Aayirathil Oruvan - A Quick Review

Aayirathil oruvan, shows how mature Tamil movie industry has become. To be frank, haven'nt seen any Hindi movie worth comparing with this one. Though the main story line revolves round the Chola-Pandya Kingdom's rivalry, its definitely not one of those studio-decorated old history movies. It has a touch of today with a swirl of History. One thing, in order to enjoy the movie, you need to reset your expectation level. Dont even buy ticket with an expectation of watching a normal masala Tamil movie.

Looked to me like, the director is great addict of English movies. The movie gave an impact of watching multiple Hollywood movies in one shot. Yes! many scenes gave me dejavu. It starts like one of those Indiana Jones movies, then moves to goes onto give a feeling of the Anaconda movie. Then quickly it reminded me of some scenes of mummy movie. Then again came the Indiana Jones adventures for some treasure hunt. By the time you feel that, the movie is finished, there comes intermission. Seriously I thought movie was over!!

After intermission, You would be reminded of the movie Apocalypso. Guess, the director has got a hell lot of inspiration from that movie. However, must say the dresses and the locations are so great, that you really feel lo like lost in some world of tribals. Some sort of scary feeling will creep into you without you knowing. You will have your Journey through Gladiator movie scenes, and also the last Samurai scenes. Some fights will give you a feeling of crouching tiger hidden danger! Though I felt the movie is mix of multiple Hollywood movies, director was able to capture the emotions so wonderfully, you really feel that you are a part of the movie. If you know history, you will really appreciate the plot.

I felt the movie is spot-on different from any other tamil movie. It's a real cocktail movie. And a much watchable movie, but not for those faint hearts and under age people.

Pros:

Movie Direction and stunning visuals

Parthiban's acting

Cons:

Fight Scenes should have heard better graphics. Many time i felt People are hanging in the ropes. or graphics were not just right. Could have been better.

Rating:

7/10

Is transliteration the real solution?

A good friend of mine who works for Google recently wrote about transliteration in the Google India's official blog. I am little bit surprised by web giants like Google taking transliteration as an option to get into Indian market. Not just Google, there are some other Indian companies like quilpad are also which are taking this route. If we really look at the segment of people whom this could be helping is the people who already know English and well versed with the English keyboard. If an ordinary native Hindi guy from Uttar Pradesh or Tamil guy from Tamil Nadu is trying to type a mail in his language, he would really find it difficult to use, because most of the people anyway dont know proper English. People might recognize alphabets but to spell even tamil word in english, Its going to be hell. Finally, you ll end up helping the guy, who actually knows english pretty much. In reality you are complicating the matters by making "aam aadmi" (ordinary person) to learn and spell proper English in order for him to write in his language. I seriously doubt about this route's capability in helping Internet to reach the ordinary person. Associations like NASSCOM and CII should have been lobbying strongly for sops for companies which promote multilingual keyboards. I dont know why even regional political parties are not worried about this? I guess everybody would agree with me if I say onscreen keyboard sucks when compared to the physical ones. If tamil or malayalam language keyboard is there, a native would be more happy about using it rather than typing in his native language, then typing in english and then trying to make sense of it.

With the rise of touch screens, I think there is huge chance for native keyboard layout to find its way into the main stream. Then, only you and me, who are comfortable with typing in English would end up using translitteration while the ordinary native user would type in his language in the native keyboards. I feel in order to effectively increase internet penetration in rural India, you should actually be using native keyboard layouts, rather than transliteration.

World wars- no more on the field

In the popular culture, world wars are synonymous with nukes. Governments are spending fortunes on updating the defense equipments. Unfortunately governments are failing to realize the fact that economic war strategies could be the most devil of all. It could be slow but definitely aggravates the frustration in people, leading to internal cracks, which will ultimately crumble by itself. Cold war US tactics were in the similar lines. These economic centers are getting more and more connected to the network. In the need for providing simplicity and transparency, we are getting and more and more vulnerable to cyber world thief and goons. Most of the companies these days are connected and exchange information through the connected terminals. Most of the listed companies for that matter, the issue is the same. Most of you would have heard of the Google - China episode. If one of the giants like Google' most secured infrastructure could be targeting, how long will it take for such an coordinated attack to take place against say stock market infrastructure or the banking infrastructure. A short bursts of irregularities changing numbers is enough to create havoc. How much time it takes against a company CEO's or an ordinary employee's PC/laptop? You might have all those antivirus and antispywares and anti malwares and firewalls and the list might grow on. The so called experts might talk about "layered security" or "complete protection" etc. But in reality none of these experts could help you in a worst case scenario.
Forget about coordinated complicated attacks, Indian government websites are vulnerable to more simpler "out of the book" example attacks. See this or this or this. Government Cyber cells might be possible to identify or track back to the source of the attacks, but wont be easy to stop such things happenings against economic value centers. Even with so much of IT brain in India, India still looks towards the west for any kind of help. Recent 26/11 Mumbai attacks, India had to get US expertise help for tracking the VOIP calls source. Unfortunately Government has yet to for rapid response team or rapid response architecture to stop any kind of misuse or any kind of cyber attack. Though great Firewall of China might be a devil, it lays a foundation for government control in the case of an emergency. Though there might some kind of research work going on universities, but the will to convert these research into usable product is still not there.

3D Television..Timing Issues?

Interesting to read about Samsung annoucing Thin 3D Television. The question is not how good the TV experience is but are we really ready to upgrade? While half of the world is trying to adjust with HDTV upgrades, 3D TV upgrades looks little far away. Just like Color TV did and what HDTV is doing, there is a need for upgrades and investments across the media Continuum. From Video capture devices to end consumer device, you need to upgrade everything. So that raises a question on whether the timing of 3D TV is right?
While definitely there is a lot of opportunity to enhancing the user experience, the question is on the content. Its like a chicken and egg problem. Also, a consolidated effort seems lacking at this point. A consolidated standard committee initiative(ITU) or government push needs to be created or revamped and hence a long way to go for 3D TV become day to day reality. TI's DLP or samsung recent effort, all could have the end result of showing content in 3D, but it will still remain as a premium product. At this point I would like to just pass on 3D TV as the "Peak of Inflated Expectations" of the Gartner's Hype Cycle. So 3D TV Just wait for some more time.

Mobile Ad Networks - You too...Apple?

Recent reports about Apple buying Quattro Wireless did not have any surprise element to it. Its a very expected move with so much hype in the Mobile Ad market after Google's acquisition of Admob. Looking at the history, its not Google which started this, Nokia had earlier acquired Enpocket. Not sure how much money its generating for Nokia. According to Yahoo, which has been running its own mobile ad network, Mobile Ad spending would go up to 19Billion USD by 2012. Lot of other survey put the figures between 6 Billion to 19 Billion. Given this figure and the number of players, I am not sure what is the real carrot, companies are looking at. Its understandable when Google acquired admob, atleast some synergy is out there in terms of Adsense.

In case of Apple, the carrot seems to be at any cost keep Microsoft out of the bay as far as Iphone are considered. News about Microsoft partnering with Quattro or Microsoft even searching for opportunity in Iphone would have really troubled Apple. Any way Apple didn't had a proper platform for Ad delivery. Quattro serves that purpose. Acquisition is more of defensive move rather than a "Copy Google" move. Any way lot more companies still available in the Mobile Ad network space.

Chrome OS - for whom?

Best way to kill competition is to give your product free. When IBM in 2005 did the same by releasing a set of patents to open source. If you look at its mostly the Application patents, where IBM has been facing strict competition. Looks like Google is taking the similar approach in fighting Microsoft's OS near-monopoly. The question is will the idea sell? While Google looks at advertisement as the key cash flow channel, Microsoft looks at OS and Office suite sales for cash flow. In other way, Google is taking Free TV channel approach where as Microsoft takes pay TV channel approach. Interestingly Most of Microsoft profits comes from OEMs and Enterprises, while a lot of individual users use those pirated versions. Though some what serious Microsoft seems not very serious about tackling this problem. This being the situation, who is Google targeting? Enterprise or Individual users? Linux has been trying to enter enterprise market for quite some time but with little success. The mantra of service-based pricing has not really been taking off with linux for some reason. Even Google Enterprise is also not a big hit enterprises. So Google might not be betting big time on the Enterprise sector. Here Google plays a very interesting game of targeting the mobility machines (netbooks/laptops). This is the only world where OEMs really make money. Branded PCs face a very strong competition from custom assembled PCs. Laptops or netbooks don't have such a competition. So bundling the OS price into End product is the best option to make money. So OEMs would be one channel of making money for google. Penetration into individual customer is again another tougher battle for Google. Here it battles Apple, Microsoft or the closer alternative Linux. However the difference here is Chrome OS is trying to make PC as webclients, with most things hosted some where in the cloud. Just like TV, but an extreme interactive one. Probably with a lot of Ad powered free applications, thus changing the meaning of free and premium applications. Advantage is the portability of your data as well. However the disclaimer is you got to pay for internet. ISPs would have great advantage of making more money. This restricts a normal user in some or the other way. \

Media has made so much hype that the word "Social" is being observed as online. All this days man is being seen as social animal, now he is being perceived as online social animal. I wont be wrong, if I say online OS could bring in more virtual Social Animal attitude to man.

New year..new hopes

Till this year to be frank I have never taken any new year resolutions. But this year I am on to it. I am not going to discuss any resolutions here or how I am going to achieve it, but am hoping to keep up to the resolutions.

Top 10 Things that I would like to have to make my life more simpler are..
1. Unified Bill Format across all super markets in India.. Would be good if its direct software readable. But great if they could email my bill directly in qif or some other standard format. I can track my expense with much ease.
2. Sub 20$ PC to TV wireless connectivity. Sick of burning CD/DVD or copying movies to my USB. If I have a overlay of TV with PC functionality on TV then nothing greater than that. infinite possibilities. Currently thinking of connecting Mac Mini to TV. But its a damn costly solution.
3. Sub 20$ accelerometer based universal remote for my TV/DVD/STB/....or whatever I have.
4. Slick LED/LCD display on the back of my car with voice recognition for input. Educated people here drive more crazily than uneducated here. Seems need to change to definition of "educated".
5. Low cost Small flying ambulances/emergency vehicles. A must in places like India, where cars are status symbols and not necessities. I think Tatas need to think beyond vehicles on roads.
6. RTI (right to Information) was the great first step in India. But now govt agencies are saying they cant handle so many querries. Solution for this problem is to make details available online proactively. Digitize every government agency workflow. Make workflows more transparent. I think government needs to mandate this.
7. Realtime location sensing inside home. Next time I lose my car key, I should be able to search in my PC and it gives me the location. UWB..rfid..looks can have wonderful opportunity.
8. A cheap light weight e-book reader. ofcourse must have pdf reader. Sick of converting pdfs into multiple formats for multiple ebook readers.
9. A non power hungry fast Virtualisation base OS. Which can load any mobile OS with wine-like application, which can run any cross-OS applications. Thats what I call My mobile.
10. I need to have more ideas :P