Ouija

The ouija (/ˈwiːdʒə/ WEE-jə, sometimes /ˈwiːdʒi/ WEE-jee), also known as a spirit board or talking board, is a flat board marked with the letters of the alphabet, the numbers 0–9, the words "yes", "no", "hello" (occasionally), and "goodbye", along with various symbols and graphics. It uses a planchette (small heart-shaped piece of wood or plastic) as a movable indicator to indicate a spirit's message by spelling it out on the board during a séance. Participants place their fingers on the planchette, and it is moved about the board to spell out words. "Ouija" is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc., but is often used generically to refer to any talking board. Spiritualists believed that the dead were able to contact the living and reportedly used a talking board very similar to a modern Ouija board at their camps in Ohio in 1886 to ostensibly enable faster communication with spirits. Following its commercial introduction by businessman Elijah Bond on July 1, 1890, the Ouija board was regarded as an innocent parlor game unrelated to the occult until American Spiritualist Pearl Curran popularized its use as a divining tool during World War I.

BOARD International

BOARD International S.A. is a Business Intelligence (BI) and Corporate Performance Management (CPM) software vendor known for its BOARD toolkit. The company is headquartered in Lugano, Switzerland, where it was founded in 1994. While its core markets are still located in Europe, BOARD International has been expanding globally and now operates in 15 countries worldwide. It has a total of over 2,500 customers from a number of different industries, including large international corporations such as ABB, Best Western, GlaxoSmithKline, NEC, Nike and Puma.

Products

BOARD International offers only one product, the BOARD toolkit. It combines various BI and CPM functionalities within a single graphical software environment. BOARD's BI capabilities include multi-dimensional analysis, ad hoc querying, dashboarding and reporting, while its CPM capabilities include budgeting, planning and forecasting as well as "other finance-related activities". Like Business Intelligence software in general, BOARD is used in an effort to improve productivity and decision making while lowering costs. It does not require any programming skills to build BI and CPM applications.