It seems Malayalam film industry is in “a crisis”:http://sify.com/movies/malayalam/fullstory.php?id=13334644
bq. The shooting of Mammootty?s Vajram has stopped temporarily as it looks like the film will not make it to the theatres for Christmas. Mohanlal?s Vamanapuram Bus Service is on the verge of a breakdown are theatres are refusing to advance money to producer Anand after the colossal failure of Hariharan Pilla Happy Aanu.
bq. Dileep?s Pattanathil Sundaram is not able to get the kind of advance that his earlier films got. In Ernakulam producer ?Liberty? Basheer wanted Rs 10 lakhs as advance but theatres are offering only Rs 4 lakh!
bq. Three films of Suresh Gopi are lying in the cans with no takers for months and no distributor or exhibitor wants to touch it with a barge pole
Malayalam movies are low cost productions, with simple stories involving family and human relations. Now with the proliferation of Cable TV, all such stories are available to people as Mega Serials. So there is no incentive for people to go to a movie theatre, pay lot more money and watch sometimes pathetic movies. Many of the film stars are now migrating to the small screen and super stars have turned to Serial producers.
What is the way out ? One way would be to mount lavish productions like Tamil movies. This is something which the TV industry cannot match.
Outsourcing stories
“Companies outsource to India”:http://www.eveningstar.co.uk/Content/news/story.asp?datetime=03+Dec+2003+17%3A38&tbrand=ESTOnline&tCategory=News&category=News&brand=ESTOnline&itemid=IPED03+Dec+2003+09%3A38%3A18%3A880
bq. The announcement, as revealed in yesterday’s Evening Star, by Royal Sun Alliance to close the More Th>n call centre in Ipswich with the loss of 240 jobs in the town came on the same day that Norwich Union’s parent company Aviva, said it was axing 2,350 jobs nationwide to “outsource” them to parts of India.
“Companies retreat from outsourcing”:http://www.fortune.com/fortune/technology/articles/0,15114,558743,00.html
bq. In Web.com’s case it wasn’t so much antiforeigner sentiment among customers as frustration with tech-support people who were simply too far from headquarters to reach the people who could solve problems quickly. “If it’s a binary decision process?yes or no?then you should consider outsourcing,” says Pemble. “But if there’s a maybe in there anywhere, then you can be sure that all your customer-support difficulties will gravitate to that like iron filings to a magnet.”
Book Review: Prey
In this book Michael Crichton’s evil beasts are nano particles. This is the story of an experiment which went wrong in the Nevada Desert. In a secret lab which was supposed to develop cameras using nano particles, something goes wrong. The particles escape, and develop the ability to learn and decides to kill the scientists who developed the technology.
This book is a page turner, like all his previous novels. But somehow it all seemed like a rehash of Jurrasic Park. Even the scenes are similar. The way the dinosaurs walk around the broken down jeeps, the nano particles swarm around a car in which the scientists take refuge. After sometime, the whole story became predictable.
Still a good read.
Sandeep has a review of the book as well
iTunes
For the past month or so, I have been using “iTunes”:http://www.apple.com/itunes/overview.html on my Windows laptop to listen to music and have become a fan of Apple software. iTunes is just like Windows Media Player or an y other Juke Box out there. But the feature I like the best is called “Smart Playlist”:http://www.apple.com/itunes/smartplaylists.html.
This works similar to a normal playlist, except that it is dynamically updated. You can set the codition for the list, like say, all songs by Yesudas, in the language Malayalam, which has been listened to atleast 3 times but not greater than 10 times. So during the normal course of listening, when a song qualifies under this category, it appears in that smart list. So as I listen to my library, songs get classified into various smart lists I have created.
This is the first piece of software that Apple has released for Windows and is amazing.
Thanksgiving
The day after Thanksgiving is the craziest day in United States. That day stores offer crazy deals and the whole country “goes bonkers”:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=519&e=9&u=/ap/trampled_shopper
bq. A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter.
bq. Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her.
My Thanksgiving shopping consisted of going to Best Buy in the morning, finding that the whole world is inside, walking out immediately and going back to sleep.
How to be a Microsoft Beta Tester
Today I got an invitation from Microsoft to be a Beta Tester
bq. You are cordially invited to join the MSN?? Beta Program. We use beta programs to help define features for future products and services. This is your chance to make a difference! Participation lets you share your ideas and plays a key role in the development process. And together, we will build a better MSN!
I was all for it till I read the fine print.
bq. During sign-up and installation of the beta software you will get prompted for credit card information. The MSN beta software will be free during the program and you will not see any charges on your credit card until the beta has expired.
This way Microsoft is getting Beta Testers to pay for all the work they should be doing. What a terrific business model.
Looking for a PDA
When the first Palm Pilot came out, I was one of its enthusiastic users. But then over a period of time, I stopped using it. But recently I dusted the old Palm III and found that none of the new applications run on it (low memory). So I have been looking for a new PDA. After lot of research, I have finally settled on the “Sony CLIE SJ-35”:http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start;sid=PYBlXoWoZ5llebpit6hvVcqmaYYLz0U-gkE=?CategoryName=hp_BasicMP3Audio&ProductSKU=PEGTJ35%2fUKIT1&Dept=hp
I have always found Sony CLIE to be much better looking than Palm devices. This one has an MP3 player also built in. Does anyone use an iPaq ? What’s your experience with it ?
Job Market will boom
And how is this job market going to pick up ? It is going to start with a trickle. People are so frustrated with their jobs now that if a better one comes, a lot of people are “going to quit”:http://money.cnn.com/2003/11/11/pf/q_iquit/index.htm.
bq. Consider, for example, that more than eight in 10 workers plan to look for a new job when the economy heats up, according to a survey by the Society for Human Resource Professionals. While there’s a difference between looking for a new gig and actually jumping ship, that kind of number is “very, very high,” says SHRP spokesman Frank Scanlon.
And why are so many people going to quit ?
bq. Many employees are overworked, stressed out, fed up — and eager to quit their jobs once the economy picks up. In fact, worker angst is so pronounced that it has surprised even the most tuned-in human resource professionals.
bq. The threat of pink slips has prompted plenty of people to work scared and to give everything to their jobs. Overtime isn’t that uncommon anymore. Nearly 40 percent of all workers spend at least 50 hours on the job per week.
As people quit, vacancies will be created. People will be moving around. Dow is now at 9,848.83 and Nasdaq at 1,973.11. Dow is soon going to go beyond 10,000 and Nasdaq above 2000. Since the American stock market is emotional, once these numbers are crossed, there will be some exhuberance, more spending and more hiring. Already, the “job market is picking up”:https://varnam.org/archives/000265.html.
Call this wishful thinking if you want. But don’t forget to thank me for predicting this, if it all comes true.
Flood
Couple of weeks back, here in Los Angeles, we were surrounded by “fire”:https://varnam.org/archives/000262.html. Today it is “flood”:http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-storm13nov13,1,5986774.story?coll=la-home-headlines.
bq. Powerful thunderstorms rumbled across Southern California Wednesday evening, hammering central Los Angeles and surrounding communities with torrential downpours that flooded roads and buildings and with lightning strikes that knocked out electrical power.
The rain today reminded me of the “monsoons”:https://varnam.org/archives/000149.html. There was thunder and lightning and I got a free car wash.
Economy is improving
The American job market is “improving”:http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1110/p17s01-coop.html
bq. In October, the economy added 126,000 new jobs, the Labor Department reported Friday. September’s increase in private-sector payroll jobs was revised up to 125,000.
The article does not break down into how many jobs were created in the Technology field. But from personal experience I can tell that it is definitely improving. Many people I know are leaving their jobs and finding new ones. And that’s about 15 people in the past few months. The hourly rates for contract programmers are increasing. There are more permanent job postings as opposed to only contract jobs a few months back. Even the salaries for permanent jobs are increasing.
The golden era of the 1999 boom may not come back. But I will be happy if I could change a job with some effort.