Since the money we are generating by Google AdSense is not enough, we are trying out other publishers.
We had signed up for PubMatic a week ago to increase the revenue generated by AdSense. Pubmatics is not really effective as our CTR has dropped, the other part that you need to know is that it works better if you have multiple publishers by displaying ads with the highest eCPM. Like if you have Yahoo and Google it would display the ad that will make you more money.
Now coming to Kontera, John Chow has Kontera in his recommended money makers' section, we decided to give it a try. Kontera is different from the normal text and image advertisements. Kontera picks up keywords from your existing text and displays relevant ads for that word. This technique is called text advertisements. Here you can see the text Online Marketing in our blog header underlined, the advertisement is not so relevant but if you take a look at the first day stats of Kontera on our blog its not so bad. The impressions will definitely be less than ads that automatically display on the page, but this looks like a health click although the eCPM isn't awesome.
I feel this would really do much better than WidgetBucks on a blog with a variety of content, hopefully they will have enough of advertisements as there seems to be a handful running on our blog. They do have an interesting choice of advertisements, that include text, video, images etc.We will give you a detailed update about how much of a boost Kontera gives us in December.Read the complete post...
Once wary of taking a hands-on role in Middle East diplomacy, George Bush was now ready to inaugurate the first formal Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations first time since he took office in 2001. Change of attitude?
So US as usual will be playing big brother to bring peace at Jerusalem. Apparently both the sides (Palestine-Israel) have agreed to complete a deal by the end of next year.Read the complete post...
The first time the Celebrate Bandra festival has left us a tad bit disappointed, no it had nothing to do with the bands performance but with the quality of sound.
If you had seen our first Celebrate Bandra 2007 post you would have seen those nice tiny JBL speakers that produced some thumping sound. Yesterday unfortunately there was a wall of speakers that couldnt produce the same effect. There were slight mishaps, but the artists on stage Paper Clip Airplane and Woteva, had a tough time with their monitors not giving them enough feedback. Anyway it was a lovely evening as usual, the high point was when an old man stood up on his chair and danced when the female vocalist of Woteva sang. Paper Clip Airplane was the first to perform, believe it or not the entire band is in college and Jeremy their drummer is a 14 year old school going boy. After the show we overheard him say, “Screw this man, my parents are sending me back to school and no more shows!” Hey the kid is talented hes gonna be real good when he grows up let him play!Paper Clip Airplane covered the Who, Stone Temple Pilots, Justin Timberlake, etc the band had 3 Guitarists one of them was a backup vocalist, a drummer and a vocalist. They were good entertainers especially the lead vocalist had a lovely voice. Its seems Woteva did not perform so well at their first performance as they had not practiced enough as the musicians teamed up to perform at Celebrate Bandra. But this performance of theirs got the old man on the chair. It was fabulous, as they covered the Doors, the Beatles, Jack Johnson, Bob Dylan and others.
I also met a friend who I had not met for quite a while Vivek, who was the keyboardist of Woteva after a min of 5 years, we were not being in touch with each other as our common friend immigrated to the USA. So hope you guys heard them perform cause it was fabulous.Would you like to see a sky full of colors? Time to get out your cameras for the Kite flying at Bandra Reclamation on the 1st of December at 4PM, be there and Celebrate Bandra!Read the complete post...
Bangkok is known for its idiosyncrasies, so it was no surprise to see a video of feeding nearly 2000 monkeys with variety of fruits, vegetables and soft drinks. Its known as the Monkey Festival, held annually in front of Pra Prang Sam Yot temple in Lopburi province, north Bangkok. The Hindu temple is filled with monkeys and the locals believe that feeding the monkeys brings them good luck.
The video shows how the monkeys scamper around to eat food, without harming humans. Tourists come to Lopburi to see the monkey feast.
Malaysia is prospering, undoubtedly, on the tourism front. Large of Indian tourists are traveling to Malaysia too, the number has nearly doubled from last year. This can be attributed to the various events held to celebrate its 50th year of independence. But its birthday party was spoilt recently when the ethnic Indian community, held the biggest anti-government protest to raise their voice against alleged racial discrimination.
What led to this Protest?
Protesters were mostly ethnic Tamils, who are descendants of 19th century indentured labourers brought to Malaysia from South India by British colonists. They claim of being racially discriminated by the ethnic Malay Muslim-dominated government. They braved tear gas and water cannons to raise their voice, while rallying outside British High Commission in Kuala Lumpur to submit a two-page memorandum urging the Queen of England to help them in a legal case brought against the British government.The suit was filed in London in August by the Malaysia-based Hindu Rights Action Force (Hindraf) seeking US $4 trillion from the British Government in damages to atone for what the group calls the "150 years of exploitation" of ethnic Indians by their former colonial rulers.
Is Malaysia, Truly Asia?
Activists demanded better living conditions and employment opportunities for ethnic Indians, who form around 8% of Malaysia'a population. The Indian community have long felt marginalised, this is reflected in the growing number of ethnic Indians being held in prisons and detention centres. "Our community is backward, our schools are dilapidated. We are the last in the line for jobs, scholarships, health benefits," said opposition lawmaker Kulasegaran Murugesan, an ethnic Tamil, in Time magazine Report.
Why does Malaysia claim to be Truly Asia when it is practising government-sponsored racism? Malaysia has been promoting its 'Malaysia: My Second Home Program' in India, asking Indians to buy properties in Malaysia and also allowing them to stay there. Why this hypocrisy, when the Indian community residing there for over decades is not being mistreated?
Malaysia has been increasingly questioning its true identity amid concerns over the growing influence of conservative Muslim. I visited Malaysia recently for its 50th independence day celebration and Prime Minister Badawi acknowledged the growing tension caused due to religious extremism.
During my trip to Malaysia I felt that uncertainty in the air, since Malay Muslims dominate the country's political background. Not only ethnic Indians, but also Chinese community (which forms around 25% of the population) is treated as a minority community. I happen to interact with couple of Chinese in Malaysia, they weren't happy with the government's rules and treatment meted out to them either.
Malaysia is a beautiful country, a place which I would want explore. Malays are friendly bunch of people, then why this kind of treatment to citizens who have played a role in the development of the country? These protests have opened up a new fault line in Malaysia's tense race relations.
Televisions are becoming more and more popular in India, and especially in rural India. Nearly 77% of the population in India live on a measly Rs 20 a day, but majority of household would still have a television set. If a poor household thinks TV is a necessity, then it also means that majority of them get influenced by the soap operas.
TV Changing Lives of Rural Women
A study conducted across 2700 households in five states in India by Robert Jensen of Brown University and Emily Oster of the University of Chicago showed that soap operas are making women from villages more liberated and changing their narrow-minded outlook to life. According to the survey - Rural Indian women don’t have a lot of control over their lives. More than half need permission from their husbands to go shopping. Two-thirds need their husbands’ permission to visit friends. Spousal beating is common and accepted: Sixty-two percent of women believe that it is sometimes acceptable. Thirty-four percent of the women surveyed believed a husband could hit his wife if she neglected the children, while nearly a third believed that showing disrespect and going places without permission warranted a beating. One fifth of women believe husbands are entitled to hit them for cooking a lousy dinner.
So how do you change this mindset. Obviously education would be the answer, but TV has played a major role in changing the attitude of rural women. It is hard to believe that those stereotypical inane soap operas actually changed lives of people? The emancipated female characters in these shop operas are well-educated, work outside the home, control their own money, and have fewer children than rural women.
With more rural women watching TV their attitude underwent a drastic change in terms of educating the girl child as well, removing gender bias etc. In fact one man questioned during the survey said, "Since TV has come to our village, women are doing less work than before. They only want to watch TV. So we (men) have to do more work. Many times I help my wife clean the house."
Such exposure to urban life through soap operas provides them with an alternative model of what role they can play in the society. After all TV is not an idiot box, it acts as an empowerment box for rural India.
If you are a backpacker or a discerning traveler waiting or contemplating to explore India, then the list below should be of great help. It was difficult to make a list of the top ten things to do in India because there is so much to do and see here, but I thought of listing down at least the top ten things that comes to my mind that every traveler must experience.
Top Ten Things to do in India:
1) Go for a boat ride along the sacred Ganges in Varanasi early morning to see the sunrise, get there before the stars are gone. Sunrise is a magical time for a ride as lot of Hindus come to the ghats to take their holy bath and start the day. That sure is a very famous sight of India. 2) Wildlife safari to Sunderbans, which is home to the Bengal Tigers. It is the largest Tiger Reserve and National Park in India, and it is also the only place where mighty Bengal Tigers are found!
3) Want to see Paradise on Earth? Go trekking to Valley of Flowers. Nestled in the upper reaches of Garhwal, Uttarakhand amidst snow-capped mountains and swarmed with over 500 species of flowers, this place is as good as it gets. I can guarantee that if you visit this place once, you will feel like coming back every year.
4) Camel Safari in Rajasthan - Its a real adventure and an amazing way to experience the vibrant and colourful Thar Desert. Imagine sleeping on the sand under a star-lit sky, you will enjoy every bit of it. Besides, Rajasthan is also a place to shop for ethnic art and craft items, which are very intricately carved and colourful.
5) Experience the Backwaters of Kerala. There is much more than Kovalam. Popularly known as God's Own Country, Kerala offers a combination of various activites. You can go river-cruising, or trekking, or a nature trip in the rainforests, it is a lovely abode.
6) Visit the waterfalls of Meghalaya in North-east India. The place is blessed with numerous waterfalls with mesmerizing surroundings. In fact the major part of North-East is worth a visit as its untouched and divine. Dzukou Valley in Nagaland, which reminds me of Valley of Flowers, is an enchanting valley filled with wild flowers. North-East India is definitely in our list of places to travel!
7) You can't travel in India without going in local transport. Be it local trains in Mumbai, or Tuk Tuks in rural India, it's all part of feeling the true pulse of the country. For instance a road trip from Manali to Leh is scintillating either on your bike or jeep!
8) Diversity is also found in Indian food. If in Delhi or Northern parts of India make sure you try stuffed parathas (Indian bread), tandoori chicken or any of the Moghlai food. Any where in India you must try the local food of that particular region, am sure it will be a lip-smackng experience. 9) Ride around on a Moped in Hampi and experience the mystical temple town and its beautiful sunsets. You might end up discovering newer places, as the monuments are scattered all around Hampi. Trust me, its truly enjoyable.
10) Last but definitely not the least, visit one of the Seven Wonders of the World - Taj Mahal in Agra. An architectural splendour built by the Mughuls, Taj is generally on every traveler's list. No debating its popularity around the world.
I couldn't include several other places or things which one can do in India, so if you have anything in mind drop a comment!
From the last Tata Indicom update where I calculated that 3,00,000 of their subscribers complain every month. Something happened, an official of Tata Indicom contacted by local service provider and I had them come to my place.
They called me up and gave me phone numbers to contact if my line goes down, one was Manish 9892725368 another one was Manohar 9892790322. The day after that my connection expired on a Saturday, I had asked for a renewal package of 256KBp/s instead of the 512KKp/s so I can take another connection to avoid being offline. No package on saturday, they were closed on Sunday, no package on Monday after being promised, package arrives tuesday afternoon. I am then online on 256Kbps it definitely feels happier when your offline on the 256KBps feels like you are not wasting that much money. Just for you to know I am typing this while I am offline.
On Tuesday evening my net goes down, yes just after paying another Rs.6080 for the next 6 months. I call up Manohar, he said that they are working on it, he comes home and then goes to the next building where the switch is. Guess what the problem is? The building people do not want to power the switch anymore and why should they provide free electricity for a multi crore company like TATA?
When did it get fixed, not on Tuesday, not on Wednesday, not on Thursday but on Friday, how would you feel after shelling out Rs.6080 and not getting any Internet service for the next few days??? They finally took an electricity connection from a Pan wala!!!
Do you know what Manohar told me, you should understand that these problems happen. No! I told him, this is your business I pay you money all I understand is I need my Internet working, I don't care what you do but my Internet needs to work cause I work from home. Ideally with the service they provide their plan should be called the Power On & Off plan instead of the Power On & On!
But now since I am off line again, this is what I am going to do, listen Mr. Tata, I know you read my blog unlike Ajoy who will be fighting a battle with Tata Broadband in court I am going to fight the battle on my playground, the Internet. All those who want to join in, I will teach you how to do SEO in such a way that when someone types Tata Indicom Broadband in Google, our blog comes up.Whats pushed me to this, Manohar has switched off his phone after me trying to call him. I called up Manish and told him your going to hear from your boss at Tata Indicom today. So until I am not refunded for the lost hours or Tata Indicom does not get their act together I am opening up the blog untill every potential customer of yours drops out, you guys do the job for your existing ones so I don't need to bother about that!
Watch Ajoy Lal, on CNN IBN communicating with Tata Indicom Customer Service.
Updates from Ajoy Lal:
A. Has complained to TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India).
B. Has complained to the CIC (Central Information Commission) about TRAI not responding to my RTI application.
C. Has been prolific in writing more letters to the TRAI Chairman after that.
D. Is still in negotiation with TATA Communications to find solutions for all of us and of course for myself.
... there are no real results worth any mention here... hence the battle with them continues!
Ajoy Lal's plans for the [very near] future:
1. Personally take them to consumer court.
2.Together, file a class-action-suite against the ISP.
Held close to the Bandra fort (Mumbai) at Bandstand Amphitheatre, the first day of Jazz Utsav (festival), part of Celebrate Bandra 2007, was really enjoyable with performance by international bands featuring Paula Jeanine and Jake Fryer & the London Bebop Collective. The musical extravaganza will end today, November 25th, it started on the 23rd.Entry was only by invitation, and unfortunately we didn't have an invite, then a very kind of mine came to our rescue and got us in. The festival kick started with local artists - Sanjay Divecha, Adrian & Karl playing some jazzy tunes as we tried to find a place in the open air theatre.
Luckily we found the best place in the house, atop a cliff (we were on the ruins of old Portuguese fort) with the sea as the backdrop and the palm trees swaying with the mellow tunes of the local band. The crowd began to build up, and soon the place was packed.The guitarist, Sanjay Divecha, played for both the local and Paula's band.Up on stage was the popular vocalist, percussionist, composer and poet - Paula Jeanine. Well the Indian jazz lovers would probably know her as she has performed earlier in Mumbai at various events. But a lot of us were also seeing her perform for the first time, and it was really impressive! The way she blended South Asian musical form of Ghazal with western music was top class. She calls that American Ghazal. Listen to her tunes in the video below.
Jeanine's songs were on topics of love and divine longing weaved in with themes of family, cultural identity, mind travel, use of substances etc. She was like a live wire on stage, jumping around, cracking few jokes, a true performer!She received an encore from the audience at the end of her performance and sang a lovely number asking god to not only bless the girl who believes in the Bible but also the one who believes in Drums. I am sure if a lot of people understood her lyrics there would have been quite a big scene.My personal favorite was about the man who's body couldn't travel so he would smoke and travel in his mind, it had a very strong Indian influence and spoke about things people smoke all over India.Next on stage was Jake Fryer & the London Bebop Collective. The piano, the saxophone and the piano, together made some amazing sounds. It was foot-tapping and soul-enriching! Here is the video to share our experience - Be it a purist or a person who loves music, Jazz Utsav was great! We ended up going for the second day as well. The artists performing were Sascha Ley (Belgium), Madhav Chari Trio (India), Chet Baker Tribute (Norway). Due to heavy traffic we missed around an hour of the show and Woteva's performance. We made it on time for tribute to American trumpeter and vocalist - Chet Baker. Although yesterday there was a mess up with the piano, the peddle got stuck, delayed performance of the band.
At the end of it we were all jazzed up and what a way to spend the weekend.
If you have not yet been to Celebrate Bandra 2007, you sure are missing out on a pile of good fun! If you are a Blues, R & B, Jazz or Rock fan, then Wotevas going to cater to your musical appeal tomorrow.Woteva is influenced by folk, blues, jazz and funk, this is the song list for their performance at Banstand: 1) My doorbell - white stripes 2) Come together - The beatles 3) Hoochie coochie man 4) Car hiss by my window 5) Respect - Aretha franklin 6) Heard it through the grapevine - CCR 7) Gimme one more reason - Tracy and eric claption 8) The weight - The band 9) Like a rolling stone - Bob dylan 10) Let it be - The beatles Woteva jams in a classroom, Kris's parents teach science & math to school children, so the band has a room just for themselves.
Interview with Kristofor Paul Mendonca the bands drummer,
Clyde says: and how did u guys meet Clyde says: yah Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: the keyboardist with straitish long hair - vivek and the long curly haired guitarist - rohan Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: we three have been playing together with different bands on and off Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: we all met for a carma fete (not sure how you spell that) in malad Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: quite a few years ago Clyde says: karma? Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: i think so Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: hehehehe Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: we had different guys with us then other than the 3 of us Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: then we played at andrews for something Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: and then basically drifted off Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: rohan and me have kept playing together for a while Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: with different bands Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: then for this gig we got together again Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: and added pradeep the short haired guitarist in the pics Clyde says: good scene Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: anjo a bass player Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: and menellie the female vocalist Clyde says: wheres her pic? Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: she wasnt there the day we clicked theese Kristofor Paul Mendonca says: neither was the bassist Clyde says: feck cool
Another band called Paperclip Aeroplane will be performing on the same day!
Celebrate Bandra 2007 Schedule Click on the images to enlarge them and zoom in to read, it really works!Read the complete post...
There are so many degrees of innovation on the Internet, sometimes you come across things that you know will do well provided they do what they say they can do.PubMatic for example claims to increase your blog or websites CTR.
So we decided to give it a try to test it out, if you can see the funny colors of the Google AdSense ads in the top part of the post that's due to PubMatic trying out stunts, you can see all the post under have different ad colors as well. Setting up PubMatic:
Pubmatics offers a very simple integration process into your blog, currently PubMatics can integrate a couple of well known networks but not all of them. You just put in your user name and password for that network to integrate it. You then agree with their terms and services, after that you proceed to generate ad tags. Ad tags are nothing but the codes that you will have to replace your existing ad scripts with.You choose the format of the current ads running on your blog. There are a couple of advanced options like your current ecpm.I put in our blogs eCPM for November and now lets if PubMatic manages to drastically improve it, or even slightly improve it.Unfortunately PubMatic is not yet compatible with Opera, so I had to get into Internet Explorer and get the code to replace with my Adsense code.A few hours later we have an active Pubmatic Service, now according to ProBlogger it takes a couple of weeks for them to make changes, he definetly gets a lot more impressions as compared to us. So I say it may take us a month to see some benefits from this service. Should you PubMatic?
Google let’s you create:
3 types of ad units
12 ad unit sizes
5 color choices (border, title, background, text, and URL)
Each color choice is comprised of 6 hex values which is 16 ^ 6 = 16,777,216
3 corner styles
If you multiply all of that out, I get 3 * 12 * 5 * 16,777,216 * 3 = approximately 9 billion. That’s 9 billion unique ad formats that AdSense offers, without counting the link unit and referral combinations. Do you know which of those 9 billion should be on your web site, or did you just pick the Seaside color palette that Google offered?
Widget Bucks, that had the entire blogosphere going ga ga about their high CPM,has provided nothing much to be joyous about since then!
The company has been continuously correcting the CPM value since the time we have incorporated it on our blog. We placed widgetbucks on both this blog as well as our games blog, begin product related it did much better on the games blog.
If you remember we started of with $0.28 a click that dropped to $0.19 later, we realized that widget bucks does not really form a synergy with fractal and we removed it. The surprising part a few weeks after we removed it the $0.19 that we had already made came down to $0.09.
The games blog widget was doing fairly well with a CTR of 1.03% at the moment, the CPM is down to $0.08, note that the games blog is averaging 70 visitors a day and double the amount of page views.
So I think it would be easier to generate revenue from affiliate programs on a focused blog than depend on widget bucks. Adsense made the same amount of revenue on the games blog, half the amount of space and in the sidebar.Read the complete post...
If you remember there was utter chaos in the blogosphere when Google seemed to be dropping the PageRank of even the top bloggers and people were wondering why.
Pay Per Post, Death to the Honest Blogger?
The Page Rank drop was associated with Pay Per Post, the service that recently changed its name to Ieza. Ieza basically has a database of Advertisers and Bloggers, the advertisers post their requirement, such as write an article on a certain product or service that they have to offer.
A blogger can pick choose which advertiser he would like to write about and get paid anywhere from $5 to $100, top blogs make much more money. Now that seems like a good idea to making money doesn't it.
But which advertiser is going to pay you if you write about how much their products sucks? I think these would be one of the biggest reasons that Google decided to step in and tell the bloggers look, we don't like what you guys are doing and this for influencing your readers for money.
Over 12 million American adults currently maintain a blog.
More than 147 million Americans use the Internet and over 57 million read blogs.
Over 120 thousand blogs are created every day.
There are over 1.4 million new blog posts every day.
22 of the 100 most popular websites in the world are blogs.
51% of blog readers shop online
Since blogging is still rather slow in India as compared to America, imagine Ieza paying bloggers to influence consumer decisions.
In India newspapers like the Times of India have been doing this for years together. I still don't understand how people don't have a problem paying Rs.1000 a month for 70% advertisements and 30% content.
Anyway, blogging can give people the opportunity to slam the mainstream media's bullshit that keeps occurring in our day to day lives. Sadly its also so easy to get drawn to money, even we applied to pay per post at a point of time.
Google and Bloggers:
So if Google is trying to monitor the way the blogosphere is heading, trying to be the governing body and putting in some ethics into the system that's a good thing. You will listen if majority of your traffic depends on them. How many bloggers will defy Google?
But Bhavika tends to think that Google is rather unhappy that most bloggers are giving up on AdSense for more profitable alternatives. Interesting, I think this could be the initiation point of finding a flaw in Ieza.
As long as there are so many bloggers putting their best into their blogs with monetization not their primary objective, we will have a lot of good content to read. As I don't really care too much for money, cause money can't buy me love!
My recent visit to Karjat, apart from the usual macro photography that I do. I tried applying some new techniques, I also thought of how I should take the pictures when I could. So here goes! The above picture is a new plant, I am not sure what the name is, but its rather beautiful isn't it! Here we have Mr. Cricket with red eyes and a green body on a white rose, rather colorful!Theres a Spider on the Rose below I spotted it when I came to take the Macro, otherwise it would be so easy to miss a white spider on a white rose. I have taken a shot of this flower before but it always seems to fascinate me. Especially when you zoom into the picture and look at the way the flower bleeds black.Just a picture that would confuse you, the texture is wonderful and so is the color!
Alien FM! Yes click on the picture and enlarge it, look at the top part of the picture and you will see the Alien atennae, they are here in the Bananas!The seed that can be seen on top, this is inside the skin of the seed, this picture was thrilling!Yummy a good healthy crop of yummy bananas looks like the image below!The Egret has been introduced on our blog before so will skip him he wouldn't mind he's the timid kind.Ok!!! This photography was what I really enjoyed clicking, I was lost in the leaf for a good amount of time watching the stripes runing up and down was soo much fun! To get an idea of what im talking about click on the image and have some fun!Fractals in Nature once again, I picked this cajurina corn up later, set the lights on it and will soon be creating an orignal favicon for our blog with the fractals on this!The colors of the morning reminded me of the morning when Bhavika and I slept on Om Beach in Gokarna.This flower can never be forgoten, I think every one in India should know the flower as we studied it in school!The leaves of the Hibiscus glowing with dew, if you find the above set of pictures a little hazzy starting with the morning sunlight, its because of the low light, my short pants and my shivering hands in the cold!This is a very common shrub used as a boundaries and dividers. I like the way the others just blur!The King of Good times was here, another bird that does not need any introduction was also spotted in Hampi! Musunda is a plant with colored leaves, we have a pink one in the building where I live in Bombay. This is a white one with a cute yellow starry flower!I took 3 goes to get this shot right, was happy when I finally succeeded.Some people hate the below vegetable, I always seem to find it extremely medicinal so I enjoy eating it now!This guy just wouldn't let me get my camera close enough to him!This Beetle had a transparent shell with black spots on him, the picture is not too cleare as he just couldn't seem to stop moving! But that's alright I was quite fascinated with it!!The picture below is here thanks to Dad who showed me the plant where the spiders nested. The leaf was webbed together, had to open it up to get a pic of the hundeds of baby spiders safely residing in their nest!I just love the look on this guys face below, it feels like he's saying, "WTF! I thought I was Camouflaged!"An unusual yellow flower!The Canna as well has featured here before in different colors.This is the Creeper of the Kerala plant, using the support of others to bear fruit! We all can use someones support to get through life, that's what we are all here for! I do hope you enjoyed my walk through my pictures. I will soon start a dedciated blog for our Photography. In the meantime, hope you go through the rest of your day with a smile!Read the complete post...
Listening to jazzy tunes by the seafront with people from all walks of life enjoying the beautiful setting on a pleasant Sunday evening. The Jazz and R&B performance by a local band called, The Big League, at Carter Road, Bandra, a Mumbai suburb, marked the beginning of a 15-day long 'Celebrate Bandra' festival.This bi-ennial event is one of the most vibrant festival of Mumbai inculcating a sense of bonhomie among the locals. This year's theme is 'Heritage', as this suburban part of Mumbai is home to some of the quaintest heritage buildings.
We happened to be there, not knowing the festival was on, and decided to stay back and watch the Jazz performance. We reached there quite early, before sunset, and the organisers were setting up stalls and the band - Big League - was practicing.
After the long wait for the start of the performance, Clyde was thrilled with the fact that we were there together without knowing that it was actually on.Since we were there we made the most of it, taking pictures, videos and even recorded audio files on the Zen to put up on the blog.We took some pictures of the place and also bought a nice lantern, which had Indian last names calligraphed on them.We caught front seats of the show and once it started more and more people thronged the place. Here you can see the entrance to the event, and also the huge list of sponsors. Clyde was so glad to be there as music is something that drives him, listening to it besides the sea side, pumping sound and a violinist going crazy was too much to comprehend.The spirit of people was high and the atmosphere was very festive.
The lanterns hung all around the place looked quite pretty.It was fusion of classical, jazz and rhythm and blues. Danielle was quite a good performer and extremly confident on the stage, as she sang some classics.Karen belong could modulate and carry her voice higher and futher than Danielle although she seemed to get a little turned off when Danielle and she performed together. The highlight of the evening was the violinist, he played some nice tunes.
Clyde,"I get high really, really high on music, and that's what happen something that I did not expect at certain points in the concert. Thanks to Karen and the guy playing the violin, they reawakened my passion for making music.
I feel I really need to start playing with sounds again, I used compose some music on fruity loops, I stopped due to lack of time and considering starting again."You can see the performance in the below videos.
The guy singing below was voted as the voice of Mumbai, he seems to be around 16 and his fathers the Violinist
The atmosphere simply adds to the overall experience, cool breeze blowing next to the sea and the moon emanating a nice glow, and illuminating the sky.
On our way out we saw the NGO stall which was selling diyas, candles etc made by underprivileged children.Although we didn't like two singers, overall the performance was worth a dekho! We had an enjoyable time together, sadly we had a tiff right now.
Program for 'Celebrate Bandra' 2007
The events lined up are very interesting, they include heritage walks, mix of Western and classical music, theatre performances, literary events, kite-flying festival and a festival can be very dull without some food, so one can enjoy local home-made delicacies on 30th November and 1st December.Click on the images to enlarge them and zoom in to read, it really works!Apart from these exciting events, there were also great deals and offers going on in Bnadra at various shopping outlets, restaurants etc.To add colour to event there will be artistic sessions too, people can indulge into mural painting of certain parts of Bandra. Here's to give you an idea of the wonderful art work done during the event in 2005.
We definitely going to ensure that we make it for few more events in these two weeks because it promises to be a fun-filled fortnight. All said and done it was a nice ending to a very pleasant day!Read the complete post...
The General's Family - Can you spot the nine people in the image below combining to form the face of the General and to tell the story and the secrets of his life. We see his mother and father, his wife and other members of his family, even his dog (masquerading as his hand) and as you study the painting you see behind the facade and read the story of a remarkable life. Very creative, there is a whole zoo out there to make a man's face! Can you find 28 animals?How twisted is this?The tower is like a twisted cylinder, which in this case has become a fascinating illusion of people within a tower made of stones. People can get so creative! It's wonderful to see such piece of work. Google Earth is a cool program and it of course gets very fascinating. In the image below you can see a flying car in Perth, Australia. You can see the car flying high above the grass, but is it what it actually seems?
Well, its not a flying car. A black car is parked next to a white car in such a way that it looks like a shadow of the white one.
Beowulf is the new CGI-animated feature film starring Angelina Jolie, Anthony Hopkins and Ray Winstone. Or rather it stars avatars of them. Think of it as Second Life: The Feature Film.
I had heard about the oldest surviving epic in British literature - Beowulf - ages back and I was transfixed by the simplistic, yet gory tale of good vs evil. The story's premise isn't complicated, it's superman vs. monsters. The warrior Beowulf (Ray Winstone) must fight and defeat the monster Grendel (Crispin Glover) who is terrorizing towns, and later, Grendel's mother (Angelina Jolie), who begins killing out of revenge.
Angelina is a slithery, sexy snake, and as she seems prone to doing in any period piece that she does, she speaks with a Russian accent. I guess that's her default foreign accent.
The movie is slated to release in India on November 23rd, so if you need to decide whether this movie would interest you, check out the trailer and some interviews from the stars of the film in this video playlist. Check out our list of some fantastic movies and you can buy them too at a low cost!
I recently received a mail to try out a new service to promote your blog, called Entrecard, and I found their concept quite innovative. It is a digital business card - 125x125 - with your blog name or an image that represents your blog on it. You can exchange Entrecard through a widget placed on your blog, so others with an entrecard can leave their card on your widget and similarly you can drop your card on the blog you choose. It's a great way to network with fellow bloggers, build contacts and publicize your blog at a zero cost.
Here's a video of Entrecard CEO Graham Langdon explaining this concept, the interview was conducted by Shoemoney during Blog World Expo in Las Vegas.
The image below shows our dashboard with our business card along with the blogs where we have dropped our card and bloggers who want to advertise on our blog.
Entrecard works on credit system. You earn a credit every time you drop your card in someone else's widget, every time someone leaves you a card, and every time someone buys placement for their card on your blog. The image below shows the statistics of number of cards dropped each day on our widget.Each card placement lasts 24 hours, after that the next ad in line is displayed on the blog. When higher number of cards are dropped in your widget, more credits you earn, thereby increasing your ad price/day. The person who receives the most credits in their category is listed first. In the screenshot below you can see our blog has topped the category (News & Media) which we selected. Entrecard just went into beta stages so there will be some bugs, but none that has caused us any problem. It's a great way to advertise your blog. We're liking it!
How will Entrecard make Money?
Once per day Entrecard will allow a larger company to drop their card into the inbox across the entire network. This will not appear on your website, but only in your inbox when you log into entrecard. You will also receive 5 bonus credits for visiting these sponsors. We will also allow for sponsorship opportunities for our system emails and all of our RSS feeds. When the economy is in great shape, we will roll out a credit exchange for bloggers to sell their credits to advertisers, and we will take a commission.Read the complete post...
Its been more than a year since I got my hands on the Creative Zen: Vision M, when I decided to pick up this portable music player, the video ipod was the hottest gadget in the segment.
I did a thorough research before I decided what player I wanted and did a comparison with the ipod, the Zen stood strong in many ways, it actually squashed the video ipod. So how is the Zen doing after using it for a year and half? Creative Support:
During the process of owning the Zen, I have had more than 5 firmware updates, the latest firmware being 1.62. Creative Labs gave us; a firmware for faster boot ups, a more stable firmware, a longer battery life, more functions, and the list goes on. My Vision M froze on me twice, once because I was just plugging it in and out continuously for some reason, the other was the players fault. Have you updated your zens firmware?
USB Problems:
The USB chord that came with the box pack decided to stop working one day, but that’s fine I have the same one for a sony cybershot camera. The only thing it took me a good hour or two to figure out what was wrong, thanks to the anything but ipod zen vision m forum for helping me out.
Dead Zen?
It so happens that if you completely drain out your zen batteries and forget to charge it for a week or so, it plays dead. It won’t switch on after you connect it to your USB charging cable. Just leave it charging for an hour or so and voila it comes back to life, this was one of my scariest Zen moments. Silicon Cover Warning!
Your creative zen buttons are extremely sensitive to scratches, creative knows this and hence the provide you with that easy to get dirty in India pouch. I had a silicon case for quite a while and the dirt that gets stuck between the case and the zen manages to scratch it. Although my screen cover is still on not a scratch on the screen and not a dead pixel.
Build Quality:
The Vision M has been dropped once from four feet high and it fell 3 feet away, not a bit of damage, no hardware problems. I managed to snap the box packed ear plugs that are supplied by getting one of them stuck in the car door, but that only led me to buy the M-Audio IE10 and woo hoo it’s just been heavenly since then.
I have recommended more than four people to buy it and not a single one has complained, after all its Zen!Read the complete post...
FreeRice, was introduced to me by a kind friend of mine. It is a very noble concept that you might be able to decipher in the image below.
The site features a vocabulary game that will help you not only feed people as you score more points but also help polish your skills by -
Writing better papers, emails and business letters
Scoring higher on tests like the SAT, GRE, LSAT and GMAT
Reading faster because you comprehend better
For every word you get correct FreeRice donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program run by the United Nations. FeedRice has donated more than one billion grains of rice that would help feed 50,000 people for a day. I managed to donate more than 300 grains of rice until my net went down.
Its a great feeling to know that somewhere in the world, a person is eating rice that you helped provide. When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people.Recently we had done a study on India's statistics on death due to starvation, which may interest you.
FreeRice is a sister site of the world poverty site, Poverty.com.
FreeRice has two main goals:
Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.
If AdSense is the main source of revenue for your blog, then you might be interested in knowing a couple of changes announced by AdSense in their ad format.
Firstly the most important one, according to ProBlogger, AdSense is making changes to the text ad format to help reduce accidental clicks and increase value for advertisers. Earlier (old AdSense system) if a reader clicked anywhere on the background of the ad it would register as a click, but now bloggers will only get paid if the user clicks on the ad url of the text ad or the actual title. So the revenue we use to generate from stoned teenagers is not going to be counted any more. Jokes apart, according to Google the reason for this change is: "This new format will match the changes we've implemented on Google.com to help decrease the number of accidental clicks and increase the number of ad conversions. A reduction in accidental clicks will keep users on your pages, interacting with your content until they choose to click on an ad. This change will enhance the users' overall experience with your websites and improve advertiser campaign value, but it's likely that your click-through rate will decrease."
Many people are uncertain about the actual impact of this change, it may lead to hike in the rates or people might choose not to use AdSense at all, according to Internet mogul John Chow. But if its good for readers, and good for advertisers then it should also be good for bloggers! If there is going to be a significant drop in earnings then bloggers might have to bid goodbye to AdSense.
Other Changes...
AdSense has renamed site targeting to placement targeting which will allow advertisers to also target individual ad units or groups of pages (depending on your channel setting). Another change is that advertisers can bid on placement-targeted ads (formerly known as site-targeted ads) on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis along with targeted ads on a cost-per-impression(CPM) basis.
Am waiting with bated breath to see the outcome of these changes, should be interesting!
India has just churned out the fourth fastest supercomputer in the world for the first time. Created by the Computational Research Laboratories, a subsidiary of the Tata Group of Companies in Pune.
The System is codenamed Eka, the Sanskrit word for number one and will be initially targeted at developing applications such as neural, molecular and crash simulations, and digital media animation and rendering.S. Ramadirai, chairman, Computational Research Laboratories, said, "The facility gives us the ability to address applications in multiple disciplines including software development and research." Eka is based on the HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c system and so is the Hewlett-Packard system installed at a Swedish government agency.
Except Eka processes at 117.9 teraflops while the Swedish one is at 102.8 teraflops, this is probably due to their own advanced routing technology.
It's a brand-new first installation of a newer version of the same type of IBM system. It is a BlueGene/P system installed in Germany at the Forschungszentrum Juelich (FZJ)
SGI Altix ICE 8200 - 126.9 teraflops
A 14,336-core, 28TB system, acquired by state of New Mexico for the New Mexico Computing Applications Center, earns the No. 3 spot on the Top 500 list. One of the world's largest systems dedicated to non-confidential projects, the new supercomputer is the largest Altix ICE system purchased to date, and will fuel scientific and engineering breakthroughs both for private industry and public research institutions. Read more about the SGI Altix ICE 8200.
HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c - 117.9 teraflops
Is what this entire new piece is talking about!
HP Cluster Platform 3000 BL460c - 102.8 teraflops
The fifth place is a similar system by Hewlett-Packard installed at a Swedish government agency.
It's that day of the week when we drag ourselves to office, and if you've had a long weekend then it's really painful to go to work. So I thought let's have an offbeat post and help my readers to beat the Monday Blues
Politician-cum-Toilet Man
He's known as South Korea's "Mr Toilet" for his campaigns as a politician to beautify public restrooms worldwide. Sim Jae-Duck, who was born in a restroom, is taking the lavatory life to a new level and moving in to a toilet.
The 1.6 million dollar toilet-shaped house is designed to promote his tireless campaign for cleaner loos worldwide, which is the reason he is nicknamed "Mayor Toilet." His idea is to transform toilets into "clean and beautiful resting places imbued with culture."Sim has taken a step further and formed World Toilet Association to develop sanitation facilities in underdeveloped countries and also spread awareness of safe hygienic practices. According to Sim, epidemics caused by poor sanitation worldwide cost two million lives a year and 2.6 billion people live without toilets. Elsewhere, poorly designed flush toilets waste huge quantity of potential drinking water.
It's a brilliant initiative, wish someone could roll out such a thing in India too. We really need cleaner and hygienic public toilets here, the loos are so filthy that you rather not use them. So India needs a "Toilet Man"...
We can never get enough of optical illusions. So I've searched for some more intriguing images to tease your eyes!
Below is a shop in Burkina Faso, in Africa. The owner seems to be looking for customers, but it seems like there is nothing interesting in his collection of bowls and buckets, or are we missing something. If we were to move a few steps towards our left, we can see something really interesting! Can you see it now? All the items, the straw roof, and the tree branch form the face of a man. The multi-coloured items on top form his hat, and his nose and mouth are to the right. Brilliant optical illusion, isn't it! Can you guess the hidden image? If you succeeded in guessing the image in Optical Illusion II, then this is a simple one. Any guesses?
There is something in these spots. In fact this image is one of the popular "Guess what" pictures on the Net. It's going to test your experience in identifying a visually challenging image.
Can you spot the deliberate mistake? Some people see it instantly, but some, like me who are spaced out most of the time, can't!If you couldn't guess what's the mistake, then what's the name of the animal?
This one is an absolute gem. I loved it! Simply stare at the black dot in the center of the image and you will find all the coloured clouds gradually disappearing. Move your eyes away and look t the image, the clouds are still there, nothing has changed!
Hope you enjoyed this short collection of optical illusions. There are many more to come.
If you haven't seen the previous posts on Optical Illusions, here it is -
My six-year old cousin sister came to me the other day with her boxes of fire crackers she plans to burst this Diwali. She had the normal ones - sparklers, spinners etc. Everyone from young to old burst crackers during Diwali. Sreets in Mumbai are filled with shops selling fire crackers, and its also during this festival that pollution level rises by "six to ten times" with the crackers releasing clouds of aluminium, lead, copper, zinc and potassium particles into the air. The situation has worsened with firecrackers already exploding with monotonous regularity as soon as it gets dark. So as usual the police department has levied a 10 pm deadline to burst crackers, and people crossing the deadline or exceeding the 65-decibel level would end being severely penalised. Offenders can be fined Rs 1 lakh and sentenced up to five years in prison under the Environment Act. Till now, offenders were only fined Rs 50 under the Mumbai Police Act, so would a hike in the penalty fee make a difference?
The video below shows the audiometer reading of Diwali crackers. It goes to up to 106 decibels, which is quite high.
Apparently the commissioner of police has deployed 15,000 personnel to monitor the city. Last year, the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board (MPCB) recorded sound levels as high as 105 dB in Girgaum and 108 dB near Mantralaya (both areas are in South Mumbai) after 10 pm during Diwali season (October 21-24). That is as high as the noise made by a jet aircraft taking off at a distance of 100 metres, according to MPCB. In the suburbs though, the sound was much controlled, with sound levels hovering around 85 dB to 95dB.
Every year during this time I hate staying at home because of high levels of noise pollution when people burst crackers in the building itself. It can get very frustrating.
Will it be different this time around? We shall soon find out...
After giant manufacturer Mattel recalled over millions of Chinese-made toys in August, there has been yet another blow to the toy industry. Millions of Chinese-made toys were yet again withdrawn from stores in North America and Australia after it was discoverd that it contained a chemical which metabolises into a "date rape" style drug when swallowed. In fact two children in the US and three children in Australia were hospitalised after swallowing the beads. The toy goes by the name Aqua Dots in the US and Bindeez in Australia, where they were named Toy of the Year earlier this year. These toys can be arranged into designs and fused together when sprayed with water. When ingested it can induce seizures, drowsiness, coma and can prove fatal as well. Australia have already announced a ban on this Chinese toy.
Should Chinese made toys be a big no-no?
It seems like it. China is the world's largest toy manufacturer, and exports about 20 billion toys every year, contributing to nearly 60 percent of global toy trade. Besides, Chinese toys are considered to be relatively cheaper than other brands. But it has come under the spotlight amid a spate of export toy recalls this year.
In the past four months, more than 20 million toys made in China have been recalled worldwide because of potentially dangerous levels of lead and hazards posed by small magnets in toys.
So with holiday shopping imminent, parents would have to ensure that the products are safe. They would have to be cautious about cheap, painted toys and fake jewelry, and toss toys with chipped paint or deteriorating plastic.
We would like to wish all our readers a very Happy Diwali and a Great Year Ahead! Enjoy the festival of lights in the right spirit and keep visiting our blog too this year! Read the complete post...
We were experimenting with an innovative service provided by The Newsroom, where you get paid for embedding their videos, articles and images on your blog or site. We tried their service for two months, and though Bhavika feels the revenue it has generated to be quite dismaying, I think its pretty good to get paid just for views.
We have embedded 4 videos from Newsroom so far, they got 130 views and we have made US $0.50. Well, I was quite impressed with the content on their site which is from AFP, Reuters, BBC etc., but if the revenue is going to be so low then it only makes more sense for publishers with high amounts of traffic. We would either have to market the videos or use more newsroom content.
They also pay you for using their text and images, maybe we should try incorporating that as well! The only problem about news room is that they do not have a full fledged referral program yet. The current one that works is if someone embeds the video from the embed button on the video above. Which I think is highly unlikely!
Recently we came across a new way to monetize blogs, WidgetBucks. If you notice the widget on the right hand side just under the two happy shiny bloggers picture.
It features pay-per-click shopping widgets that help make money faster than Google Adsense. They display the most popular products based on buying trends of 100 million shoppers, you have a range of widgets to display and select the color. Unfortunately you can't put in the color code to get the identical color yet.In the first one Month from their launch Widgetbucks got 30k publishers and 200 Million Impressions.
Problems with Widgetbuck$?
We came across good points about the widgetbucks bot that looks up your sites content and places relevant ads, called MerchSense. So far it hasn't yet kick started on our blog. I think I may have to regenerate a fresh widget.
Though some people feel that widgetbucks with their 30k Publishers, 200 Million Impressions and high pay out rate are gonna go broke. I feel that widgetbucks has struck upon a brilliant marketing idea. What they could do is tie up with good converting affiliate program. If you notice the widgetbuck advertisement, it shows you the product a little bit of the details and the best price you can get it at.An advertisement which has a higher probability of an interested customer to buy, say widgetbucks gets ten clicks and 2 people buy. They make a nice affiliate commission the ten people get a good earning for their clicks, widgetbucks is happy, the webmasters and bloggers are happy we are all happy! There seems to be an exception for Widgets Displaying Lingerie, the hot woman get more clicks than other widgets, thank the perverts for giving you additional income, BTW I would click too if I were in the mood!
Now if this case scenario is true, widgetbucks would make their first payments in the month of December! Heres a site tracking widgetbucks ongoings!
How Much Money through Widgetbucks?
Well here's the good one, 3 clicks on adsense = 1 click on widgetbucks for my statistics yesterday. So, that's what you can expect, we got $0.28 a click on widgetbucks. Now that may not be much but people have got up to $0.50 per click, now that's not bad at all.
What's even better is they are paying you $25 when you sign up for widgetbucks! We got our $25 added to our account and are on our way to meet the $50 paypal payment threshold! What are you waiting for?Read the complete post...
The origins of this art belong to a very innovative flash art forum where the creators make various sketches, like the one that can be seen below!
I had come across this art around a year ago on Digg and now through my new stumble upon account thats helping me find really cool stuff. I am a new stumbler and it sure seems like good fun!
This afternoon around 4 pm I received a call from, no surprises here, Tata Indicom. For the first time in the last 6 months of paying Rs 11,449 for my 512 Kbps connection did I receive a call from their side.
"Hello Sir, I am calling from Tata Indicom, am I speaking with blah blah, your 512 Kbps connection is going to expire. Would you like to renew it?" I said immediately, "No."
Kyo Sir, Kya Paresahani hai? (Why Sir, what is the problem?) Because your connection is not really good!
So how will you make the payment? I don't want your connection.
Kyo Sir, Kya Paresahani hai? The moment he said that again I lost it, I didn't want to let it out on him so I said what every person working in a call center must have heard in his/her life. I have worked for a call center for 2 years, said the same thing, wonder if its just so easy for human minds to be conditioned, "Please call me if you can talk in English!"
I felt guilty as soon as I said that, but those of you who worked in an American call center would understand that, its frequent for call center employees to be called Pakistanis and have the phone slammed down on them. Well that's all right I guess, I felt remorseful at that time, but nothing the mind couldn't deal with. Moving on 3 hours later there goes my connection and didn't come back for a good half an hour, so I guess he chose not to learn English.
Customer Service Interaction:
I called up the customer service, this time it was much better, because this is where I had a new experience with the customer service rep who was a woman. I don't know why but technology and women don't quite go together. The Tata Indicom Broadband Customer Service number is 022-60607070, I know it at the tip of my tongue! Press 1....3......1 at the IR to talk to the tech team person and voila, for the first time I nearly dropped the phone when I heard a prompt, “Hello Sir, ....introduces herself, how may I assist you?”
"My Internet connection is down," I complained. Please give me your username. C for Cat, L for Lion, Y for Yak, D for Donkey, E for Elephant, O for Ostrich and F for ....
Sir sir sir, I have to type it down! OK!! C for ...cat... L for... lion... Y for...Yak.. D..... for..... Donkey....E.....for......Ostrich.....oops sorry E for Elephant!
What Sir? C for Cat, L for Lion, Y for Yak, D for Donkey, E for Elephant, O for Ostrich and F for Fish and L for Lion.
OK Sir! @ vsnl... Sir Please wait I am searching. Alright.
Sir you are calling from Mumbai. Yes I am! OK sir. Your connection is not working nah Sir! Yes!
You are new at the job aren't you? What sir? You just joined the company didn't you? Yes Sir. Alright can you please give me a complaint number your servers down! What Sir? But Sir I need to find out why your Internet connection is not working for me to register a complaint. OK!
Sir can you please check if your modem is on? I don't have a modem I am on LAN! Sir please see there has to be a black box behind the CPU! (Hehehehe) I am on LAN, I connect via an Ethernet card! Eth..er..net card? Yes a LAN card! OK Sir!
Look! I connect via a web dialer, so your login page is not loading which means your servers down. Now can you please give me a complaint number.
Sir but I have to write down what the problem is. Ok! Write down that your servers giving me a request time out error. Ok Sir!!! (Thats ok had a yelp of glee in it!) I will have to put you on hold is that ok? Yes it is.
After half a minute to a minute can you please take down the number. Your Tata Indicom complaint number is 4051540. Thank you for using Tata Indicom. Welcome haha! Tata Indicom Complaint Statistics:
I wanted to check the amount of complaints I've made, so I decided to keep track of the complaint numbers. Check this out, these are some statistics, without counting short downtimes, that happens less number of times now, but I have something very interesting for you. These are my complaint numbers and the dates of the complaints.
2541218 - June 01 2784388 - June 25 2836812 - June 30 2937592 - July 10 3085266 - July 25 3121400 - July 30 4051540 – Nov 07
Between June 25th and June 30th a total number of 52,424 complaints were registered. Between July 25th to July 30th the complaints were 36,134.
9,30,140 customers complained in a span of 3 months, still thinking of going with Tata Indicom Broadband? The Icing on the cake, in the last 6 months in every call I have had with them they would confirm my phone number as 26361101, every time I would tell them no its not that, they would ask me for the correct one so they could change it and today again I had the wrong number read out.
Tata Indicom Broadband Lies:
Previous customer service reps have told me that I would get my validity period extended for all the time my connection was dead. But today I received a call stating that my connection is expiring in the next three days.
With the limited choice of quality broadband service providers in India I will be forced to lower my connection speed and choose two different ISP's to make sure I am never offline. It sounds rather ridiculous but does someone who needs to be online have an option?
Clyde and Myself, love eating spicy food mixed with chillies. In fact we've often had competition of who can eat most number of chillies. I have always won that chilly-eating competition (although Clyde would beg to differ), but maximum I can eat is 3-4 but only the green chillies. Well my eyes popped out when I saw this video of a 62-year-old man who can eat 51 red chillies in one minute and said that he has eaten 500 such chillies non-stop in 4 hours, without it causing him any medical problems or agony.
Kailash Jagodiya, a resident of Assam (North-East India), eats world's hottest chillies in an attempt to make it to the Guinness Book of World Records. He also smears his body with chilli powder, and says he can endure this for an entire day. Amazing! Watch the video to see the chilli eater in action.
I went for a Spanish Cultural Evening recently in Mumbai and the highlight of the party and what I was really looking forward to was Flamenco performance by internationally renowned flamenco dancer Carmen Cortes and her husband who is considered the best flamenco guitar players Gerardo Nunez. I had seen it on TV but never experienced the real thing. What is Flamenco?
Flamenco is a vigorous rhythmic dance style; also music or song suitable to accompany a flamenco dance. The dance, which is passionate and seductive at the same time, involves a lot of hand movement and footwork which is quite intricate. Flamenco exists in three forms: el cante, the song, el baile, the dance, and la guitarra, the guitar playing. An interesting fact - Gypsies are believed to have invented Flamenco and Gypsies actually have their origins in India. So a Spanish musical genre with a touch of India!Apart from that, Andalusia was the breeding ground for the continued development and mixing of Spanish folk music and for the Flamenco song. Read the history of Flamenco A combination of colourful polka-dot dresses, castanets, mellow tones of the acoustic guitar and rhythmic clapping, made the performance very fascinating and foot-tapping. I have taken few videos of Flamenco performance - Carmen (Flamenco dancer) and Gerardo (Flamenco guitar player) complement each other very well. I loved the way she gyrated and moved her body so gracefully.
Google has Facebook in its sights again, after Orkut ripped off the News feed from Facebook we are now witnessing a team up of all the major social networks to adopt Google's new OpenSocial API. The only difference is this time it could be a head shot for Facebook.
Facebook has grown into a billion dollar company faster than any of its competitors, by allowing developers to use its API to integrate games, quiz's, apps and a whole lot of interactive features and functions into the website itself. John McCrea, vice president of marketing at Plaxo, one of Google's partners in deploying OpenSocial, said, “Facebook is trying to build a proprietary web platform. Those of us that believe in openness saw that as a threat to the open web."
Although I am not sure if they really believe that Facebook would be the next Microsoft online, but most of the social network sites have decided to adopt OpenSocial, is it in fear of Facebooks growing power? What changes would we see with a site like Paypal going open social I wonder. What can we expect? A whole lot of developers loosing focus on Facebook and building apps on the OpenSocial API which will give them a much bigger audience now with even Myspace joining Google's Open Social. Here's a list of all Google's Open Social Partners.
What is Open Social?
OpenSocial provides a common set of APIs for social applications across multiple websites. With standard JavaScript and HTML, developers can create apps that access a social network's friends and update feeds.
Common APIs means you have less to learn to build for multiple websites. OpenSocial is currently being developed by Google in conjunction with members of the web community. The ultimate goal is for any social website to be able to implement the APIs and host 3rd party social applications.
Orkut has opened a limited sandbox that you can use to start building apps using the Open Social APIs in order for developers to get started immediately.
“The killer apps of the web, email, instant messaging and blogging, have enabled us to communicate with our friends, family, and the rest of the world on a large scale. But there is a newer characteristic of the web that has been emerging: to become social. The first wave of killer apps allowed us to communicate with the world at scale. The next wave is about connecting us and our online activities with our friends,” taken from the Open Social blog, the web is better when it's social, Amar Gandhi and Peter Chane, Group Product Managers, OpenSocial.
The Open Social Demo Google gave the Social Networks
There are already a couple of applications ready for the Open Social Api, some of the ones that are doing really well on Facebook, the Flixster app for example. The other apps can be viewed in the community on Google's Open Social Page.
The quest for knowledge can make scientists do strange and bizarre things. When you read the kind of experiments some of them have conducted, you would be amazed or disgusted but at the same time its hilarious. And most of the experiments fall closer to madness than to genius.
A list of the most provocative and outrageous experiments of modern science has been compiled by author Alex Boese, who scoured research journals, books and university archives. Topics covered include what happens when you give an elephant LSD and how to make a turkey frisky.
Featured recently in New Scientist magazine, his book, Elephants On Acid And Other Bizarre Experiments, also tells of attempts to bring dead dogs back to life. Read on...
Elephant on Acid
In 1962, Warren Thomas, the director of Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, injected Tusko, a three and half ton elephant, with a syringe full of LSD, which was 297 milligrams (would make at least 3,000 people hallucinate) and he thought that he was about to make a major contribution to science. The poor elephant began trumpeting furiously, before keeling over as if he had been shot. An hour later, he was dead. "It appears that the elephant is highly sensitive to the effects of LSD," Thomas and his colleagues concluded.
And Tusko's role in history of science has certainly been recognised with Alex Boese writing a book called Elephants on Acid and Other Bizarre Experiments. He has mentioned several more incidents that have taken place in real life.
Obedience Test
The second one is worse than the previous one. What if you volunteer for an experiment and the researcher tells you to torture an innocent person for getting the answers wrong. Would you be obedient or salvage your conscience?
When asked what they would do in such a situation, almost everyone replies that of course they would refuse to commit murder. But Stanley Milgram's famous obedience experiment, conducted at Yale University in the early 1960s, revealed that this optimistic belief is wrong. If the request is presented in the right way, almost all of us quite obediently become killers.
Milgram told subjects they were participating in an experiment to determine the effect of punishment on learning. One volunteer would attempt to memorize a series of word pairs. The other volunteer (the real subject) would read out the word pairs and give the learner an electric shock every time he got an answer wrong. The shocks would increase in intensity by fifteen volts with each wrong answer.
The experiment began. The learner started getting some wrong answers, and pretty soon the shocks had reached 120 volts. At this point the learner started crying out, "Hey, this really hurts." At 150 volts the learner screamed in pain and demanded to be let out. Confused, the volunteers turned around and asked the researcher what they should do. He always calmly replied, "The experiment requires that you continue."
I found a video which is based on Milgram's experiment. It can freak you out.
To Milgram's surprise, even though volunteers could hear the agonized cries of the learner echoing from the neighboring room, two-thirds of them continued to press the shock button all the way up to the end of scale, 450 volts, by which time the learner had fallen into an eerie silence, apparently dead.
Milgram later said, "I would say, on the basis of having observed a thousand people in the experiment and having my own intuition shaped and informed by these experiments, that if a system of death camps were set up in the United States of the sort we had seen in Nazi Germany, one would be able to find sufficient personnel for those camps in any medium-sized American town."
Stressful Flight
This one is quite funny. Trying to chart how people react when faced with death, the U.S. Army faked a plane crash in 1960s. Some 10 soldiers boarded a aircraft were told that the plane was going to crash land in the ocean, so they were asked to quickly fill out insurance forms. After they completed the forms, they were told the threat was over and the plane landed safely.
Due to fear of death the group of soldiers made more mistakes on the form than another group who filled out the same paperwork on the ground. So conclusion - extreme stress harms cognitive ability.
The Doctor who Drank Vomit
Stubbins Ffirth was a doctor-in-training who lived in early nineteenth-century Philadelphia. He was determined to prove that yellow fever is not contagious and decided to make himself the subject to prove his belief. What he did was unbelievably disgusting.
He smeared himself with the blood, urine, sweat, and black vomit of yellow-fever patients. He dribbled the vomit into his eyes. He even drank undiluted vomit which gains its black colour from blood that has hemorrhaged in the stomach.
Miraculously, Ffirth didn't get sick, prompting him to declare yellow fever was non-contagious. Of course, he was wrong. It hadn't occurred to him to test for transmission by mosquito bite.
Two-headed Dog
One of the most gruesome experiment performed was by the Soviet surgeon Vladimir Demikhov. He created the two-headed dog by grafting the head, shoulders and front legs of a puppy onto the neck of an adult German Shepherd. The milk dribbled from the stump of the puppy's head when it attempted to lap milk. Occasionally, the two would fight, with the German Shepherd trying to shake the puppy off, and the puppy would bite back. Both animals soon died because of tissue rejection — but that did not stop Demikhov from creating 19 more over the next 15 years with the one of the creatures living for a month.
Turkey Frisking Male turkeys aren't fussy. Give them a lifelike model of a female turkey and they'll happily try to mate with it as eagerly as they would with the real thing. Fascinated by this, Martin Schein and Edgar Hale, of Pennsylvania State University, devoted themselves to studying the sexual behaviour of turkeys in the 1960s, and what might be the minimal stimulus required to excite a turkey. This involved removing parts from the turkey model one by one, until the male turkey eventually lost interest.
Then they took a model of a female turkey and gradually removed parts of the turkey, like tail, feet, and wings, but still the clueless bird waddled up to the model, let out an amorous gobble, and tried to do his thing. Finally, the researchers were left with a head on a stick. And surprisingly, the male turkey still showed great interest. In fact, it preferred a head on a stick over a headless body.
These were just few of the bizarre experiments conducted by psychos, oops, scientists. There are many more from Boese's book which are mentioned in Museum of Hoaxes
October was a great month for us in terms of traffic, page views and revenue. We saw a substantial increase in traffic from September and also surpassed our previous highest number of visits. Our daily visitors hit a high of 660, the best news was our blog's PageRank moved up from PR3 to PR4 along with Clyde quitting his job! We are excited with the prospects of the new page rank, lets see what it can do for us and how we leverage it to the best of our abilities.
Our new blog is picking up faster than Fractal Enlightenment did in the same period, thanks to all the testing and tweaking she exposed us to. Not to forget all our friends who are doing the word-of-mouth marketing, we love you all. Thank you very much!!! The good part is we are already seeing a bit of traffic from google, to visit the blog click on the analytics image above.
Thank you once again for spending your valuable time on our blog! We will be happy to hear from you and interact with you now, since Clyde spends most of his time here!Read the complete post...
In our quest to broaden our offerings on our blog, we've jotted down a list of our all-time favorite movies, which you can buy directly from us, by clicking on the buy button located on the right-hand side of the movie. We've recommended movies from a variety of genres, although some movies fit in multiple genres we narrowed it down to the closest one we felt is correct. The selected movies are either mind-boggling, heart-wrenching, or extremely hilarious; we recommend you get your hands on them to have an enlightening experience. Make sure you keep checking this section as we will be making some more interesting additions.
Fight Club is a 1999 feature film adaptation of the 1996 novel Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk, adapted by Jim Uhls and directed by David Fincher.Fight Club explores themes of psychological emasculation in modern white-collar society, with Edward Norton playing a disillusioned everyman who meets a woman similar to him (Helena Bonham Carter) and a soap salesman (Brad Pitt) who embodies his repressed masculinity.
The two men establish a club for men to engage in fist fights, and later, radical revolutionary/terrorist acts. The movie has achieved cult film status.Fight Club
Apocalypto
Apocalypto is an Academy Award nominated 2006 epic film directed by Mel Gibson. Set in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula, it depicts one man's experience during the decline of the ancient Maya civilization. The film is brilliant. The cinematography, costumes and the set up manages to recapture the real Mayan civilization. The use of Yucatec language, which necessitated the use of subtitles, worked perfectly within the confines of the film. However, the violence and few scenes can get disgusting and gross.
I quite liked the end when the Mayan couple had an option to embrace modern civilization, they turned their backs and chose to stay close to their roots. This is summed up in a famous quote from historian Will Durant about the fall of Rome showed in the opening of the story : "A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself from within."Apocalypto
Gladiator
Gladiator is a 2000 historical action film. It is directed by Ridley Scott and stars Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix, Connie Nielsen, Djimon Hounsou and Richard Harris.Crowe portrays General Maximus Decimus Meridius, friend of Emperor Marcus Aurelius, who is betrayed by the Emperor's ambitious son, Commodus (Phoenix), who murders his own father and seizes the throne. Captured and enslaved along the outer fringes of the Roman empire, Maximus rises through the ranks of the gladiatorial arena to avenge the murder of his family and his Emperor.
The film's epic scope and intense battle scenes, as well as the emotional core of its performances, received much praise. In fact the film's success might have helped to revive the historical epic genre, with subsequent films such as Troy, Alexander and 300. Gladiator
Crank
Crank is a 2006 action/thriller film, written and directed by both Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor. Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) is a professional assassin working for the West Coast crime syndicate. Chev's girlfriend Eve (Amy Smart) doesn't know what Chev does and Chev is planning to quit the crime syndicate so he can spend more time with her. But for Chev, things about to get very bad, when he learns he has been injected with a poison called "The Beijing Cocktail" by his rival Verona (Jose Pablo Cantillo), which will kill him as his heart rate drops.
Trying to stay alive and seeking help from friend, Kaylo (Efren Ramirez) and Doc Miles (Dwight Yoakam), to keep his heart pumping. Chev sets out to find answers as well as protecting Eve, and get his revenge on those who have betrayed him before the poison kills him. Crank
The Ghost and the Darkness
The Ghost and the Darkness is a 1996 Oscar-winning film about the Tsavo maneaters, two lions who attacked the builders of the Uganda-Mombassa Railway in 1898, and the subsequent hunt to kill them. The attacks, which took place in Tsavo, Kenya, were recounted by Lieutenant Colonel John Henry Patterson in his book The Man-Eaters of Tsavo.
William Goldman's script introduces Michael Douglas as the big game hunter Charles Remington - but in reality, Remington did not exist and Patterson killed both lions. Many Maasai characters in the film were actually portrayed by South African actors, although the Maasai depicted during the hunt are real Maasai warriors who helped for the movie. The Ghost and the Darkness
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings film trilogy comprises three live action fantasy epic films: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).
Set in the fictional world of Middle-earth, the three films follow the young Hobbit Frodo Baggins as he and a Fellowship embark on a quest to destroy the One Ring, and thus ensure the destruction of the Dark Lord Sauron. However, the Fellowship breaks and Frodo continues the quest together with his loyal companion Sam and the treacherous Gollum. Meanwhile, the wizard Gandalf and Aragorn, heir in exile to the throne of Gondor, unite and rally the Free Peoples of Middle-earth in several battles culminating in the War of the Ring. The wizard Saruman is defeated, The Ring is destroyed, and Sauron and his forces are vanquished.
The films were written, produced and directed by Peter Jackson. It is considered to be one of the biggest movie projects ever undertaken, with the filming for all three films done simultaneously and entirely in Jackson's native New Zealand.
The films were critically acclaimed, winning 17 Academy Awards in total, as well as wide praise for the cast and for the innovative practical and digital special effects. The Lord of the Rings - Trilogy
The Guns of Navarone
One of the best WWII action-adventures, this spectacular epic portrays the heroics and bravery soldiers faced when tasked with impossible missions during the War. The film boasts a stellar cast, headed by Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, David Niven, Anthony Quayle, Stanley Baker, and Irene Papas. Two powerful German guns control the seas past the Greek island of Navarone making the evacuation of endangered British troops on a neighboring island impossible.
Air attacks are useless so a team of six Allied and Greek soldiers is put ashore to meet up with partisans to try and dynamite the guns. The mission is perilous enough anyway but are the Germans on the island getting further help too? The Guns of Navarone
The Good, the Bad, the Ugly
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is a 1966 Italian epic spaghetti Western directed by Sergio Leone, starring Clint Eastwood, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach in the title roles. The plot centers around three gunslingers competing to find a fortune in buried Confederate gold amid the violent chaos of gunfights, hangings, Civil War battles, and prison camps.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly has been described as European cinema's best representative of the Western genre film, and Quentin Tarantino has called it "the best-directed film of all time."The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Magnificent Seven
A remake of 'The Seven Samurai', this American version starrer Yul Brenner, Charles Bronson, Steve McQueen, and Robert Vaughn, just to name a few. They are picked to guard a Mexican village from Bandits that come every now and then to take whatever the town has grown since their last visit. When they are hired, they go to town and teach the villagers how to defend themselves.
When the leader of the bandits come, they fight him and his men off. The second time he comes the villagers give the seven to them, due to a heated argument. The seven decide that they aren't going to run away, and head back to the village for a final showdown. The movie is not only ludicrously enjoyable entertainment but also a superior and thoughtful character study.The Magnificent Seven
Where Eagles Dare
Where Eagles Dare is a 1968 war adventure film directed by Brian G. Hutton, featuring Richard Burton, Clint Eastwood, and Mary Ure. In 1944, an American General is shot down over a heavily defended German fortress and imprisoned within. A rescue attempt is at once launched by British Intellegence, since the General must be liberated before being made to reveal Allied plans for an invasion of France.
As the mission unfolds, however, double and triple agents begin to appear in the ranks of the rescue team with the added mystery of an American Lieutenant assigned to the mission for reasons unknown. Where Eagles Dare
Seven Years in Tibet is a true adventure story written by Austrian mountaineer Heinrich Harrer based on his real life experiences in Tibet between 1944 and 1951 during the onset of the Second World War and the Chinese People's Liberation Army Invasion. Seven Years in Tibet tells the story of how Austrians Heinrich Harrer (Brad Pitt) and Peter Aufschnaiter were imprisoned by the British while mountaineering in the north of India at the beginning of World War II in 1939.
They eventually escaped across the border into Tibet in 1944 and crossed the treacherous high plateau. Shortly after arriving in Tibet, they were ordered to return to India. They were able to disguise themselves, and make their way to Lhasa, where they were warmly received. Harrer was introduced to the Dalai Lama, who was still a boy, and became a tutor and then close friend to the young spiritual leader. Harrer and Aufschnaiter remained in the country until the Communist Chinese invasion in 1950. Seven Years in Tibet
The Beach
The Beach is a 2000 film by the Trainspotting team of writer John Hodge, producer Andrew Macdonald and director Danny Boyle based on the 1996 novel of the same name by Alex Garland. The movie centers on a young nicotine-addicted traveler named Richard (Leonardo DiCaprio), an avid pop-culture buff with a particular love for video games and Vietnam War movies. While at a hotel in Bangkok, he finds a map left by his strange, whacked-out neighbor, who just committed suicide. The map supposedly leads to a legendary island paradise where some other wayward souls have settled.
Richard and his companions try to locate the spot, which, after a dangerous and taxing journey, takes them to a beach as beautiful as Duck said it would be. Richard and his friends settle in, but they soon discover that they are not alone; a large group of fellow travelers has already dug themselves in, and they have established a community with the same social evils that Richard was hoping to leave behind. Just as important, there is an army of natives who grow marijuana in the nearby hills and do not appreciate the presence of these visitors. The Beach
Made in 2001, Waking Life is a digitally rotoscoped and animated film, directed by Richard Linklater. The entire film was shot using digital video and then a team of artists using computers drew stylized lines and colors over each frame. This technique is similar in some respects to the rotoscope style of 1970s filmmaker Ralph Bakshi, which was invented in the 1920s.
The title is a reference to George Santayana's maxim that "sanity is a madness put to good uses; waking life is a dream controlled." The story is about a young man in a persistent lucid dream-like state. He encounters people from various walks of life.
He has indepth and not to mention mind-blowing conversations that question various aspects of the way we as a functional human race interact with each other and what has become of the world as we know it. A must watch for everyone! But you can't watch it at one go, as the dialogues can get heavy, but a great film nonetheless. Waking Life
The Yellow Submarine
Yellow Submarine is a 1968 animated feature film based on the music of The Beatles. It is also the title for the soundtrack album to the feature film, released as part of The Beatles' music catalogue. The film was directed by Canadian-born animation producer George Dunning, and produced by United Artists and King Features Syndicate.
The singing group, The Beatles, at the height of their popularity, made this cartoon of a land that is taken over by the Blue Meanies. They are recruited by an escapee to come and bring joy (and music) back to the land. The techniques are quite psychedelic in the cartoons and much care was taken to have the walks and mannerisms of the individual Beatles cartoons match the originals. The Beatles themselves appear only in the closing scene of the film. The Yellow Submarine
A Fantastic Planet
Fantastic Planet an animated 1973 science fiction film directed by René Laloux. It won the special jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1973. The story is based on the novel, Oms en Série, by the French writer Stefan Wul. It is an excellent serious science fiction tale.
On one level, it can be interpreted as an allegory of the struggle of one culture against another—at the time it was conceived in the late 60s, Russia was in the process of invading Czechoslovakia — a concept that is still very relevant today as mass media threatens to homogenize the entire world. On another level, it is simply an exciting and surreal adventure story. Fantastic Planet
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut
South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut is an Academy Award-nominated animated satirical comedy/musical film released in 1999 and based on the animated television series South Park. The film parodies animated Disney films such as Beauty and the Beast as well the Broadway musical Les Misérables.
In the sleepy town of South Park, four children cause an total disturbance when they see an 'R' rated Canadian film, the 'Terrance and Phillip Movie'. Watching this, the bad language 'warps their fragile little minds'. Soon all the children watch it and the bad language gets out of hand.
When their mothers finally form a union to kill Terrance and Phillip, it is up to Carl, Cartman, Stan and Kenny to prevent the killing of Terrance and Phillip to prevent Satan and Sadam Hussein ruling the world. South Park
Trainspotting is a 1996 Academy Award-nominated, BAFTA-winning cult classic film directed by Danny Boyle based on the novel Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh. The movie starring Ewan McGregor as Mark Renton, Ewen Bremner as Spud, Jonny Lee Miller as Sick Boy, Kevin McKidd as Tommy, Robert Carlyle as Begbie and Kelly Macdonald as Dianne is about a group of disaffected Scottish youths who turn to heroin to escape the banalities of modern-day existence.
Then, they begin to suffer the consequences and discover that there are no easy solutions to the inherent loneliness and pain of life. Author Irvine Welsh also has a brief appearance as hapless drug dealer Mikey Forrester. Trainspotting
Borat
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (often shortened to Borat) is a 2006 Academy Award-nominated mockumentary comedy film directed by Larry Charles. It starred the British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen in the title role of a fictitious Kazakh journalist, traveling through the United States recording real-life interactions with Americans.
The film achieved critical and commercial success, despite an initially limited release in the United States. Cohen won the 2007 Golden Globe Award for Best Actor: Musical or Comedy as Borat while the film was nominated for Best Motion Picture in the same category. Controversy surrounded the film even before its release. It has been criticised for having a protagonist who is sexist and antisemitic (although Cohen is Jewish himself), and some who have appeared in the film have criticised and even sued its creators.
All Arab countries, except for Lebanon, banned it, and the Russian government successfully discouraged cinemas there from showing it. Borat
Spun
Spun is a 2002 independent movie directed by Jonas Åkerlund and written by Creighton Vero and Will de los Santos.Three days of epic drug binging become a meth-induced odyssey for college dropout Ross when he becomes the local crystal meth cook's personal driver in exchange for free drugs. Bouncing from one bizarre situation to another, Ross slowly slips deeper and deeper into the crazy anonymous world of speed freaks in which there exists no boundaries or morality.
With an all star cast including Brittany Murphy, Jason Schwartzman, John Leguizamo, Patrick Fugit, Mena Suvari, and an unfortunate green dog, get ready to see the city through eyes that can't sleep. It's SPUN. Spun
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas is a 1998 film adaptation of Hunter S. Thompson's 1971 novel Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream. The film, directed by Terry Gilliam, stars Johnny Depp as Raoul Duke and Benicio del Toro as Dr. Gonzo. It has since become a cult classic.
The film details a whacky search for the "American Dream", by Thompson and his crazy lawyer. Fueled by the massive amount of drugs they purchased with an advance from a magazine to cover a sporting event in Vegas; they set out in the Red Shark. Encountering police, reporters, gamblers, racers, and hitchhikers; they search for some undefinable thing known as the "American Dream" and find fear, loathing and hilarious adventures into the dementia of the modern American West. Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas
A 1994 drama film, The Shawshank Redemption is based on the Stephen King novella, Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. Written and directed by Frank Darabont, the film stars Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne and Morgan Freeman as Ellis Boyd "Red" Redding.
The film portrays Andy's twenty years in the cruelty of Shawshank State Prison, a fictional penitentiary in Maine, and his friendship with Red, a fellow inmate. This movie exemplifies the gap between box office success and popularity.
Despite a poor box office reception, The Shawshank Redemption received favorable reviews from critics and has enjoyed a remarkable life on cable television, home video, and DVD, and continues to be noticed by popular culture. It is frequently ranked amongst the greatest movies of all time. Shaw Shank Redemption
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
It is a 1975 film directed by Miloš Forman and starring Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher and William Redfield. The film is an adaptation of the novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey.The movie was filmed at Oregon State Hospital in Salem, Oregon. It depicts life in a mental institution.
The patients who there are almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. They have created their own world, with its own laws and social circles. In our own society, the mentally ill are sadly seen as outcasts, so different from what they should be like. But in the institution, all their quirks, shortcomings, and handicaps don’t seem out of the norm when they compare themselves to each other.One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Requiem for a Dream
Requiem for a Dream is a 2000 film directed by Darren Aronofsky, and starred Ellen Burstyn, Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly, and Marlon Wayans. The film depicts different forms of addiction, leading to the characters' imprisonment in a dream world of delusion and reckless desperation, which is then overtaken and devastated by reality.
The final fifteen minutes of the movie shows the increasingly dire circumstances of the four characters and allowing those to escalate to a brutal climax. This is easily the most startling and memorable extended sequence, and, for raw power, it exceeds any scene I can recall from other films about addiction. Don't be fooled by the passively poetic title; there's nothing serene or restful about this motion picture. Requiem for a Dream gets under your skin and stays there. Requiem for a Dream
The Basketball Diaries
A 1995 film based on the book of the same name by Jim Carroll, is a true story of the death of innocence and the birth of an artist. Jim Carroll (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a high school basketball player. His life centers around the basketball, and his dream is to be a basketball star. Once in a while he gets stoned with his friends, and step by step, he falls into the dark world of crime and drugs.
Once his mother expelled him out of the house, he goes into the streets of New York, and together with his friends takes drugs for which they steal, rob and even kill. As time passes, Jim's situation becomes worse. It looked as if he would never get out of his drug addiction, but with the help of Reggie, an older neighborhood friend, Jim "picked up a game" now and then, and that marked the beginning of his long journey back to sanity.
The film features original music by Red Hot Chili Peppers's bass player, Flea. The Basketball Diaries
Lord of War
Lord of War is a 2005 film written and directed by Andrew Niccol. The film, based on fact, follows arms trafficker Yuri Orlov's (Nicholas Cage) meteoric rise to the top of his profession. Yuri, played perfectly by Nicholas Cage, is the ambitious son of Ukranian immigrants whose desire to escape the banality of New York's Little Odessa leads him to the hyper-violent war zones of post-Cold War West Africa - "the edge of Hell," quips Yuri. There, he dodges bullets and Interpol agents while delivering planeloads of weapons to a sociopathic dictator. After each sale, Yuri returns to his multimillion dollar Manhattan condo, his fashion model wife, and their young son. Yuri's transition between the two worlds is seamless, as is the ethical compartmentalization that allows him to exist in both.
Through some of the deadliest war zones, Yuri struggles to stay one step ahead of a relentless Interpol agent (Ethan Hawke), his business rivals, even some of his customers who include many of the world’s most notorious dictators. Finally, Yuri must also face his own conscience. The film was officially endorsed by the human rights group Amnesty International for highlighting the trafficking of weapons by the international arms industry. Lord of War
Philadelphia
Philadelphia is an Academy Award-winning 1993 film revolving around the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It was the first big-budget Hollywood film to tackle the medical, political, and social issues of AIDS. Tom Hanks, in his first Academy award-winning performance, plays Andrew Beckett, a talented lawyer who is infected with AIDS. He is fired from his conservative law firm in fear that they might contract AIDS from him. In desperation, he sues his former law firm with the help of a homophobic lawyer, Joe Miller (Denzel Washington).
During the court battle, Miller sees that Beckett is no different than anyone else on the gritty streets of the city of brotherly love, sheds his homophobia and helps Beckett with his case before AIDS overcomes himIt is a touching movie with phenomenal performance by Hanks.
In fact it was the first movie which made me cry. Philadelphia definitely succeeds as a deeply affecting humanist drama.Philadelphia
A Beautiful Mind
A Beautiful Mind is a touching, emotionally charged film detailing the life of a brilliant academic who suffers from schizophrenia. This 2001 biographical film about John Forbes Nash, the Nobel Laureate (Economics) mathematician, played by Russel Crowe is an Oscar winning film.
The story begins in the early years of Nash's life at Princeton University as he develops his "original idea" that will revolutionize the world of mathematics. Later, Nash develops schizophrenia and endures paranoid and delusional episodes while painfully watching the loss and burden his condition brings on his wife (Jennifer Connelly) and friends.
The movie was well-received by the critics. A Beautiful Mind was a stirring film and condition of Nash has been illustrated in a very effective manner. A Beautiful Mind
Good Will Hunting
Good Will Hunting is a 1997 film directed by Gus Van Sant and written by Matt Damon and Ben Affleck, who both star in the film. Set in Boston, Massachusetts, it tells the story of Will Hunting (Damon), a troubled prodigy who works as a janitor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, despite the fact that his knowledge of and facility with higher mathematics far outstrips that of anyone in the university.
Will must learn to overcome his deep fear of abandonment in order to learn how to trust and love the people who care about him. Good Will Hunting is the story of a young man and his struggle with both himself and personal relationships, trying to work through his problems so that he can open up to others, and begin putting his immeasurable intellectual potential to work.
It is an endearing film with touching moments, well-written verbal exchanges, and outstanding performances from Williams and Damon.Good Will Hunting
Almost Famous
Almost Famous is a 2000 American film written and directed by Cameron Crowe. It tells a fictional story of a teenage journalist writing for Creem and Rolling Stone magazines while covering the rock band Stillwater, and his efforts to get his first cover story published. The film is semi-autobiographical, as Crowe himself was a teenage writer for Rolling Stone.
The film is based on Crowe's experiences touring with rock bands The Allman Brothers Band, Led Zeppelin, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. In a Rolling Stone article, he talks about how he lost his virginity, fell in love, and met his heroes, experiences that are shared by William, the main character in the film.
The film is engaging, entertaining and authentic that it has become a rock-era classic. We enjoyed watching this movie! "I am a Golden God"!!!Almost Famous
Thirteen
Thirteen is a 2003 film directed by Catherine Hardwicke and written by Nikki Reed. It is a autobiographical film based on Reed's experiences as a thirteen-year-old and those around her in the same age group. Tracy (Evan Rachel Wood) is a normal 13-year-old girl trying to make it in school. After befriending a new girl at school, Evie (Nikki Reed); Tracy's world is turned upside down when Evie introduces Tracy to a world of sex, drugs and cash. But it isn't long before Tracy's new world and attitude finally takes a toll on her, her family, and old friends.
The film caused controversy upon its release, dealing with topics such as underage sexual behavior (the teenagers involved in it are as young as 13) and drug and alcohol use, and because of this, was compared to similar films such as Kids and The Basketball Diaries. Thirteen
21 Grams
21 Grams is a 2003 drama starring Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benicio del Toro. It was directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu and written by Guillermo Arriaga.
21 Grams is a movie which interweaves several plot lines, this time around the consequences of a tragic automobile accident. Penn plays a critically ill academic mathematician, Watts plays a grief stricken mother, and del Toro plays an ex-convict whose newly discovered Christianity is sorely tested in the aftermath of an accident.
The movie was shot in chronological order, but is edited in a non-linear arrangement where the lives of the characters are depicted before and after the accident. The three main characters each have 'past' 'present' and 'future' story threads, which are shown as non-linear fragments that punctuate elements of the overall story, all imminently coming toward each other and coalescing as the story progresses. Although you never learn its meaning until the film’s last scene, "21 Grams" refers to the amount of weight a body is supposed to lose when it dies.
For a good part of the time, however, you might guess that it’s simply the amount of cocaine Sean Penn’s character shoves up his nose. What makes the movie fascinating is the way its told and when everything sort falls in to place towards the end.21 Grams
Blow
Blow is a 2001 drama film about the American cocaine smuggler George Jung (Johnny Depp), directed by Ted Demme (who later died of a cocaine related heart attack). It is based on the real life stories of George Jung, Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lehder, and the Medellín Cartel. The film's title comes from a slang term for cocaine.
He starts off selling weed for a few bucks. He is soon jailed and meets Diego who offers him alot of money by selling... cocaine. He eventually becomes known and infamous for his cocaine selling. Then he must come to terms with his wife leaving him and trying to keep promises to his daughter he cannot keep. Blow has some terrific performances (particularly Johnny Depp), a well-written script, and a well-oiled production. While you may not agree with the things Jung did in his life, particularly his pivotal role in turning the United States into the world's single largest market for cocaine, you can at least appreciate the cautionary message embodied by the photograph of the real George Jung that appears at the end of the film - the image of a desolate existence fashioned by the misguided priorities of youth. Blow
Munich
Munich is a stunningly well-made film. Starring Eric Bana, and directed by Steven Spielberg, Munich depicts the 1972 Munich massacre of Israeli Olympic athletes by Black September gunmen and the Israeli government's secret retaliation assassinations.
The film shows how a squad of assassins, led by former Mossad agent Avner (Eric Bana) tracks down and kills a list of Black September members thought to be responsible for the 11 Israeli athletes' murders. The film was nominated for five Academy Awards.The first part of the film, which depicts the hostage taking, corresponds well with historical accounts.
The second part of the movie Spielberg refers to as 'historical fiction', saying it is inspired by the actual Israeli operations which are now known as Operation Wrath of God. Munich
American History X
American History X is a 1998 film directed by Tony Kaye.
Derek Vinyard (Edward Norton) returns from prison to find his younger brother, Danny (Edward Furlong), caught in the same web of racism and hatred that landed him in prison.
After Derek's father is killed in the line of duty by a minority, Derek's view of mankind is altered, but while in prison, he discovers that there is good and bad in every race. The task before him now is to convince Danny of his newfound enlightenment.
Kaye and McKenna have crafted a very thought-provoking film, full of powerful scenes and dialogue. American History X
Schindler's List
Schindler's List is a 1993 biographical film was a masterpiece by Steven Spielberg. The movie tells the story of Oskar Schindler, a Sudeten-German Catholic businessman who saved the lives of over one thousand Polish Jews during the Final Solution.
It was based on the book Schindler's Ark by Thomas Keneally, and starred Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ralph Fiennes as the SS officer Amon Göth, and Ben Kingsley as Schindler's secretary Itzhak Stern.
The film was a box office success, and won several Academy Awards, and is our all time favourite movie.Schindler's List
Based on the 1968 Broadway musical of the same name, Hair (1979) is about a Vietnam war draftee who meets and befriends a tribe of long-haired hippies on his way to the army induction center.
The hippies introduce him to their counter cultural lifestyle of marijuana, LSD, "be-ins", and protests. The film was directed by Miloš Forman, who was nominated for a César Award for his work on the film.
Cast members include Treat Williams, John Savage, Beverly D'Angelo, Don Dacus of the rock band Chicago, Annie Golden, Dorsey Wright, Nell Carter, Ellen Foley as well as Johnny Maestro, Jim Rosica and Fred Ferrara of the rock group The Brooklyn Bridge. Hair
My Fair Lady
Gloriously witty adaptation of the Broadway musical 'My Fair Lady' about Professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), who takes a bet from Colonel Pickering that he can transform unrefined, dirty Cockney flower girl Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) into a lady, and fool everyone into thinking she really is one, too!
He does, and thus young aristocrat Freddy Eynsford-Hill falls madly in love with her. But when Higgins takes all the credit and forgets to acknowledge her efforts, Eliza angrily leaves him for Freddy, and suddenly Higgins realizes he's grown accustomed to her face and can't really live without it.
It was followed by a hit London production, a popular film version, and numerous revivals. It has been called "the perfect musical."My Fair Lady
Before Sunrise is a 1995 film directed by Richard Linklater and written by Linklater and Kim Krizan. The movie follows Jesse (Ethan Hawke), a young American on his way to Vienna to catch a flight back home after a traumatic break-up, and Celine (Julie Delpy), a young French woman traveling back to Paris to attend school at La Sorbonne after having visited her grandmother in Budapest.
They meet on a train and after talking for a while, Jesse convinces Celine to get off the train with him at Vienna so they can spend more time together. The plot is minimalist with some amazing conversations. The two characters' ideas, perspectives on life, love, reincarnation, etc. are detailed and thought out. Jesse is a romantic disguised as a cynic, and Celine seemingly a romantic though with some doubts.
Taking place over the course of one night, their limited time together is always on their minds, and leads to their revealing more about themselves than they normally would, since both believe they will never see each other again. Of note these characters appear again in another film by the same director, Waking Life. Before Sunrise
Before Sunset
In 2004 a long awaited sequel titled Before Sunset was released from the same director and cast, and reprising the original concept. In fact the sequel was also released nine years after Before Sunrise, the same amount of time that had lapsed in the plot since the events of the first movie.
Jesse, a writer from the US, and Celine, a Frenchwoman working for an environment protection organization, acquainted nine years ago on the train from Budapest to Vienna, meet again when Jesse arrives in Paris for a reading of his new book.
As they have only a few hours until his plane leaves, they stroll through Paris, talking about their experiences, views and whether they still love each other, although Jesse is already married with a kid.
The movie was filmed in just 15 days, on a budget of about USD $2 million. The movie is simply fantastic, it feels like you've been dropped into these peoples' actual lives. A movie which is close to our heart. Although we would recommend Before Sunrise more than this one.Before Sunset
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Vibrant, warm and deliriously inventive, Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind is romantic comedy snogging science fiction in another genuine original from writer Charlie Kaufman.
Playing smartly against type, Jim Carrey gives perhaps his best performance as the timid Joel, who discovers his sparky ex-girlfriend Clementine (Kate Winslet) has undergone a medical procedure to erase him from her memory.
Miffed, he decides to do the same, but changes his mind while watching his memories erased, and must race though his own brain trying to stop the process. The movie really touched our hearts, some of the scenes are so stirring emotionally, that they feel real.Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind
Cube is a 1997 Canadian movie directed by Vincenzo Natali. Six different people, each from a very different walk of life, awaken to find themselves inside a giant cube with thousands of possible rooms.
Each has a skill that becomes clear when they must band together to get out: a cop, a math whiz, a building designer, a doctor, an escape master, and a disabled man. Each plays a part in their thrilling quest to find answers as to why they've been imprisoned.
The film has acquired something of a cult status as a niche science-fiction title. Cube
Cube 2: Hypercube
Cube 2: Hypercube is the sequel of the science fiction/horror movie Cube. Eight strangers find themselves waking up in a strange cube-shaped room with no recollection of how they landed there.
Soon discovering that they're in a strange fourth dimension where our laws of physics don't apply, they have to unravel the secrets of the "hypercube" in order to survive.
The industrial-style rooms of the first movie are replaced with high-tech, brightly-lit chambers; the plausible technology of the traps — flamethrowers and extending spikes — are replaced with floating objects with razor-sharp blades and translucent walls that disintegrate matter. The cubes now do not move with lumbering slowness, but instantaneously. Cube 2
Cube Zero
Cube Zero is a 2004 Canadian horror movie directed by Ernie Barbarash.
It is the third film in the Cube series, and its plot builds on the previous two in the sense that it is primarily about people who are trapped within a maze of cube-shaped rooms, with some of the rooms containing deadly traps.
Whereas the first two movies take place almost entirely within the maze, Cube Zero takes place within and outside the maze. Cube Zero
The Time Machine
The Time Machine is a 2002 science fiction film directed by Simon Wells as a remake of The Time Machine (1960), and starred Guy Pearce, Jeremy Irons, Orlando Jones, and Samantha Mumba.
Alexander Hartdegen (Pearce) is a scientist and a inventor, who is determined to prove that time travel is possible. When the girl he loves is tragically killed, Alexander is determined to go back in time and change the path.
Testing his theories, the time machine is hurtled 800,000 years into the future. He he discovers a terrifying new world. Instead of mankind being the hunter, they are now the hunted, with him stuck in the middle. The Time Machine
Dark City
Dark City is a 1998 science fiction directed by Proyas. It stars Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, and Jennifer Connelly.
The story concerns a man waking in a hotel room with no memory, which soon proves to be but one of many troubles. He is sought by police, who believe him to be a serial killer, and also by a group of mysterious men with psychokinetic powers.
Furthermore, something appears to be wrong with the world at large: time, memory, and identity behave in unusual ways.Dark City
The Butterfly Effect is a 2004 movie starring Ashton Kutcher, Amy Smart, Eric Stoltz, and others. The title is a reference to the butterfly effect, which theorises that a change in something seemingly innocuous, such as a flap of a butterfly's wings, may cause unexpected larger changes in the future, such as a tornado. The Butterfly Effect is directed and written by Eric Bress and J. Mackye Gruber. A college student (Ashton Kutcher) discovers a way to travel back in time to his troubled childhood as himself at that age. His goal is to change his life by changing painful events from his childhood. He finds that a very small change from his childhood will dramatically change his life today.
He is not pleased with the results of his first trip back, so he makes another trip to change another bad event, hoping for a better life. Unfortunately, he must return to his childhood many times, because his alternate future gets worse with each trip. Where his life ends up is anybody's guess. The Butterfly Effect
Zodiac
Zodiac is a 2007 suspense film directed by David Fincher and based on Robert Graysmith's non-fiction books Zodiac and Zodiac Unmasked. It stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, and Robert Downey Jr. A notorious serial killer known as "Zodiac" haunted the San Francisco Bay Area during the late 1960s, leaving several victims in his wake and taunting police with his letters and ciphers mailed to newspapers.
Zodiac tells the story of the men and women who were involved in the hunt for the notorious killer, a case which remains today as one of San Francisco's most famous unsolved crimes. The movie is thrilling and some of the scenes can catch you off guard.Zodiac
The Constant Gardener
The Constant Gardener is a 2005 Academy Award-winning film based on the John le Carré novel of the same name. Directed by Fernando Meirelles (City of God), The Constant Gardener is a dramatic thriller about a man who only grows to truly understand his wife after she's dead.
Rachel Weisz excels as the late Tessa, a passionate, sometimes overbearing activist in Kenya whose motivations unspool in flashback as her other half, shy diplomat Justin (Ralph Fiennes), investigates her fate.
The film was shot largely in Kenya and benefits hugely from an authentic sense of place and people. Director Fernando Meirelles blends high tension with social conscience, giving a human face to the West's exploitation of the Third World. The situation affected the cast and crew to the extent that they set up the Constant Gardener Trust in order to provide basic education around these villages. The Constant Gardener
A Clockwork Orange
A Clockwork Orange is a 1971 film adaptation of a 1962 novel of the same name, by Anthony Burgess. The adaptation was produced, written and directed by Stanley Kubrick. It stars Malcolm McDowell as the charismatic and psychopathic delinquent Alex de Large. He is a teenage hooligan in a near-future Britain, gets jailed by the police. There he volunteers as guinea pig for a new aversion therapy proposed by the government to make room in prisons for political prisoners.
"Cured" of his hooliganism and released, he is rejected by his friends and relatives. Eventually nearly dying, he becomes a major embarrassment for the government, who arrange to cure him of his cure. A pivotal moment is when he and his gang break into an author's home: the book he is writing (called "A Clockwork Orange") is a plea against the use of aversion therapy.A Clockwork Orange
Mullholland Drive
Mulholland Drive is a 2001 Academy Award-nominated genre-defying film written and directed by David Lynch. It stars Naomi Watts, Laura Harring and Justin Theroux.
The plot is structured around an aspiring actress named Betty Elms (Watts), who befriends an amnesiac (Harring) whom she finds hiding in her aunt's apartment when she arrives in Los Angeles, California.
The film includes several other seemingly unrelated vignettes, which eventually connect in various ways, as well as other surreal scenes and images which are all involved in the cryptic narrative.
Strongly acclaimed by many critics, the film has achieved the status of a cult classic. Mulholland Drive
How could I have not put this as the first enlightening video on this blog. This documentary is responsible for the creation of fractal enlightenment and our fractal awakening!
Here you can see the text Online Marketing in our blog header underlined, the advertisement is not so relevant but if you take a look at the first day stats of Kontera on our blog its not so bad. The impressions will definitely be less than ads that automatically display on the page, but this looks like a health click although the eCPM isn't awesome.
We will give you a detailed update about how much of a boost Kontera gives us in December.
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