Priya - A New Woman Director for Tamil

Pongal releases were sink, except S Films (Shankar's production) Kadal doing good even in tsunami affected areas. Expecting a few good flims for this year like Rajini's Chandramukhi, Shankar's Anniyan, Kamal's Mumbai Express and to add....

In Tamil movies, women directors are a rarity. Priya, who worked as an assistant to Mani Ratnam, is about to become an exception -- she is working on a love story. The producer of the film is the National Award winning actor Prakash Raj. He had earlier made a small but successful film called Azhagiya Theeye.

Prasanna, who acted in Azhagiya Theeye, plays the lead in Priya's film as well. The movie also stars Karthik Kumar, Laila and Revathy.

The movie Kana Kanda Naal Muthal is a triangular love story, but with P C Sreeram behind the camera, it is likely to be different. He is one cinematographer who would not accept a project unless he felt passionately about the story.

Bill Gates and Narayana Murthy

Bill Gates on US Visa restrictions and his view on India and china
Building a great company by Infosys Chief Mentor N.R.Narayana Murthy

Top Acquisitions of Jan '05

Two top industrial mergers happened in the month of Jan '05.

Procter & Gamble to buy Gillette for 140 billion USD
SBC to buy AT&T for 16 billion USD

A Day Shift

It was a terrifying experience in packing, cleaning and moving the apartment during winter and Snow flakes. With out Gopi's help it wouldn't have been possible, Sat night we (myself and Sam) packed all the suitcases, kitchen items, and did the first round of cleaning. Sun morning we first loaded and moved the heavy weight items to the new apartment. Later took a 14 inch UHAUL truck to move the larger items. The smaller items took much time to pack. By 1.30 we were exhausted and had a very good lunch (akora pasi) prepared by Swarna (Gopi's wife). Then off- loaded the contents of UHAUL and returned the truck. Then the final house cleaning took more than 4.5 hrs (not expected, but happened!). By that time felt the pains through out the body and Gopi came and picked us to the new apartment. On our way we got our dinner (7 layer bean burrito from Taco Bell). Took a good bath and went to sleep. It was nice to enjoy this experience.

Google & Yahoo! Video Search

You can now search recent TV programs online at Google Video
and Yahoo! Video. Want to know more read Suntimes

Republic Day - Online Flag Hoisting

Be Proud of an Indian and hoist the Indian Flag online

Farmer's Prayer : 'Shocking!'

The farmers are up in arms against the idea of setting up more IT firms in villages around Bangalore

Pongal Film Ratings

Ayya - Nice mix of everything (40/100) at Vikatan.com
Ayudham - Not a powerful weapon (34/100) at Vikatan.com
Devathaiyai Kandaen - Dhanush's wait continues... (36/100) at Vikatan.com
Kadhal - Earthy, native, realistic and emotional...My top rated film and also at Vikatan.com(52/100), I missed watching this film along with 18 of my college friends and roomates, who enjoyed watching this movie at Chennai on January 1st 2005. But had a chance to watch later.
Thirupachi - For Vijay’s fans (40/100) at Vikatan.com

Tsunami - Fund Raisings

Initially there were prayer meetings and fund raisings at the Hindu Temple on December 28th 2004.

The contribution from pongal celebration function held at Hindu Temple on January 15th 2005 was also donated to Red Cross for Tsunami Victims.

Friday January 21st 2005, Indian Association of Nebraska (IAN) and Indian Students Association (ISA) at University of Nebraska (UNO) organized a dinner ($100 per plate) for the Tsunami victims at Milo Bail Student Center, University of Nebraska. The special guest was Mr. Mike Fahey, Mayor of Omaha. The cricket club of Omaha got 20 tickets. Gopi got the tickets for us (Sethu, Sam, Shiva, Shankar and Viswanathan). The entire amount collected was given by Mayor to Jim Brown, the local American Red Cross president. Mr.Balaji, ex-president of IAN was in Chennai during the Tsunami, he explained the worst affected areas with his motion pictures.

There is one more Tsunami lunch at Hindu Temple on Sunday Jan 23rd 2005.

Vikatan.com - Pay Site from Feb 15th 2005

After 7 years of the free Vikatan online version, an all time favorite tamil magazine Vikatan is becoming a pay and use site by the end of Valentine's day February 14th 2005. There are high chances to see the competitor Kumudam also to follow the same lane. For more details, you can go to Vikatan.com

Wi-Fi at US President's Inauguration

The volunteers of The Open Park Project, a Washington D.C based non-profit organisation is making sure broadband wireless internet is available at the grounds outside US Capitol Hill. This is the place where the presidential inauguration is slated to take place today. Here are the photos of the launch of hotspots at Capitol Hill. The availaility of Wi-Fi would mean a good deal of bloggers will be covering the events live on their blogs.

It's nice to read the letter of appreciation from the US government.

Demanding Kamal - Awarded Doctorate

[Pic: Hindu]

Not just this post but also the doctorate itself was by a popular demand. This guy is certainly worth one. Dr. Kamal Hassan. Doesn't that sound a little odd ?. I perfer to call him simply by his first name, Kamal.

Just noticed that the previous post was on Rajini. Can't beat this combo.

Rajini's Chandramukhi

Chandramukhi is on the sets. Rajinikanth looks much younger, just like the Arunachalam make-over. IdleBrain and Behindwoods are up with galleries. Check out.

Pic:[rediff.com]

Also see Rajni poses with Gandhi!.
*Updated News! Chadramukhi troops has just completed the B'lore Phase and back to chennai.

New Jersey Visit - Jan 14 2005

[E*Pro Team]

For the first time on a Friday evening (Jan 14 2005) since June 2004, we (Myself and Sam) started our trip with in US from Omaha to New Jersey for E*Pro Party at Wood Bridge, Iselin. We were initially informed of the united airlines delay to Chicago, but to our good luck, we boarded on time and reached Chicago. We waited for an hour to board the next flight to Newark. Mean while we had Fish Fillet from McDonalds. We boarded Newark flight on time and reached Newark Liberty International Airport. We had Kumar waiting to pick up us to the E*Pro corporate apartment. We reached the apartment located at Woodbridge around 1.30 a.m. (Saturday early morning). We planned for the next day and went to sleep.

We got up at 6.00 a.m again, refreshed ourselves and Kumar drove us to New Jersey - Liberty Statue Ferry Parking at CRR-NJ Rail Terminal. The weather was cold outside and the Rail building was very old. We watched the tall buildings of NY (Empire State and others, TWIN TOWERS was missing). We took some snaps outside and took the ferry by paying 10USD for adults. It includes a round trip to Liberty Statue, Office of Immigration and Manhattan (NY). After seeing the Liberty Statue we decided not to go to NY, since we were running out of time on the ferry car parking (2 hours). I called Vidhya and asked about the place where she stayed. Mean while we decided to go to Bridge Water Sri Venkateswara Temple. We offered our prayers for the tsunami victims and also for every one. It is a very good temple to visit and good crowd on Saturday morning. We took few Indian foods at the temple cafeteria. We finally reached Vidhya's house and had a wonderful lunch. We had a quick chat at her house and started back to apartment as Priyabrata Mukherjee (a consultant) from India were on the way to our apartment. We picked up him with his friend at Bestbuy. We refreshed again and started to the E*Pro Party.

Finally we met the entire E*Pro employees in the Wood Bridge, Hilton, Iselin Party. We arranged for the eSolv's back ground presentation along with Naren. It was very good to meet every one at one place and the buffet started around 7.30 p.m. The crowd slowly started filling with Vendors, Clients, E*Pro employees with their family members. DJ started the performance and the lively dance started with the mix of Hindi and English songs. We had a good time watching every one dancing. The party catches up slowly and it went on till 11:30 p.m. We reached home and went to bed.

Got up on Sunday morning at 9.00 a.m and planned for the rest of the day. We started from home at 10:45 a.m to see the E*Pro office, but unfortunately the code to open the office gate didn't work, so we moved to Subhzi Mandi to buy the Indian Groceries. We bought for us, Kumar's home and also for Gopi at Omaha. We reached Dosa Express at Green Street to have the brunch. We had a delicious south Indian food. We started back to EWR (Newark) Airport and flied back to Omaha. We reached our Home back at Omaha by 7.40 p.m. by cab from Omaha Airport. It was a memorable trip.

India: 2020's Super Power

Surprise Surprise. The National (US) Intelligence Council predicts that around the year 2020, India will join China in challenging the US position for Global Economic supremacy. Sounds cool huh, so do the other peek into the past.

In an unrelated move, the US says it's willing to push India's request for Permanent membership at the U.N.

Interview with Bill Gates on Blogging

Interesting interview. Shows the amount of importance Microsoft's top man gives to blogging. Here's one of his lines "I think blogigng is super-important and we've got to do a lot more software." Read the full interview

Shankar's Anniyan

[Pic: Vikatan]

Shankar's Promo for Anniyan has just began. In his quick inteview[needs user id/password] with Ananda Vikatan, Shankar seems to be happy about the shoot until now.

He describes that when an Indian travels to the foreign nations, more often, he behaves like a green-eyed monster on their lifestyle, cleanliness and financial growth. Anniyan is an answer for the never-ending question of "When will India shine?". He is also happy with Harris Jayaraj's music.

Shankar also reacalls his experiences with Kathal as a producer.

More on Vikatan with lot of Stills and Wall Papers

*Updated News!
Special News at Kumudam issue dated Jan 31st 2005.

Lot of movies gearing for Tamil New Year -2005 - Rajni's Chandramukhi, Kamal's MumbaiXpress, Vijay's Sachin, Surya's Maayavi. Expecting a good race on the Kollywood.

Google Suggest

Google Suggest

Google has launched a new feature that tries to guess what people are looking for as they type queries into a search box.

The feature is pretty cool. Try it out.

More info:
- http://labs.google.com/suggest/
- http://labs.google.com/suggest/faq.html

Google SMS

Google SMS

I came across Google SMS. It is a service (still in Beta) introduced by Google where users can send phone book listings, dictionary definitions, product prices etc. I decided to try it out.

Note: The queries need to be sent to 46645 (GOOGL).

------------------------------
Case 1 (Local business info)
------------------------------
Query: papa john 37919
Reply:
Papa John's Pizza: UT Campus
South 1819 Lake Ave
Knoxville, TN 37916
865-522-7272

Papa John's Pizza: Northwest
5617 Western Ave
Knoxville, TN 37921
865-546-7272
------------------------------

------------------------------
Case 2 (Zip code info)
------------------------------
Query: 37919
Reply: zip code for Knoxville, TN
------------------------------

------------------------------
Case 3 (Area code info)
------------------------------
Query: 865
Reply: area code for Eastern Tennessee
------------------------------

------------------------------
Case 4 (Word definition)
------------------------------
Query: define alacrity
Reply: Glossary: * alacrity: liveliness and eagerness; "he accepted with alacrity". Source: www.cogsci.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/webwn
------------------------------

I think the service is pretty interesting and very useful too. I intend to use it more in the future. But this is now limited only to major wireless in US, Google is trying to slowly move to other countries as well.

Yahoo! Says, "Me Too!" -- Again

Ah, yes. It's another yawner -- Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) launched its desktop search application today in beta, as has become the customary way of search function launches. This word is no surprise whatsoever, given the historical progression of the search wars -- not to mention, Yahoo! had already made the promise.

Major rival Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) launched its own desktop search product quite some time ago. And then several other search players followed suit, including Microsoft's (Nasdaq: MSFT) MSN service and Ask Jeeves (Nasdaq: ASKJ). Rich Duprey didn't see anything too revolutionary about the trend last month.

With those things considered, today's desktop search news from Yahoo! seems barely worth the press release, other than the fact that those who are stalwart Yahoo! users know that they've now got the option.

On the other hand, Yahoo!'s product seems to do everything that the rivals' functions do, including desktop search of video and MP3 files. Other features including previewing of content before launch and allowing users to specify the content they don't want indexed for search.

However, there's an interesting aside -- Yahoo! seems to have relied on an outside entity called X1 Technologies (a company that's related to Idealab, a name that might ring a bell to many of you) to actually provide the technology for the product.

I personally got a little more excited about Yahoo!'s recent word that it was launching video search and real-time traffic reports, both of which seemed to up the ante in the struggle for Internet users' eyeballs and advertising dollars. It definitely catered to the idea that Yahoo! needs to not only provide what the other guy does but also come up with its own innovations as well.

At any rate, Yahoo!'s desktop search launch seems like a case of same story, different day, different search giant. In this arena, it seems to me that Google's still got powerful first-mover advantage on its side.