Provoked

Jagmohan Mudhra is back with his latest flick
Provoked starring Aishwarya Rai and
Nandita Das among others. The last film I saw
from him was Bawandar, which was specially
screened at IITBombay in Mood Indigo'2001.
Jagmohan, who was present there, had given
a pre-screening talk.

Those who don't know, he has a Bachelors'
degree in Electrical engineering from IIT
Bombay.

To begin with he made movies which could sell,
with titles such as Irresistible Impulses, Tainted
Love,Wild Cactus etc. But now, he seems to have
created another niche for himself. Something he
deserves to be applauded for.














In Bawandar and in Provoked he has raised the
issues of atrocities against Indian women.
While Bawandar tells the story of Bhanwari Devi,
a social worker in Rajasthan,who was gangraped
by members of a higher caste in her village,













Provoked is the story of Kiranjt Ahluwalia , who
was the victim of her NRI husband in London. Kiranjit
suffered and kept quiet for the sake of her family honor
for a long time, but eventually gave in and burnt her
husband alive.

Indian film industry is not very well known for tackling
such dark and real-life stories, which makes creators like
Mundhra so much more important.

Cool Ergonomic Products

All those who use computers or are doing sedentary jobs, will find these products cool and useful:

1. GentleMouse - Never click a mouse again.
2. Lumbar Support - available from many companies, for e.g. Ergoworks.
3. Wristease - Patented Portable Ergonomic Wrist Support

We will miss you Bob !

Bob woolmer(left) with Younis Khan(right) after
Pakistan's famous victory against Sri Lanka in
ICC Champions' Trophy 2006. Woolmer passed
away in suspicious circumstances on 18 Mar'07.

Red is Back in Vogue

The civil war in India has reached a new high. 50 policemen
were killed by Naxalites in Dantewada on 15th March,
while an unofficial estimate yields the same number of deaths in
Nandigram on 14th March, of the villagers protesting against
WB government adamant on takig away their land.

This comes barely 10 days after a Member of Parliament from
Jharkhand, Sunil Mahto, known for his strong anti-naxalite
stance, was shot dead.

Choice of Dantewada for the killings is not very surprising
either, since it is where the government started its Salwa
Judum campaign which pitches residents of the same village
against one another(Naxalites vs. non-Naxalites).

And, it's in the vicinity of Dantewada where TATA and ESSAR,
two of India's richest corporate houses, have been accused
of grabbing the land forcefully from the villagers for a
peanut compensation, as can be read in the memorandums against
TATA and ESSAR.

Why should a state be so powerful that it can evict its people from
their lands for negligible compensation and without any proper
rehabilitation? In the case of Nandigram and Singur, villagers
are being asked to give up a lush green land, for money and
some menial job which the proposed plants may or may not generate
for them.

Ironically, it's Bangladesh, West Bengal's eastern neighbor, which, only
a few months ago, produced a Nobel laureate for his successful efforts
at alleviating poverty.

Comparison of Images->Slideshow generator softwares

If you have a bunch of pictures, and wondering if you could create
one of those fancy slideshows, which you see everywhere nowadays,
with some background music, some text and yeah, some cool transition
effects, here is a list of softwares which could help you do that.
Of course, you can do it with Macromedia Flash, but the
following softwares are way simpler since they are specifically
built for this particular task, that is, making slideshows out of
images.
(I don't know why does this table appear so much down the page?)

Software Name(rightwards>/Features(downwards)	MemoriesOnWeb 3.1.7	PhotoStory 3	Flash Slideshow Generator Trial Version
OS	Windows	Windows	Windows
Music Embedding	Yes	Yes	Yes
License	Freeware	Free for customers running genuine Microsoft Windows.	Shareware
Ouput Formats	avi/mpeg-1	wmv	flash,exe
Video Quality	Poorer	Better	Better
Adding Text to Images	Yes	No	Yes
Adding Text Slides	Yes	No	No
Random Transition effects for all images	Yes	No	Yes
Applying same transition duration/picture duration to all pictures	Yes	Yes	No
Special Mention	..	1. Music fades gently in the end, irrespective of the source music file's length. 2. Capability for adding narration.	..

Here is a video from my Goa trip with Mentor colleagues,made with MemoriesOnWeb.

Rediffmail launches unlimited email storage - But Why?

Would it be of any use really?
No, I would say.
Why?
Because :
1. The maximum attachment size is still 10MB, so hard
luck for those who would like to store their multimedia
or other huge files in rediffmail in a simple hasslefree
manner.

2. It doesn't have any feature which can force gmail
to even blink an eye-lid, let alone the other bunch
of integrated services that come with a google account.

3. Its spam filter is almost non-existent and add to
it the amount of promotional mail that rediff itself
sends to its users and you know how would the unlimited
space be utilized.