March 31, 2006

Delhi tabloid 'Today' to turn into morning broadsheet
The India Today Group is planning to invest around Rs 100-150 crore in the makeover.

March 27, 2006

Avirook Sen set to join Mid-Day as Group Editor
The Resident Editor of Hindustan Times, Mumbai edition, has decided to take on a bigger challenge.
(PS: Dantonews had reported this on March 17)
Did you read the newspaper this morning?
In the mid-1970s, with the advent of computers in the Western countries, people started questioning the future of the print medium, wondering if it would vanish quietly.
Check this out!
http://www.25peeps.com/r/572 . You could be one of the top hot bloggers!

March 26, 2006

How your staff can drive you mad
When the pressure's on, here are sure-fire ways your charges can make you see red.

Glimpses of world's realities
I am seeing the world. From South Asia to West Asia to Europe to Latin America. Film festivals offer glimpses of world culture. That is why I love International Film Festivals.
Frustration city!
A few weeks ago, this writer had the good fortune of being part of a workshop on Bombay... the idea was to bring together people from different `walks of life'.
Journalism, anyone?
She was sitting on the first row. With an intense, intelligent gaze. And quiet most of the time. The classroom was like any other. Actually, perhaps better.

March 25, 2006

Workers be damned -- The Akbarallys story
It's appalling to see the treatment bestowed upon employees of big establishments here in Mumbai.
Blogging tools and services from India
Blogging is a new but fast catching phenomenon. Though it may not replace main stream media, well that is atleast in the next few years, the rate at which the number of blogs are increasing is sure to leave an impact.

March 22, 2006

Precariously perched
It is said that the best seat to watch a game from at the Wankhede Stadium is either the VIP enclosure or the Garware Pavilion area – but we beg to differ!
Headliner?!
Parliament dances on Jaya issue
Both the Houses of Parliament were adjourned sine die. Noisy scenes and repeated adjournments marred the last day of Budget session.

(From -- believe it or not -- the All India Radio web site)

Steve Jobs on magazine covers
The CEO of Apple Computer and Pixar Animation Studio on the covers of magazines.
Man alive
Prospect examination of the authors published between late February 2004 and late February 2006 found that 90 percent of writers -- including staff columnists -- who discussed abortion on the New York Times op-ed page over the past two years were male.

March 21, 2006






The Porn Priestess page
The Cleveland Plain Dealer page by Andrea Levy and Staci Andrews and another page with a similar concept above it.
Adventures in Indian English
Now that my departure time is getting really close, I’m starting to get the ‘what will you miss most about India?’ kinds of questions.
The End User: Where are they now?
What ever happened to... the Simputer? The Minitel? Or other hot technology ideas and products that once grabbed all the headlines?
Utterly, Butterly, Amul
Expect something here on V Kurien's exit...
(PS: Will update this, if anything comes up!)

Also see this interesting post by my DNA colleague, Vilakudy.

March 20, 2006

India Today to launch ‘Men’s Health’ magazine
DNA’s Jamal Shaikh has been roped in as the Editor of the magazine.

March 19, 2006

Sick and tired of the Internet?
Then, visit this site... (You will need audio and flash)

March 18, 2006

Judge tells DoJ "No" on search queries
Google will not have to hand over any user's search queries to the government. That's what a federal judge ruled when he decided to drastically limit a subpoena issued to Google by the Department of Justice.

March 17, 2006

Association of Radio Operators of India formed
The radio operators, who have been allotted frequencies under Phase II of FM expansion, formally created the Association of Radio Operators of India , the FM radio industry body, on Friday.
AOL may be ready to revamp Netscape.com
The online portal that has held a second-class citizen position to AOL's own entertainment portal hasn't been updated since last May, when AOL released version 8 of the Netscape browser.
Let there be light...
BREAKING NEWS: Avirook Sen, resident editor, Hindustan Times (Mumbai), is joining Mid Day as group editor.

March 16, 2006

Egg on my face...
This is with reference to your blog where you suggest I have egg on my face.

I do wish you had accessed the whole story and the follow up story in the next issue of Impact.

My reference was to the misuse of the word “exclusive”. The story was claimed to be exclusive by the Times of India and suggested to be exclusive by DNA.

It is clear there was no possibility of an exclusive for anyone: The Times of India, Dainik Bhaskar, Dawn and Jang were all ALLOWED to carry the story on the same day. In addition to them, there were a number of journalists from wire services present, who had an embargo of two days on the carrying of the story.

If it were an exclusive because The Times of India was the only English language paper in India to be allowed to carry the story on Day 1, then we’re into semantics, and every story in every paper could be an exclusive.

For example, Impact, if it were allowed to carry the interview after one week, could claim that it was an exclusive because we would be the only weekly tabloid in the advertising, media and marketing space published out of India to carry it.

Thanks for the comments anyway. I’ve appeared on a Technorati.com search for the first time.

Anant Rangaswami

March 15, 2006

The Abu Ghraib files

279 photographs and 19 videos from the Army's internal investigation record a harrowing three months of detainee abuse inside the notorious prison -- and make clear that many of those responsible have yet to be held accountable.


Seven-ounce wrist PC
A European embedded computing specialist has announced a wrist-worn wearable computer that runs Windows CE or embedded Linux.

March 14, 2006

25 Things I Hate About Google
Google's
purchase of Writely sort of drove me over the edge last week.
Google News credibility foiled by 15-year-old
Sometimes the most well thought out practical jokes trigger an uneven brand of justice that falls under the laws of unintended consequences. While not formally codified and ill defined, the law of unintended consequences is very real, as a Google-focused prank pulled by Tom Vandetta amply illustrates.

Praveen K Singh joins Indian Express group
The group as roped him in as editor (news) for its Business Publications Division in Delhi.

March 12, 2006

Fat strippers conquer Russia
Tired of the usual parade of toned and slender exotic dancers, desperate Russian men are turning to a new alternative.
Headliner
Slobodan Milosevic: Rest in Hell
(www.sploid.com)
Peeking into Google
Urs Hoelzle, Google vice president of operations and vice president of engineering, offered a rare behind-the-scenes tour of Google's architecture.
Blinq His blog-to-book could land him a Lulu
Do not underestimate these simple little men. They could be Philadelphia's next champions.

March 10, 2006

UN slams Mumbai cops over missing scribe
The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has said Mumbai journalist Violet Godwin “might have been killed” due to negligent investigation on the part of the Mumbai police.

March 09, 2006

Food for All…World’s Biggest Solar Kitchen His Here!
The Herculean solar kitchen established in Mount Abu, Rajasthan, India is world’s biggest, running on huge solar reflectors that “produce steam which is used to cook vegetables and rice for up to 18 000 people.”
Talking Beer Mug
Nothing could make a better gift for a beer drinker then this Never Empty Beer Mug!

Microsoft finally unveils its Origami Project
With powerful processors, big, bright displays, easy input options, and support for the latest connectivity standards, Ultra-Mobile PCs are ready for your life on the go.

March 08, 2006



















Redesigns
The BusinessLine one and the Mid Day one.

Absence makes the glass glow fondly
Researchers have come up with a novel way to keep long-distance lovers in touch -- high-tech wine glasses that glow warmly however far apart the pining couple are.
Tastes like chicken…
Located in an elegantly decorated courtyard in Beijing, the Guo Lizhuang restaurant offers customers more than 30 kinds of animal penis served in Chinese hotpot style.
Web users only visit 6 sites
Research, conducted by government website Directgov, said the Internet is now in the age of the ‘Supersite’- a handful of sites that have become indispensable to a significant portion of Web users.

March 07, 2006

Google lets slip talk of online storage service
Google Inc is preparing to offer online storage to Web users, creating a mirror image of data stored on consumer hard drives, according to company documents that were mistakenly released on the Web.
Headliner
Oscar Ratings "Crash"
(E!Online News)

March 06, 2006

The doctors' strike in Mumbai
...medical ethics and the politics of it.
Computer made from DNA and enzymes
Israeli scientists have devised a computer that can perform 330 trillion operations per second, more than 100,000 times the speed of the fastest PC. The secret: It runs on DNA.

March 04, 2006

Details of some Guantanamo hearings
Details from transcripts of 'enemy combatant' hearings involving Guantanamo detainees.
The madness of the exclusive
It's official: Chidanand Rajghatta of the Times of India and Udai Jain of DNA are one and the same person.
(Anant Rangaswami has, unfortunately, egg on his face! The Times of India and Dainik Bhaskar were granted the interview, being the largest selling English and Hindi dailies in India. If Times called it an exclusive, well... The Daily News and Analysis is managed by Zee and Dainik Bhaskar so it carried the English version)

March 01, 2006

Google page creator cannot handle...
In what is becoming a trend with Google Beta product launches, Google Page Creator had had to stop issuing accounts due to heavy demand.

See http://anthonydcosta.googlepages.com/