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THE SHARD RALPH LAUREN JIMMY CHOO INKLING COCA-COLA

RICHARD BRANSON FOUNDER OF THE VIRGIN EMPIRE STYLE JUN 13

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Contents 4/5

The Shard is one of the most

enigmatic buildings to adorn the London skyline in recent years.

6/7

While fashion trends come

and go, Ralph has Remained true to his original concept.

8/9

As founder of the Virgin empire,

Branson never lost his vision for success.

s 10/11

Women around the world

prize Jimmy Choo shoes for their classic design, fine craftsmanship and surprising comfort.

12 /13

Inkling enables you to

start off your artwork the traditional way, while making the first step of your digital workflow.

14/15

For 125 years, Coke's

secret recipe has remained one of the most heavily guarded trade secrets in the world.

THE

SH RD

The Shard is one of the most enigmatic buildings to adorn the London skyline in recent years. The vision of its creator, the much lauded Italian architect Renzo Piano was for a vertical ‘City in the Sky’; and the Shard at London Bridge Quarter with its mix of offices residences, hotel, restaurants and viewing platforms will herald a new era in high rise development for London and will become emblematic when all eyes look towards the city in 2012.

Increasing density in central London, particularly near major public transport nodes, is key to London’s future development. Improving the efficiency of the public transport system and maximising the use of space around transport hub is essential. Given the location of The Shard above one of London’s key commuter stations, bus interchange and two main underground lines, a high density development was deemed not only possible but very desirable.

At an inspiring height of 306 metres (1,016 feet) and with a total 72 occupied floors reaching skyward into a breathtaking 15 story spire, the Shard London Bridge Quarter is set to be the tallest building in Western Europe. The Shard immediately adjacent to London Bridge Station will rest elegantly on the London skyline, providing a welcome new symbol for the world financial capital.

The Shard replaces the Southwark Tower, a 1970’s building located on London Bridge Street. The Shard offers high density vertical development at a transport hub and will be the UK’s first truly mixed use tower, devised to interface with London on many levels. The master architect, Renzo Piano, designed the Shard as a ‘vertical city’ that includes a public piazza, 586,509 sq ft (54, 488 sq m) of world class office space, an exclusive collection of residential apartments which will be the highest residential apartments in the UK and will be serviced by Europe’s first 5-star Shangri-La Hotel, retail space, restaurants, and a public viewing gallery. This will all ensure that it becomes the beating heart of a regenerated London Bridge Quarter.

Inspired by the spires of London’s churches and the top sails of the ships that used to moor on the Thames, the Shard will be a light and elegant presence in London’s skyline. The plan of The Shard is generated by the irregular nature of the site. Each facet forms a shard, a plane of glass gently inclined inwards, rising towards the top. The corners of The Shard are open and the shards do not touch, allowing the building to breathe. In turn the glass surface fragments as it rises and the tower dissolves into the sky.

Office Space at The Shard The Shard offers 54, 488 sq m (586,509 sq ft) of flexible prime office space and is set to become the premier commercial address in London. Over 45% of the Shard has already been pre-let to Shangri La (floors 34-52) and to Transport for London (floors 4-10). The remaining available office space offers all the amenities one would expect from

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a desirable central London address. The highly flexible floor plates at The Shard are efficient and effective with space net internal floor area ranging from 2,790 sq m (30,032 sq ft) to 1,349 sq m (14,521 sq ft).

A key feature of The Shard office floors is the naturally ventilated winter gardens. These spaces were first devised by Renzo Piano for his acclaimed Aurora Place skyscraper in Sydney, Australia. These multifunctional areas make the most of the stunning views across the Thames and from Hyde Park in the West to Canary Wharf in the East from the Shard. The winter gardens can be used for a variety of purposes and allow occupants to enjoy natural light and air within the office.

The offices within the Shard are accessed via a dedicated entrance on the concourse level of London Bridge Quarter.

The office entrance also benefits from direct access to London Bridge mainline station, the bus station and the Jubilee and Northern lines on the Underground.

The Hotel at The Shard The first Shangri-La Hotel in the UK will occupy floors 34-52 of the Shard and will contain 195 rooms and suites. The hotel will operate on the simple yet powerful philosophy of a warm, efficient and seamless service that has made the Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts Group famous. The Hotel will also feature a signature Shangri-La Spa on floor 52, which is available to guests as well as the residents and workers in the Shard and London Bridge Place. The Hotel also has its own entrance on St Thomas Street with valet parking and taxi drop off point directly outside.

The Apartments at The Shard An exclusive collection of apartments at the Shard are arranged on floors 53-65 and are the highest elevation residences in the UK. With their amazing vistas across the London skyline they will be one of the most coveted addresses in the world. The Shard apartments will be the ultimate in sophisticated and contemporary living, with each being custom designed to the resident’s exact specifications. The apartments will also benefit from all the services and facilities of the Shangri-La Hotel. To ensure the maximum levels of privacy synonymous with an exclusive address, residents at the Shard will have their own private entrance on St Thomas Street.

The Public Viewing Galleries at The Shard Uniquely, the Shard will be open to the general public who can visit the viewing platforms on floors 68-72. The Shard viewing galleries offer breathtaking 360° views across London. The viewing galleries are accessed directly from an entrance on the mezzanine level at below ground level so that visitors do not cross over with any of the other users of the building. The galleries are expected to attract over half a million visitors a year to The Shard and with visibility at 800 ft (almost double the height of the pinnacle of The London Eye) are certain to become a major tourist attraction.

The Shard will be a striking new addition to the London skyline, commanding panoramic views across the capital doubling the height offered from the London Eye. The Shard will become the tallest building in London as it reaches the maximum height allowed by the Civil Aviation Authority with unobstructed views thanks to its proximity to the river.

Restaurants at The Shard The Shard will contain an exciting mix of world class restaurants and cafes for the enjoyment of residents and visitors alike. With its prime location on top of a major transport interchange, the Shard is expected to become a destination in its own right with people travelling from across London and the rest of the UK to dine in one of its restaurants (located on floors 31-33) and experience the highest view in the United Kingdom.

Public Space at The Shard The development of the Shard and the creation of London Bridge Quarter has provided the opportunity to transform the transport facilities at this major London transport interchange. London Bridge Station is one of London’s busiest railway stations, with an average of over 350, 000 journeys through the station each day. In addition to a new concourse for London Bridge Station, a bigger bus station will be constructed to the north of London Bridge Place with 15 bus routes, as well as riverboat and taxi stands. The train and tube stations will be extended covering an impressive 61 underground and 247 rail destinations.

London Bridge Quarter will also include a significant new public square with ever changing art installations, cafes and places for visitors to the area to relax. By bringing the soul back into the heart of the city, London Bridge Quarter will benefit not only tenants and residents of the Shard but also the local community by becoming a vibrant public space for everyone to enjoy.

When completed in Summer 2012, the Shard London Bridge Quarter will be an awe inspiring part of the London skyline. With its hotel, restaurants, luxury residences, flexible premium office space and public viewing galleries the Shard is a welcome addition to this long overlooked area of Central London.

The Shard will form the nucleus of London Bridge Quarter, a large scale regeneration program for the area by Sellar on behalf of LBQ Ltd. This far-reaching program will improve the local district and reinforce the importance of this gateway destination for the benefit of all of London.

Sellar and LBQ Ltd are committed to a progressive improvement programme that will see a vibrant London Bridge Quarter emerge offering improved transport links and significant public space. In short the whole area around at The Shard is set to become a new destination for Londoners to work, eat, drink and relax.

While fashion trends come and go, Ralph has remained true to his original concept: selling not just preppy clothes but a lifestyle. It’s earned him a personal fortune close to $1 billion and a place in design history. Not bad for a kid from the Bronx, New York, who wore tennis sweaters to school when everyone else was slouching around in leather jackets.

Ralph Lauren, née Ralph Lifshitz, was born on October 14, 1939. He grew up in a middle-class Jewish household and for a time shared a bedroom with two of his three older brothers. Possessed of an innate fashion sense from birth, he took part time jobs early on to fund his penchant for designer clothes. His chosen course of study, however, was business, although he left the course at City College in Manhattan before receiving his degree.

Unhappy with the design of men’s clothing at the time, Ralph designed his own despite his lack of formal training and had them custom made. “You have to remember this was the late Sixties and everything was three buttons and narrow lapels,” says the fashion maestro. “I had always loved the look of the old English gentleman who dressed in class and style, who knew what he was wearing but acted like he didn’t care. That’s the image I wanted. I loved fashion and wore clothes well, but had no idea I could use that in terms of a career.”

After a stint in the army, Ralph was given an opportunity to prove himself when he convinced New York City clothier Beau Brummel to invest in his wide tie venture. In the first year he notched up sales of half a million dollars.

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Tailored suits and shirts were added the following year and Polo menswear “tweedy English-American look with a French cut,” as he described it was born.

The company name was always intended to be evocative of a lifestyle. “Well, what kind of people play polo?” he asks. “Wealthy, cosmopolitan, chic, wealthy. I wanted to create a concept for the name.” And he did, ironically (considering his personal reinvention) designing the wardrobe for the film version of F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby along the way.

Women’s clothing and houseware bearing the Ralph Lauren name followed and in 1997 the firm went public. Ralph the first fashion designer to have his own signature store pocketed $465 million that day.

Shortly after leaving the military in 1964, Ralph married Ricky Low Beer. The couple have three children Andrew, Dylan and David. Only David is involved in the family business: his brother and sister have pursued their own interests despite their father’s hopes that they join the firm.

Unlike most other fashion houses, Polo and Ralph Lauren are inseparably tied. “A lot of what you see in the clothes and stores comes literally from my father’s life,” says David. The man himself is self-deprecating about his contribution to the 20th-century fashion scene. “I don’t think I created fashion,” he says. “I don’t know what original means. I think I made a mark, a niche that was a little distinctive for what it is personally.”

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Richard Brans As founder of the Virgin empire, Branson never lost his vision for success The 20-something Richard Branson racked up a rĂŠsumĂŠ that would impress no one: high-school dropout with poor reading and math skills. Failed get-rich-quick schemes. Long-haired, barefooted hippie.

Struggling business that led to two arrests and a night in jail on suspicion of tax evasion.

But as he turns 59 in July, Branson’s life seems as golden as his locks. Worth about $4.4 billion, he ranked as the 236th richest person in 2008, according to Forbes. Branson has put his Virgin brand on independent businesses in the airline, hospitality, space travel and financial industries, to name a few. He has made headlines as a humanitarian, environmentalist and adventurer. In 2000, he was knighted for his services to entrepreneurship.

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plea bargain called for him to pay £60,000 or face rearrest, trial and a criminal record.

He had previously been arrested after founding his Student magazine for violating laws dating from 1889 and 1917 that banned publishing advice about remedies for veneral disease. But he was able to avert imprisonment with help from a good lawyer and was fined just £7. He emerged emboldened and vindicated.

But with charges of tax evasion, the law was clearly not on his side. “Avoiding prison was the most persuasive incentive I’ve ever had,” and the next two years were a crash course in money management.

Perseverance, imagination and courage sustained his transformation. His family nurtured his independence and entrepreneurial spirit; however, many of his strengths were born out of struggles. Dyslexia, for instance, made reading and understanding some concepts painfully difficult. Even today, he says he doesn’t trust numbers. “I don’t complicate my life with financial reports,” he says, laughing. But he compensated for what he lacked by exceeding in other areas, developing extraordinary people skills and learning to trust his instincts.

“I do a lot by gut feeling and a lot by personal experience,” Branson says.

“I mean, if I relied on accountants to make decisions, I most certainly would have never gone into the airline business. I most certainly would not have gone into the space business, and I certainly wouldn’t have gone into most of the businesses that I’m in. So, in hindsight, it seems to have worked pretty well to my advantage.”

As entrepreneurs struggle in today’s economy to throw off the negativity and rekindle the bold spirit that fueled their passion in the first place, Branson has this advice: “Obstacles and challenges are healthy for everyone, not just entrepreneurs. They force you to think outside the box, so to speak —to be creative.

“The challenge is to follow through on a great idea. I think if [you’ve] got a great idea, you need to just give it a try,” he tells SUCCESS. “And if you fall fl at on your face, pick yourself up and try again. Learn from your mistakes.

And, remember, you’ve got to go make a real difference in people’s lives if you’re going to be successful.”

Breaking the Rules Branson’s own challenges did not stop with his dyslexia. Though famous for his business risks and daredevil adventures, like record-setting attempts by balloon and boat, he’s also seen his share of calamities. Branson took lessons from those experiences, but was never unnerved. In many cases, his failures led to innovation and greater success.

In his early years, his Virgin records shop continually experienced cash-fl ow problems, even despite its brisk sales. To pay off an overdraft, 20-year-old Branson pretended to buy records for export to escape an excise tax on sales within Britain. He was arrested and jailed for a night, released only after his mother secured his bail by pledging her home as collateral. Branson’s

After that incident, Branson realized there were some rules he would heed in the future. “I vowed to myself that I would never again do anything that would cause me to be imprisoned or, indeed, do any kind of business deal that would embarrass me,” he writes in Losing My Virginity. “My parents had always drummed into me that all you have in life is your reputation: You may be very rich, but if you lose your good name, then you’ll never be happy.”

He paid the fine and, looking back, realises that failure to do so would have ruined his life. “It is unlikely, not to say impossible, that someone with a criminal record would have been allowed to set up an airline.”

Taking Flight Indeed, the airline business was fraught with plenty of other challenges.

Branson was aware of some of the obstacles related to starting Virgin Atlantic Airways, which was the clear underdog in the British Airwaysdominated transatlantic market. He thought the big airlines weren’t in touch with customers’ needs and believed he could be successful by offering a more affordable and enjoyable flying experience. To minimise financial risk, Virgin Atlantic started out in 1984 with a jumbo jet leased for a year.

But during the government certification flight, the unexpected happened: Birds flew into an uninsured engine, which exploded. Insurance on the plane was dependent on the certification, and certification was dependent on a fully functional plane. A new engine cost £600,000 (more than $1 million).

Virgin’s bank balked at the tab, so Branson pulled cash from overseas record subsidiaries to ease the crunch. Then Branson brought in financial specialists to restructure the company and find new banking backers.

Despite the setbacks, Virgin Atlantic was ready for takeoff a couple days after the engine failure, just in time for an inaugural flight filled with journalists.

Virgin Atlantic’s competition with British Airways was perpetually difficult and financially draining. Branson even waged a lengthy court battle claiming British Airways had played dirty tricks to steal Virgin Atlantic’s passengers.

Branson agreed to a settlement in 1993 calling for a £500,000 payment to him and £100,000 to Virgin.

But amidst the competition, rising fuel prices and global economic woes in the early 1990s, the price to keep Virgin Atlantic flying was too great. To appease impatient bankers, Branson faced one of his most difficult decisions

ever. Against the advice of his wife, Joan, he sold Virgin Music Group in 1992 to Thorn EMI. Ironically, Virgin had just contracted to record the Rolling Stones, a lifelong dream Branson would never realize.

Yet, the influx of cash from the sale—almost $1 billion—allowed him to pay off loans on Virgin Atlantic and own it outright. The sale of the beloved music company also gave him new incentive to avoid the crippling indebtedness that put him at lenders’ mercy.

A New Approach Out of what had been a chaotic and heartbreaking experience came a new business strategy: “branded venture capitalism,” as Branson calls it, which gives him control over a large number of companies with minimal financial risk. Today, the Virgin Group is an eclectic empire of more than 200 diverse companies that run independently with different shareholders and boards, yet share the brand, as well as the resources and collective knowledge and experience of others at Virgin.

Branson believes in empowering talent to flourish, providing freedom and minimising bureaucracy to foster creativity. “Every business… operates according to its own rules. There are many ways to run a successful company. What works once may never work again,” Branson writes in Business Stripped Bare. “There are no rules. You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing.”

In addition to Virgin Atlantic, Branson’s airlines include Virgin Blue and V Australia in Australia, and Virgin America. He expects to fly even higher with Virgin Galactic, which plans to offer space tourism beginning in 2011 or 2012 (f lights are $200,000 per ticket, and the group has already secured almost $40 million in bookings). Interested passengers include designer Philippe Starck, actress Sigourney Weaver, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking and, of course, Branson and his family.

In a new venture to encourage entrepreneurship, Branson launched PitchTV in March as part of Virgin Atlantic’s 25th anniversary celebrations. The show will air the video pitches of wannabe entrepreneurs onboard and online.

Virgin Atlantic’s business travelers, many of them executives, will see the pitches, and each year Branson will select a favorite with a yet-undisclosed prize for the winner.

Branson remains mindful of his own entrepreneurial beginnings, as well as the fact that great ideas from up-and-comers help fuel the Virgin Group today. He tells SUCCESS that one key to entrepreneurial success is to “get a great group of people around you who believe in your idea.” Just as he had his family’s support from his childhood to his earliest business ventures to his space flights today, Branson aims to provide encouragement and inspiration for other entrepreneurs. But, he says, the ultimate reward for an entrepreneur is individual and personal.

“Entrepreneurship is business’s beating heart. Entrepreneurship isn’t about capital; it’s about ideas. Entrepreneurship is also about excellence. Not excellence measured in awards or other people’s approval, but the sort that one achieves for oneself by exploring what the world has to offer.”

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Women around the world prize Jimmy Choo shoes for their classic design, fine craftsmanship and surprising comfort. The company launched in 1996 by London shoe designer Jimmy Choo and Vogue accessories editor Tamara Mellon has become a household name.

City” that cemented Jimmy Choo’s global fame. The popular HBO show’s characters obsessed over the line’s strappy sandals and sleek stilettos, and millions of fans immediately followed in Carrie and her friends’ highheeled footsteps.

Origins Jimmy Choo was born in 1961 in Malaysia to a family of shoemakers and wasted no time getting his career started: He reportedly made his first pair of shoes at the age of 11. After moving to London and training at Cordwainers Technical College ­— now part of the London College of Fashion — ­ Choo began to sell his handmade couture footwear in the late 1980s. Before long, his client list included famous names like Princess Diana, but his oneof-a-kind, handcrafted creations were out of reach for most women. The painstaking methods Choo used to create the shoes meant their availability was extremely limited.

Since their immortalization on “Sex and the City,” Jimmy Choo shoes have gone on to receive plenty of attention elsewhere in pop culture, from hit films such as “The Devil Wears Prada” and “In Her Shoes” to TV sensations like “The Sopranos” and “Ugly Betty.”

That changed when Mellon approached Choo in 1996 with the idea of mass-marketing fashionable, high-quality footwear for women. In 1997, the two opened the first Jimmy Choo boutique in London and began selling ready-to-wear women’s shoes that were designed by Choo and produced at factories in Italy.

Choo himself, who sold his stake in the company in 2001, continues to handcraft shoes in London under the Jimmy Choo Couture label. In 2003, Queen Elizabeth II made him an officer of the Order of the British Empire.

Mellon and creative director Sandra Choi, who worked with Choo before the company’s launch and is the niece of his wife, oversee the ready-towear collection. As of 2007, Jimmy Choo has more than 60 retail stores worldwide. The shoes are also available online and in department stores such as Neiman Marcus in the U.S. and Harrods in Great Britain, though certain styles are exclusive to Jimmy Choo boutiques.

Commercial Success It didn’t take long for the company to find success: Celebrities, already familiar with Choo’s handmade creations, snapped up the new line and quickly made the shoes a fixture on the red carpet, but it was “Sex and the

Jimmy Choo Today Jimmy Choo offers a fresh selection of innovative, trendy shoes each season without abandoning the classic silhouettes that never go out of fashion. The company also makes handbags and clutch purses, which are frequently seen in the hands of celebs like Cameron Diaz and Sarah Jessica Parker.

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Do you start your artwork with pen and paper? But at the same time regret that your work is stuck on paper until you have scanned the image? Then Inkling is an indispensable tool for you. This digital sketch pen allows you to sketch with a real ballpoint pen on any paper. While you are drawing, all strokes are recorded electronically which can then be imported as raster or vector artwork in to your preferred graphics applicationfor further editing.

With just one button click you can record layers, for instance, to separate preparatory and final drawings. These layers are then retained after import.

In a nutshell, Inkling enables you to start off your artwork the traditional way, while making the first step of your digital workflow simultaneously — wherever you are.

The Wacom Inkling pen doesn’t use special ink, write underwater, or feel mightier than an antiquated weapon. Instead it requires batteries, a special case, and a bit of calibration. But it’s probably the most useful pen you could ever own.

Why? Because it will track your every doodle, scribble, stroke, and poke to produce a digital copy of whatever you put on paper. It’s designed

by Wacom — one of the most popular makers of graphics tablets — and uses the company’s pressure-sensing technology to offer 1024 levels of sensitivity. (This means that it will detect even the slightest variations in pressure as you doodle — and reproduce them accordingly in the digital versions of your drawings.)

Now that sounds great, but does it work well — and will you ever really want to use it?

Yes and yes.

Ever since I finished staring at the gadget for two and a half hours while begging it to charge faster for the first time, I’ve been using it more than I’ve used any other pen in recent memory.

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It takes a few seconds to set up the Inkling — you have to attach a clip-on receiver to the notebook or paper you’re using — and you have to avoid obstructing the line of sight between the pen’s tip and its receiver so that the ultrasonic and infrared technologies it uses to track pen movements don’t get confused. This may sound complicated and annoying, but it came naturally even to this absent-minded doodler (who happens to have a habit of placing her fingers too close to a pen’s tip).

As long as you take care of those things, you can proceed to scribble as much as your heart desires — or at least until the Inkling’s battery dies or the receiver runs out of memory. (Wacom claims that you’ll get up to 15 hours of work out of the pen and up to 8 hours from the receiver while saving “thousands” of sketches. I have struggled to drain the batteries completely between syncs to my computer and have yet to fill up the receiver’s memory.)

When you are finished sketching the next Vitruvian Man or designing treasure maps, you’ll need to sync the Inkling to your computer in order to retrieve your masterpieces. You can do this by either plugging the receiver directly into your computer using the included cable or by placing it into its carrying case and connecting that instead. (I prefer to use the carrying case during syncs since the pen can be placed into it for a quick charge.)

If it’s your first sync, you’ll need to install some software — don’t worry, both Windows- and Mac-friendly versions are included — but after that retrieving sketches is as simple as opening up the Wacom Sketch Manager.

You can choose to export your work in the form of layered files which are sent directly to Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator or Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. Or if you prefer, you can also save files in JPG, BMP, TIFF, PNG, SVG or PDF formats for use with other applications.

Great! Now you’ve got all your drawings available in digital form — and if your Inkling experience is anything like mine, they’re reasonably accurate and true to their paper counterparts. But what now? What is the point of using the Inkling and creating these files?

I approached my friend Sam Spratt, who is a professional illustrator, with those questions and he managed to avoid laughing at my amateurish trial drawings long enough to explain.

He says that digital graphics tablets — such as the Wacom Cintiq or Intuos — have “been around for quite some time and that while many artists have made the jump to working entirely within the realm of pixels and vectors, plenty still prefer to start their work on paper before scanning it and completing things digitally.”

“The Inkling not only skips the scanning process and the flaws that it brings — dust, exposure, and such — but it also cleverly adds two major advancements for artists: Vectors and layers,” he continued.

Once you’re done being awestruck by the sheer talent necessary to create this sample doodle, you’ll be able to calmly compare what’s on paper (left), the individual layers in the digitized version, and the complete digital image (bottom right).

The Inkling’s ability to spit out vector graphics is incredibly useful because it means that your drawings are represented by mathematical expressions instead of existing as a grid of pixels (like their counterparts, raster graphics).

This means that you’ll be able to tweak individual pen strokes or even scale your drawing to the size of a bus — without ever losing quality.

The fact that the Inkling can save work in layered files, Spratt told me, is a huge deal because artists make mistakes: Let’s say I take my notebook and Inkling along on a subway ride and start sketching someone seated across from me. Since he might move around a lot, my first lightly drawn layer would consist of the basic shapes of his face.

I don’t want to have all that messy preliminary work in the digital version of my sketch, so I’ll tap the Inkling’s receiver to create a new layer in which I’ll begin refining the drawing.

When I import my notebook contents to a computer, I’ll be able to look at the individual layers and throw out the ones with the messy initial work. The mistakes which will continue to exist on paper can disappear from the finalized digital version of my subway sketches in seconds.

Not bad, right? Such features should be especially appealing to a new artist, but — as Spratt points out — they could “serve as an affordable bridge between traditional and digital mediums for the pros who really like the feel of pen on paper yet crave the flexibility of digitized drawings.”

Now while the Inkling is great when it comes to digitizing your sketches, it also has an extra trick which — in my opinion — isn’t advertised enough: It can serve as an additional input device for your computer.

If you’re using the gadget while its receiver is plugged into your computer, it switches to “online” mode. In that mode the pen can be used similarly to a mouse or a stylus. (Just don’t forget that you do need to have some paper clipped to the receiver!) If you treat it as a stylus, you’ll be able to draw almost as if you’ve got a more traditional Wacom graphics tablet attached to your computer.

Yes, of course you’re wasting ink and paper by doing this instead of buying a separate mouse or stylus. And yes, of course the Inkling isn’t a replacement for a regular mouse or graphics tablet — but come on! This is a pretty neat bonus feature.

The Inkling’s priced at $200 and everything you need — save for the actual paper — is included. (There’s a pen, a receiver, 4 spare ink cartridges, all the necessary batteries, a USB cable, and a charging case which will hold all those things.)

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For 125 years, Coke’s secret recipe has remained one of the most heavily guarded trade secrets in the world. Now a group of accidental soda sleuths say they’ve stumbled across a list of its ingredients.

Producers of the radio program came across an article on the history of Coca-Cola in an old copy of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Coca-Cola’s hometown newspaper. Published on page 2B on February 18, 1979, the article received little attention at the time. But, producers say, that’s because no one realized the photo used to illustrate the story is a hand-written copy of John Pemberton’s original recipe, jotted down by a friend in a leather-bound recipe book of ointments and medicines, and passed down by friends and family for generations.

The long story of Coke’s secret formula begins with Pemberton, a veteran from Georgia who emerged from the Civil War with a morphine addiction.

Hoping to cure his ailment, he dreamed up Pemberton’s French Wine Coca, a brew that included kola nut and coca wine. But in 1886, as Atlanta passed prohibition legislation, he reformulated the drink without alcohol, renamed it Coca-Cola, and began selling it in Georgia pharmacies.

Asa Candler, an early president of the Coca-Cola company who bought the formula in 1887, worried rivals would obtain the recipe so insisted no one ever write it down again. Staff removed all labels from ingredient containers and identified them by sight and smell only. Candler even went through the company mail so he could shred invoices that employees might attempt to sell to other drink makers.

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If the radio program’s producers are right, Candler and other executives were too late: the book of remedies with the copy of the Coke recipe had already started its travels. This American Life tracked down the book to a widow in Griffin, Georgia, who says her husband was fishing buddies with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer. It’s now in a bank vault, too.

And while companies like Pepsi have deduced the general ingredients on their own, none have unlocked the “Merchandise 7X flavoring” that gives Coke its unique taste and bubbly burn. “The company has always said, and as far as I know it’s true, that at any given time only two people know how to mix the 7X flavoring ingredient,” Mark Pendergrast, historian and author of For God, Country and Coke told us. “Those two people never travel on the same plane in case it crashes; it’s this carefully passed-on secret ritual and the formula is kept in a bank vault.”

The This American Life team enlisted experts and ordinary citizens alike to taste-test the original formula. It was pretty close — some people couldn’t differentiate it from the real thing — but the radio show couldn’t hit the nail on the head. And no matter what, they’ll never quite achieve the level of marketing that has made Coca-Cola so beloved.

The recipe: Fluid extract of Coca: 3 drams USP Citric acid: 3 oz Caffeine: 1 oz Sugar: 30 (unclear quantity) Water: 2.5 gal Lime juice: 2 pints, 1 quart Vanilla: 1 oz Caramel: 1.5 oz or more for color The secret 7X flavor (use 2 oz of flavor to 5 gals syrup): Alcohol:Â 8 oz Orange oil: 20 drops Lemon oil: 30 drops Nutmeg oil: 10 drops Coriander: 5 drops Neroli: 10 drops Cinnamon: 10 drops

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for