Its getting better everyday..

Saturday, May 15, 2010

A good read - 22

This one's preety captivating..for people who have even an iota of interest in processor technology. Gives you a great update on whats the big shots are doing.

http://www.economist.com/science-technology/displaystory.cfm?story_id=16103910&source=hptextfeature

Happy Reading !

Sunday, May 02, 2010

Orkut pics, Movie promo and Metadata.

Movie watching is "ambience dependent ". Sounds arbitrary ? Yeah thats made to sound random.I mean whenever I watch a movie the way my brain works depends on whom I am sitting with..It would be happening with most of us. The kind of things I would think when I am sitting with my best buddy while watching a scene would be antipodes to what'd be gyrating inside my mind while I would be sitting with my parents. Thats the way our mind ( read my mind) works. I had thought a lot to write a blog on the theme " promo making ". Promo making ( of a movie) in my view is one of the most creative works present in the world. It can stand on par with creative pursuits like photography, art, craft and even poetry. All of these are about depicting something with the angle you want, to the audience, which is actually your own angle. The piquant thing about promo making is that it is a commercial activity. Technically its a meta data. Data about data. The other three are simple data. Another meta data would be the title of the poem. But I have seen that in poems, meta data doesnt have much relevance to the actual data ( or so do I think/perceive). A poet can write about Kargil war but he can write the title as "Maa ke aansoon ( tears of a mother)". Thats what he perceives it.
Anyway, coming back to promo making , promo making ( as I see it ) is about attracting audience. Showing the best scenes of the movie to make the audience that there is much more to this. The audience also have this thing inside their mind. After a hectic weekend they just need a ray of hope to visit their near by PVR to watch the movie. The scenes that'll be shown will be full of instances that the audience got to enjoy and discuss with near by people. Putting the brand names of directors, music director and other members we are made to believe that this would be yet another stuff from the hit director. The small small instances of comedy and may be in a hollywood movie, a miniature shot of the impending kissing scene. These are all the ways to capture the nerve of the junta. To make their BP curve go asymptotically high , which would make them come the next weekend as well.
Similar is the case I think with orkut pics. Say a person attaches 35 pics about his Ranthambhor trip. What would the orkut do ? It can really attach only 7 pics as the meta data. That is where the intelligence should lie. I have observed that the orkut much like promo makers tries to do a promo making of the pics. It just like the promo maker selects few pics which would be the ( potentially best) of the lot and has that glue factor in it. The person goes and watches those pics and comes back thinking ( many a times) that the rest were not as good.
It could be that my assumption is totally wrong but it could also be write. The simplest algo I can think of while deciding the pics could be " select the pic which has maximum data " ..example..a pic with only sea in it will have less data then a mountain with lots of trees and 5 people posing in it. There can be then much more sophistication to this. But this is again a very interesting thing to do if somebody wants to write a program.

BTW, the title of this blog is a right "meta data ".

Saturday, May 01, 2010

Interesting read

This one's fairly thought provoking..force you to align your business sense. Suitable for people having interest in consumer insights, marketing.

http://www.livemint.com/2010/02/05212657/The-Indian-shopper8217s-cha.html

Happy Reading !!

Satire.

This one's a blood burner. Dont laugh after you have read it. Get into the skin of the character and realize his pain.

http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/randomaccess/entry/passport-office-doesn-t-accept

Happy Reading..