Watson

Watson may refer to:

Companies

Computing

People

Places

Karelia Watson

Watson was a software program released by Karelia Software for the Apple Macintosh on November 27, 2001, which provided Internet content through a familiar Mac OS X-like interface through the use of plug-ins.

Plug-ins were programmed in the Objective-C language using the Cocoa frameworks, included with the Mac OS X operating system.

On September 18, 2002, Apple bundled a similar program, Sherlock 3, with Mac OS X v10.2. Advocates of Watson claim that Apple copied the features of Watson without permission, compensation, or attribution. Apple, however, claims that a Watson-like program was simply the natural evolution of Sherlock 2.

At Sun Microsystems JavaOne conference in June 2004, Sun announced that they had licensed the Watson technology and were porting it to the Java programming language under the name Project Alameda. On October 5, development of the Cocoa-based version of Watson ceased. On November 24, Dan Wood, Karelia owner and Watson lead developer, made the last version of Watson available free of charge by posting a registration code on his weblog.

Watson (surname)

Watson is a patronymic surname of English and Scottish origin. Meaning "son of Walter", the popular Old English given names Wat or Watt were pet forms of the name Walter. Watson is the 46th-most common surname in England and 19th most common in Scotland.

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Watsons Personal Care Stores

Watsons Personal Care Stores, known simply as Watsons, is the largest health care and beauty care chain store in Asia. It is a member of the A.S. Watson Group, majority-owned by CK Hutchison Holdings. It operates over 700 stores in Hong Kong, Macau, Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Ukraine and Estonia.

History

Dr. Thomas Boswell Watson (1815–1860), from Scotland, was the first member of the Watson family to arrive in the Far East, where in 1845 he set up a private practice in Macau, on the south west coast of China. After selling his practice to a fellow doctor, he moved to Hong Kong in 1856 where he became part owner of the Hong Kong Dispensary, an offshoot of the Canton Dispensary which operated from 1828–1858. Known as the "Big Medicine Shop" (Chinese: 大藥房; Cantonese: Dai Yeuk Fong), the dispensary's main customers were soldiers and sailors. The dispensary was not known as A.S. Watson until 1870 although Alexander Skirving Watson took over in 1858 following management changes. T.B. Watson sent his family back to Scotland in 1857 and he himself followed two years later.

Watson's (United States)

Ira A. Watson Co., more commonly known as Watson's was a department store chain based in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. It was founded in 1907 and grew to many locations throughout the Southeastern United States. The company was purchased for $4.45 million by Peebles with the transaction closing June 29, 1998.

History

Expanding from the original operation, the company opened a group of downtown stores in county seat towns. As shopping centers and malls developed, Watson's opened substantially larger stores in those locations. Operations grew from a single location in Knoxville, Tennessee to numerous locations in Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Missouri, Indiana, and Illinois. The merchandise was purchased and distributed to all of the Watson's stores from the centralized warehouse located at the corporate offices in Knoxville.

The company hit hard times in the late 1980s and eventually filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy in February 1992 when they were unable to renew bank financing. At the time of the filing, the company operated 31 stores in nine states. The courts approved a reorganization plan for the company to emerge from Chapter 11 in 6 years. Profitability improved and Watson's emerged from Chapter 11 in about half of the anticipated time. Even after emerging from bankruptcy, the company never fully recovered. Through a series of lackluster upper management hires in the early to late '90's, the company continued its downward spiral. In the end, the company that prospered by selling goods in remote areas of the southeast where competitors were few, could not compete with the new Walmart and Goodys Family Clothing stores as these companies began to build in markets that were once considered too small to inhabit. Watson's business model no longer was viable.