(CNN) -- The last minutes in the life of Steve Jobs were still filled by the epiphanies and moments of inspiration that fed his inventor's mind, according to an intimate portrait provided by Jobs' sister in a eulogy published Sunday in The New York Times.

Mona Simpson's eulogy -- originally read during Jobs' memorial service on October 16 -- is a sister's celebration of a brother she knew only later in life, and a lament of losing a best friend. It weaves in words what she believed were the foundations of Jobs' genius: his humility and hard work, his love of learning and his family.

Steve Jobs final words? Really, just a final phrase, repeated in triplicate: "Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow."

That's but the capstone of a gripping eulogy delivered by Steve Jobs's biological sister, author Mona Simpson, at Jobs's October 16 memorial service at Stanford University. The New York Times printed a transcript of Simpson's thoughts today, and it reveals a great deal of the unique relationship that Jobs shared with his sister–who he met for the first time when she was 25–as well as the more intimate moments of Jobs's life and final days.

In the lead up to today's release of the Steve Jobs biography, there's been an increasing stream of news surrounding its subject. As a business researcher, I was particularly interested in this recent article that referenced from his biography a list of Jobs's favorite books. There's one business book on this list, and it "deeply influenced" Jobs. That book is The Innovator's Dilemma by HBS Professor Clay Christensen.

But what's most interesting to me isn't that The Innovator's Dilemma was on that list. It's that Jobs solved the conundrum.

About a hundred years ago, a man looked at the morning newspaper and to his surprise and horror, read his name in the obituary column.

The news papers had reported the death of the wrong person by mistake. His first response was shock. Am I here or there?

When he regained his composure, his second thought was to find out what people had said about him. The obituary read, “Dynamite King Dies.” And also “He was the merchant of death.”

This man was the inventor of dynamite and when he read the words “merchant of death,” he asked himself a question, “Is this how I am going to be remembered?” He got in touch with his feelings and decided that this was not the way he wanted to be remembered.

We all know the story of the greedy king named Midas. He had a lot of gold and the more he had the more he wanted. He stored all the gold in his vaults and used to spend time every day counting it.

One day while he was counting a mysterious stranger came from nowhere and told the King that he would grant him a wish.

The king was delighted and said, “I would like everything I touch to turn to gold.”

The stranger asked the king, “Are you sure?”

About ten years ago when I was an undergraduate in college, I was working as an intern at my University's Museum of Natural History. One day while working at the cash register in the gift shop, I saw an elderly couple come in with a little girl in a wheelchair.

As I looked closer at this girl, I saw that she was kind of perched on her chair. I then realized she had no arms or legs, just a head, neck and torso. She was wearing a little white dress with red polka dots.

Once a church had fallen upon hard times. Only five members were left: the pastor and four others, all over 60 years old.

In the mountains near the church there lived a retired Bishop. It occurred to the pastor to ask the Bishop if he could offer any advice that might save the church. The pastor and the Bishop spoke at length, but when asked for advice, the Bishop simply responded by saying, "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you."

He was in the first third grade class I taught at Saint Mary's School in Morris, Minn. All 34 of my students were dear to me, but Mark Eklund was one in a million. Very neat in appearance, but had that happy-to-be-alive attitude that made even his occasional mischieviousness delightful.

Mark talked incessantly. I had to remind him again and again that talking without permission was not acceptable. What impressed me so much, though, was his sincere response every time I had to correct him for misbehaving - "Thank you for correcting me, Sister!" I didn't know what to make of it at first, but before long I became accustomed to hearing it many times a day.

Once upon a time there was a man who strayed from his own country into the world known as the Land of Fools. He soon saw a number of people flying in terror from a field where they had been trying to reap wheat. "There is a monster in that field," they told him. He looked, and saw that the "monster" was merely a watermelon.

He offered to kill the "monster" for them. When he had cut the melon from its stalk, he took a slice and began to eat it. The people became even more terrified of him than they had been of the melon. They drove him away with pitchforks, crying, "He will kill us next, unless we get rid of him."

1. The story behind Apple's name

Most tech companies adopt curious names – Netflix, Flickr, Microsoft, Bitly. Some choose names for their futuristic sound; others drop vowels in order to secure cheap Web addresses. Either way, few embrace the extreme simplicity of a moniker like Apple.

Steve Jobs and co-founder Steve Wozniak almost went with "Executek."

Isaacson writes that "the Steves" had that Hollywood-villain-sounding name on their short list. Executek, which is actually now the name of a different tech firm, was passed over, of course, along with "Matrix Electronics" and "Personal Computers Inc."

So, why Apple?

The pungent aroma of cinnamon is unmistakable, usually evoking dreams of hot cinnamon rolls from the oven. Cinnamon was once so highly-prized that wars were fought over it, it was used as currency, and it has aphrodisiacal powers.
Cinnamon History

Native to Ceylon (Sri Lanka), true cinnamon, Cinnamomum zeylanicum, dates back in Chinese writings to 2800 B.C., and is still known as kwai in the Chinese language today. Its botanical name derives from the Hebraic and Arabic term amomon, meaning fragrant spice plant. Ancient Egyptians used cinnamon in their embalming process. From their word for cannon, Italians called it canella, meaning "little tube," which aptly describes cinnamon sticks.

10 Health Benefits of Cinnamon

Several studies suggest that cinnamon may have a regulatory effect on blood sugar, making it especially beneficial for people with Type 2 diabetes.

In some studies, cinnamon has shown an amazing ability to stop medication-resistant yeast infections.

The Creator gathered all of Creation and said, "I want to hide something from the humans until they are ready for it. It is the realization that they create their own reality."

The eagle said, "Give it to me, I will take it to the moon."

The Creator said, "No. One day they will go there and find it."

The salmon said, "I will bury it on the bottom of the ocean."

Chapter 1.
I walk down a street and there's a deep hole in the sidewalk. I fall in. It takes forever to get out. It's my fault.

Chapter 2.
I walk down the same street. I fall in the hole again. It still takes a long time to get out. It's not my fault.

The Japanese monkey, Macaca fuscata, has been observed in the filed for a period of over 30 years. In 1952, on the island of Koshima scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand. The monkeys liked the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the firt unpleasant.

An 18-month old female name Imo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother. Her playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers, too.

Six humans trapped by happenstance
In black and bitter cold.
Each one possessed a stick of wood,
Or so the story's told.

Their dying fire in need of logs,
The first woman held hers back
For on the faces around the fire,
She noticed one was black.

Oct. 25 (Bloomberg) -- When Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook took the microphone at a memorial tribute to Steve Jobs at the company’s campus last week, he shared a piece of advice Jobs gave him before his death on Oct. 5.

“Among his last advice he had for me, and for all of you, was to never ask what he would do. ‘Just do what’s right,’” Cook said. Jobs wanted Apple to avoid the trap that Walt Disney Co. fell into after the death of its iconic founder, Cook said, where “everyone spent all their time thinking and talking about what Walt would do.”

Sometimes your biggest weakness can become your biggest strength. Take, for example, the story of one 10-year-old boy who decided to study judo despite the fact that he had lost his left arm in a devastating car accident.

The boy began lessons with an old Japanese judo master. The boy was doing well, so he couldn't understand why, after three months of training the master had taught him only one move.

"Sensei," the boy finally said, "Shouldn't I be learning more moves?"

One morning a sixteen-year-old boy was kidnapped from his house by a band of knife-wielding thugs and taken to another country, there to be sold as a slave. The year was 401 AD.

He was made a shepherd. Slaves were not allowed to wear clothes, so he was often dangerously cold and frequently on the verge of starvation. He spent months at a time without seeing another human being -- a severe psychological torture.

But this greatest of difficulties was transformed into the greatest of blessings because it gave him an opportunity not many get in a lifetime. Long lengths of solitude have been used by people all through history to meditate, to learn to control the mind and to explore the depths of feeling and thought to a degree impossible in the hubbub of normal life.

An old farmer had plowed around a large rock in one of his fields for years.

He had broken several plowshares and a cultivator on it and had grown rahter morbid about the rock.

After breaking another plowshare one day, and remembering all the trouble the rock had caused him through the years, he finally decided to do something about it.

In the 1930s a young traveler was exploring the French Alps. He came upon a vast strech of barren land. It was desolate. It was forbidding. It was ugly. It was the kind of place you hurry away from.

Then, suddenly, the young traveler stopped dead in his tracks. In the middle of this vast wasteland was a bent-over old man. On his back was a sack of acorns. In his hand was a four-foot length of iron pipe.

We were a very motley crowd of people who took the bus every day that summer 33 years ago. During the early morning ride from the suburb, we sat drowsily with our collars up to our ears, a cheerless and taciturn bunch.

One of the passengers was a small grey man who took the bus to the centre for senior citizens every morning. He walked with a stoop and a sad look on his face when he, with some difficulty, boarded the bus and sat down alone behind the driver. No one ever paid very much attention to him.

In his last years, Steven P. Jobs veered from exotic diets to cutting-edge treatments as he fought the cancer that ultimately took his life, according to a new biography to be published on Monday.

His early decision to put off surgery and rely instead on fruit juices, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments — some of which he found on the Internet — infuriated and distressed his family, friends and physicians, the book says. From the time of his first diagnosis in October 2003, until he received surgery in July 2004, he kept his condition largely private — secret from Apple employees, executives and shareholders, who were misled.

There comes a time in your life when you finally get it… When in the midst of all your fears and insanity you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out- ENOUGH! Enough fighting and crying or struggling to hold on. And, like a child quieting down after a blind tantrum, your sobs begin to subside, you shudder once or twice, you blink back your tears and through a mantle of wet lashes you begin to look at the world from a new prospective. This is your awakening.

Did you know that an eagle knows when a storm is approaching long before it breaks?

The eagle will fly to some high spot and wait for the winds to come. When the storm hits, it sets its wings so that the wind will pick it up and lift it above the storm. While the storm rages below, the eagle is soaring above it.

The eagle does not escape the storm. It simply uses the storm to lift it higher. It rises on the winds that bring the storm.

An ancient Indian sage was teaching his disciples the art of archery.

He put a wooden bird as the target and asked them to aim at the eye of the bird. The first disciple was asked to describe what he saw.

The first disciple said, “I see the trees, the branches, the leaves, the sky, the bird and its eye.”

The sage asked this disciple to wait.

A wealthy Jewish merchant treats a poor old man with rudeness and disdain as they travel together on a train.

When they arrive at their common destination, the merchant finds the station thronged with pious Jews waiting in ecstatic joy to greet the arrival of one of the holiest rabbis in Europe, and learns to his chagrin that the old man in his compartment is that saintly rabbi.

Embarrassed at his disgraceful behavior and distrught that he missed a golden opportunity to speak in privacy to a wise and holy man, the merchant pushes his way through the crowd to find the old man.

Mark was walking home from school one day when he noticed the boy ahead of him had tripped and dropped all of the books he was carrying, along with two sweaters, a baseball bat, a glove and a small tape recorder.

Mark knelt down and helped the boy pick up the scattered articles. Since they were going the same way, he helped to carry part of the burden. As they walked Mark discovered the boy's name was Bill, that he loved video games, baseball and history, and that he was having lots of trouble with his other subjects and that he had just broken up with his girlfriend.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Google is killing off Buzz, the company's 18-month-old first try at creating a social network.

Buzz will be shut down "in a few weeks," Google said in a blog post Friday, as the company redirects its social focus toward its new Google+ network. The move is part of a broader effort at Google to cull its product portfolio and shut down low-profile offerings. "More wood behind fewer arrows" was the way Google put it in the July blog post announcing its first wave of product eliminations.

Google added a few more projects to the scrap heap on Friday, including Code Search, a tool for finding open-source code on the Web, and Jaiku, a Twitter-like microblogging service that Google acquired in 2007.

There was this Hindu who saw a scorpion floundering around in the water. He decided to save it by stretching out his finger, but the scorpion stung him. The man still tried to get the scorpion out of the water, but the scorpion stung him again.

A man nearby told him to stop saving the scorpion that kept stinging him.

But the Hindu said: "It is the nature of the scorpion to sting. It is my nature to love. Why should I give up my nature to love just because it is the nature of the scorpion to sting?"

There is a story of identical twins. One was a hope-filled optimist. "Everything is coming up roses!" he would say. The other twin was a sad and hopeless pessimist. He thought that Murphy, as in Murphy's Law, was an optimist. The worried parents of the boys brought them to the local psychologist.

He suggested to the parents a plan to balance the twins" personalities. "On their next birthday, put them in separate rooms to open their gifts. Give the pessimist the best toys you can afford, and give the optimist a box of manure." The parents followed these instructions and carefully observed the results.

During the devastating earthquakes in Kobe, Japan, an American newscaster did a short piece on a Japanese woman who set up a makeshift store out of boxes selling flashlights and batteries. When the commentor asked why she wasn't selling these essential items for more than the regular price, the woman answered, "Why would I want to profit from someone else's suffering?"

It was a rainy night in New Orleans;
At a bus station in the town,
I watched a young girl weeping
As her baggage was taken down.

It seems she'd lost her ticket
Changing buses in the night.
She begged them not to leave her there
With no sign of help in sight.

The bus driver had a face of stone
And his heart was surely the same.
"Losing your ticket's like losing cash money,"
He said, and left her in the rain.

Then an old Indian man stood up
And blocked the driver's way
And would not let him pass before
He said what he had to say.

In managing the country store, as in everything that he undertook for others, Lincoln did his very best. He was honest, civil, ready to do anything that should encourage customers to come to the place, full of pleasantries, patient, and alert.

On one occasion, finding late at night, when he counted over his cash, that he had taken a few cents from a customer more than was due, he closed the store, and walked a long distance to make good the deficiency.

At another time, discovering on the scales in the morning a weight with which he had weighed out a package of tea for a woman the night before, he saw that he had given her too little for her money. He weighed out what was due, and carried it to her, much to the surprise of the woman, who had not known that she was short in the amount of her purchase.

It was a sunny Saturday afternoon in Oklahoma City. My friend and proud father Bobby Lewis was taking his two little boys to play miniature golf. He walked up to the fellow at the ticket counter and said, "How much is it to get in?"

The young man replied, "$3.00 for you and $3.00 for any kid who is older than six. We let them in free if they are six or younger. How old are they?"

Bobby replied, "The lawyer's three and the doctor is seven, so I guess I owe you $6.00."

Jenny was so happy about the house they had found.
For once in her life 'twas on the right side of town.
She unpacked her things with such great ease.
As she watched her new curtains blow in the breeze.

How wonderful it was to have her own room.
School would be starting, she's have friends over soon.
There'd be sleep-overs, and parties: she was so happy.
It's just the way she wanted her life to be.

I suspect that the most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention. And especially if it's given from the heart.

When people are talking, there's no need to do anything but receive them. Just take them in. Listen to what they're saying. Care about it. Most times caring about it is even more important than understanding it.

Most of us don't value ourselves or our love enough to know this. It has taken me along time to believe in the power of simple saying, "I'm so sorry," when someone is in pain. And meaning it.

A cab driver taught me a million dollar lesson in customer satisfaction and expectation. Motivational speakers charge thousands of dollars to impart his kind of training to corporate executives and staff. It cost me a $12 taxi ride.

I had flown into Dallas for the sole purpose of calling on a client. Time was of the essence and my plan included a quick turnaround trip from and back to the airport.

While professional soccer is still struggling to find a firm foothold in the United States, in the 1970s the North American Soccer League marked the brave first attempt to introduce the game to American sports fans. While most teams had only limited success at best, one did manage to break through to genuine mainstream popularity – the New York Cosmos.

It was the brainchild of Steve Ross, a passionate soccer fan who was also a major executive at Warner Communications.

In modern times a great deal of nonsense is talked about masters and disciples, and about the inheritance of a master’s teaching by favorite pupils, entitling them to pass the truth on to their adherents. Of course Zen should be imparted in this way, from heart to heart, and in the past it was really accomplished.

Silence and humility reigned rather than profession and assertion. The one who received such a teaching kept the matter hidden even after twenty years. Not until another discovered through his own need that a real master was at hand was it learned hat the teaching had been imparted, and even then the occasion arose quite naturally and the teaching made its way in its own right. Under no circumstances did the teacher even claim “I am the successor of So-and-so.” Such a claim would prove quite the contrary.

A man dies and goes to heaven. As usual, St. Peter meets him at the pearly gates.

St. Peter says, “Here’s how it works. You need 100 points to make it into heaven. You tell me all the good things you’ve done, and I give you a certain number of points for each item, depending on how good it was. When you reach 100 points, you get in.”

“Okay” the man says, “I attended church every Sunday”

“That’s good, says St. Peter, “that’s worth two points”

When he became emancipated the sixth patriach received from the fifth patriach the bowl and robe given from the Buddha to his successors, generation after generation.

A monk named E-myo out of envy pursued the patriach to take this great treasure away from him. The sixth patriach placed the bowl and robe on a stone in the road and told E-myo: “These objects just symbolize the faith. There is no use fighting over them. If you desire to take them, take them now.”

When E-myo went to move the bowl and robe they were as heavy as mountains. He could not budge them. Trembling for shame he said: “I came wanting the teaching, not the material treasures. Please teach me.”
The sixth patriach said: “When you do not think good and when you do not think not-good, what is your true self?”

John and his wife got married for 60 years and had never quarrel or even had a bad day together. Many people were always admired his marriage and one day a magazine decided to have an interview with John about his secrets of a happy marriage.

John said:
"Well it happened 60 years ago on our honey moon. My wife and I were riding on a horse cross a vine yard while suddenly my wife’s horse tripled and my wife fell. My lovely wife stood up with a happy face not angry but just said one word “ONCE”.

A giant sea monster, the likes of the mythological kraken, may have swum Earth's ancient oceans, snagging what was thought to be the sea's top predators — school bus-size ichthyosaurs with fearsome teeth.

The kraken, which would've been nearly 100 feet (30 meters) long, or twice the size of the colossal squid, Mesonychoteuthis, likely drowned or broke the necks of the ichthyosaurs before dragging the corpses to its lair, akin to an octopus's midden, according to study researcher Mark McMenamin, a paleontologist at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts.

Steve Jobs’s true genius was in design—from phones to retail, he reshaped our world with a look that was cool, clean, and friendly.

When it came to design, Steve Jobs lived Apple’s “Think Different” mantra. Many major corporations use design to benefit their bottom lines, but Apple’s entire ethos was design. And it was hardwired in Jobs. Even when he was heading NeXT, the educational-computer company he founded, product and graphic design drove his strategy. He went so far as to get special dispensation from IBM to commission the NeXT logo from Paul Rand, designer of the IBM, ABC, and Westinghouse logos. When Jobs returned to Apple, he took its design to new levels, profoundly influencing the look of 21st-century computer technology.

A small private  funeral for Steve Jobs took  place on  Friday, the Wall Street Journal has revealed , quoting a  person "familiar with the matter."  The person wouldn't say where or when the event took place, out of  respect for the Jobs family's privacy.

The event came two days two days after the Apple cofounder died  at 56 following  a long battle with pancreatic cancer.

There are no plans for a public memorials but the company is "planning a celebration of Steve's extraordinary life" for staff members,  said CEO Tim Cook earlier in the week . He did not say  when or where.

First came the social media. By 8 p.m. EST last Wednesday, the evening the co-founder of Apple lost his battle with pancreatic cancer at age 56, Steve Jobs was mentioned in 17.3% of all Tweets.

Then came the flowers, photos and, of course, apples left outside Apple Stores across the nation. Outside the Fifth Avenue store south of Central Park, an artist spray-painted the words “iLove Steve.” Even the protesters on Wall Street paused for a moment.

For every magical thing Steve Jobs revealed in his Apple keynote addresses, there were many other things he concealed. Like the devices he created, his life was more and more opaque even while becoming more and more celebrated. So his death this week came as a shock for nearly all of us, even though we knew that only grave illness could be keeping him from the company he co-founded and loved. He told us almost nothing about his prognosis—right through his last public appearance he was as turtleneck-clad and upbeat as ever. But suddenly, this week, he was gone.

Over the last few months, a steady stream of visitors to Palo Alto, Calif., called an old friend’s home number and asked if he was well enough to entertain visitors, perhaps for the last time.

In February, Steven P. Jobs had learned that, after years of fighting cancer, his time was becoming shorter. He quietly told a few acquaintances, and they, in turn, whispered to others. And so a pilgrimage began.

For all of his years in the spotlight at the helm of Apple, Steve Jobs in many ways remains an inscrutable figure — even in his death. Fiercely private, Jobs concealed most specifics about his personal life, from his curious family life to the details of his battle with pancreatic cancer — a disease that ultimately claimed him on Wednesday, at the age of 56.

While the CEO and co-founder of Apple steered most interviews away from the public fascination with his private life, there's plenty we know about Jobs the person, beyond the Mac and the iPhone. If anything, the obscure details of his interior life paint a subtler, more nuanced portrait of how one of the finest technology minds of our time grew into the dynamo that we remember him as today.