This is really bad!

My blog is being mirrored by someone at this address http://bootybabej0828.duskdiary.com/ This is really bad. He/she is infringing my copyrights! Do you guys have any idea about how can this be tackled? What is this dusk diary stuff? bad, bad....

Few updates

[+] Ran suggested me this link. It may be useful for you too. http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/07/dealing-with-website-plagiarism-when.html
I tried to leave comments in that blog, but it isn't accepting any comments
[+] Use this site http://www.copyscape.com/ to find out if your blog content has been copied somewhere else

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Love for mother land!

We have more than 180 countries in the world;
India has 28 states and 7 union territories;
Tamilnadu has more than 39 districts and numerous sub districts, towns and villages.
If we assign a probability for a child to be born in a particular town in a particular district in a country in this world, it will be a miniscule fraction 0.000005085… I am quoting these numbers to stress on the randomness associated with our place of birth.

Have you ever wondered?
Why did we born in this country with myriad language and mighty culture?
How could we express our complex emotional attachments towards our mother land?
How could we repay to the country which nurtured our dreams?
Can we live forever happily in some foreign land?
How could we express the psychic excitement when we go back to our home town?

Love for mother land is an inherent character. The patriotic feeling can’t be pushed into an individual’s mind. I was seeing the movie ‘Kannathil Muthamittal’ today. It is a legendary Tamil movie by director Mani Ratnam. The movie’s plot revolves around a kid’s search for her identity & her birth-mother, a mother’s love for her country & her patriotism. The background of the story is Tamil Elam fights in Srilanka.

Few thoughts on Tamil Elam fights:
The chaos prevalent in Srilanka is because of miscalculated political moves by yesteryear’s Sinhalese racists
The war can’t be the final solution to Tamil Elam. Wars offer an intermediate passage towards the amicable solution.
Any racist oppression on minorities will have huge repercussions on mainland.

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Safe bloggin!

We all love our blogs. While publishing a blogpost, we take few things for granted. Those can potentially fall under prevention of copyright infringement laws. I was embedding lot of images/ youtube videos from internet to fit the theme of the post. But my sole intention while doing so is not to infringe those artist's or creator's copyright and it is purely for non-commerical purposes. Few brickbats I had received now and then made me realise these mistakes.

Here are few do's and dont's for safe blogging.

Don't embed an image available in internet into your post. If you want to do so, please read that site's copyright notice. Usually web admins allow embedding their images with conditions to give them a link and a note of credit for images. If you want to use those images in your homepage, you got to download them, upload to your image server and use it in your post.

Youtube is becoming the most popular entertainment option for netizens. But youtube videos are big copyright infringement violations bomb waiting to explode anytime. When you embed a youtube video into your blog, you are indirectly broadcasting the original video without the content owner's prior information/permission. Do you know, if someone use film songs as background music in their youtube videos, then the music company which has copyright for those audios can sue them.

Don't give links to business corporate houses unnecessarily. And better don't mention their names explicitly when you want to write about them. It is good manners not to write about their business models explicitly. Don't mention any names in your posts, unless you want them to be indexed by google. We got to respect the views of lot of people who don't like to see critiques about them.

Don't publish your or your friends photos on your blog. There are lot of unethical hackers in this world who can use the images for wrong purposes. You can even see morphed version of your photos floating in web mocking at you.

Better have a separate online identity. It is not going to cost you anything more. And don't give out your contact details. Even incase you commit few mistakes, it can save your soul!

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Rock your life!

The relationship between a guy and a girl is complex to be framed in few rules. Love is not guy's ultimate aim in life; Having a caring lover is greatest achievement or rather dream for a girl. The difference in both perspective is more than usually expected. Few funny quotes from guys who got frustrated with their girls:

"All girls are cute chicks as long as they are in distance"
"You can face a problem, but you can't live with a problem, right?"

Even though guys crib a lot about their girls, ultimately we need that girl's love. We need someone to grow with, grow old with, share our visions with and share the love with. I am getting a perception that girls will never accept to their mistakes. Ultimately at some point of time, the guy has to adjust to that character of girls and keep the life boat rocking.

As often quoted, ogden nash words on love and life:
“To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up”

Few of my observations about life. You are most welcome to argue/comment on this.

Don't take your life partner for granted. Just because he/she accepts your proposal, don't take them for granted.

Ego fights can't be avoided. But someone should be matured enough to break the ice and smile after the fights.

Don't go with expectation for love from your partner. When you tie a nuptial knot, say onto yourself, that you will love your partner all the time, irrespecive of what mistake he/she does.

For guys, step into your girl's shoes to see the problem from their view point. And most important, don't expect her to step into your shoes to see your view point. Afterall if your girl win in the argument, you win in your life.

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Where did my money go?

Indian equity market is very volatile these days. FIIs and Mutual funds are playing high number game in markets. The sensex and Nifty fluctuates in high percentages daily. There are still very little room left for small investors in equity market now. I had a virtual investments for one lakh INR on few sensex large market capitalisation companies from April 2006.

Wanna see their returns now?

(click on the image to see the details). All are in red and negative returns except for few banks and Reliance Industries stock!
Man....where did my money go?

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Do helmet laws save life?

Helmet laws rumors are doing rounds in Bangalore now. My friend and I were debating over the topic in lunch today. His logic is simple: Helmet saves your life by reducing the chance of head injuries in accidents. So why not the government is implementing compulsory helmet laws in place? Yep, there is no doubt that helmet reduces the risk of head injury in two-wheelers accidents. But I won’t vote for compulsory helmet laws for two reasons.

• There are no worldwide statistics saying that number of deaths in accidents came down in any city by implementing helmet rule. Every city lays their hand on the helmet laws once in a while and sees them reversing the rules after court verdict.
• There is a commercial aspect of making helmets compulsory. Assume there are two crore (2, 00, 00,000) people in Bangalore. And lets take a quarter of them (which is fifty lakhs 50, 00,000) commute by two-wheelers. And we can safely assume three fourth of them don’t wear helmets and hence the estimate of helmets sale in Bangalore city alone is 37, 50,000 helmets. If we take a helmet cost as Rs.300, then the business potential involved here is about Rs.112, 50, 00,000. The overnight huge potential business deal makes the helmet manufacturers to woo or lobby the government to bring in the helmet laws. It’s back door business for them.

So the best way forward will be to create awareness of helmets among the city dwellers, rather than forcing it as a helmet rule. What’s your take on this issue?

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I'm A Country Boy...So?

This post is inspired by ‘so-what’ series written by Ammu. The earlier one is I’m depressed…so what?

I was born and brought up in a small-time town. I am proud to be country boy who see value in life.

 

My town had no big shopping malls, no big multiplexes, no discos, and no coffee-bars. But it had a lively set of people. It is a no nonsense town. It had enough wealth to sustain agriculture based economy. It had enough schools to bring the best talented kids to forefront. Besides it had plenty of natural entertainment spots like lake, beaches, lush-green paddy field and lovely people.

 

Our thoughts on people, friendship and relationships are more towards commitments. We, small town people, never know how to hang out on bars with friends forever and also run off from his problem.

We will never learn to live in same neighborhood and still live like the neighbor is non-existent living being. We don’t treat anyone as our enemies. We will never learn to see bad character in others. We are country boys for whom all will think good and all deeds will be good.

We will never learn to run off from the place when someone needs help. We learn to live as a big society and we will never learn to go to cosmopolitan style clubs in cities.

We will never learn how to go behind a girl, flirtings are strictly no-no. But we know how to be sensible in relationships and how to be polite to girls.

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Are girl's really weaker sex?

After spending a weekend with Freakonomics, I started asking questions on so-called conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom is a false fact but that got wide popularity among the masses. Just because everyone of yester world told us that girls are emotionally dependent, don’t take those statements for granted. I wish to quote some statistics to put forward this argument, but I didn’t get one good case study. I will try to get one. I am taking cues from my life. My friends who are girls impressed me a lot in terms of emotional maturity. All are very much independent and with right mix of social nature. My first impression about them is all are running with clear direction in their life. I couldn’t resist quoting this dialogue from a Tamil film “Ah Aah” a.k.a “Best friend”. The dialogue as said by heroine’s alter ego is:
 

Heroine: “Pasanga marathuten solluvanga, ana onnumey maraka mattanga. And ponnunga marathuten sonna, avalothan”
Translation: Guys will keep on saying that they forgot her from his life, but he never forgets anything. But when girls say they forget him from his life, that’s the end of it.

In this ever changing world, do you think this old adage (that girls are weaker sex) still holds true?

Courtesy: The picture in the left is of photograph of a sculpture called "Cupid and Psyche". It is a grand work on artist Grayden.

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What's this attitude problem really means?

Attitude problem- this is one of overused phrase in HR parlance and software industry these days. It becomes a cliché to refer anyone who are introvert or with self centered ego. Other day, my friends were grudging about another colleague of mine. His nature is to push the work around others’ table. He tries to say what others have to do in their work, rather than concentrating on his work. Nobody wants to take advices from peers, and this attitude of this guy had got this coveted label. Quickly before going to the analysis, let me quote one more friend of mine, he says “all my appraisals have same feedback – please work on your attitude problem”.

 

It’s natural for people to be independent when they enter their career. As aptly said by Steven covey, people will move into interdependent paradigm only if they achieve success in their independent paradigm. Till you feel that you achieved a lot in your personal career, you will not think about working for betterment of team. It’s not at all issue of that guy/girl trying to be independent, give them their time. We don’t abandon our kids just because they don’t listen to us. Similarly treat those people with parental affection. Industry works in a fine fusion of people with different mindsets. People with different perspective can form the best team. And team’s success is what gets counted ultimately at the end of the day.

 

If you are one of those who got bugged up to work with those guys, try to list what’s positive in those guys and work on to improve them. Having said this, I never really mastered this art. But I wish to. These days I am getting enough maturity to deal with all kind of people. I am very independent, never become really close with lot of friends but always felt the friendship with everyone whomever I met. Feel free to share your best/worst experiences regarding this. Have you ever noticed such a stuff going around you?

 

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What the heck is this impending US Economic slowdown?

IMF issued a warning last week about impending US Economic slowdown. The growth target for US economy has been revised downwards from 3.3% to 2.9%. The main reason attributed to the slowdown is the burst in housing market. The US department of commerce reported decline in the sale of new homes by 4.3% and inventory of unsold homes climbed record high. The Federal Reserve wants to cool off the growth to overcome this burst. I leave it my friends who specialize in economics to explain us the technicalities of the slow down. (Tag to Vatsan, Santhakumar or any other who want to write on this)

 

Few worthy happenings and announcements that came after this:

 

1. Few stocks took the beatings. Shares of Tomkins, Rinker group and Lenova are falling. Around the Markets: U.S. sneezes and world catches cold - Marketplace by Bloomberg - International H
2. IMF warned the Asian countries not to over-dependent on US exports and advised to concentrate on improving domestic business. US economic slowdown is key risk for Asian growth, warns IMF
3. Federal Reserve faces the twin problem of rising inflation and slow economy. This is interesting because the interest rate is right now at 5.25% and this rate had been revised upwardly 17 times before. IMF warns of U.S. economic slowdown - baltimoresun.com
4. The economic growth in other parts of world will compensate for this US slowdown. China economy is showing a steady growth.

 

Few funny ways to know that effect of US economy slowdown in your job are:

 

1. When your boss says your quarterly performance bonus is declared as 5%
2. When your boss says your annual salary hike is decided, but kept frozen for few months. You will get it as pre-dated hike after next January
3. When HR manager says the recruitment drive is frozen for next 3 months
4. When your colleague says “I love this company, I am going to work for the profits for this company”
   

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Have you spotted this trend before?

Indian IT companies are losing their jobs to Chinese competitors. The cost of operation in India was the primary selling point for IT companies to bring jobs from US to India. And thanks to hot Indian job market today, the cost of operation is increasing multifold. In simple terms, running same operation in china is roughly 3 times cheaper than India. The only disadvantage of Chinese friends is their proficiency in English. But we should not forget that Indian’s knowledge on English was also poor before all these IT operations moved down. If we could scale up all our resources, the efforts of Chinese governments to overcome this disadvantage will work in their favor soon. My friend was predicting that Bangalore has jobs only for next 3-4 years.

 

Indian IT companies are running in government office mentality. Less passion for the work among the IT population is the latest dangerous trend in India. They wish to freak out most of the time, work for fun; besides they want more and more salary hikes every year. The yester year’s government office working mentality has come into this place. That is not a great trend for Indian IT industry. People here should work more with more passion for work and work more towards profits for the corporation.

 

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Dumb Remark

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached" Benedict said, quoting the Byzantine source on the Prophet Mohammed.

 

This remark of Pope is an utterly dump propaganda. There is an unplanned propaganda going on this world around us to link Islam with the problems exist. Earlier I had seen reports claiming all the terrorism exist today are linked with Muslim countries; Pakistan vs. India, Palestine vs. Israel, Indonesia Bali, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Terror attacks on US, UK, Spain in recent past. Pope has just fuelled to this argument by quoting some stupid king of 14^th century. In fact the story behind the remark is: that Byzantine king used this as war cry to unite his people against Muslim invader. Pope got into self-dig hole by quoting this remark to malign Jihad.

 

I don’t agree with linking the whole community and religion to terrorism. General statements are not always true. Earlier there were propagandas against the Madrassas, claiming that they produce dump set of people who are unfit to be employed in any sane organization and hence they turn to be terrorists. Not sure of what’s the curriculum in those schools of Islam, but those statements are classified as fallacies of generalization in common people literature.

 

 

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Think Tank Series - 2

This discussion thread is kick started with a mission to understand the business model of our companies and your vision of an ideal company with big potential. I am aware that lot of readers of my blog are techies and software professionals. But that shouldn’t restrict us from discussing any business under the sun. A business is defined as an activity which we like to do that could earn us money and become independent; the revenue potential is not the scale of comparing these ideas. The scalability, sustainability, diversification activity of the ideas will be given importance for the evaluation of ideas.

 

The discussion thread is not necessary supposed to end us making entrepreneurs immediately. We, the like minded people should keep the discussion alive and share our views. Feel free to post your views on comments section. I will keep his blog discussion thread as a sticky post; will update your views on the posts as soon as possible.

 

1. What is your company business model? If you are part of big company, what is the business model of your vertical or division? Try not to name these companies, anonymity of those companies need to be maintained. What’s important to us is to understand the ideas clearly
2. What do you think is best business which has big potential?

 

My take on this:

 

1. My company has two divisions. PC division has a big hit product. That is media player software for DVD. It includes multimedia codec’s of audio and video. The codec are packaged into a successful winning product. The business plan is linked with OEM. The product gets shipped a bundled product with PC manufactured by those OEM. The volume determines the revenue. PC division earns around 100M$ per year for the company.Embedded systems team is working on developing a reference design for TV on mobile. The core components remain same and now this reference software will run on any gadgets. The embedded product division is not reached its pinnacle; we are still making inroads with few design wins here and there.
2. I don’t have clear idea on what is the winning product or business or market. I like to proceed in my current career line

 

 

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Do you like this? TV on mobile phone

We have been discussing about how innovative is the idea of Digital TV on mobile phone. It is technically feasible and already there are cases of field testing and sample deployment in few countries. I am not going to get into technicalities of this. I like to hear your views on how innovative is this? Do you like the idea or not?

 

A friend of mine is of opinion that mobile TV technology going to be a run-away hit in the Indian market. Already a lot of fairer sex friends are complaining that they couldn’t watch those television serials when they are on the road. Now if a content provider starts telecasting those niche programs, people can enjoy it wherever they are. Even if they get struck in traffic, on the travel, they need not miss out their favorite programs. The flop side is going to be small screen size, which may switch off most of the users.

 

I like the idea of using my mobile phone as my personal entertainment center. Though my phone is not DVB-H enabled, I copied few video clips to the phone and watch it during my travels. Though the mobile phone screen is pretty small, it didn’t kill my whole interest of watching.

 

Another friend is in opinion that the market for the mobile is not yet come. During FIFA world cup 2006, in Italy, an operator started this service. He got 100,000 subscribers within a month, but he couldn't sustain that growth after the world cup. All sports lovers will definitely enjoy seeing their favorite game on the go. Like all products, there may be initial hype around it too, but the true market for mobile TV is yet to come.

 

What are your views on this? Do you like this idea of seeing TV on mobile phone or strictly no-no?

 

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Unposted Emails

Well, I was strolling with these thoughts for two days. The concept of unposted emails is not new. There are occasions in life where silence is better than any words uttered. When things go bad, better take life as it comes; don’t ever speak more and make things worse. The basic etiquette in email conversation is it should start in smile and end in smile. If your email is going to be about any negative feelings, better post the email to yourself first. Then at the end of the day, take a re-look at the email. If your negative feelings (anger, jealous, possessiveness or irritation) still persists, delay posting the email again by a day. Don’t send those emails ever with the same mood in which you have written.

 

The world has really become a global village, become small by improvement in communication mediums. Emails, chats, skypes, mobile phones replaced most of face to face meetings. Over the years, I lost confidence in most of the other mediums in helping true communication. I try to maintain friendship with people whomever I meet in daily life. I am little bit matured enough to hold back my negative feelings in F2F meetings. The smile in my face rarely goes away or few times I show a kind of irritation in my face. But I fail miserably lot of times in using these ultra-modern means of communication. Expressing feelings over emails & chats is really tough for me. Most of time ends up with misunderstood statements.

 

Trust and beliefs in people are tender things which you need to be much matured to handle. The differences between the people never blow up a big issue when they are in love. But the day when someone lost love for other; even a small misunderstanding will become big issues. The nuclear family culture - when guy and gal start living together- teases them with a lot of problems based on this. There may not be any elders to advice them what to do during those times. These occasions can cause lot of failures, don’t get dishearten when you face failures, it is just a lesson you got to learn.

 

[+] There was couple of interesting columns in Ananda vikatan in this week issue. One is by Dr.J. Radhakrishnan, IAS officer in Tamilnadu. He talked about the social issues and the fallouts in our primary education system. I can't agree with him more. Our primary education rears students with competition rather than breading good social culture. Our education system complements a guy who gets first rank based on marks and demotivates another who don't excel much in studies. Both of them has rights to co-exist happily in the world, then why do we disparage between them. Just because a student can't score marks in the exams, he has to be deprived of rights to live peacefully. Nay. The education system has to be refined so that everybody win the race; one can excel in studies, another in music, acting, sports, organising and any other.

 

[+] The second column is from actor Prakash Raj. His level of maturity in handling human emotions is unique. The latest episode about love and the issues lover face after the marriage. He quoted an example of his two fren who fall in love and failed after marriage. The "panni kutti" story as explained by him was little rude, but absolutely a matured talk. He uses other people's emotions to express his feelings. Those writing style reached grabs my attention immediately. Last episode was about the his kid asking him questions about terrorism. May be that kid is not so big to ask him so many questions, may be it is just his figment of imagination, but lovely style of writing. He discusses the problem and leaves the issue to people to conclude. Well, way to go, Mr.Prakash!

 

 

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What good stuff have you done in recent past?

This question is few standard stuffs in self-help management workshops. It kindles new experience and new flow of thoughts in you, when tried to answer. I joined as volunteer in DaD computer workshop again today- but with new set of kids, new set of syllabus, new faces around and getting ready for whole new experience. Spoke about my earilier experiences here. And this is not one more post on that! So.... :)

Shashank started the group discussion with the question in title. We are just eight of us there. And this question was thrown to bring the positive vibe to the think-tank. It worked out well too. One fren talked about how she helped a lorry driver to take an u-turn in mid of high traffic road; how she stopped her car and made the whole crowd wait behind her car, which considerably ease out the tension of the heavy vehicle driver and how he bowed out of his door to wish her a big thanks. Sounds great, Isn't it?. I had to race my thoughts back to find out what good have I done in my recent past. Left blank also for few moments. Finally could remember one incident happened a week back. What I quoted was: "Me and my friends were having our lunch in a hotel. That restaurant was unusually crowded that day and the waiter of the table couldn't attend to us properly. We had to remind him 10 times to get our side dish, main course, or even for a glass of water. Our usual reaction in those moments: We get bugged up, call the owner, shout at his face and show the anger on the bearer in mid of whole guests. Those negative reaction won't work out most of time. What happens finally is you get tensed up and you spoil the mood around. Today we consciously decided that we are not gonna do anything negative. We sat quietly, waited and reminded him every time patiently and finally left a good amount of tip also. That would not have made the bearer understand his mistake, but definitely eased out his tension on that busy day".

Feel free to share your experiences folks!

 

Popcorn Entry:

How is my new template folks? :) or :(

Theme is to potray optimism everywhere in my blog. Title says it all, I guess.

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Mergers & Acquisitions Season!

After a relaxed long weekend, I was greeted with a surprise news today morning in my office . My company is getting acquired by another giant. There was a lot of discussions along with management. The acquisition got thums up from wall street as both companies have complementary product line and geographical presence. The deal is expected to go through on Q4 2006. More hot news to follow in coming days. Will keep this blogpost a sticky one to update.

From Baystreet

My company share prices surges on this news

Official press release

 

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Dump the trains!

My tête-à-tête with Indian Railways is always funny. Never am I lucky enough to get a reserved berth in sleeper class ;) This time too, I and my friend tried to book our sleeper class tickets two weeks in advance and still ended up in most coveted sitting and sleeping seat. Our seats went into RAC list in that dumb jam-packed train. Was tag-tailing the TTE for a whole one hour to find out that that not even one berth got cancelled in the last moment. We reached Bangalore today morning with red eyes and fully drained out. I am wondering how to work actively even with this tiredness. Earlier, I was lazily sleeping for the whole day in Chennai. That is my usual weekend schedule in my brother’s home there. After light breakfast, I doze off for 2 hours in morning. Wake up for heavy lunch and again doze off in afternoon. In midst of this tight schedule, try to find some time to play with my niece and keep her entertained.  It’s rather other way around, she keeps me occupied with some work for the day.

Traveling in reserved class in Andhra Pradesh is a unique experience. Even if you reserve you berths, people simply hop into your berth and demand their share. Earlier, during my one vacation, we boarded the train to Delhi. Slept happily in the night in our berths, woke up in morning in Andhra to find three monkeys sitting in the upper berth with us, one relaxing with legs over that special fans of Indian railways, another trying to build bridge between two upper berths and third analyzing what’s the red chain used for. Those are not real monkeys, just people who throng into reserved coupes too and take their comfortable seats. Trains are afterall common man’s chariot in this democratic country!

Coming back to the topic, I love bus travel rather than this dumb trains. See you all after gooooooooooooood sleep. Awwwwwhhhh!

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Don't misuse media power!

Media has enormous power over people. But this is clear case of media blowing up a stupid issue. NDTV correspondent stationed at PM's residence reported at 8:45 PM on 27th July, that there was "A security breach in PM's house". NDTV started airing the related developments till people got pissed off with whole episode and shutdown the TV. Initially, me and my fren got enthused on hearing those catchy headlines at 9 PM news. The news was: Two girls and a guy drove in till second gate of PM's residence without prior appointment. The reporter argued that no one should be allowed to enter that zone without prior appointment or ID card. If SPG frisks and pisses off these reporters daily with their detailed secuiruty checks, even if media persons carry a valid ID card from the government, "How can they allow those guys in sonata?"

Yeah, there was a lapse in security, but definitely it is not a big issue to blow up and sensitise. They have wasted a helluva lot of airtime in broadcasting the video clips and interview with the girl on the car repeatedly. Later, some retired SPG person came on air in NDTV to confirm that this is a secuirty breach. Bargha datt was sent to place of incident in that late night to collect more info. Some more reporters put in action to contact PMO. Besides the whole 10 PM news time, was wasted in speaking about this issue again and again. NDTV tried to track those youngsters later in that midnight. What not? All sort of idiotic coverage over an useless issue. Isn't it a height of stupidity?? Folks, stop misusing media power.

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Corporate Competition and A Product Launch!

Apple computers reinvented itself through i-pod. From sagging revenue, Steve jobs showed a remarkable turnaround in Apple computers. I-pod symbolises a gadget can create it's own market. Nobody would have thought about the market of personal media players till then. Now everybody jumps in to say I want a pie in it. After I-pod' phenomenal success, samsung came with Yep, Flextronics has Hip and host of electronics giants has their PMP. The best i-pod can cost me more dosh than buying a great television set for home. Besides I-pod comes with a tiny display, plays only audio and can't receive any broadcasted audio or video signal. Don't you think it is dumb gadget? But it is selling like a hot fudge. Believe me, its USP stand on simple belief, that it is my own media player.

Apple's I-pod success envy Samsung a lot. Samsung last year publicly vowed to take away Apple's top spot in music players by 2007. This year, the South Korea-based company will kick off that effort with a slew of products and large ad campaigns, Peter Weedfald, senior vice president of consumer electronics for Samsung's North American division, said during an interview last week at the Consumer Electronics Show. "What's the difference between how they have gone to market and how we have gone to market? It's real simple. They spent $165 million last year to advertise Apple MP3 products. We spent $1 million," Weedfald said. "We are going to break the code. In 2006, we are going to over-invest in advertising and marketing around these really hot, new digital video and digital audio products, and we will spend tens of millions of dollars."

 

Internet moguls spoke about Video-On-Demand for long time. Now technlogy become matured enough to cater to this market. Google announced video store in CES 2006, which is a convergene of entertainment media like sony, CBS, NBA with Google. Watch the video of Larry page explaining what is google video store all about here.  You can understand how casual a product launch can go. Their business tagline is: 'You have the show "Desperate Housewives," and you spend maybe a million to produce one episode. That thing is going to sit on a shelf for a year or two until it goes into syndication or DVD. What if the next day, Mr. ABC, after you've made money on advertising, I could take the fresh lettuce of content and sell it the next day for $1.99 and give you back $1.50?' And someone at ABC says...'That's a good idea."

 

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