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As much as I like watching movies, I like to watch movie trailers too. Sometimes, unfortunately, the best part about a movie is the trailers that run before it. The main aim of the trailer is to raise the viewer’s interest in the movie. If the trailer is successful in garnering the viewer’s interest and pulling him towards watching the movie, its purpose is served. Teaser trailers which run for like 15-20 seconds generally pique the viewer’s interest. However the longer trailers, which usually run for 2-2 ½ minutes, tell much more about the movie. These should not give away too much lest it might ruin all the fun. Nor should it be so ordinary that it completely bores the person and he/she loses any interest in the movie. continue

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Europe’s biggest carmaker, Volkswagen, will soon takeover Porsche after the Porsche CEO, Wendelin Wiedeking, resigned from his position on Thursday. The takeover deal is supposed to be worth $11.3 Billion.

The surprising aspect in this deal is that for the past few years, it was Porsche who was steadily and strongly increasing its efforts to takeover Volkswagen even with Volkswagen being 16 times the size of Porsche. continue

Ding Ding Ding:

Round 1:
Microsoft and Google enter the ring. Microsoft has been the reigning heavyweight champ for years. But Google has grown in size and strength rapidly and has become one of the top rivals to Microsoft.
Microsoft needs to make a move. It tries to beat Google by taking over Yahoo’s search engine, but fails badly. Now it jabs at Google with its own search engine: Bing. Microsoft scores some points with that one, but the young and strong Google parries the blow and seems unaffected. Instead some competitors in the search engine business to both MS and Google are affected. Microsoft manages to gain some respect in this round but things largely remain unchanged. continue

Here is the first quiz of Strat.in. For more details and rules about the quiz see here

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Bernie Ecclestone of F1 fame recently made comments that he adores Hitler. According to Bernie, dictatorships are better than democracy and help get work done faster and swifter without all the bureaucratic red tape that is involved in democracy. Later he clarified his comments that he adored Hitler only for getting things done and considers Hitler a lunatic for all the other things he did. continue

Transformers –Revenge of the Fallen released last Wednesday in the United States and many other countries. The sequel to the 2007 hit Transformers made a smashing entry with an opening of around $60 million at the box office. Its five day earnings, from Wednesday to Sunday total $200 million. This total is just short of what last year’s summer blockbuster The Dark Knight made in its first five days. Eventually Dark Knight went to make nearly $1 billion in ticket sales and stands second only to the Titanic in top earning movies of all time. continue

MirCorp, the first company in the area of space tourism, ended in bankruptcy and shut down in 2003. However, The X Prize foundation, in 1996 had declared a prize of $10 million to encourage private participation in this area. The challenge was to build and launch a spacecraft capable of carrying three people to 100 kilometers above the earth’s surface, twice within two weeks. 26 private companies slugged it out for nearly 8 years. Finally in 2004, Scaled Composites, owned by aerospace designer Burt Rutan and financed by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen won the prize. continue

I recently saw the latest Star Trek movie. Sci-fi has always been one of my favourite genres and the movie was enjoyable as well. The tagline for the Star Trek movie/series has been “To boldly go where no man has gone before…” Well humans crossed the space boundary more than half a century ago. But the number of people who have entered space has not even reached 500 yet.  Before 2001, barring astronauts, the rest of the earthly population could only dream of entry in space. continue

When the price of gas hit about $4 per gallon in the US last year, the sales of the SUV, which had been the favourite vehicle of the US citizens for a while, substantially dropped, while fuel efficient cars and hybrids managed to get their foot through the door. (Though once the prices dropped, Americans were back to their usual ways).However inspite of being costlier than the usual gas powered cars, the hybrids slowly have made space for themselves in the market.
Japan has been the leader in Hybrid vehicles with its two automobile giants, Toyota and Honda, having launched their Prius and Insight brands respectively. The Prius has already captured the hybrid car market in the US with increasing sales each year. By far this year, Toyota has sold approximately 150,000 units. Honda’s Insight which made its debut in US recently, is also expected to have strong sales.
The American car giants are not doing that great in the hybrid market. General Motors which recently went bankrupt and will survive only with the aid of the US government, had initially a nice technological advantage in this market with its Chevy Volt. But they blew it by concentrating instead on the gas guzzling and fuel inefficient SUVs.
As concerns the EVs (just to clarify, EV vehicles run only on batteries, hybrids can work both on electricity and gas) Mitsubishi motors has launched its new all electric vehicle i-MiEV in Japan. According to the company, “Keys to the i-MiEV’s performance include an ultra-quiet permanent magnet synchronous motor and a powerfully efficient lithium-ion battery pack that can be quick-charged up to 80 percent of capacity in as little as 30 minutes.”  The cost of the the i-MiEV, which has a range of 99 miles (160 km) on a single charge, is a considerably steep $47,500. continue

Book publishers have reason to rejoice at the news that Google is about to enter the ebook market. According to Google, it will let the publishers decide the price at which they would like to sell the electronic versions of their books through Google. Right now Amazon dominates the ebook market in the US. It sells ebooks at a rate of $9.99 (less than half the average cost of a hard copy) which users can read with the help of the Kindle reader, which is also manufactured and sold by Amazon. continue