 When TechSmith Corporation on April 17 informed the update of the version 5.1 of its blockbuster screen capture software, Camtasia Studio, one facility it incorporated is to be able to put Flash movies on iPhones. In the release to the subscribers TechSmith said: “Steve Jobs plans to ship 10 million iPhones this year. Now you can produce your videos for iPhone and iPod touch users, at just the right dimensions, using a simple preset. Your viewers are on the go, so let them bring your videos along!” That it was not a hollow forecast was proved soon enough when Apple made known its Q1-08 results. The iPod and iPhone makers profited $1.05 billion in the quarter on the back of the strongest March quarter revenue and earnings in the company’s history. Apple shipped 2.29 million Macs between Jan and March, up by 51% from Jan-Mar ’07 figures. According to reports, the Apple Q1 results pleasantly overwhelmed most analysts because they thought Apple’s profits would be no more than 94 cents a share, while it actually came to $1.16 per share (+23.4%). Apple’s magical figures are probably not much of a surprise. That is, if you are able to read between the lines. The New York Times on 23rd last has a news item by Miguel Helft that gives the example of one Kip Kedersha who earned $102,000 in little more than a year by just making simple home-solution video clips and hosting it in video sharing site Metacafe. There is a strong message here. Users on the net are increasingly veering toward uploading/watching online web videos. And pray why not! You can do a long list of things by making videos. Here are 10 top to-do fun things with your webcam. But frankly, online videos are the best choices for plenty of other creative/demonstrative/teaching/what-not things. That’s why I’m shortly coming up with an easy-to-learn training course on How-To-Make-Online-Videos for newbie and non-professionals. Interested to know more? Stay tuned. Or else, just opt for this blog’s email posts so you know in time. Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: Commentary, Life on Web
Eastern Metropolitan Bypass, a.k.a EM Bypass, a.k.a Bypass runs from Ultadanga till Garia. There are plans to extend it further, maybe till Baruipur, and who knows, even beyond. A stretch of Bypass is also called JBS Haldane Avenue. Don’t ask which portion, for I’m not sure myself. Take for example the recently opened BMW showroom, OSL Prestige at Silver Arcade, which is the market complex of Silver Spring. The showroom address mentions JBS Haldane Avenue, but perhaps the stretch from this point till Ruby Hospital may also be called Car Avenue. As many as 4 major car showrooms have sprung up here with the promise of another 2 in not-so-distant future. In Silver Arcade itself, giving company to BMW is the Spring Hyundai. Around there a cluster of new hotels are coming up. Down south, a little before Ruby Hospital is Pinnacle Honda, and then comes Dulijan Motors’ Chevrolet showroom in close succession. A notch ahead to the south, after the Calcutta International School, will see Toyota’s cars on display. The construction is going on. Take a left turn to Anandapur. Not far ahead is the showroom of Ford Motors. The one advantage – thus far – with these showrooms is that they can offer test drives a bit more comfortably than what one gets in the cramped city. Some of these have the ‘luxury’ of service lane that is quite useful especially for car vendors. There is no doubt business will blossom at any point on the Bypass in due course. The first movers will enjoy the benefits of vantage places even though the mood is yet to firmly pick up. No wonder some say the EM Bypass is poised to become tomorrow’s Chowringhee. Here are some images taken at OSL Prestige, the BMW showroom last week.   Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: Business, Shops, Traffic
When the MySpaces and Facebooks of the world of ‘online sharing’ came upon us with all the guns blazing, many (mainly the old schools) thought these are fads for the young and so will pass away soon. Instead, as time passes, the Web 2.0 technology is spreading its multi-headed tentacles far and wide. A recent study by Forrester Research predicts that by 2013 the Web 2.0 apps will climb to a $4.6 billion industry. Did I mention ‘industry’? Well, that seems an almost certainty. And of that $4.6 billion pie the major portion will belong to social networks, nearly $2 billion for them. Why the corporate sector will sit up and adopt the new beast is amply answered by the amazing SightSpeed Video Chat that costs just $9.95 a month ($99.95 annually) for business. This package permits 4 persons for video conferencing, each located anywhere on the globe.  SightSpeed has personal free edition too for non-commercial use. The SightSpeed guy’s suggested ten top things to do with a webcam have speeded up my decision to buy a laptop armed with one without delay. The launch of its video mail for MySpace will be another feather in the cap. SightSpeed is however not the first one in the field. It comes pretty long after Skype stole the first-mover limelight, and perhaps later than Google’s GrandCentral interest.  Skype was ordinary in the beginning, but with time it too provides lots of damning nice features. Look at its video conferencing facility as well. In the meantime, away from online chatting, there is now a formidable claimant to the space hitherto monopolized by Yahoo’s Flickr. The Apr 22 News.Com report says that Photobucket “is making a significant change aimed to weave the widely used photo-sharing site more tightly into the Web 2.0 fabric” so as to match Flickr. All in all, as the Web 2.0 phenomenon marches on, there is enough reason to think that the beginning of the surprise called the Internet has perhaps just begun. The developments in the last decade have been so rapid and jaw-dropping that the erstwhile winners like the search engine optimization for websites no longer have the aura around them. The signal is clear on the web horizon. Either take one or more social networking paths, or remain in the realms of history forever. The choice is yours. Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: Commentary, Life on Web
Excuse me if I feel jealous, but it does pay to be better halves of wealthy industrialists. I’m not sure if the term ‘better half’ applies to the female human specie only. I hope it doesn’t, for frankly I won’t mind playing the second fiddle to my wealthy woman if it were so. Unfortunately for me – for us rather – that is not the case. We earn just about enough to make a just about decent living. And when occasions arise such as the ET news of April 15 last about cash-rich better halves, I do try to rise to the occasion to feel flustered with envy. Okay, so what did the ET news say? It informs that while Kokilaben Ambani holds 0.25% of RIL, his worthy son Mukesh holds less than half her holding at 0.12%. And while Sudha Gopalakrishnan, wife of Infosys’ present CEO, has 2.15% of the software major to her name, that of Nandan Nilekani is at 1.46%. The picture is similar with several high profile Indian companies that have leapfrogged from small bases to now occupy the center stage. Heading this heady list is Pia Singh, daughter of KP Singh of DLF. Pia’s 2.27% stake is valued at Rs.2314.26 crore. Next to Pia are Sudha, her Infosys stock worth Rs.1748.19 crore, and Kolkilaben whose RIL stake is valued at Rs.934.65 crore. Kokilaben is lucky because she has holdings in younger son Anil’s companies as well. That comes to Rs.371.35 crore, taking the total of her shareholding worth in her son’s companies to Rs.1306.1 crore. A notable ‘absentee’ in the list is Kiran Mazumdar Shaw of Biocon where she owns close to 40% of the total shareholding. Kiran, a 2005 Padma Bhusan recipient, runs Biocon herself, and is a glorious example of female entrepreneurship achieving singular success. Commemorating 30 years of its coming into being next November, Biocon has just dished out a 1:1 bonus, and an attractive Rs.5 dividend per share including a special dividend of Rs.2.  Kiran in a famous lip-lock with Rajasthan CM, Vasundhara Raje at a function in November 2006 [ image source] Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: Corporate, Investment, People
 A genre of sport, few months old, captures the headlines for several days in a row. Enter cricketainment, the newest avatar of T-20 cricket, packaged so sleek that it has managed to make the Eden full-house on a day when the mercury nearly touched 40 degrees. Thanks must go to the Bollywood badshah Shah Rukh Khan to have ensured an ensemble of VVIPs rarely seen in the city, not to speak of his electrifying presence, full of energy and with full-throated support for the team he co-owns. Here are some glimpses of the supercharged game that the Kolkata Knight Riders won. The pictures are those from today’s editions of the TT and ABP.    Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: Business, Celebration, Showbiz, Sports-n-Games
Experts have their own ways of explaining inflation. Much of those are not within the grasp of common people to make a head or tail. Thus, rising oil prices, bad credits by US banks triggering slowing down of economy, India being still food deficient in certain sectors, India’s rising growth translating to more consumption, etc. mean nothing to the toiling masses for whom the only concern is the prices of essentials having gone beyond reach. Just how costly it is compared to a year back can be gauged from the graphics below taken from the April 14 TT.  It is one thing to do away with the need of a second face cream for the relatively well offs, and completely another for a daily laborer to go nearly empty-handed from the local bazaar. The price rise has been quite sudden over the past 4-5 months, and now it seems there is no respite. Says a know-all person in our locale, “Whatever may happen over the nuclear deal the government will not dare go to polls with the inflation monster looming large.” Looks like he has got it right. If so, we’re spared an imminent slugfest that could have taken this summer’s heat to record levels. Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: Life, Market
After 43 years the train link between Kolkata and Dhaka commenced on the Naba Barsha day, April 14. Flagged off by Pranab Mukherjee, the ceremony also saw the presence of 2 more union ministers, PR Das Munshi and of course Lalu Prasad Yadav. Although the efforts started more than a year back, the reality happened only yesterday. Here are some glimpses of the historic event (the top and bottom pictures are taken from ABP and TT; picture in the middle source AsiaNews)    Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: Celebration, Culture, Life, People
 For the benefit of my readers who do not know Bengali and who do not know how nightmarish the Kolkata roads are, the above script on the back of a nondescript city private bus reads: This year let’s not race against one another.
The thought is noble, but is the picture real? I copied it from April 13 Anandabazar Patrika. Why I think this picture may not be a real thing is because on that very day, that is April 13, there have been couple of fatal road accidents involving the private buses. There is enough cause to feel deeply skeptical and cheated about the way the traffic moves in Kolkata. Here below I reproduce an article in ABP of April 10. Click the image below. It’s written in Bengali, and I’m sorry I cannot give the translation. If you can read Bengali, you’ll have a good grasp of what life is in today’s Bengal.  Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: City Life 1, People, Traffic
As someone whose better part of childhood was spent in Dhakuria, I know how important the arterial Raja Subodh Mullick Road cum Gariahat Road South is. It connects the hitherto southern suburbia with Ballygunge and beyond, the once landfall point to the south of this great city. Up to late 60s the urban life of Kolkata used to thin beyond Ballygunge to its east and south where the boundaries used to be the railway tracks – the Sealdah South tracks at Ballygunge Station and the Budge Budge tracks across which was Dhakuria. The first flyover on the key arterial came up in early 70s, and people rejoiced that Dhakuria is no longer ‘far’ from Gol Park and Ballygunge. Almost 4 decades have since gone by, but the main connector from Garia to Ballygunge has seen no real improvement except the Gariahat flyover some 3-4 years back. This doesn’t mean people have stopped using the road. In fact the number of people using the road in public conveyance or in owned vehicles has increased alarmingly sharply. The road has no space to expand laterally, and beyond Jadavpur it turns out as a great place for performing circus. All kinds of things that move try to jostle past one another in a constant free-for-all one-upmanship. The bad news is that close to Jadavpur PS a massive complex, South City, has come up which has the potential of making every nightmare look inconsequential. It’s time for the mandarins to wake up from deep slumber, which they have with all their skilled might. The result is the proposal for building 2 flyovers (see the TT schematic below). One will be at the Lord’s crossing on Prince Anwar Shah Road. This will pass by South City with probably a pair of connections to it from the complex.  The South City builders want to share the cost to the extent of Rs.12 crore. There will be another new road at the back of the South City complex that will connect with Ghulam Mohammad Shah Road across a big jheel. The second flyover is perhaps what matters more. This will stretch over the Jadavpur PS crossing and end just before the present Dhakuria Bridge. Experts feel the twin flyovers will ease the flow of traffic to a large extent. The catchwords here are ‘large extent’. There is every reason to feel skeptical because a place that hasn’t seen – it’s pretty much the same in the entire Kolkata in fact – any road development in the last 4 decades is like an old bag with thousand holes that can never prevent the ‘leaking’ of wishful thinking no matter how attractive they seem to ordinary eyes. Collated from TT story.Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: Cityscape, Traffic
You may argue you travel in a luxury sedan, air-conditioned, chauffeur driven, tinted glass, with less to bother what goes on outside. How can you feel unsafe on the city roads? True, you’re safe by say 75%, putting the figure arbitrarily. But suppose your car is hit by a bus whose brakes fail, or hit by another vehicle coming the wrong way at you. Feel squeamish, as though how the hell can that happen? Well, the hell the answer is everything can happen on Kolkata roads. Consider for example the case of those 20 who died, trapped in a private bus when it swayed off the road slipping on slush, careening on one side, and diving straight into a ditch full of filth (refer schematic below, courtesy TT).  Did they know even a minute before they met their fate as to what lay waiting for them? The answer would be ‘no’. Yet for all their hopes and aspirations that were never to be, these people no longer live among us. I am not sure about other places in the state, but the moral degradation of average people in the city is so total that you feel scary. Barely 24 hours have passed since the VIP Road accident, but not many people seem to feel bothered about its enormity, about the irreparable loss of human lives. In a superb display of managing the ‘crisis’, the government is painfully quiet. The ministers representing the biggest ruling party perhaps resent that this would happen even before they could settle after exercising their brain in the party congress in Coimbatore. The common people on the road have very little choice. They have to travel in what today’s HT says are coffins on wheels. Why? Look at the pictures below and consider these facts (courtesy HT, Apr 6). You’ll but agree that No One Is Safe On Kolkata Roads. - Both gates are on one side.
- No other exit point is there.
- All windows have iron and steel bars running midway, so no one can climb out in case of an emergency.
- Glass pane at the rear is blocked by net guard and advertisement boards.
- Driver’s cabin has 2 doors, but none is accessible to passengers (incidentally the driver of the ill-fated bus jumped off and escaped relatively unhurt in Apr 4 accident though 20 passengers died).
That’s not all. There still are some more: - Most buses are not checked regularly for snags.
- Drivers race for commission (you and I be damned).
- Tyres, specially the front ones, are resoled, and therefore have no proper grip.
  Picture top: A private bus seen from outside; bottom: inside of a private bus (courtesy Jingalex)I doubt if things will at all change even a tiny bit. For, as I said above, human lives do not matter much in today's Kolkata. The apathy is too stark there for all to see. It is not worth a dime that you and I have the right to live a life of our own in a city that we call ours. Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: City Life 1, Culture, Traffic
 The baton of showcasing trickeries has already passed on to his daughter Maneka, but Indrajaal hero PC Sorcar has still some aces up his sleeves. This was evident recently when the great magician bi-cycled on a pond at his Baruipur studio. [ Picture courtesy, TT] This is clearly awesome…by any yardstick. But then which trick of his is not? PC Sorcar says he never performed Bicycling on Water before. Now that the dress rehearsal is successfully over with Maneka backing up with the hocus-pocus, the next aim of course is to take the trick to larger public arena. As he says, “Maneka and I want to take the trick to a giant stage, maybe on the Dal Lake and if possible on the Red Sea, next year.” Let’s wish him, sorry them, the very best. Like this blog? Get daily posts by email. Labels: People, Showbiz
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