested invites already.

    Ark is a recent start-up that is part of Y Combinator investment funding. Y Combinator is an interesting investment group, which twice a year gives small amounts of money to start-ups so that they can get their company into shape for an investment pitch. Y Combinator then holds a “demo day” for all of the start-ups to pitch to investors. According to Gannes, Ark’s pitch got the company $2 million in a single day.

    Ark bills itself as a search engine for finding people, but it has limited functionality so far. The only people Ark can sort are those whose information is public on a social network. To find those people, users must use search filters such as location, employer, schools, and interests. The site seems tailor-made to be bought by Facebook to enhance their site search.

    I should also mention Ark’s strange obsession with penguins. Their site is covered in cute penguins, and their Facebook page includes a photo gallery packed with groan-worthy penguin comics.

    What do you think? Are the search engine wars heating up again? Will the search landscape fracture into a series of specialized search engines good at only niche searches? Or are investors jumping onto the bandwagon, hoping for a Facebook payday? Leave your comments below and let me know.