The War Between MSFT and GOOG’s Not Yet Over
Posted: February 4, 2008 Filed under: Business, Finance, GMail, Google, internet, laptops, Microsoft, Software, Stocks, Technology, yahoo, YouTube, Zune | Tags: Acquisition, Business, computers, Consumer Rights, Finance, Google, internet, Law, Life, Merger, Microsoft, Technology, Thoughts, yahoo 24 Comments »The other day, I made some points on this entire move made by Microsoft. Most of this was focused on the effect it will have on Yahoo and how the combined entity will be able to pull off such a humongous merger. There is a very interesting post in the Official Google blog that totally highlights their insecurity:
So Microsoft’s hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It’s about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.
Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.
It’s tantamount to one thief calling the other person a thief! What about Google’s interest in the 700 MHz spectrum? What about their “habit” of copying each product that their competitors release? None of their products like Google Documents, Google Talk, Google Mail etc. are totally “original”. They shouldn’t even be talking about Microsoft’s “legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses”. Their financial statements were being audited sometime back because the regulatory authorities felt that they were incomplete. Correct me if I’m wrong.
It’s not that I’m against Google. In fact, most of my regular readers call me an “Anti Microsoft” person. So this post is quite out of the line for me. You won’t read such good words for Microsoft very often on this blog.
I think Google feels quite threatened and they have good reason to be. Microsoft has a huge share in the PC Market and if they were to merge with Yahoo, then the internet dominance fight will only get more interesting. The consumers will benefit in either case. So it’s good for the consumers I would say.
Further, they say:
Could a combination of the two take advantage of a PC software monopoly to unfairly limit the ability of consumers to freely access competitors’ email, IM, and web-based services?
Google shouldn’t even be commenting on the monopoly issue here because this is exactly what they are trying to do now. How else would you explain their coming out with every possible internet service and all of them being accessible from a single Google account?
And you’ll find it interesting to know that I could hardly find any “Google suggestions” when I started typing “Google trouble” or “Google audit”. Of course, Yahoo! gave me more results for once.
Market Watch (owned by News Corp) has another take on this entire issue. I kind of agree with what they have to say because it’s perfectly logical and quite unbiased. While they mention this positive point:
If Microsoft’s acquisition of Yahoo is consummated…
…the Goliath of the PC desktop will represent the one truly credible competitor to Google in the online world. (News Corp. is the owner of MarketWatch.com, the publisher of this column.)
They also mention the negatives:
Put it all together, and Microsoft/Yahoo vaults to the number one position with site traffic that’s nearly double Google’s. That’s the good news. The combination would still lag Google’s sales by a factor of two to one — $2.6 billion for Microsoft/Yahoo in the last quarter of 2007, despite the traffic advantage, as compared with $4.8 billion for Google.
And I agree that Microsoft +Yahoo is the only way that Google can be stopped. Otherwise, even though Google propounds “Do No Evil”, this is exactly what the company has started to do and will do full scale in the future.
Movie: The Orphanage
Posted: February 4, 2008 Filed under: Entertainment, General ramblings, Guillermo del Toro, Life, Movies, Thoughts, YouTube | Tags: Belen Reuda, Entertainment, General ramblings, graphic novels, Guillermo del Toro, Horror Movies, Life, M. Night Shyamalan, Movies, Pan's Labyrinth, Persepolis, Super Bowl, The Orphanage, Thoughts, YouTube 12 Comments »
The Orphanage is a great movie based on the supernatural powers. I’m not really a fan of horror movies, but this one was exceptional. Luckily, I got to view it in an independent theater called Moxie Cinema here. They keep playing all kinds of international and off-beat movies. And one of the best things about this theater is that every part of the service is very personalized. The capacity of the theater is quite small- it’s no bigger than two large sized bedroom. They have a lovely wooden stage. Before the start of each show, someone actually gets up there and gives a general introduction to the movie and other upcoming attractions. You also get beer- which no other theater allows (at least in my town). Today was the Super Bowl night here; so I managed to get a ticket even though I reached just two minutes before the start of the show.
Back to the movie- One of the reasons for watching this movie was because it’s been made by Guillermo del Toro, the same person who made Pan’s Labyrinth. The treatment is somewhat similar to The Sixth Sense. So, if you enjoyed Shyamalan’s masterpiece, then there is a high probability that you’ll love this movie. I like the fact that there is a very strong storyline connecting the events. It’s not like those creepy horror movies where the director’s intention is to only make you jump out of your seats.
Some of the scenes in this movie were quite scary and there were two girls sitting behind me who had put their mufflers to good use. Even I jumped out of my seat at least a couple of times- and once, I got a horrible cramp, that took at least ten minutes to subside.
The movie is primarily about Laura, brilliantly played by Belen Rueda, who comes back to her old orphanage to open a small home for special children. She has a husband (Carlos) who is a doctor and an adopted child, Simon, who is HIV positive. Now starts the horror show. Simon starts talking to his parents about his invisible friends and how he plays with them. Obviously, the parents don’t fall for it. About half an hour into the movie, the boy disappears. Nobody knows why or how. The rest of the movie is about a mother’s quest to get back her child at any expense. I can’t talk about any of the other scenes of this movie without giving away the plot line.
I seem to have developed a special affection for Spanish films these days. I watched this movie tonight after at least ten days, which is a very long interval by my standards. Be prepared to feel a little morose once the movie is over. So if you want to watch a movie with a happy ending or you like those John Cusack kind of horror movies, then give this movie a miss.
The theater was also airing trailers of Persepolis, a movie on the famous Graphic Novel. I can’t wait to get a copy of that next. If any of you have seen this movie or read the graphic novel, then please let me know about your views.
Trailer:
Music Review- Jodhaa Akbar
Posted: January 23, 2008 Filed under: a r rahman, A.R.Rahman, Aishwarya Rai, Bollywood, Entertainment, Jodhaa Akbar, Movies, Music, Thoughts, YouTube | Tags: Aishwarya Rai, AR Rehman, Bollywood, Entertainment, Hrithik Roshan, Jodhaa Akbar, Movies, Music, YouTube 31 Comments »
Jodhaa Akbar is Ashutosh Gowariker’s soon to be released film and is based on the love story of the Rajput princess Jodhaa and the famous Mughal Emperor, Akbar. The music of this movie makes a big splash, typical AR Rehman style. Ever since the promos have been aired, I have been eagerly waiting for the album to be released. Without further ado, let’s get down to the nitty gritty!
The first track of the album, Azeem-O-Shahenshah opens with lots of earth shattering beats and fan fare. It transports you back to the Mughal Era and makes you want you dance, in a way. It’s been sung by Mohammad Aslam and Bony Chakravarthy. Never heard either of them singing before. Rehman does a good job of mixing some soft tunes in between his trademark beats.
The second track, Jash-e-Bahaara, has been beautifully sung by Javed Ali. It’s a very melodious and romantic song. I have seen the song on Youtube (Click here) and Aishwarya Rai looks really pretty. I’m not really sure if Hrithik Roshan suits the role of Akbar. Hrithik just looks like Hrithik! Towards the end of the album, you’ll also find an instrumental theme based on this song.
The third track, Khwaja Mere Khwaja, has been sung by the maestro, A.R Rehman himself and is my favorite 
It reminds me of Ishq Bina from Taal and Piya Haji Ali from Fiza. I have always felt that AR Rehman excels when it comes to Sufi music. I don’t know how he manages to compose these songs, because this genre is definitely one of the most difficult to even conceptualize. I’m a sucker for A.R Rehman’s voice because it’s quite distinct and a little “cracked”, if you know what I mean.
Sonu Nigam and Madhusree have done a decent job in the next song, Inn Lamho Ke Daaman Mein. I didn’t really like this song much, because it gets spoilt by some unnecessary strong vocals. The entire effect is not very good. The last song, Man Mohanna, which has been sung by Bela Shende, is also quite dull compared to the first few tracks in the album. You might like it if you are fine with devotional songs.
All in all, I highly recommend this album. It lives up to the expectations of AR Rehman fan(atics)s and is one of the best Hindi Movies albums to be released in a long time. The last that I liked was Guru, which had also been composed by AR Rehman. 
I’m not sure if I’ll watch the movie- I don’t fancy Hrithik Roshan trying his level hard to portray the role of Akbar. Wasn’t Akbar a little rotund? Hrithik should have put on some weight, at least. We could have expected some more perfectionism from him. Anyway, this is a music review and I don’t intend to spoil it by talking about Hrithik Roshan.
You can download the album from this link.
Rating: 4/5
Let’s end this review by watching a trailer from the movie:
Aggregate All Your Online Feeds
Posted: January 22, 2008 Filed under: Blogging, Business, Facebook, Finance, GMail, Google, Howto, Orkut, Social Networking, Software, Technology, Thoughts, Tumblr, yahoo, YouTube | Tags: blogger, Blogging, bloglines, Business, digg, esnips, facebook, Finance, Google, Howto, Microsoft, MyBlogLog, netvibes, Orkut, social bookmarking, stumbleupon, Technology, Thoughts, Web 2.0, Wordpress, yahoo, YouTube 12 Comments »Online social networks seem to be proliferating at an exponential rate and it has become quite necessary for us to aggregate them in one place. It’s difficult to keep track of different people and their online activity in different networks. There are lots of websites online where you can aggregate all your online accounts and then, circulate a “master feed”, that simplifies the entire process. I really love this idea and have been tinkering with it since the past couple of days. These are some of the websites that I would recommend:
1. Friendfeed- Started by three ex-Google employees, and still in beta phase. You need to request an invitation to join it. I got mine on the same day. They plan to make this service public by the end of next month. The UI is extremely simple and resembles Google. Friendfeed tops my list for the simplicity of the sign up process (less than 30 seconds), and the overall usability. You can aggregate all your online accounts, such as Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Facebook status updates, Netflix queue, Amazon wish list, Tumblr, Youtube, Blogs, Digg, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Delicious…I’m tired! Your friends can just subscribe to the “master feed” and know what you’ve been doing everywhere. Simplicity is what we should aim for. Take a look at my Friendfeed page.
People can also comment on your activities and decide if they “Like it”. Deleting a particular activity from your feed is also very easy and takes only a single click. You can also install a bookmarklet that lets you post anything that you liked to your friendfeed profile. You can also install a Facebook application that will integrate your Friendfeed with your Facebook profile. I haven’t seen these features in any of the other “Aggregation” services.
The only drawback that I see here is that there is no way of adding any sort of single sentence profile. Louisgray.com has ten suggestions for its improvement.
Rating: 5/5
2. Soup.io- Very similar to friendfeed, minus the ability to comment. The best part is that you can try the service without even signing up. Of course, if you want to make your profile permanent, then you need to make an account, that takes only 20 seconds. You can customize the look of your page by adding a theme and editing the CSS. But I didn’t like the fact that I need to click twice in order to delete a particular entry (once, initially, and the second time, to confirm) and for me, that’s very important! But yes, it’s open to public and you don’t need to wait for an invitation. Take a look at my soup page.
Rating: 4.5/5
3. Readr- This has been in existence since a longer time, compared to Friendfeed and Soup.io. Again, you have the ability to comment on particular items, choose a theme and merge all your online accounts together. There is nothing unique about this service, IMO. Soup.io and Readr are clones of each other. Readr’s output of the feeds is not that nice looking and it kind of looks jumbled up. Another problem is that when you initially set up an account with them, then your items will be shown in the order you added the feeds and not in the chronological order. So, you might have three pages of Delicious, two pages of Stumbleupon, one page of Digg etc. You get the picture. Take a look at my page for an example. The process of adding accounts was a little more cumbersome because the default number of accounts that are available are less compared to Friendfeed or Soup.io.
Rating: 3.75/5
Apart from these major player, there are others such as Mugshot, 30boxes (the sign up process needed me to click on a link in an email and that is a complete no-no when we compare it with its competitors), etc. The bottomline- The web 2.0 sites are showing a tremendous upsurge in the usage. If you don’t sign up for an aggregator today, you very well have to a couple of months down the line. And what are those RSS feeds for? We need to embrace anything that helps us save time (and become lazier).
Replaying Old Ads and Songs
Posted: January 12, 2008 Filed under: advertisements, advertising, Business, General ramblings, India, Television, TV Sitcoms, YouTube | Tags: advertisements, Bajaj, Business, Cadbury, Complan, Doordarshan, General ramblings, India, Life, Mahabharat, Marketing, Rasna, Television, Thoughts, TV Sitcoms, YouTube 109 Comments »Ever since I wrote that post on Malgudi Days, I have not stopped thinking about Indian Television and the shows/advertisements/jingles that we used to watch in ’80s and early ’90s. If you’re away from India, like me, then it is likely that you miss these shows much more and can’t wait to catch a glimpse of these.
I’ve tried to collect some of them in this post-
1. Ek Titli Anek Titli (Thanks Bong’o'P’ondit)- An old song that talks about the strength of unity.
2. Mile Sur Mera Tumhara- The objective of the video was to instill a sense of pride and promote unity amongst Indians, highlighting the different linguistic communities and societies that live in India. Created in 1988 by Doordarshan. (From Wikipedia)
3. Humara Bajaj Ad- We hardly get to see such genuine, patriotic ads these days!
4. Doodh Doodh Doodh- It’s fresh. It’s pure. It’s co-operative Milk! Not so sure about that anymore. The proportion of water is definitely greater than milk. Lovely ad though.
5. Surf Lalitaji Commercial- Bhaaaisaab! Need I say more?
6. Jungle Book- Chaddi pehen ke Phool Khila Hai 
Wasn’t he the hottest guy?
7. Mahabharat Opening Credits- Every Sunday morning, every single household in the country had this song blaring from their television sets..I’m dead sure.
P.S- I don’t mean to hurt the feelings of people belonging to other religious sects. It’s just a general recollection.
8. Cadbury India Ad (Kuch Khaas Hai)- Never seen a hotter batsman…seriously.
9. Yeh Joh Zindagi Hai- Beatiful Title Track sung by none other than Kishore Kumar and starring Shafi Inamdar, Swaroop Sampat, Rakesh Bedi and Satish Shah.
10. Orangie Orangie I love you Rasna!
11. Complan Commercial- The young stars in this ad are supposedly Shahid Kapoor and Ayesha Takia.
Famous punch line- I’m a Complan Girl! I’m a Complan Boy!
12. Old Liril Commercial (1975)- I’m surprised that they allowed a bikini clad woman to be aired in an ad in 1975. 
13. Surabhi can be viewed at Youtube. (Thanks Ulag- for reminding me)
Some ads I couldn’t find-Does anyone have these video?
1. Bajaj Ad- Jab mein chota bachcha tha, badi shararat karta tha…meri chori pakdi jaati…tab roshan hota Bajaj.
2. Vicco Turmeric Nahi Cosmetic ..Vicco Turmeric Ayurvedic Cream.
3. Boost Ad (Kapil Dev)- Boost is the secret of MY energy…OUR energy!
4. Priya Tendulkar as Rajani. When I tried searching for this, I only found hits relevant to Rajnikanth and Sivaji. 
5. Old Nirma Ad
Please feel free to add more to this list. I’ll edit this post accordingly.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: India, Marketing, Advertisements, Business, Youtube, Doordarshan, Bajaj, Mahabharat, Cadbury, Rasna, Complan, Thoughts, Life
Knut the Polar Bear
Posted: January 8, 2008 Filed under: Animals, Knut, Polar Bear, YouTube | Tags: Animals, Berlin Zoo, Knut, Polar Bear, YouTube 12 Comments »Knut, is a one year old polar bear who is being brought up at Berlin Zoo, after his mother refused to accept him. The animal rights activists worldwide caused a ruckus over this issue and they wanted Knut to be killed, instead of being raised by humans. Their reasoning was that it is “shameful” for a wild animal to be brought up by humans and turned into a domestic pet.
I can’t believe that people who profess to be lovers of animals can even issue such a statement in the first place. Secondly, take a look at Knut (and a video here)
How can anyone have the heart to kill him? Knut is the first polar bear to have survived in more than thirty years at the Berlin Zoo. Just when you think that the zoo keepers and the other officials are a hero, another piece of news comes in the limelight- That the very same zoo who had stood up for their action, has now refused to save the lives of two other polar bears, who are not being fed by their mother. Why? because they don’t want to get into th Knut mania again.
They have not been able to spot the two polar bears recently and think that the mother- after realizing that the cubs are ill- might have either let them die or killed them herself, and later, eaten them up.
The zoo again went back to its former policy (after another public outcry) of saving the cubs because another polar bear, Vera, is about to give birth.
Most of the wild animals who are brought up in captivity, if they survive get very domesticated and lose their natural, wild ability to defend themselves. So many times, after they’re brought up, the care takers leave them in the wild, hoping that they will survive, which is often not the case.
The important question here is whether we should let nature take its course (what the zoo officials did in the case of the two polar bears) or interfere and try to protect the animal in danger (in the case of Knut)? People have different opinions and given the small rate of survival in captivity, many of us would feel that its better for nature to take its course of action.
Personally, I like the way Knut is being raised by hand. This way, we’re at least trying to save the bear’s life, even though the animal might not survive in the future.
Blogged with Flock
Tags: Knut, animals, polar bear, berlin zoo, animal rights, youtube
Track Santa
Posted: December 24, 2007 Filed under: Christmas, General ramblings, India, Santa Claus, Taj Mahal, Thoughts, YouTube | Tags: Crhistmas, General Rambling, India, Santa Claus, Taj Mahal, Thoughts, YouTube 8 Comments »This website helps you track Santa Claus, as he delivers presents all over the world tonight. No, don’t laugh! Keep the faith!
There is a cool Google Map that shows the cities/towns where Santa’s already delivered the goodies.
Here is the video of Santa’s first sighting-
There is this video where Santa is shown flying over the Taj Mahal. Err…isn’t flying over the Taj Mahal prohibited? Maybe the Government makes an exception for Santa Claus.
For other videos, check out this page from Youtube.
There is a page that’s titled “Is He Real?”. According to the website, of course, he’s real. Another page tracks the number of cookies he’s already eaten. Want to know the number? It had crossed 1 billion the last time I checked. The counter gets updated every nano second. Not a very good message heath wise, eh?
Yes, I used to believe in this stuff as a kid too. Not anymore. If anyone were to ask me if it’s real, then I wouldn’t come up with such elaborate lies. At one particular place in the website, it’s written-
I can’t stop squirming in my chair. This website is probably getting a lot of hits. Whatever! Happy Holidays everyone.
P.S- Sorry for not replying to your comments. I’ll do that as soon as I can.
Blogged with Flock
Top Greasemonkey Scripts
Posted: December 12, 2007 Filed under: Amazon, Blogging, Facebook, General ramblings, GMail, Google, greasemonkey, Movies, Social Networking, Thoughts, Wordpress, YouTube | Tags: add ons, Blogging, facebook, flock, General ramblings, Gmail, Google, greasemonkey, Movies, Mozilla Firefox, Technology, Thoughts, web browsers, Wordpress, YouTube 10 Comments »The power of customizing your internet experience with the help of Greasemonkey Scripts is limitless and it’s one of the best things about using Mozilla Firefox. All of these scripts also work with the social web browser, Flock. In case you didn’t know, Greasemonkey is an add on that lets you install user made scripts.
Here’s a list of my favorite Greasemonkey scripts (I’m using ALL of them currently)-
For Facebook Users-
UnF*ck Facebook- If you’re sick of rummaging through millions of third party applications on your friends’ profile pages before you reach the Wall, then this is the script for you. I have been using this script since yesterday and I would give it a 5/5. It’s that good. I was transported back to the time when Facebook didn’t have all those annoying Facebook applications.
Amazon Users-
Cleaner Amazon(screenshot available)- I really love buying books and electronics from Amazon and if I were richer, then I would have spent al my money there. This script “gets the useful book information (pub date, ISBN, #pages) closer to the top, eliminates some useless sections (best value, customers also bought, etc.).”
Movie Freaks-
The Movie Dude(screenshot available)- It adds cross links between many movie sites, such as Rotten Tomatoes, IMDB, Netflix, Yahoo! Movies, Flixster etc. It’s really cool and you should definitely give it a try. For example- Just search for any movie in the IMDB wesbite and you’ll find small favicons that will cross link to the other movie sites.
Search function made easier- LookItUp lets you search for any word of your choice on various websites such as Google, Wikipedia, Answers.com, The Free Dictionary etc. without leaving the web page. All you gotta do is highlight the word and press “?”. There are many other shortcuts that can be learned from the developer’s page.
Delicious_Blank: Adds a target _blank to links so that they can open in a new tab instead of a new window.
Textarea Backup: The primary purpose of this userscript is to save having to retype lost emails, forum posts, bug submissions, etc. The backup should be transparent so if the page is reloaded for whatever reason, be it browser crash, unintended exit or a forgetful website, the previously entered text will be restored.
Pre-Fill Comments Form: Complete the author, email & URL fields (& focus on the message box) in most comment forms by hitting ‘ALT+C’ .It is designed to work with wordpress blogs, but will work with any blog that uses the same id’s for fields. You will be asked for your name/email/URL the first time you run the script. It will then remember your values so you never have to fill them out again! To change your name/email/url at a later date just hit ‘SHIFT+ALT+C’ and you will prompted for your new values.
Google Service Enhancers-
Google Search Results Ultimate Makeover- It adds a number of amazing features such as Google Suggest, search results are displayed in two columns instead of one, Adds Google Page Rank, enables snap shot, add favicons to all links, embeds videos right into the search results, removes all ads from the search page etc. Personally, I love this script a lot.
Edit: Forgot to add that I also like to use Customize Google along with this add on because it provide links to other search engines and blocks Google Analytics cookies.
Mailto 2 Webmail: Makes “mailto” links open in your favorite web-based email account, instead of a pop-3 client (like Outlook, Eudora, Thunderbird, etc.) Supports Gmail, Yahoo Mail, and Google Apps Mail.
Google Services in HTTPS: Change Google Url services using HTTP by same service using HTTPS for security.
Google Extra- Displays results for google image search, video search, wikipedia search, dictionary.com search and Dict.CN search alongside normal google searches.
From my Previous Posts-
WordPress Ninja Comment- Respond directly from the comment administration panel on your dashboard, by either a comment or an email or both.
Social Bookmarking for WordPress- Generates pure html code for adding social bookmarking links (with favicons with buttons)to blog posts at wordpress.com which users can click to add the blog post page to their fav. bookmark sites like del.icio.us,digg & 20 other bookmarking sites.
Are you lost? First time using a greasemonkey script? don’t worry! All you gotta do is make sure you’re using Firefox/Flock web browser. Then install the greasemonkey add on. After that, you’re ready to install any of the above mentioned scripts.
Social Bookmarks:
What A Weekend!
Posted: December 3, 2007 Filed under: Entertainment, General ramblings, Life, Movies, Thoughts, YouTube | Tags: Entertainment, General ramblings, hollywood, Life, Movies, Thoughts, YouTube 19 Comments »I saw three good movies this weekend-Elizabeth: The Golden Age, The Shipping News and Platoon.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age-
I hadn’t really liked the first part much, but wanted to watch this one anyway. Cate Blanchett’s acting potential wasn’t fully realized in my opinion. Clive Owen played the role of Sir Walter Raleigh and was a treat to watch. The extravagant costumes and the magnificent sets were larger than life, so much so that I almost lost track of the main story line.
My biggest complaint with Shekhar Kapur’s direction is that he focused more on the chest heaving and reactions of the different characters than the war at the end. The Spanish Armada wasn’t intense enough, Cate Blanchett didn’t really behave like the political queen that we expected her to be like. Like I said before, the fault doesn’t lie with her acting, it lies with the direction. I wanted to watch some kind of political urgency in this movie, which never happened.
I’ll remember this movie for the sheer flow of lace…and the short war at the end, where they showed some fire ships. I think Shekhar Kapur remarked somewhere that he has so much of material in Elizabeth that he can make another sequel. Why didn’t he put in some more amount of facts in this one then? I might not be interested in watching the last one.
Rating: 7/10
The Shipping News:
The first movie that I’ve personally come across that’s better than the novel. The movie is based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Annie E. Proulx. I read this book about three years back and somehow managed to finish it in two months. It was long, dull and boring with too many details. Probably that’s the reason that the movie turned out so well. The novel supplied all the visual details that were necessary to create this cinematic beauty. (Trailer)
Kevin Spacey is phenomenal as the main protagonist, Quoyle, who works as an ink setter at a newspaper house. He belongs to a family that has many dark secrets; secrets that he’s unaware of, until he shifts to the town of Newfoundland along with his daughter Bunny, at the insistence of his aunt, Agnis (Judi Dench).
Cate Blanchatt has a small and powerful role as Kevin Spacey’s wife. Her name’s Petal. She’s more of a free bird and only too happy to have a puppy dog for a husband because he gives her the freedom to court other guys outside her marriage and even bring them home, to her bed.
After Petal dies in a road accident, Quoyle leaves the town and gets a job as a journalist in the local newspaper of Newfoundland. Along with his foster aunt and his daughter Bunny, they stay in the old house of their forefathers…a house that’s tied to the ground with strong ropes and was dragged to its present place by the early Quoyles.
The movie has its moments and you’ll wish that they don’t get over. I don’t know if I should reveal the entire story line here because it might spoil your fun. I simply loved the background score too.
Julianne Moore plays the role of a caretaker of a child day care. She also has a ‘sensitive’ son who is slow at picking up things, because he wasn’t given enough oxygen during his birth.
Judi Dench, again, delivers an amazing performance. I think I liked her the best in the movie Notes on a Scandal. She has an air of mystery surrounding her in this movie, a mystery that will catch you off guard towards the end.So, if you like Kevin Spacey, Cate Blanchett and Judi Dench, then that’s reason enough to watch this movie.
Rating: 10/10
Platoon
Yay! Finally watched it. I can’t believe I hadn’t watched this movie. It’s definitely one of the best war movies out there. As good as Schindler’s List, if not better. Charlie Sheen, Johhny Depp, Forest Whitaker, Willem Foe…can’t get better than this! (Trailer)
Frankly speaking, I really don’t know what to write about this movie. I’m at a loss of words. Instead of focusing on the brotherhood and how soldiers stand up for each other through thick and thin, this movie exploits the political vibrations that are omnipresent in any group, and more than ever, when all of them face death. The real story starts when Elias and Barnes find themselves at opposite ends over a certain issue. From then onwards, all the boys are forced to take sides. Instead of fighting the enemy, they start fighting amongst themselves.
As Taylor (Charlie Sheen) wonderfully puts it-
“The enemy is within us”.
What do I say about Charlie Sheen? Boy, he looks SO hot. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, seriously.
Rating: 10/10
All tomatoes, eggs and criticisms are welcome.
Let’s Flock Together
Posted: November 24, 2007 Filed under: Blogging, Facebook, General ramblings, Life, Social Networking, Technology, Thoughts, YouTube | Tags: Blogging, browser, facebook, flickr, flock, General ramblings, Life, Mozilla Firefox, Technology, Thoughts, YouTube 20 Comments »Those of you who love Mozilla Firefox will absolutely swoon over the ‘social browser’ Flock. It’s out of beta finally and version 1 was released in early November. It’s an absolute pleasure using it because it has a number of blogging and social networking tools. It has a number of wonderful features:
1. Inbuilt tool for writing a blog post: Just like Firefox users can add Performancing, Flock has this tool which has all the basic features needed for writing a bog post. I haven’t yet tried it, but for those of you who write short posts (esp. after reading something on the internet), this feature will definitely come handy.
2. Screenshot: There is an amazing extension which can take screenshots of all the web pages! This reduces my reliance on Snippy and Microsoft OneNote.
The greater amount of integration there is in a browser, the better it is.
3. Remain signed into all those networking website right from the comforts of your browser: Yes! All you Facebook, Youtube, and Flickr enthusiasts, this one is for you. (Take a look at the picture above) You can use all the basic features of Facebook right from this sidebar. Same goes for Flickr and Youtube.
4. Upload pictures to Photobucket/Flickr/Facebook directly from your browser when the pictures are stored in your hard disk.
5. There is a “Media” tab that lets you browse through different Youtube videos and search and play your favorite ones in a mini window that always remains at the top. So, even if you are browsing the internet, the video window will stay on top of your current page. This reduces the need to stay on Youtube while watching videos. You can also browse recently uploaded photos on Flickr/Photobucket or photos uploaded by your friends on Facebook. (Take a look at the picture above).
6. Inbuilt Clipboard: Let’s you drag and drop any URL, picture, text from a webpage on to the sidebar for later use.
Too good to be true huh?
6. I even like their Feed Reader. It’s much cooler than Firefox’s.
7. There is a tab called “My World” that provides a summary of everything that’s 
functioning in your browser at the current moment.
8. You can add other Flock users to your friend list using an add on called “Me.dium” and see what they’re browsing. I haven’t yet given this one a try, but soon, I will. If any of you want to add me, then leave me a comment.
Most of the Firefox plug ins and add ons work with Flock. My biggest fear was if the Greasemonkey script will work and it does!
Flock has special features that imports all your settings (including the add ons) from your Firefox browser.
The only thing lacking now is perhaps “Themes”. I’m not really a user of browser themes; so it doesn’t really matter to me.
Another really cool thing that I noticed is that suppose you are reading one of your friend’s blogs. When you hover your mouse over their pictures, which in case they’ve uploaded from their Flickr album, then your browser will prompt you and let you view their entire Flickr album in the “Media stream at the upper corner of your browser. You can also ask your browser to let you know if your friends have updated their albums recently. Yes, lots of cool stuff…
So, why don’t you give it a try? Let’s flock n roll!
