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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This is the second of the two posts detailing the Arcelor Mittal deal. The first post gave the background of the deal and the process in which the offer was communicated. This post details the happenings after the offer was made. continue

In this and the next post, I would try to give an account as to how the “impossible” Arcelor-Mittal merger became possible.

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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

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

China and India have always been compared; being the two most populous nations with diverse cultures and being neighbors on the map, they are expected to be similar, but in reality they are starkly different – be it economically, socially or politically. In this blog, I will share and extend some of the ideas of Prof Tarun Khanna, Harvard Business School, in his book Billions of Entrepreneurs: How China and India Are Reshaping Their Futures and Yours. In the book, Prof Khanna compares the millions of budding entrepreneurs in India and China; and how the economic, social, political situations in India and China affect its growth, culture and entrepreneurship ecosystem. continue

If that’s the advice that you have got from your parents, a new web service called omegle.com advises just the opposite. It’s a new chat service where you can start the chat at the click of a button with any random person. It requires no registration, no user name or identity. The only handles used are “You” and “Stranger”. However Omegle is not exactly the first website to have introduced the concept of anonymous chat. Another website called “A Nice Chat” established earlier also links you with unknown strangers although you are expected to pick a nickname for yourself first. continue

These days, its rather difficult to miss the mostly noisy, rarely insightful election time debates in India (specially in the 7.5 minute “strategy” break during IPL matches). Couple of days ago, I heard a new phrase: “Political Entrepreneur”. The term was used in a rather condenscending, almost derogatory manner and never defined. Though I think the term was used to describe politicians who have carved out new vote bases on the basis of caste, region; or formed new caste alliances; often without the real possibility of winning too many seats, but enough to gain some nuisance value by playing a spoiler to somebody else’s chances. The one thing that is conspicuously absent from the description is ideology (more on that later…) continue

Every major city in the world needs a lifeline in terms of transporation. In London they call it tube, in NYC they call it subway and in our very own amchi Mumbai they call it Local. continue