Another G-service

Google can't stay quite for too long now, can they... They are now coming up with a new service, Google Voice, which is designed to help the person calling you, get to you on any one of the myriad locations you are likely to be in (home, mobile, office desk, lab etc). The way it works is, they give you a special number which gets mapped to all your configured contact numbers. So, calls to this special number can be received on any of your configured contact numbers. This is far from being a brave new idea with many companies already providing similar services (just Google for it).

If you go through the homepage for this service you will see a lot more features. As exciting as this may sound, the service is currently under private beta for GrandCentral users, a company that Google bought quite some time back. And if and when it comes out of private beta, the service is likely to be available only in US. The rest of the world will just have to wait for Google's benevolence to cross the seas. :-( And considering the big market in India and innovative ideas that the telecom service providers here come up with, we can expect an alternative to come up pretty soon. From what I remember, Airtel already had a similar service though only compatible with their mobile and landline services.

Timeless...

In the midst of drastic attempts by the cricket administrators to make the sport more TV friendly (T20, T10 gully cricket) and compete with other sports like football, basketball etc, here is an interesting bit of info I didn't know off until today.

Imagine if we had stuck with the "Timeless" format for tests and we leave the Sri Lankan cricket team to bat on a dead wicket... they will keep batting till the fat lady is in her grave!

Movie Review : Delhi 6

I caught this much anticipated second movie of Rakeysh Mehra during its first weekend after release. I was not really keen on this movie till the music released and got more interested after a couple of colleagues gave me a positive review after they watched it on the day the movie released.

The movie describes the "holiday' journey of an American born to Indian parents coming to India to drop off his grandmother who wishes to 'rest in peace' back home. An "All American" Aby baby comes to the chawls of Old Delhi to be greeted by the contrasts that would surprise even folks who have stayed in India all along! Apart from a few "cool" and "nice" remarks he is not too perturbed by what is transpiring in the antiquated streets of Delhi-6. While taking in the smell, sound and taste of Delhi-6 our hero slowly falls in love (desi style incest) with his uncle’s daughter. While poking his American value system onto the almost childishly immature occupants of Delhi 6, he incurs their wrath in the most obvious problem that could crop up, communal tension. All this under the backdrop of the monkey man controversy that hit the Delhi streets in 2001. The movie climax is obvious and expected in more ways than one, and hence I skip it. :-).

There isn't a strong storyline or great performances to note. Throughout the movie there is an innate sense driven into people that "India Works" while making Cliché yet needed comments on politically incited communal tensions. The music is good, the screenplay is excellent and Old Dilli plays a wonderful backdrop to this movie. A see once and forget experience, I give Delhi-6  a 6.5 on 10, docking 0.5 off for not living up to expectations.

BTW, I up the music review rating of Delhi-6 to 7.5. I liked the picturisation of a couple of songs. :-)

Now just a slumdog!

Azharuddin Mohammed reached heights he could not imagine, saw places he could not even dream about and shared stage and red carpet with legends he could not even afford to see on screen.

After all the glitter and glamour of the Oscars, the little boy comes back to his life, his reality, to be treated like a superstar.



But then, has his reality changed very much? His irritated father is angry with him for not putting on a show for onlookers, completely disregarding that the young boy has just been through adrenaline pumping last few days and a tiring 24 hour plane journey. He gets an ass kicking (which he is probably used to), but this time in front of a crowd which was there to applaud his performance but instead see one from the dad.







I haven't seen the movie and am not really in a hurry to see it either. But, as people say, if the film talks of optimism and hope, I think one of the protagonists of the movie needs to see the movie more than many others!