Oscar fame lost in sex trade

Preethi Mukerjee a.k.a Puja, one of the most highly paid sex workers in Kolkata's Sona kanchi was watching A R Rahman receiving the Oscar statuette. She knows how it feels because she also walked on the same stage to collect the Oscar with Zana Briski, director of the oscar winning documentary Born Into Brothels.

Preethi was one of the nine child artists involved in the documentary in 2004. She with the other children were taught photography to get a view of their world. The children's work was exhibited, and one boy was even sent to a photography conference in Amsterdam. The film won 20 international award excluding the Oscar and the directors flew the children to LA to collect the award.

Stay back and study in US - sounded like dream for the children but this is what they were offered and some did accepted but Preethi backed out. The children who accepted the offer are now studying in New York University and Preethi is in touch with them.


"At this age, I have a flat in Salt Lake, a laptop, expensive phones and lot of money. What do I lack?", says Preethi. She is in touch with director Zana brisky who was upset that preethi joined the trade like her mother. "But this trade has really paid off for me", she says.

Her mother Rakhi, who never wanted her daughter to join the trade, has a photograph of Preethi with the Oscar statuette stuck on a wall.

Gmail offline 0.2

Google has upgraded its offline Gmail to 0.2. With this comes the option of specifying size for synchronizing. Those who are having 0.1 version, will see a "0.2" near the sync icon. Just click on the icon to upgrade your offline gmail to version 0.2.

On the Offline settings page, you can see an option "Specify maximum attachment size". You can even set it to "no attachments" - helps if you are on a very slow connection and do not need attachments while offline. If you have any issues installing the 0.2 or upgrading from 0.1, post your question on Google Groups for Offline Gmail.

Any guesses on which features Google will add to Offline Gmail next?

At last, 3G is here

After a long wait, BSNL has launched the third generation mobile service in Chennai. On 22 February, Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu , Mr M. Karunanidhi, launched the service with an inaugural call to the Union Minister for Communication and IT, Mr A. Raja. Chennai Telephones has installed 25 stations in the city for the initial launch and would add more soon.

The new service will offer data speed of 2 Mbps against 144 Kbps available now over the GPRS and EDGE enabled mobile networks. This makes possible video streaming applications such as Live TV, movie downloads, high speed data download on mobile phones. Callers can also see each other on their mobile phone screens using video call service.

Chennai Telephone has also announced the tariff plans for 3G service. New initiatives such as bringing down tariff to 40-50 paise a minute and mobile number portability are in the pipeline.

Are you ready to reap benefits from the next generation service?

AR Rahman wins Oscars

AR Rahman has won two Oscars for his work in Danny Boyle's Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire. Rahman took one Oscar for the best score and another for the lyrics of the song Jai Ho, along with Gulzaar. Rahman is among five Indians to win an Oscar. Gulzar and Resul Pookutty, picked up Oscars for original song and sound mixing. Rahman also gave a nice little speech at the oscars.



Earlier Oscar winners from India were costume designer Bhanu Athaiya for her work in Gandhi in 1983 and director Satyajit Ray, who won a lifetime achievement award in 1992.

British director Danny Boyle has won best director for Slumdog Millionaire and the film also took best picture. Altogether, it bagged eight awards.

Actor-director Aamir Khan said he was thrilled by India's successes at the Oscars. "It is great to see Indian talent being recognised internationally. We are no less than anybody else," Khan told TV channels.

Another film with an Indian connection, Smile Pinki won the best documentary short Oscar.

Isn't this something we have been waiting for a long time?

Sony Ericsson Idou

The death of the digital camera moved a step closer after Sony Ericsson unveiled the world's first mobile phone with a built-in 12.1-megapixel camera. The slick device, codenamed Idou (SE will release the phone with a model number or a name which we can understand.) was announced at the MWC(Mobile World Congress) show. This is the coolest phone I have ever seen, uber cool. With Symbian OS and an impressive 12 megapixel camera with powerful Xenon flash,a 3.5-inch touchscreen with 16:9 aspect ratio, wow!, it has really raised the bar and will compete directly with Apple's hugely popular iPhone (We know who's gonna win).


The device also has capabilities of Sony Ericsson's Walkman series phones, which means its also good in music and video playback department. SE says its a sensible choice for people who want a high-end camera and a fully-featured MP3 player packaged in a robust mobile handset.

Its time to take the next step.

Friends of BJP - sms campaign

Few days I back read on Shalin Jain's blog about online banner advertisements promoting L.K. Advani as a Prime Ministerial Candidate on SourceForge.net. I have subscribed to My Today, a popular SMS subscription service. At the bottom of every message you receive, it has an advertisement and guess what, the sms I received today had an ad promoting Friends of BJP. You can even subscribe to the group.

I then googled friends of BJP and stumbled upon their website.This is not BJP itself, its a group of educated civil society comprising youth and professionals that is BJP-leaning, and willing to be vocal about it. They intend to support the BJP in 3 ways: Outreach, Ideas Bank and help BJP win more (urban) seats. Here is a snippet from their website:"We are neither all signed-up members nor agree with everything and everybody in the party has always said. But we firmly believe that, in 2009, the BJP and LK Advani are the best hopes for India. We have a clear short-term goal, and a grander long-term vision for Friends of BJP."

I wonder if every political group starts promoting themselves this way, it will help in raising the employment rate of our country. Could be a good job opportunity for web developers, content writers and SEOs.
Note: I am not promoting BJP or any other political party in any way. This is what I came to know about, was quite surprised and decided to let others also know about it.

Same charging socket on all mobiles by 2012

Major mobile phone manufacturers have agreed to have same type of charging socket by 2012. The GSMA(GSM Assocoiation) has zeroed on Micro USB to be the universal charger socket, which is already used on digital cameras to transfer pictures to a PC.

Major players like Nokia, LG, Motorola, Samsung and Sony Ericsson have signed the agreement. Operators such as AT&T, Orange, Telefonica, T-Mobile and Vodafone are also part of the initiative.


The GSMA also expects that the manufactures will eventually ship mobile phones without a charger because everybody would have one. This should also lead to less waste and could yield energy savings.

ahref - tinyfy long URLs

http://ahref.in, a product of Tenmiles Corporation tinyfies long urls. There are some other webapps on the Internet which also do this. So, whats unique in ahref, how is it different from other URL tinyfiers? First of all, its ad free and has a clean and simple interface, good looking too.

There is nothing new or unique in terms of features but we hope new features will get added later. You can post a comment in here to report bugs on http://ahref.in

Tata Indicom's Photon+

Tata Indicom(TI) has introduced a truly wireless solution for broadband connection using High Speed Internet Access. They have named it Photon+ . Its truly wireless because it connects to the base station without wires and also supports Wifi. So, you can connect to the photon device(router) using wifi.


This will really bring down the time and effort required for installation but TI has not mentioned the bandwidth(speed) available with this service. Their website says "Upto 2.4 Mbps Downlink speed . Actual internet speed will depend on multiple factors like time of the day, number of simultaneous users, web page accessed, etc." Well, here speed depends on too many things:)

You have two devices to choose from, a USB data card or a Wireless router. You have to pay Security Deposit of Rs.6999 for the router and Outright Cost of the USB data card is Rs.3500. If anyone has subscribed to this service, leave a comment on your experience with Photon+.