Bharat Entrepreneurs

Google Has Acquired Like.com

cassy — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 18:23:38 +0000

It was confirmed by Google last August 20, 2010 that they have already acquired the website, Like.com.

Like.com, has been known since 2006, that when it comes to fashion, according to them, they are the first to bring visual search to shopping, the first to build the automated cross-matching system for clothing, and more.

Munjal Shah, CEO and founder of Like.com announced this deal on their homepage on August 20. One of the Google’s spokesperson also said during on one of the interview, that Google are pleased and excited to welcome Like.com into their company wherein they will work closely with their commerce team.

According to Like .com, they employ computer vision and machine learning technology to publicize the so called- “soft goods” or those that are purchased according to the consumer’s personal style or taste and “whether the item matches an outfit to current trends and opinions of the fashion elite.”

To all intents and purposes, Google has obtained a visual search engine for “fashionistas” and trendy on-line shoppers.

On the other hand, Google doesn’t know what it takes when it comes to technology for this deal, one of their spokesperson released some hints in his statements that Like.com will operate its Website separately in the near term, they are excited about the technology that Like.com have been built and the domain expertise they will bring to Google as they continue to work on building great e-commerce experience for their users, advertisers and partners.

Despite the fact that Google was not very much vocal for the purpose of this deal, it might be that Google wants to venture on e-commerce for visual fashion if this could be feasible. If it’s not, try again for another.

Though Google did not reveal how much they spent in buying Like.com but there are speculations that it was close to $100 million.

Intel’s Acquisition of McAfee Raises Issues

cassy — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 14:16:01 +0000

The recent controversy was highlighted to Paul S. Otellini, the President and CEO of Intel, when the company made an announcement last Thursday regarding the acquisition of the McAfee’s security- software for $7.68 billion in cash.

This move raises the eyebrows of everybody in the streets who can relate with the issue. There has been a lot of company who tried to make that move but it never materialized after thorough studies. Cynical questions remain to everyone for making this move. How helpful can it be? Is it worth throwing bucks for this?

Otellini was very optimistic for this act for the reason that he believed time will come; McAfee’s security technology will be effective because their design will create a stronger “hardware-enhanced security”.

Intel, world’s biggest maker of computer chips, believes that this could be a great help to increase revenues for the company. McAfee will help Intel get semiconductors loaded with security features into Smartphone, TV’s and other devices.

But some consumers and businesses was not certain of the fact that mobile devices are prone to viruses and hackers.

According to Intel they can get more than 90% of its sales from semiconductors for Personal Computers. They also believe that integration of McAfee’s software security into their products will make their machines more efficient, secure and attractive to makers of other kinds of devices. It was also stated that McAfee investor will get $48 a share in cash, a 60% premium over the company’s closing price the day before the deal will announce.

Intel affirmed that the software can run quickly when it is incorporated directly into a chip and doesn’t have to go through other programs. This will avoid the hackers to evade their software devices.

Otellini stated during the conference last August 19 that McAfee added more than ten million new Malware variants to its database of security threats, since there are new number of security threats identified every month and it still continue to rise.

Though Intel was very optimistic for this strategy, there are analysts who are doubtful for this issue for the reason that the company is paying a higher-than-average premium for McAfee.

Only time will tell for Intel and McAfee if this concern is victorious or it will fall short. They will never know if it is effective until they try it.

The New PS3 Coming Out in September

cassy — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 13:49:29 +0000

Andrew House, CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Europe, proclaimed at the ongoing Gamescom 2010 conference in Germany, that Sony will release its 2 new PS3 models this coming September 15 in UK.

The PS3 160GB HDD is the latest model that has a bigger hard drive compared to the existing 120GB and this can be purchased individually for only $299. The new 320GB model will replace the existing 250GB model which will be an exclusive PlayStation Move Bundle to be launched on September 19. The 320 GB PS3 bundle is inclusive of goodies such as the PS3 navigation controller, PS3 motion controller and other starter pack costing the whole bundle for almost $400.

These new and bigger hard drives can store more great contents than that of former PlayStation, it can store greater games, more movies, TV shows, and even your personal photos, videos, music etc.

The PlayStation Move motion Controller is available as stand alone for only $49.99. While the PlayStation Move Bundle includes PlayStation Move controller, Playstation Eye camera, Sports Champion Blu-ray game and PlayStation Move game demo disc for only $99.99.

Earlier last week, Xbox made known of its hands free motion control system and plans to be out of the market early in November this year.

Sony also stated during the conference in gamescom that ITV Player will be added to UK’s PS3, along with Germany’s Animax, Spain’s TV3, Australia’s Yahoo!7′s PLUS7 service, Finland’s YLE, and Holland’s expanded NOS service. In addition, Sony’s surprise was also announced during the conference about their new software support games. Sony and their partners will include the NBA 2K11, Resident Evil 5 Gold Edition, Time Crisis: Razing Storm, Toy Story 3, and Tiger Woods PGA Tour 2011,. This is to gratify and ignite the user’s addiction to PS3; this will provide them an all-in-one package depending on their taste that the whole family can play together and have fun.

Saudi Arabia Took Back Blackberry Messaging

cassy — Sat, 14 Aug 2010 22:10:32 +0000

It was all over the news last week that Saudi Arabia ordered local cellphone providers to suspend Blackberry services on the country because R.I.M., the maker of Blackberry smartphones, do not want to bear the country’s regulatory requirements which is to provide access to its costumers’ messages.

Mike Lazaridis, R.I.M.’s Founder and Co-Chief Executive said in one of his interview that if they are going to allow this, it could endanger their company’s relationship with their customers. They don’t want to compromise because their highly encrypted data service makes the Blackberry to be no. 1 worldwide in business solutions.

Last Tuesday, the Saudi government drew back from its plan of shutting down Blackberry’s corporate messenger service in their country. There is a positive progress in the ongoing negotiations with operators and Research In Motion regarding their ability to monitor encrypted messages for security reasons. According to a statement on one of Saudis’ news agency, Communications and Information Telecommunications Commissions stated that it had obtained unspecified commitments from R.I.M. and other operators that would help in the country’s aim of monitoring encrypted traffic on the Blackberry Smartphone.

R.I.M. and the other three mobile operators in Saudi Arabia had faced their deadline last Monday to abide with the regulator’s request or their service to more than 500,000 people in Saudi Arabia will be cut off. But the regulators have decided to continue working with the operators to carry out other requirements.

Saudi Arabia, United Arab of Emirates and Indian government was apprehensive with RIM’s unwillingness to give them access on its encrypted e-mail traffic. R.I.M. said that even them had no way to decode those data services.

Saudi governments have accused R.I.M. of using double standard because of not allowing them to decrypt their data which are usually granted to other governments like North America and Europe. Even UAE threatened RIM to cut their corporate services this coming October if the concurrence was not established yet.

London Analyst, Nick Jones of Gartner, said that R.I.M. have probably given other governments the access to their encrypted information but did not help them in decrypting the information.

“Most governments reserve the right to access communications,” Mr. Jones said. “But it would be difficult for R.I.M. to decrypt and disclose private communications and then lie about it, because security is everything to R.I.M.”

R.I.M.’s security feature for its delivery system actually makes them successful in corporate email. The traffic is encrypted and travels mainly through R.I.M.’s own data center in Canada, and other countries across the globe.

Live TV Streaming on iPhone and iPad

cassy — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 17:14:08 +0000

Here is a good news to iPhone and iPad users: You can now watch TV to your Apple gadgets using Dish Network!

Next month, they’re planning to launch their latest product. This new functionality will be built into the Dish’s current application. It was developed to control the company’s high end set-top boxes using Apple’s devices. Android and Blackberry will be followed.

Dish Network is a sister company of Echostar, the maker of Slingbox that makes satellite and set-top boxes.

To cater to their consumers’ needs, especially to those who have cut their cable subscription and satellite TV plans, Dish applications are joining the growing list of video streaming products from big-name media companies, like Netflix, Hulu and ABC.

On the other hand, Dish relies on consumer’s current TV subscriptions and set-top boxes to work. The Dish application is going to connect over the Internet to the set-top box at home that was specially made or modified to work with technology from Slingbox. Consumers may choose to purchase a Slingbox setup for up to $300 or they can buy a higher-end high-definition set-top box from Dish with the built-in technology.

However, Dish network have its own weakness too, if one person is at home watching, and another is on the road accessing the set-top box over the Internet, Dish said they’ll be stuck with whatever’s being watched at home. If they want to watch one or more channel they will need a special set-top box with functionality to watch or record two channels at once.

Regardless of the potential conflicts that may arise, Dish said that for those who have the necessary hardware and now wants to watch live TV on their iPhones and iPads, they can use Slingbox Mobile application which is now available in the market for only $29.99.

RIM’s Blackpad To Rival Apple’s iPad

cassy — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 13:54:51 +0000

Research In Motion (RIM) is the designer and manufacturer of the award-winning BlackBerry® Smartphone and known rival of Apple iPhone. According to the two people familiar in the company they are developing a new model of technology to race with the Apple’s iPad. Because based on Apple they sold 3 million iPad tablet computers in 80 days. This ignited the urgency of the RIM to create its rival.

RIM plans to introduce this computer tablet to connect the gap between smartfones and notebook computers. They’re planning to call this as Blackpad. According to Whois Database of Domain Names, RIM already acquired the Internet rights to blackpad.com this month. RIM tablets will make the most on Blackberry’s email capabilities and the phone’s popularity in businesses.

Blackpads will likely similar to iPad, it has the same dimension as the Ipad, with a 9.7-inch diagonal screen, it includes Wi-Fi to connect to the internet anywhere (as long as there is an available wireless internet connection) and Bluetooth to tether their Blackpads’ data connection to other Blackberry cell phones. The device also has a camera in the back, as well as in the front for video conferencing which can be useful for business, like meetings, conferences, etc.

Just like the iPad, the pricing for Blackpad is almost $500 or more. RIM is focused on acquiring additional ideas on how to develop and improve the tablet for the benefits of the user and not on the price just to sell the large number of this device.

Ashok Kumar, an analyst with Rodman & Renshaw Inc. in New York, “They can’t wait for a second generation of devices from Apple or they’ll fall too far behind.”

RIM’s challenge is on how the Blackpad stands out in the tablet market; how to get the most against iPad because the buyers are attracted due to different software application. Almost 225,000 apps are available in Apple’s devices while RIM stated that last April they only had more than 6,000 apps.

William Power, an Analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co., said that, “With the success of the iPad, RIM faces an uphill battle,” “RIM really has yet to demonstrate that it can roll out touch screen technology to match the leaders in space, most noticeably Apple”

This could be an adverse battle for the RIM to be on top in the tablet market.

Mahindra to bid for SsangYong

Aravind Patrudu — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 08:22:52 +0000

The board of Mahindra & Mahindra, the Rs 31,000-crore utility vehicle and tractor maker has approved the company’s plan to bid for South Korea’s cash-strapped automobile company, SsangYong Motor. M&M, India’s largest maker of utility vehicles now wants to have a global footprint as the South Korean SUV-maker has products such as the Rexton II, New Kyron, Actyon and Rodius that are bigger and more powerful than M&M’s current line-up of utility vehicles. The acquisition of SsangYong will help M&M to penetrate deep into the United States and the European automobile markets.

M&M, which is among the final six companies from the original seven shortlisted to bid for the troubled Korean maker of utility vehicles, did not elaborate on the financial details of the bid. But the worth of bid is expected to be in the region of $350-500 million.

U.S. Senate approved hike in visa fees of Indian firms

Aravind Patrudu — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 07:35:27 +0000

According to Nasscom (National Association of Software and Services Companies) the US government has passed a border security bill that will hike the visa fees of Indian companies operating in the U.S. by $2,000 or more. IT Market Analysts are saying that this move will hit Indian IT companies hard and will definitely have a serious impact on the operations of IT sector.

The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM) sharply protested the bill, estimating that this move will saddle the outsourcing industry with an additional cost of $200-250 million per annum towards visa fees. Nasscom estimation is based on the assumption that the increase is $4,500 (on top of the existing fee of $2,500 for H1 visas) and the fact that around 50,000 H1 and L1 visas a year are used by the industry every year. Mr. Som Mittal, president of NASSCOM in a statement said the legislation would lead to diminished inflow of Indian talent to the U.S., and that would adversely affect the U.S.’ technological innovation capabilities.

For US MNCs this will have a minor impact, but gaint Indian IT companies which have well over 50 per cent of their employees in the US under these visas will be serioulsy affected.

Infosys Murthy’s son Rohan to wed TVS Venu’s daughter Lakshmi.

Aravind Patrudu — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 06:53:09 +0000

‘A Boy marrying a Girl’. It is not all a news for a person who is interested to know news related to Business. But this wedding definitely holds a great deal of corporate significance. Rohan Murthy, only son of NR Narayana Murthy the founder and chairman of Infosys Technologies who needs no introduction, was engaged to be married to Lakshmi Venu. Lakshmi Venu is the only daughter of TVS Motors (India’s third largest two-wheeler company) chairman Venu Srinivsan. Venu Srinivasan’s wife Mallika Srinivasan is the vice-chairman of Tractors and Farm Equipment (TAFE). Thus this wedding makes three large corporate entities together. Marriage date is left to the couple’s decision.

Brief introduction about:

Rohan Murthy:

He studied at Bishop Cotton Boys’ School in Bangalore
He studied engineering in Cornell University.
He is now a Doctoral student at Harvard University.(doing his PhD in computer science).

Lakshmi Venu :

She did her schooling at Shishya in Chennai.
Studied economics at Yale University.
She got a PhD in manufacturing management from Warwick University in the UK.
Board member of the Chennai-based TVS group firm Sundaram Clayton as strategy chief.

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC):Affordable for kids

Aravind Patrudu — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 07:12:01 +0000

One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), a nonprofit organisation is targeting to sell 1 million OLPC XO laptops in India.These small textbook-size 256GB-compliant laptops are developed for children which comes with 1-gigabit RAM and 1-Giga HZ speed, and is fully-loaded with Wikipedia content and Wiki dictionary.

Satish Jha chairman of OLPC India Foundation says, “The momentum has just begun in India. We are targeting government primary schools as illiteracy in the country is in the level of primary schools,”. So far in India Manipur was the first state to adopt this technology in government schools.Next to Manipur, Kerala and Gujarat are planning to distribute them in government schools across the State. As per to the market rates, OLPC is offering its laptop for Rs 11,000 in the US and Rs 15,000 in India.

Earlier to this OLPC XO Laptops, Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has failed to deliver on proposals for low cost computers, such as the Simputer PC and Sakshat. So let us pray the God for an outstanding success to oversee the creation of an affordable educational device for poor children for self empowered learning in the developing country.

Who will be the Tata successor?

Aravind Patrudu — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 05:30:06 +0000

Tata Sons, the holding company of the $71-billion Tata Group, has announced the members of the committee which will choose a successor to Chairman Ratan Tata. As Ratan N Tata is due to retire in December 2012 when he turns 75 they scheduled a selection committee for a successor who will work with him for atleast eight months before taking charge. In Tata’s words, ““The person must maintain our values, because they are, in a manner of speaking, the DNA of the group — the crown jewel,”.

The selection panel is a 5 member committee who will together shoulder the great task of selecting a successor to Ratan N Tata.

The panel includes:

R K KRISHNAKUMAR : Director on the Tata Sons Board, chairman of Tata Coffee and Asian Coffee, and vice-chairman of Tata Tea and of Indian Hotels.
CYRUS MISTRY :Younger son of construction tycoon Pallonji Mistry, and was appointed board member of Tata Sons in 2006.
SHIRIN BHARUCHA : A trustee of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust and lawyer who worked with the Tata Group for several years.
N A SOONAWALLA : Trustee of the Dorabji Tata trust and number two in the Tata Sons board till his retirement.
LORD BHATTACHARYYA: Founder of the Warwick Manufacturing Group(WMG), an industrial consultancy and part of Warwick University. His actual name is Sushanta.

So all we can do is nothing except waiting for the BIG NAME to be announced shortly by the team of 5 TATA heads.

India’s L&T bags Rs 6500 Crore order from Jaiprakash Group

Aravind Patrudu — Sat, 07 Aug 2010 04:39:06 +0000

Engineering major Larsen and Toubro (L&T) in India has bagged a Rs 6,500-crore order from the Jaiprakash Group for the supply, erection and commissioning of Boiler-Turbine Generator package,Piping,Electrostatic Precipitators (ESPs), and Power Plant Automation for their 1,980-MW Power Plant being set up in Uttar Pradesh, India.

The power project is located in Karchana district which is 40 km from Allahabad in UP .This plant will comprise three units of 660-MW each. This contract’s worth is about INR 6500 crores and they are planning it to be commissioned in 60 months with the first unit scheduled to go into commercial production in 48 months. Prior to this another similar contract to construct a plant near Singrauli in Madhya Pradesh with two supercritical units of 660 MW each has been scheduled.This plant is set for commissioning in 2013.

Recently L&T has also bagged three orders worth Rs1,749 crore from state-run SAIL and Bharat Aluminium Company (BALCO). Thus L&T is looking forward to enhance indigenous availability of components and spares for other critical equipment such as air pre-heaters and fans, besides heavy forgings.

Twitter Hits 20 Billionth Tweets

cassy — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 17:37:27 +0000

It was amazing for a Tokyo graphic designer to unlock a significant accomplishment on Twitter by hitting the 20 billionth tweets. According to his user profile, he works in an advertising agency. His message which was sent at 3:44pm GMT was a bit hard to translate.

Last March 2010, twitter reached its ten billionth tweet since 2006. But in a matter of 5 months, it reached its 20 billionth tweets from the Tokyo Graphic Designer.

“It looks like I posted the 20 billionth tweets. I’m getting replies from people all over the world. It’s scary. What are the chances? Maybe I’m going to die. Is it more amazing than winning the lottery? I thought it was a joke,” he said in another Twitter message moments later.

It’s an enormous result for four years since it was launched. Every year; it doubled the increase of users around the world. Twitter’s upswing of activity accelerated during this year’s Soccer World Cup.

However, like other sites, Twitter has its own dilemma, the “traffic.” Almost 300,000 users are signing up for Twitter accounts everyday. The “fail whale” error page has become common to many users in the last few months, particularly during major news or sporting events. Twitters also encountered bugs that prevented users from following other people, updating their profiles, or using the help center. And this made their IT Engineers alarmed to solve the problem.

The company has pointed out in a recent blog post about the issues they are facing recently. It said that “Making sure Twitter is a stable platform and a reliable service is our number one priority. The bulk of our engineering efforts are currently focused on this effort, and we have moved resources from other important projects to focus on the issue.”

“It’s got kind of cramped at our current quarters,” Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said in an interview last week.

Twitter has initiated their plans to transfer its operations into a new, custom-built data center in Salt Lake City, Utah. The facilities there will help the company accommodate demands better.

Engineer Jean-Paul Cozzatti wrote in a blog post that dedicated data centers will help them accommodate more users and activities on the site which are growing rapidly.

The new site will be bigger than the San Francisco-based Twitter’s current setup and will be housed in a building that is “designed specifically around our unique power and cooling needs,” Cozzatti said. Twitter will also have “full control over network and systems configuration.” “Importantly, having our own data center will give us the flexibility to more quickly make adjustments as our infrastructure needs change,” he added.

For now they will still work with their present data center, the NTT America, the date of transfer to Salt Lake have not yet confirmed.

Twitter is doing their very best to address those “fail whale” issues. Now that they’re breaking the records, they’re on their guard racing against their competitors.

Will Facebook Inc. Go Public in 2012?

cassy — Sun, 01 Aug 2010 15:17:17 +0000

The inside story for this week is Facebook’s initial public offering. The story exploded when Douglas MacMillan of Bloomberg spoke about his exposé during his interview with Deidre Bolton on Bloomberg Television’s “InsideTrack.” (Source: Bloomberg). MacMillan revealed that Facebook will probably put off its initial public offering until 2012.

There has been speculations from media and other investors that a sale of shares might start in 2011. It all started when Jim Breyer, one of Facebook’s board member, said that the management is focused on attracting more users and developers and not on a 2010 IPO sale.

“If they have other sources of capital, the company would probably be better off deferring an IPO until Zuckerberg had more experience under his belt,” said Ray Valdes, a San Jose, California-based analyst at Gartner Inc.

Amidst all the speculations, Facebook spokesperson, Jonathan Thaw, never left a comment. While Zuckerberg stated in a television interview that Facebook will only go public “when it makes sense.”

On the other hand, Kevin Landis, manager of Firsthand Funds, said that Zuckerberg will have a greater burden when he decides to put Facebook Inc. on public. At 26, Facebook Inc. Chief Executive Officer, Mark Zuckerberg, is facing a lot of criticism on issues like the Facebook user privacy. He was given at least a year and a half to handle all the issues and to follow his vision without too much criticism and the implications concerning this.

No one knows as to what is going on in Zuckerberg’s mind. At 26, some feel he is too inexperienced. Others have reservations about his leadership capabilities to run the biggest network in the world.

Yahoo Japan To Use Google Search Engine

cassy — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 12:45:13 +0000

Yahoo Japan is the largest internet portal operator in Japan. Recently, it created a controversy by refusing to follow Yahoo Inc.’s lead in choosing Microsoft as their partner. Instead, they will be using Google’s search engine instead. They will also adopt Google’s search-linked advertisement delivery system and feed its data to Google sites. In return they will provide US Company its auction and shopping sites data.

Yahoo Inc. owns one-third of Yahoo Japan and it is the second largest shareholder next to Softbank Corp. Yahoo Inc. also tried to partner with Google for search engine before they went with Microsoft but the deal was blocked by the US government.

Yahoo Japan’s recent move was seen by others as an emphasis of “Microsoft’s weakness” in search engine compared to Google. But Yahoo Japan believes that this decision will make them stay on top of the domestic market.

Mitsushige Akino, Chief Fund Manager at Ichiyoshi Investment Management stated that, “If this Yahoo Japan and Google partnership works well, other search engine and portal site players all over the world may start adopting Google’s technology.”

In addition, the Yahoo Japan President cited during the news conference that after a thorough investigation, the company concluded that Microsoft’s technology was not strong enough to compensate for its needs; one example was their sub-part Japanese language search capability.

Yahoo Japan still assured Yahoo Inc. that they will remain to be their strategic partner for Japanese portal site. and the U.S. Company will maintain its stake. They will still use the Yahoo brand as well and this move will not change the company’s relationship with Yahoo Inc.

Although Yahoo Japan confirmed with the Japanese government that their partnership with Google will not violate the anti-trust regulations, Microsoft is seeking legality for Yahoo-Google tie up. Microsoft Corporation’s general counsel stated that, “This agreement is even more anti-competitive than Google’s deal with Yahoo in the United States and Canada that the Department of Justice found to be illegal.” “(That) deal would have locked up to 90 percent of paid advertising. This deal gives Google virtually 100 percent of all searches in Japan both paid and unpaid. It means there will be no search competition in Japan and that Google will end up controlling all personal search information for all Japanese consumers and businesses.”

If this deal will materialize, Yahoo Japan’s switch to Google search engine will take effect not later than this year.

Obama on WikiLeaks Documents

kartik — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 18:30:16 +0000

The US president, Barack Obama gave his first public statements on wikileak’s release of 90,000 secret raw intelligence data about the afghan war. Obama remarked that these documents have nothing new to offer to the general public. The only thing the president was worried about is the safety of the troops which could be threatened due to the leaks.

Obama said the documents only reflected the failed policies and strategies under President Bush on Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Mr. Obama talked about the leak in the Rose Garden after meeting with the members of Congress from both parties. He also urged Congress not to delay on passing the 30$ billion needed to sustain military operations.

The $35 PC Tablet Revealed

cassy — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 04:23:20 +0000

The spotlight is now on the 35$ PC prototype revealed by the government India. Targeted towards low income group, this PC is a game changer.

The Indian government aims to extend broadband access to all of India’s 25,000 colleges and 500 universities.

The PC tablet runs on Linux operating system. It has no internal storage and it only uses memory card to store data. The tablet’s actual specifications have not been revealed yet.
Questions remain as to what kind of processor it runs on and how much RAM it needs. What is known for sure is that it can be used for word processing, web browsing and video-conferencing. It has a solar power option that is very important and of great help to help conserve India’s energy.

India is still searching out for investors who can manufacture PC Tablets at a lower price. The government wants to downgrade the price from $35 to $20 or maybe even lower price like around $10 whereby students from very low income families can afford to use it.

An untold story of Bindi

bindiwali — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 16:40:50 +0000

I wanted to share with you an untold story of Bindi… I started making bindis as a hobby — 18 years ago! I am in my mid thirties now. I have always been fascinated by bindis. It was a different time. My mother had an awesome collection of bindis. Her friends who came to our house would be always wearing a new bindi. Something was wrong with me I guess… The first thing I would do was to look for their bindis. Still today when I am traveling, my eyes are always looking for a new design, a new pattern, a new bindi…

Today I am a professional bindi maker. I started my own bindi collection eight years ago. Two dozen women work for me on my bindi from their own homes. Bindis are out of fashion for the most city girls… Some wear it to make bold statement…. Still the demand for our bindis is growing. So is my hope of creating more job opportunities for women.

I was very new to Internet until I learnt I could use it to search for new designs, bindis etc… Recently I came across a simple website Jaagore.com where I created an event to look for more people willing to help out. I got responses from people who were willing to help me create more opportunities for these women.

To be honest, I really didn’t think about empowering women or changing the society or anything like that when I first decided to turn my hobby into my profession. I just want to follow my passion. I have realized that when you are allowed to do what you truly love, you can make a real difference.

Kenny Guinn: Former Nevada Governor is no more

kartik — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 22:56:54 +0000

Former Governor of Nevada, Kenny Guinn, a two term Republican, died Thursday after he fell from his roof, while making repairs on his Las Vegas Home. He was 73 years old.

He had a remarkable and prosperous tenure when he was at the helm of the affairs. Now, however, his state is in financial straits.

Nevada Governor Gibbons expressed his condolences to Guinn’s family and friends.

Guinn was a Democrat initially. He changed to moderate Republican while serving two terms from 1998 to 2007.

Vedam – Telugu Movie Review

bharadwaj — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 17:23:11 +0000

Director: Radhakrishna Jagarlamudi “Krish”
Cast: Allu Arjun, Manoj Manchu, Anushka, Manoj Bajpai
Rating: 3.5/5

Summary
“Vedam” is a drama set on five parallel stories – loosely based on the theme “humanity”. Cable Raju (Allu Arjun) is a small time cable TV operator smitten by the idea of wooing a rich girl – his easy pass to a live of comfort. Does his conscience allow him to steal money from an utterly poor farmer? Saroja (Anushka), a prostitute in a remote village with no qualms about her profession plans to run-off from her prostitute house to Hyderabad to set up her own brothel company and make good money. Can she escape the goons chasing her and does she ever realize what she is into? Vivek Chakravarty (Manoj Manchu) is an aspiring Rock Star, unlike his late army-dad. Will he be willing to miss his concert that could give him his biggest break, to save the life of a woman he doesn’t know? How much can a disgruntled Indian Muslim (Manoj Bajpai) risk to save the lives of fellow Indian and a narrow minded cop who is always after him? Finally a touching story of a poor farmer Ramulu, who has to sell his daughter’s kidney to pay off his money lender, so that his grandson could study and grow out of the wretched lives they were leading. These five stories converge in the final scene and not all have a happy ending!

Analysis
The format of converging stories which this movie adopts is not new. The highly acclaimed Mexican director Alejandro Inarrittu (Amores Perros, 21 Grams, Babel) uses the same style in all his movies and does a fantastic job at choosing stories based on the same theme and tying them well towards the end. Even the recent Nandita Das’s directorial debut “Firaaq” based on the Godhra riots has the same format. Though “Vedam” never reaches the level of the earlier mentioned ones, it is probably one of the best “meaningful Telugu films” in the recent years. A couple of really touching scenes – especially the one where the poor farmer utters “mana Srinugaadu chaduvukuntadamma !!!” The drama never goes over-board and the movie boasts of some really good performances. The music by MM Keeravani was very fresh with good lyrics. The picturization of few songs – “Pada .. pada..pada” (which IMO is the first Telugu Gothic-Rock ) , “Rupai” deserve special mention.

However, “Vedam” has its share of flaws. Anushka’s episode is too shallow and just does not work. The organ trafficking market and the prostitution racket were treated a tad too casually. Manoj Bajpaai’s story is too clichéd and we have had enough after we have seen Mr. Khan overact all his way screaming “My name is Khan and all Muslims are not terrorists”. Allu Arjun posing as a rich guy is not convincing, shifting instantly from his mass dialect to a heavily accented one. And Telugu audience deserves a more fashionable rock star than Manoj Manchu! Please!!!

Overlooking the minor flaws, “Vedam” makes for an engaging watch and should not be missed.