Saturday, August 7, 2010

Priyanka finds 'Saat Khoon Maaf' role most difficult

National Award winning actress Priyanka Chopra says her role in Saat Khoon Maaf is the toughest project she has ever taken up.

"I have been so lost ... this film ... Saat Khoon Maaf is taking the mickey out of me ... the most difficult role of my life," Priyanka, who won the best actress National award for her powerful performance in Fashion, wrote on her Twitter page.

Saat Khoon Maaf is being directed by Vishal Bharadwaj. In the film, Priyanka has seven husbands - while Naseeruddin Shah plays her oldest spouse, Neil Nitin Mukesh has just been signed to play the youngest.

The actress was previously seen in Bharadwaj's production venture Kaminey.

Katrina is game for Ranbir



Bollywood and cricket are the country's two reigning passions and now the reigning queen of Bollywood is trying her hand at the game of cricket.

Love, Sex aur Bollywood



Bollywood's serial kisser Emraan Hashmi has done an intimate scene with co-actor Prachi Desai in their forthcoming film Once Upon a Time in Mumbaai. Take a look at this and some other steamy scenes on silver screen.

Kareena too busy for the small screen

Even though many film stars find the small screen an equally lucrative medium, actress Kareena Kapoor has turned down a television offer to concentrate on her films.

Kareena was recently offered a television show solely based on her - titled Main Kareena Kapoor Banna Chahti Hoon for a whopping amount. However due to prior movie and brand commitments Kareena had to decline the flattering offer.

According to sources close to the actress, the show involved Kareena interacting with contestants the nation over with big Bollywood dreams.

However, Kareena is not ruling out her debut on television.

"Television is an option that I definitely find exciting, but I would much rather concentrate on one thing now. So it is films for the moment," says Kareena.

Talking about her decision to turn down the offer, sources said, "Kareena has just started filming for Ra1 with SRK. She then has her hands full with Golmaal 3, Agent Vinod

Similarly, there are a plethora of brands ... as of now she doesnt have the time for television, sources said.


Read more at: http://movies.ndtv.com//movie_story.aspx?section=Movies&Id=ENTEN20100136447&keyword=bollywood&subcatg=MOVIESINDIA&cp

Ash down with high fever, gives Endhiran music launch a miss

High fever forced Aishwarya Rai Bachchan to cancel her visit to the music launch of the Telugu version of her film Endhiran/Robot in Hyderabad.

Aishwarya was all set to fly to Hyderabad yesterday morning for the Telugu music launch of Endhiran/Robot but she got up with a very high fever....she could not make it but she did send across her good wishes and thoughts through a speech, the actor's spokesperson said.

The 36-year-old actress said due to high fever, the doctor insisted she stay at home and rest.

Thanking the people of Hyderabad and the Telugu film industry, who have been very supportive through out her career, Aishwarya said Endhiran/Robot is a very special film, and the entire team that has worked so hard on its making.

She said that technically the film is a first of its kind in Indian cinema and they are very excited to share such a special film with the audience.

Aishwarya added she was elated that the music of Robot by A R Rahman was a chart topping success. Describing her co-star in the film Rajnikanth as an institution, a superstar, a massive talent and an humble man, she said it has been a honour sharing the same frame with him.

"Director Shankar has pushed the envelope and taken leaps ahead in re-defining commercial cinema. From Jeans to Endhiran, I have recognized only he can make a magnificent look more magnificent, and technically introduce the viewers to a new world of cinema each time," Aishwarya said.

The music launch was attended by Rajnikant, Shankar and Telugu superstar Chiranjeevi who was the chief guest.

On Twitter, it's follower quality not quantity that matters

You see it everywhere: your friend on Facebook trying to get you to "like" their employer's new page while another friend pleads for you to follow such-and-such account on Twitter. It doesn't matter that you're a 20-something and they're tweeting about how to make the most of retired life - everyone knows that the more followers you have, the more influence you'll have, right? Whoever has the most followers wins, right?

Wrong. According to the latest research from HP Labs, it's not necessarily how many followers you have, but how passive or active they are in spreading the word.

In a video interview, researcher Dr. Bernardo Huberman frames the questions examined in HP's study, saying "In a world where all information is crowdsourced, how is it that an agenda gets set? There are zillions of messages there, millions of people and somehow, some things end up bubbling all the way to the top and grab the consciousness of a lot of people."

"There's an enormous amount of passivity in the social network," Dr. Huberman goes on to say, explaining that some people can have an enormous number of followers, but not much influence, while others can have fewer followers but much more influence.

The study finds that "the correlation between popularity and influence is weaker than it might be expected. This is a reflection of the fact that for information to propagate in a network, individuals need to forward it to the other members, thus having to actively engage rather than passively read it and cease to act on it."

Despite this claim, the report offers a top 10 list of Twitter users with the most influence, not one having fewer than 40,000 followers, and some, such as @rww, @google and @breakingnews, with more than a million followers. The top 10 accounts, given in no apparent order in the summary of the report, were @mashable, @jokoanwar, @google, @aplusk, @syfy, @smashingmag, @michellemalkin, @theonion, @rww and @breakingnews.

The list was created by way of an "IP Algorithm", which assigns a "relative influence score and passivity score to every user" by looking at how they interact with other users, the influence they have on other users, and by studying "the propagation of web links on Twitter over time."


Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/technology/on-twitter-its-follower-quality-not-quantity-that-matters-42597?cp

Nokia declines to go all in on chips

One might think Nokia would give into the temptation.

It sees Apple vacuuming up adoration and profits. It sees Apple taking more control of the components that go into a phone. In particular, Apple has worked on building its very own chip for smartphones and tablets and has acquired chip companies apace.

Perhaps Nokia too should be harboring silicon dreams. But Henry Tirri, the head of Nokia's research centres, says it is not interested.

"You can do for a while an investment like Apple is doing on their own processor stack and aim for very optimized performance," Mr. Tirri said during an interview at the company's Silicon Valley lab. "But that is very brittle."

That would be Nokia passing on the prospect of a homemade chip as one means of invigorating its cellphone lineup.

Mr. Tirri has worked in the computer science field for about 40 years and dresses the part of a Silicon Valley local. Sparkly earring, hair tumbling down his temples, a white embroidered shirt, cream pants and sandals scream anything but "icy Finn."

He knows the chip industry's patterns well and has seen specialists capitalize on their wares for short periods of time, only to be undone in spectacular fashion when more general-purpose products come to town.

"It seems to be that Moore's Law will always end up leaning toward commoditization and a faster, general-purpose chip," Mr. Tirri said.

Nokia could use a shot in the arm, but finding that boost through a homemade chip is just too risky. Any manufacturing miss or misstep on features needed in a given generation of products can leave you waiting two or three years to catch up.

"You have to be very good at predicting things or you can kill yourself in one cycle," Mr. Tirri said.

Apple, for one, appears convinced that the specialist may enjoy a solid run here in the next few years as mobile devices undergo great change. The company continues to use Intel chips in its more traditional computers but concocts its own take on the ARM design for mobile devices.

The custom work can lead to snappier performance with software, better battery life and smaller products but comes with heavy financial and engineering costs.

Away from chips, Nokia has a few surprises in store for customers as its research bets pay off, Mr. Tirri said. The company has specialists working on advances in materials that could result in phones that change color, deflect liquids and grow keyboards out of their displays. In addition, Nokia is working hard on a variety of cloud computing and network optimization services.

Mr. Tirri referenced "My Fair Lady," a favorite musical from his childhood, and said Nokia would delight again.

"Just you wait, Henry Higgins," he said. "Just you wait."


Read more at: http://www.ndtv.com/article/technology/nokia-declines-to-go-all-in-on-chips-42782?pfrom=Top-Tech&cp