via economist.com
But according to David Kirkpatrick, who for many years was a technology editor at Fortune, Facebook is more than big. It’s a “platform for people to get more out of their lives,” a “technological powerhouse with unprecedented influence across modern life” and an “entirely new form of communication.”
No wonder he has written what amounts to two books about it: the first and second halves of “The Facebook Effect.” The first part is a fascinating but flawed corporate history, starring Facebook’s reticent creator, the Harvard dropout Mark Zuckerberg; the second is a thoughtful, evenhanded analysis of the Web site’s impact.
Zuckerberg created Thefacebook.com, as it was originally called, in early 2004, as an extracurricular project while he was at Harvard. Students, he knew, spent hours poring over the “facebooks” kept by each of the Harvard undergraduate houses, as well as the printed campus directory featuring the name and photograph of every freshman. When Harvard lagged in unifying these directories despite pressure from students, Zuckerberg posted his version online and allowed students to add new information of their own.
Thefacebook appealed to college students’ curiosity, social anxieties and hormones, and it was an instant hit. Over the next couple of years, Zuckerberg expanded the site to include other Ivy League colleges, then less elite colleges, then high schools and finally ordinary grown-ups.
Facebook became catnip for big tech companies — Microsoft, Google, Yahoo, Viacom — and the book recounts the feeding frenzy as various executives fell over themselves trying to buy it, despite Zuckerberg’s steadfast refusal to sell. (Microsoft, for one, was finally permitted to buy 1.6 percent of Facebook for $240 million in 2007, which at the time put the value of the company, which had yet to make a profit, at $15 billion.) Kirkpatrick’s is a well-researched, nicely structured account of all the wheeling and dealing. But there are kinks in the storytelling.
Descriptions are repeated multiple times. The details of Zuckerberg’s standard wardrobe — T-shirt, jeans, fleece jacket, rubber Adidas sandals — appear in as many as five places. We’re introduced to other Web-based college social networks at least three times. “Poking,” a friendly Facebook gesture, is described twice. It’s bizarre — like being at a party where some guy tells the same joke over and over in the same conversation.
Kirkpatrick’s writing is low-key but also workmanlike, and punctuated by jarring grammatical constructions (“Everybody carried their stuff themselves”; “every Thefacebook user had their own public bulletin board”). Ouch.
This isn’t the first book about Facebook. One, the sensationalist “Accidental Billionaires” (subtitle: “A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal”), is already being made into a movie. But “The Facebook Effect” is the first to enjoy the participation of the blunt, elusive Mark Zuckerberg.
Kirkpatrick makes a reasonable attempt to remain objective about his subject, noting (repeatedly) Zuckerberg’s taciturn stare and, of course, his slovenly dressing habits. Even so, there’s a good deal of hero worship going on. Zuckerberg is described as a “focused and visionary” leader with “a steely willingness to confront competition” who attracts girls with “his confidence, his humor and his irreverence.” His handwriting, we are told in several places, is “meticulous,” “extremely precise” and “beautiful.”
The author shows even less objectivity in reporting on the lawsuits that have troubled Facebook’s history. One was filed by three Harvard students — the twins Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss (whose name is misspelled “Winkelvoss” throughout) and Divya Narendra — who created an early networking site with Zuckerberg’s help and then watched, aghast, as he withdrew and started his own. (The Winklevosses were “athletic blond über-WASPs” who “couldn’t be more different from the scrawny, nerdy, brainy Jews who founded Thefacebook,” Kirkpatrick observes.) Later, Zuckerberg shut out his handpicked business manager, Eduardo Saverin, who had helped finance the fledgling project and turn it into an actual company.
In a “Note on Reporting,” Kirkpatrick names 128 people he interviewed for this book. Surprisingly (or maybe not), neither Saverin nor the Winklevossesare on the list. Only the Zuckerberg side is told.
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David Pogue writes the State of the Art column for the Business Day section of The Times. He is the author of “The World According to Twitter.”
via nytimes.com
via mashable.com
UPA to try 'de Soto model' for slum development Saubhadro Chatterji / New Delhi June 29, 2010, 0:32 IST The day Kumari Selja assumed charge as the Union minister for housing and urban poverty alleviation in the second United Progressive Alliance government, she got an unusual gift: a set of two books from none other than Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
The books, The Other Path and The Mystery of Capital, were by eminent Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, hailed as the “poor man’s capitalist”for his work on the informal sector. Time magazine chose him as one of the five leading Latin American innovators of the century and included him among the 100 most influential people in the world in 2004.
Singh asked his Cabinet colleague to read the two books for a better understanding of issues relating to urban poverty and slum development.On Tuesday, de Soto arrives in India to help prepare a road map for slum development in the country. De Soto and his Lima-based Institute for Liberty and Democracy (ILD) will become the sherpas of the Manmohan Singh government, helping it merge the informal economy in the slums of the country with the formal or mainstream one.
This is the first time the Union government will be taking the help of foreign experts for slum development, according to sources in the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation.
The government, however, says it is not about to import a foreign model of development into the slums of Mumbai or illegal colonies on railway lands in Kolkata.
“The group led by de Soto will be providing us a methodology for changing the face of the informal economy through routes like property titles and land ownerships,” Kiran Dhingra, secretary in the ministry, told Business Standard.
This will be de Soto’s second visit to India this year. He had come in February to deliver a lecture at the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry.
He had also met Congress president Sonia Gandhi, the party’s youth icon, Rahul Gandhi, and the Prime Minister.
His team from ILD arrived on Sunday and has begun the initial talks with the ministry officials. Sources in the ministry said the team would be doing the work for free, even paying for their air tickets.
While de Soto will roll out an overall road map on the issues of property rights in the informal economy of the slums, the government intends to also take his advise on the implementation of its ambitious Rajiv Awas Yojana for the urban poor.
“Rajiv Awas Yojana is currently in its preparation mode. We will be holding talks with the ILD for its speedy and better implementation,” said D S Negi, director of the National Buildings Organisation, an attached office under the ministry of housing and urban poverty alleviation.
Justifying the decision to bring in de Soto, Dhingra said: “He brings with him a global perspective and years of experience. He is one of the leading names in this field. And, if ILD joins hands with us, then the slum development issue gets a global recognition as well.”
“De Soto’s approach is essentially based on capitalist economic principles. Our government will try to meld them into our socialist objectives,” he added.
A non-profit organisation, the ILD has advised governments in many countries to vest slum-dwellers with property rights to maximise the economic use of assets in slums, create organisational forms to increase the productivity of enterprises and provide identity devices to allow entrepreneurs to operate in expanded markets.
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If the media covered America the way we cover Africa, here's what we would know of the United States over the last decade. That in 2000 there were fiercely disputed elections in which the presidency was seized by the candidate who won fewer votes than his rival. That a year later, one of the country's major cities was rocked by a devastating terror attack, costing thousands of lives. And that in 2005 another key city was submerged in record floods, destroying homes and leaving a thousand dead after the dominant tribe left the minority tribe to their fate. Surely we would speak of America as the dark continent, cursed to face constant suffering.
Much as I would like to, I can't claim credit for that riff, which belongs to my Guardian colleague Joseph Harker, who aired it first in an essay on race and the media. But I have been thinking of it, not least because I was a judge for the One World Media awards which were handed out last week. That meant watching and listening to the work of a dozen broadcast journalists and nearly as many in print, all of whom had reported on the developing world. It was a punishingly hard task and not just for the usual reason, cited by all awards judges, that the standard was exceptionally high. It was hard because no matter how good the journalism – and much of it was exceptionally good – it was almost unwatchable. By which I mean it was unbearable to watch.
Of course that was partly my fault for consuming these reports the way no punter ever would – back-to-back, one after another. But after an hour or two spent seeing children in Kenya speaking of the hunger that drives them to sell their bodies to European sex tourists, paedophiles who pay £5 to violate a 10- or 11-year-old girl on a beach – or watching footage of mass graves filled with the corpses of civilians murdered in Sri Lanka's 2009 crushing of the Tamils, many of them the small, slight bodies of children – there is only so much you can take. When confronted with the sight of men in Papua New Guinea proudly telling how they tortured and killed those they suspected of witchcraft, or with the image of entire Haitian villages submerged by hurricane-caused floods – even before disaster struck again in this year's earthquake – the urge to look away can be almost overwhelming.
The temptation, especially among journalists, is to imagine this is their fault, that if only they made their stories more appealing then they would capture the viewer's or listener's attention. So they try their best to humanise their tale of woe, to replace statistics with an individual. The result can sometimes be achingly powerful: witness the BBC radio interview with a 14-year-old Zimbabwean boy forced to be sole carer for his dying, Aids-stricken mother. Too often, though, this becomes a mere technique in a numbingly repetitive formula: the TV despatch that begins with the crying African baby before cutting to the (usually white) UN expert. Such reports turn all too quickly into cliche, the stuff of Chris Morris parody, and once again the finger is twitching over the television remote.
Others say the problem is not one of form but of substance, that the western media depicts the people of the developing world as victims – whether of poverty, natural disaster, corruption or all three. This casts the people of those countries as perennially, even innately, passive – those to whom life happens. It also accentuates the negative in a way that, for all the press's attraction to bad news, does not happen when the west discusses itself: as Harker pointed out, we know more about America than Florida 2000, 9/11 and Katrina.
The temptation then is to head in the other direction, to highlight the positive. This was the thrust of Jonathan Dimbleby's recent TV series on Africa, showcasing entrepreneurial and creative success stories – replacing the starving child with the cement billionaire. That's welcome. I confess my heart leapt when I came across one entry to last week's award, a TV report on the effort to build in Timbuktu, Mali, a library of great, pre-colonial manuscripts. An item that was not only upbeat, but also emphasised Africa's intellectual heritage, provided a rare contrast.
Yet that cannot be the template for coverage of the developing world. That too would be condescending and would never pass muster for Europe or the US. If we cover scandal, disaster and disease in Germany and France, surely we must do the same in Somalia and Congo. The challenge, of course, is to provide the whole picture – good, bad and ugly.
But this challenge cannot fall on journalists alone. The best of the award submissions were about as good as they could be, and still I know the vast bulk of the audience would prefer to read or watch something else.
This is partly a problem of all foreign news. Our curiosity about those far away is finite. As one old-time US hack used to say, "Americans will do anything for Latin America except read about it." But, more deeply, there seems to be a limit to our capacity to absorb human suffering. We know terrible, heartbreaking things are going on all over the world; but to face them, for more than a fleeting glimpse, is more than we can take. This is true of both ends of the market: sure, Sun readers would prefer to read 10 pages on the World Cup than a single story about TB in Africa, but the Guardian's traffic figures suggest our own online readers are much the same.
What might make a difference? Of course, the objective reality could change, and coverage with it. Reporting of the developing world was different in the immediate post-colonial era, when the likes of Julius Nyerere or Kenneth Kaunda were making the weather on their continent. They were active, not passive; actors in their own drama. Too few of the developing world's leaders today meet that standard, whether compromised by corruption or client relationships with the west. Even so, the media does best when it sees the developing world the way it sees its own societies: not as a crude battle of victims against villains but as a subtle mix of conflicting, shifting political interests.
A second change might be too much to ask for, especially in these straitened times. It would help if the media's coverage of, say, Africa were more sustained: a steady supply of small, inside-page stories rather than the occasional special, produced by journalists who parachute in and then leave. Audiences can follow quite nuanced reporting on Israel-Palestine, for instance, because they have already had so much of it: they know the characters, can follow the twists and turns. It's a virtuous circle: the more coverage there is, the more interesting it becomes.
Perhaps more realistic is to insist these foreign stories are not so foreign. The eventual winner last week was Dan McDougall, who wrote three blistering reports for the Mail on Sunday, all focusing on the world's extractive industries. One showed the consequences of our ravenous appetite for lithium, the mineral used to power our iPods and BlackBerrys: those living around Chile's largest lithium mine are parched, as their water is either poisoned or diverted.
McDougall produced similarly eye-popping pieces on the Madagascan mines where the nickel for our coins comes from, and on the badlands of eastern Zimbabwe, where virtual slaves dig for diamonds, jewels that will eventually find their way here.
All these reports made the connection between apparently remote suffering and our own lives. This surely is the way to make the unwatchable watchable, to force us to look when we'd rather look away. The burden on the media, and everyone else, is to realise that all this pain is not only going on over there, in the developing world. We're involved – even here, in our world.
via guardian.co.uk
Unintentionally Funny, Must-Watch Bollywood Movies: Raavan
06/22/10I’ll be honest… I’d been excited about Raavan for a while now. It’s the sorta movie that I go into knowing that it’ll either blow me away, or gimme a lotta fodder for my next comic. Well, go into it, I did… And I hope you’re not skipping out on too much work to read this, because there’s a lo-oooo-oot of fodder to be had here.
Rating 4.72 out of 5
Tags: Abhishek Bachchan, Aishwarya Rai, Bollywood, Mani Ratnam, Movie Review, Raavan, Spoof, Unintentionally Funny Movies, Webcomic
240 Responses to “Unintentionally Funny, Must-Watch Bollywood Movies: Raavan”
Brilliant stuff man!! especially the jungle-baywatch-aviator one was imba!!! had me literally ROFLMAO!
Awesome, as usual..And I loved the extra colors too..:)
Verry swit of u! Thought u’ll never come up with one…atleast not until after the World Cup! So this bought tears in my eyes (kushi ke aansu)
lou it! with sr bachchan at the end and all. wah. just wah..
I don’t think anyone watches movies the way you do!! Brilliant stuff!
Really good one, Sahil. Loved the colors and the entire mockery of the good guy/bad guy thing!
I wouldn’t say I didn’t like the movie, but probably your version is a lot betterKeep up the good work!
Dude u raak, thts the quickest update ever. your crooked approach to movies beats me. keep the good stuff coming
Been vella for some time,meant to catch this film one of these days. Thanks a lot.
Now I have finally made my mind on whether to watch this movie or not. THANKS!!!!
dude awesome man,
funny shit , i guz would still watch it for the camera works ;
Shove it losers. It was the editing. #epicstuff
Also Jungle Baywatch is a valid idea for a TV-series.
After such a long wait, I thought you would’v a kickass review! Not so good this time.
Awesomeness! This is exactly what I felt after watching the movie and you’ve put it on paper to the dot!
u shud have mentioned about the dhoom2 style ending of jumping into valley
Awesome Review…hilarious..definitely more entertaining than the movie
bwahahahahahahahahaha… hope mani saar never reads it, he’ll get another heart attack. fucking awesome shit here bro.you own!
Vigilidiot, you horrible horrible man. Now I’ll never be able to watch this masterpiece on screen. Atleast you could have waited till we got round to watching it first before gutting it in prose.
wily
i must say your reviews are the only good things that come out of making most bollywood movies. i’d pay you to read your review than to watch the movie! u r so swit, dude. jungle baywatch, avaitor man – KILLER.
Wonderful work, as usual. I especially love the drama in frame 8, it really made me pause to contemplate and you should be proud of your skills to manipulate emotions and reactions like this through your art. The high production values of the rainbow frames are appreciated as well.
This is brilliant stuff! The last part was awesome!
Sahil, you spruced up an immensely boring Tuesday mornin! Wudnt have watched this shit-flick anyway, but waited for your review all the same. And, as usual, it’s rib-ticklingly funnneee
)
Oh man I was about to watch this movie yday, canceled just in the nick of time, phew eh? lol loved the ray ban close up
Oh man #epicwin! This is gold class stuff, in the league of your epic Kurbaan review.
I could have sworn I was laughing so hard, a little poop came out. #keepgoing
Now this is what I call a ‘Modern Adaption’ in its true form. Every crappy movie calls for a great spoof!
lol…so glad i did not watch the movie after so much bad press…this panel review was worth the paisa, i did not spend…wtf….yeah, that’s desipanaa for you….:-)……thanks much bro!
that was insaaaaaanely funny!! EPIC representation of the film. Definately gona go watch it for a laugh!
first, After reading sita-ji’s comment i scrolled back upt ot he 8th comment. Now, it would be kickass if you could animate it. Thats a whole career ready for you! hilarious
awefuckinsome!!!!!
humour at its best…maybe u should make a movie on dissing movies!!Jungle Baywatch Aviator Man was the point, when i started clutching my stomach hard and had to stop reading to give my senses take a break from laughing loud.
Also on second thought, you should start your own MAD magazine.
4.62 is an unfair rating …. and govinda on the tree …. priceless!!!
this was exactly the reaction when i was watching that movie-IN GOLD CLASS!..felt like knocking myself hard amidst audience laughing and giggling!mani sir…whats wrong with you please?
Dude.You.God!
Seriously. I LOVED the Ray Ban wala panel!
And the people who are going “ooooh cinematography, ahhh lovely locations” imma forward your review to them NOW!
Unadulterated Awesomeness!Awesome! At the point where a character in the toon said “Epic”, I was ROFL. Just too good, this one!
man I could barely make it through the panes,,,,wondering how did you manage to sit through ALL THIS AWWWSOMENESS!!!???
you are doing a noble deed here my friend……keep up the good workdayum.. cant believe i have to wait till after work to read the review.. i jus browsed through the comments and getting all impatient now.. yaaay ur back.. now dont be keeping us waiting!!!
*Sighs*
This is too funny! I passed on the info to everyone in office so they can benefit from this!this is brilliant! check out my website. i think we do some stuff in common..
Reply
dude… you no where close to this guy!
Reply
yeah he’s quite awesome.
too good …better than watching a movie….rayban positioning takes the cake…finally someone rises against all the intelligence insults the audiences are subjected to…..long live the revolution!!!!
was lukin forward to this after i saw the muvi on the weekend
Good stuff. Colorful this one is.. The best bit was the detailed ‘Ray ban’ on the aviators..
Doesn’t beat the ‘Avatar’ comic though..Aviator Man & Jungle Baywatch are valid TV Shows that deserve to be made. Awesome one as usual. I hope someone sends this to JrBachchan & SrBachchan.
I guess CBSE can adapt this for level 1 English classes too .. very descriptive .. awesome one
Bro i haven seen the movie n wont watch it now .
thanks for the picture perfect review .
The rayban thing was the best ….
CHEERS !!!!
Ray-ban product placement, one scratch on the face (you missed the water-proof make-up though
), P.L.O.T., L.O.G.I.C & the ultimate pwnage – the sholay reunion…it’s all there
..some respite now after watching this badly done documentary for “incredible india” masquerading as a movie!
FTW! \m/
Awesome!!! Excellent! I feel like I saw the movie once again!!! lol
Awesome!!!
A smaaaal tweak: can you put a gap between two panels? After a few screens it was confusing which panel the narrative belonged to.
Thanks.
the sholay reunion panel is ALMOST always too frikkin’ on the ball!
power to you bro!
There’s Govinda? On a tree? Which held ‘its’ weight? I loved Ray Ban, swerving bullets. Didn’t get the ‘editing’ part. Could someone explain please?
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Big B has tweeted on his page that Little B’s part was in shambles because of editing issues….i’m guessing this is alluding to that….
Brilliantly done. Love the humor n ofcourse your sense for details…
Ray-Ban is the blockbuster revelationDude thanks for telling the story and spoiling it for me. Interesting what you did , but make sure next time you don’t let the plot out.
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lol.. you are an epic too… if you do not want to know the plot why do you visit this webpage?
Excellent work dude…. I too hated the movie but i liked this picture story very much…
@ SSD – It refers to the poor editing of the film…
Haha! The matrix style trajectory change of the bullets was EXACTLY what I thought when I watched the movie….
And a little addition, the dayamned SP sez “Hath jao Radhika” instead of Ragini in the end of the movie when he starts shooting! Junta check out that lil goof if u haven’t caught it yetSeems he didnt spend enough footage time with his wifey that he didn’t even remember her name
ROFLMAO Slides:
1. Ray Ban
2. Jungle Baywatch
3. Swerve
4. Nahi!!You have a God-given talent to lampoon cinema and pop culture…I hope you land a book deal ala GreatBong
Oh my god… I was reading this at Uni and I had such a difficult time stopping laughing out loud!!! U rock dude!!! I really wanted to ROFL!!! keep up the good work!!!
Awesomeness!
You still owe us Kites though..
If you made a book out of these, I’d totally buy it..Can’t agree with u more!! On par with My Name is Khan!!
Masterpieces!!
Products & Services
How do you hold your Nokia?
By JBC on 28 June 2010
LONDON, England – We’ve been looking around and noticed there are many ways to hold your Nokia device. Whether you’re left-handed or right-handed, there’s no shortage of ways to hold your phone. We’ve highlighted a few after the jump, but let us know your favourite in the comments.
Thumb and finger
Elegant in appearance, this method requires you to grip the phone by its edges, with the thumb on one vertical edge and one to four fingers on the opposite edge.For larger devices, you might like to place the index finger towards the centre of the top of the device for extra stability.
Popular with smaller devices, and typically comfortable for longer phone calls, the cup basically enables you to cup the phone with your whole hand. This might result in much of the phone’s edges being covered and the back of the device sitting snugly in the palm of your hand – but don’t be concerned about this, it won’t impact the device’s performance. QWERTY device users will also find this handy for tapping out messages and navigating the phone, as the thumb is typically left free with much of the device’s weight being carried by the palm.
The balance
This is a tricky one to pull off, but like the cup is actually quite useful for QWERTY users. Use your little finger as a ledge for the bottom edge of the phone to rest on, with the index and middle fingers performing a double act to keep the device stable at the back, typically near the bottom of the device, creating the balance effect. We wouldn’t recommend this as being practical for phone calls, but it does work great for messaging and device navigation.
The four edge grip
Regardless of the size of your hands, the Four Edge Grip (FEG, for short) is a universal grip which involves all of your fingers and thumb, each having hold of one edge of the device (the middle and ring fingers actually double up to provide an opposing force to the much stronger thumb). You’ll find a little gap develops between the back of the phone and the palm, which is useful. For something.We’ve found any of the four grips mentioned above to be both comfortable and as you can see, offer no signal degradation whatsoever. This isn’t a feature you’ll only find on high-end Nokia devices either. It’s something that’s been a part of pretty much every Nokia device ever made (perhaps with the exception of that teardrop 3G one, which was a bit ridiculous).
The key function on any Nokia device is its ability to make phone calls. After all, that’s why we know them universally as mobile phones (or smart phones, feature phones or mobile computers – though the same grip styles work for those, too). One of the main things we’ve found about the 1 billion plus Nokia devices that are in use today is that when making a phone call, people generally tend to hold their phone like a…. well, like a phone. Providing a wide range of methods and grips for people to hold their phones, without interfering with the antennae, has been an essential feature of every device Nokia has built.
Of course, feel free to ignore all of the above because realistically, you’re free to hold your Nokia device any way you like. And you won’t suffer any signal loss. Cool, huh?
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via guardian.co.uk
via xkcd.com
