But what today looks like a masterstroke that has catapulted BarCap from being an also-ran on Wall Street into a credible competitor could easily have turned out disastrously.

Applications for personal computers and small devices are rapidly evolving to meet the market demand for alternatives to keyboard -, keypad -, and stylus-based interaction.

The other day on the blog the Oxford Etymologist Anatoly Liberman just happened to mention in passing that the word "window" evolved from an earlier pair of words "wind" and "eye."