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November 26, 2006

Three things South Indian cinema can teach Bollywood

Indian cinema is a lot more diverse than audiences outside India might give it credit for. The Indian movies many outsiders have heard of are primarily Hindi language movies (yeah, those supposedly 'musical' ones). Although the industry that produces these movies is based in Bombay (the B in Bollywood), that city's major spoken language is not Hindi. There are several smaller film industries based in cities all over India that make movies in other languages.

The biggest film industries outside Bollywood are in South India, where Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam are spoken. Movies in the first two languages have a much broader base and appeal than movies in the latter two languages. Nevertheless, there is significant cross-pollination of ideas, actors and movie directors among movies in the South Indian languages, which leads to a reasonable degree of thematic overlap.

Bollywood movies, as popular as they are, tend to be centered around only a handful of sociocultural themes (I'll note though that since the release of Dil Chahta Hai in 2001, a greater number of Bollywood movies have tried to introduce new and provocative themes). Add a few predictable elements and you have a formula that satisfies the world's single largest film market. Many aspects of this formula have been emulated in Indian regional cinema to varying levels of success; indeed, regional actors generally gain in respect if they can also pull off a successful Bollywood movie. South Indian language movies come nowhere close to Bollywood movies in the size of their audience or box office collections. Still, they have their own take on some aspects of moviemaking, which I wish more Bollywood movies would use to reinvent themselves.

• Irony and humor. Blockbuster Hindi movies these days are generally short on irony or anything more than token attempts at humor. Perhaps the director fears that these elements are but peripheral to the main plot of the movie, or worse, that they might undermine his message. Humor and irony might undermine the message of the movie only if it involves the major characters. South Indian movies, especially those in Tamil, manage to present enough humor and irony without detracting from the main message of the movie. They use characters that have nothing whatsoever to do with the main plot of the movie; they exist solely to provide comic relief and temporary distractions from the movie's plot development. Indeed, actors like Senthil and Goundamani have made entire careers playing such roles. Free of any involvement with the plot, their minor roles often succeed in delivering insightful social commentary while being funny. What's in it for the audience? A temporary respite from a concentrated shot of plot development, a few laughs and a chance to relate as human beings to the events on the screen. Contrast this random, and quite frankly bizarre, approach to humor with that of most Bollywood blockbusters (Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna comes to mind), where any comic relief is provided by major or supporting characters and is constrained somewhat by plot elements. Not all movies must have irony or humor to be successful; however, those irony-free movies that deal solely with plot and character issues without commenting on wider social issues take themselves too seriously in enforcing patriarchy, social hierarchy and notions of propriety. Conveniently enough, this brings me to my second point.
• Treatment of human and social issues. Indian cinema has always had somewhat of an escapist streak; it caters to audiences that want to rise above the concerns that constrain them ethically, morally or materially. Starting in the 90s, several movies (especially song sequences) have been shot outside India just to give a taste of foreign lands to the local audience. Influential actors like Shahrukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan have starred in movies that depict unbelievably well-dressed characters living opulent lifestyles inaccessible to the vast majority of the Indian population. Although this escapism provides some distractions from ordinary life in India, which can often be difficult, before long it becomes hard to identify with the troubles of the characters or to see their situation as relevant in any way to the viewer's own condition. South Indian cinema is much more likely to feature relevant human and social issues (the emotional complications of surrogate motherhood, the mysteries of multiple personality disorders, the slow deterioration of someone affected by a terminal disease) in its themes. Most of these movies, notably those from the Malayalam film industry, don't do well at the box office because they are not sufficiently escapist. They receive plenty of critical acclaim as serious cinema because they expand the repertoire of collectivist and widely relevant issues that can be depicted on screen. Contrast this to Bollywood's much narrower idea of pushing the envelope: questioning whether premarital cohabitation or extramarital affairs may be appropriate in some circumstances.
• Musical inventiveness. South Indian cinema has seen immensely talented musical directors like A. R. Rahman or Ilayaraja, who have been highly receptive to experimenting with new styles of musical composition. Ilayaraja had a good bit of training in Western classical music, which he used to great effect in his work. A. R. Rahman's inventive genius has earned him a commission for the musical version of the Lord of the Rings. South Indian music directors are also more likely to give new singers a break, judging from all the fresh talent that keeps getting featured in South Indian movies. In fact, singers like Sadhana Sargam have fared much better singing in South Indian movies even though they aren't native to South India. Bollywood music has historically been largely predictable and features standard-issue love songs and dance beats that have been perennial favorites.

Bollywood is an incredibly successful commercial machine without a doubt. Despite the sheer number of movies it produces though, it is still a major event if an Indian movie is a serious contender for international honors in film. More than anything else, this points to a lack of diversity, arising in turn from a lack of maturity. I have no delusions about movies being high art; moneymaking continues to be their primary goal in every major film industry in the world. Still, if Bollywood could occasionally deviate from tried and tested themes and learn a thing or two from the South Indian movie industry, it will surely result in greater variety and wider appeal.

Posted by Vishy at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)

November 24, 2006

Google's shares like Picasso's checks?

Google's stock price recently crossed $500, making it Silicon Valley's second most valuable company after Cisco. Although 500 is just another number, boom times are evidently back. A while back, I had read about how Pablo Picasso used to prefer paying by personal check. Here's why:

Pablo Picasso loved paying for things by check. Why wouldn't he? Many times the recipients of the checks, complete with his famous scrawly autograph, would keep the checks as souvenirs rather than cash them, giving the famous artist pretty good odds that he'd be getting things for free...So prized was Picasso's signature that it is said that when he paid for things by personal check, the odds were that the recipient of the check would save it rather than cash it. Seeing as a simple Picasso autograph can easily fetch $1,000 today, perhaps this wasn't such an irrational decision.

I wonder if Larry Page and Sergey Brin have started paying for their purchases directly with Google shares. I mean, you can get a PS3 or two Wiis with the going rate of one GOOG share. With a round lot of shares, they could buy a Hummer SUV if only they weren't so environmentally conscious.

With the way the stock market is going, and with Google's philosophy of encouraging long term ownership of their stock, whoever was selling them stuff would probably just hold on to their payment-in-stock for future gains.

Posted by Vishy at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2006

Hindu vs. Hindi: a PSA

This is a public service announcement regarding some basic terminology about India's major language and religion.

The word Hindi refers to India's most widely spoken language. Not everyone in India speaks it, but it is the language spoken or understood by the largest percentage of India's population. As with so many things India, the analogy of India to all of Europe comes in handy. Consider how you may be able to get around many places in Europe — especially the touristy places — with basic English (okay, let's ignore for a moment the disdainful looks you might get). It is quite likely that you'll come to a region within a country where English is completely unknown and English speakers may number only in the single digits. Still, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that English is the language that larger percentage of Europe's population understands than any other, including as a second or third language. The situation is similar in India with Hindi.

The word Hindu refers to someone who follows India's largest religion, Hinduism. Although India has the world's largest population of Hindus, they also live in several parts of the world where there is a significant Indian diaspora, such as the Caribbean, Mauritius, Fiji, the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Hindus don't have to be Indian by ethnicity; indeed there are many Caucasian followers of Hinduism in the U.S. A related word, Hindoo, was used in the Western world historically to refer to people of Indian descent, but is now obsolete, if not offensive.

Hindus may speak Hindi but they don't have to. Likewise, not everyone who speaks Hindi is Hindu — they could be Muslim, Sikh, Christian or even Jewish (all these religious groups exist in India or places with Indian diaspora to varying degrees)! But above all remember -- Hindi is a language and Hindu is a person.

I frequently see people (U.S.-ian or otherwise) mistaking Hindu for Hindi or vice versa and thought I'd do my bit to clear the matter up. In fact, I've even made a T-shirt about it, along with a few other India-themed T-shirts. Buy them for yourself or your friends and spread the word!

Posted by Vishy at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

November 22, 2006

Date-related hijinks in Microsoft Excel and Google Spreadsheets

For years, Microsoft Excel has been the de facto standard against which all other spreadsheet programs have been judged. Because so many Microsoft customers use Excel, sometimes running their entire business off it, it has some bugs that are well known but will not be fixed so as to preserve backwards compatibility. For example, Microsoft Excel thinks that 1900 was a leap year, when according to Gregorian calendar rules, it is not (years that end in -00 must be divisible by 400 to be leap years). Preserving backwards compatibility is important in Microsoft's business model, or else people would never upgrade to newer versions of their software. In fact, so paramount is that concern that in a move that seems pretty boneheaded to be honest, this bug has been baked into an ECMA standard to ensure its propagation into perpetuity(see last link for a quote).

Google obviously does not have as big an issue with preserving backwards compatibility, because it deploys software on its own machines. Still, in matters like these, Google can't just change certain behaviors and break thousands of user documents overnight. Besides, if Google wants to inflict death by a thousand cuts on Microsoft's Office empire, it might also need to preserve the same quirks to make conversion from Excel to its spreadsheets easier. So, I fired up Google Spreadsheets (seriously guys, awfully boring name choice) to see what it thought of 1900. Screenshots from both Microsoft Excel and Google Spreadsheets are below:

Microsoft Excel	Google Spreadsheets

The images above both show date equivalents of ordinary numbers in both spreadsheet programs. Both spreadsheet applications convert ordinary numbers into dates by counting those many days forward from a starting point. For Microsoft Excel, that point is Jan 1, 1900. So, 2 would be converted to Jan 2, 1900, the second day of 1900 and so on. February 28th is the 59th day of any year, so 59 should correspond to Feb 28, 1900 in Microsoft Excel. The next day, the 60th day of 1900, should be Mar 1, 1900 but because of the bug in Microsoft Excel the 60th day is shown as Feb 29, 1900, a date that never existed.

Now Google is trying to do the 'right thing' and be Excel-compatible at the same time. Notice how in the right image the date after 2/28/1900 is not in February anymore? This is how Google does the 'right thing', by not considering 1900 a leap year.  To maintain Excel compatibility as much as possible, it chooses its starting point as Dec 31, 1899 — one day before Excel's starting point. This way, all the dates in January and February 1900 are assigned a number one higher than what they'd be assigned in Microsoft Excel. Starting Mar 1, 1900 however, all dates will have the same day numbers assigned to them.

Obviously, this is somewhat of a tradeoff. All Excel spreadsheets that contain dates in January and February 1900 will not carry over properly into Google Spreadsheets. In real life though, unless someone is using Microsoft Excel to keep track of interest accruals dating back to 1900, when a state-of-the-art computer was a human being, the total number of such spreadsheets is close to zero, if not zero altogether. This is a fine tradeoff to make, and a smart one too — it retains geek cred but keeps Google Spreadsheets compatible (in practice anyway) with the ones from Microsoft Excel. Kudos to Google for this!

Posted by Vishy at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2006

Two annoying GMail chat bugs

Because of the increasing IM-ization of email, I am a regular user of Google IM even though I have never even downloaded the actual IM client. I think this is awesome because now all I need is a Web browser to show my presence.

I will still mention a couple of annoying bugs that are truly disruptive — they disrupt my user experience like hell! I experience both bugs fairly frequently in Firefox on Windows, based on my observations on home and work computers. I have yet to encounter these bugs on Macintosh computers.

• The phantom Shift key. Like most other IM clients, I can hit Shift+Enter in a chat window and insert a carriage return in the middle of a message. Of course, if I just hit Enter, I send the message I just typed. If I have popped out a chat window though, hitting just Enter occasionally inserts a carriage return into my message instead of sending it to its recipient--it's almost as if Shift gets pressed for me for free. I have only ever seen this bug when a chat window is popped out. One workaround is to pop the window in and pop it back out. You may be able to send a staggering 5-10 messages before it happens again.
• The weird focus bug. When somebody sends you a chat message in GMail and its browser window is not in focus, the title of the window alternates between say "GMail (56)" and "Bugs Bunny says...". This is the browser version of the flashing taskbar button from desktop IM clients like AIM or MSN Messenger. After you bring the browser window into focus, this flashing disappears, and the browser window only displays the usual GMail title. If a GMail window has popped-out chat windows, sometimes this flashing does not go away even after it has been activated after a new chat message. Even if I have seen all chats rooted in a GMail window, its title continues to flash back and forth and catches my eye unnecessarily. The only workaround I have found so far is to close the popped-out chat window.

Please fix these popped-out chat window bugs and make an already awesome product even more so. (As I was writing this, I kept typing "pooped-out" chat windows instead of "popped-out", a typo that doesn't seem too egregious, given the current state of affairs. Okay, maybe I am being a bit too harsh.)

Posted by Vishy at 10:44 PM | Comments (2)

November 19, 2006

Sensory styles for doing arithmetic

I recently bought Brain Age for my Nintendo DS. One of the tasks in the game is to solve arithmetic expressions as fast as you can. The expressions are all drawn from the basic addition, subtraction and multiplication facts. They are parenthesis-free and contain no more than two numbers. For some reason, this task seems particularly addictive to me--probably because I do it at a decent speed. Karolina and I got to talking about how our respective brains actually crunch the numbers during the task.

My preferred sensory style is visual. I do know people who are much more strongly visual than me, but I suppose I screw up the least when working visually. When solving a simple math problem--say 8-5 = ?--I 'see' the 3 next to the equals sign. Karolina has more of an auditory preference. She has to sound out the equation in her head ("eight minus five equals?") to get the answer. When equations appear rapidly on a screen, it is evidently a visual task. This is why I was clocking slightly faster times than her. Conversely, I expect that if somebody shot these questions at me verbally, I'd be slightly slower than Karolina.

We've seen and heard simple addition, multiplication and subtraction facts enough times that working them out is practically automatic. I tried to model exactly what happens in my visual head as I work out addition and subtraction for any pair of two digit numbers. I have a 10x10 grid of numbers burned into my head.

When I want to perform a subtraction, say 79-26, I start at 79 in the grid. Then I move 6 up and 2 left. For three digit numbers I imagine a 10x10x10 cube. For four digit numbers, I'd probably just use a calculator! Addition works the same way, except I go right and down instead of left and up. This is why there is no significant difference between the speeds at which I do addition and subtraction. A few of my friends I have asked claim to be significantly slower at subtraction than addition because they know the addition facts much better than the subtraction facts. If somebody gave them a subtraction, they convert it into an equivalent addition fact (9-5 = ? becomes ?+5 = 9) because they can just 'look those up' inside their heads that much faster.

I'd be curious about how other readers do arithmetic in their head. I was once speaking with someone, who said that they count on fingers in their head. Like my grid above, they always saw a pair of disembodied hands and they counted fingers on  those as necessary. Some claim that it is essential to quit finger counting to get good at math. The good thing about doing finger counting in your head though, instead of with your hands, is that you can have more than two hands! You can store temporary results and carry values on as many hands as you need, making them, in effect, like registers on a CPU.

Admittedly, thinking about your own mental arithmetic style is just the kind of navel gazing that happens only after you stop needing to do math frequently in your head. If you're in grade school though and you really think about it (and play hopelessly nerdy games like Brain Age on the Nintendo DS I am sure you own), you can really kick some math butt.

Posted by Vishy at 11:55 AM | Comments (0)

November 09, 2006

Adobe makes huge bet on Rich Internet Applications

Adobe makes some very popular software. If Photoshop and Acrobat weren't enough, the Flash player is one of the most installed pieces of software in existence. The success of video sharing sites like YouTube is predicated on the prevalence of browser plugins from Adobe. Yet, there appears to be no imminent acquisition of Adobe by any larger software company. Like Nintendo in the gaming market, Adobe stands alone for now. As other software shops extend their reach into either the enterprise or consumer electronics, what wave will Adobe ride to stay competitive with its bulkier peers in the software industry? If its recent moves are any indication, it will be the wave of rich Internet applications (RIAs).

Recently, Adobe decided to contribute code to the Mozilla project from its ActionScript/Javascript engine, which it calls Adobe Virtual Machine 2. This newly revamped scripting engine is part of Flash Player version 9. The source code will be housed in the Mozilla code base as a separate project called Tamarin.

Rich Internet Applications today come in two flavors: Ajax-based and Flash-based. Firefox's first attempt at delivering rich Internet applications through XUL has not had sufficient adoption to be deemed successful. When the Tamarin code finally ships with the Mozilla suite of browsers in 2008, however, Firefox will effectively have native, plugin-less support for Flash applications. Firefox would then have native support for both Flash-based and Ajax-based RIAs, and thus become a vehicle of choice for delivering such applications. If Firefox adoption continues at the present rate, it will be the browser used by a significant minority of end users; indeed, if all goes well, it might even be the browser of choice for a few enterprises by 2008. Adobe's plan to cover both RIA bases is evidenced by its membership in the OpenAjax initiative.

Adobe's involvement in the ECMAScript working group and the OpenAjax initiative brings it into contact with an number of key players in the enterprise sector as well, such as Microsoft, IBM and Sun. Adobe can capitalize on these alliances to influence future Web-service standards activity and expand adoption of its client/SOA applications based on Adobe Flex. Moreover, Adobe could leverage the collaboration features built into Adobe Acrobat to enhance their platform's suitability for collaborative, document-based workflow systems in addition to RIAs.

Whereas Adobe's packaged software will continue to be a steady revenue stream, the forthcoming explosion of RIAs, especially in the enterprise, may well hold the key to its future.

Posted by Vishy at 11:56 PM | Comments (0)

November 07, 2006

XBox, a video game platform -- for videos and games

(image credit: Engadget)

This November is turning out to be a major media month for Microsoft. Today, they announced the availability of video-on-demand over their XBox Live gaming service. Starting Nov 22, customers will be able to download television and movie content from Warner, Paramount and Turner Broadcasting. Also debuting this month is Microsoft's media player Zune and its accompanying music store. Microsoft's lackluster performance in the increasingly influential arena of Web services is putting the software stalwart's feet to the fire, leaving it to examine other avenues. After the less-than-stellar performance of its media center operating system, this somewhat unexpected move is Microsoft's fresh salvo in the battle for control over the digital living room.

Earlier this year, Apple announced a device dubbed 'iTV', which would blur the line between the computer and TV by streaming Internet video into traditional home entertainment devices. Microsoft's announcement today preempts iTV by capitalizing on a foothold Microsoft already has, independent of its flagship Windows and Office products. Apple's strategy blurs the line between the computer and the TV by approaching it from the computer side. Apple's computers and devices have been increasingly resembling consumer electronics products for a while now. Fundamentally though, they have retained a relatively complex, mouse-and-keyboard driven user interface. Microsoft has upped the ante on the problem of PC-TV convergence by approaching it from the consumer electronics side. Even though Microsoft has years of expertise in traditional window-based graphical user interfaces, it has correctly picked the much simpler gaming controller as a means to bring media into the living room. This move is rather compelling from the point of view of the average consumer who is also a gamer: why go through the trouble of adding another set top box to the crowded entertainment center when one box can provide both digital video and games? Besides, what's closer to the effortless haze of channel surfing: A-B-A-A-Start or moving the mouse to a text field and typing in a search query?

This move, the first to combine video-on-demand and video games, underscores how video gaming has outgrown a small, loyal audience of consumers to become a key prong in a comprehensive media strategy. Because it is the first platform to combine video and gaming in this way, speculations on its future direction will abound. By adding video on demand capabilities to the year-old XBox, Microsoft provides a key competitive differentiator to other third-generation consoles being released this holiday season. Video-on-demand is the right add-on to the XBox because it has traditionally trounced its competitors on hardware and performance. If the video-on-demand service sees sufficient pick-up, Microsoft may further reduce the cost of the loss-leading XBox consoles and exert price pressures on its competitors. In-game advertising, which has seen but a ripple of the online advertising wave, is bound to get a fresh look from advertisers. Media houses uneasy about Apple's Disney predilection or Google's emerging dominance of advertising may be more comfortable about cutting deals with Microsoft. This platform may also be an interesting one for Yahoo! to consider, as it strives to differentiate its ad platform from Google's.

Microsoft is no doubt going to try and integrate Zune with XBox and this service in the future. Watch for the WiFi add-on to the XBox 360 become a standard feature in the console's next iteration.  If only Microsoft doesn't screw up the presumed DRM scheme, the XBox could well become its next enduring vehicle for a comprehensive consumer media strategy.

Posted by Vishy at 10:10 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: godman

godman./GOD·man/. A man of religion. Usually someone who commands a lot of influence acting as spiritual leader to the world at large, and not just in an intimate, personal sense. Many godmen are major media personalities in India today, appearing in the morning programming of spiritual TV channnels. By and large they tend to give sage advice, which need not always be of the spiritual sort -- things like 'learn to laugh freely' and 'don't let jealousy and possessiveness get the better of you'. Like with most other fields of endeavor, however, this one isn't without its rotten apples.

Godmen have been implicated in a number of sexual abuse cases and other forms of dodgy behavior. Given the deep influence religion holds in Indian society, some of these indictments have been handed down for political reasons as well.

To be deemed a godman, a footing in some religious tradition is generally required, especially if dispensing some form of religious commmunion. Other influential 'lifestyle consultants', who hand out spiritual advice relating to Feng Shui and Vastu are generally not considered to fall under this classification. Oh, and in case you were wondering, this guy would appear to qualify, though I am really not too thrilled about it.

Posted by Vishy at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)