Disposable cameras then, disposable cellular phones now, disposable-what-next ?

A site on Interpersonal Skills Development and the how-to-live-life kinda stuff. A Good read.

8:25 AM. The hottest FM station in Chennai is playing a song. An Unmistakeable Voice. Its Udit Narayan singing 'Allu Allu' (Movie - 'Bhagavathy'). Unmistakeable, I say is the Tamil pronunciation of this popular Hindi singer. The way Udit stresses, stretches and pauses the Tamil words makes the language sound overly sophisticated and urbane.

Have you heard the song 'Aeroplane Parkudhu' (Movie - 'Paarai') ? The first time I heard the song, I was totally amused and broke into a peel of laughter. Strangely, I did not feel indignant at the way in which the words in the song were being sung. More masterpieces of his attempts (or should I say mis-attempts) at pronouncing Tamil words can be heard in 'Achchacho punnagai' (Movie - 'Shahjahan') and 'Kadhal Pisasae' (Movie - 'Run').

This singer has become an essential part of Kollywood's musical history. While these FM stations play some really unheard-of songs, I cant help but notice that many of those songs have been sung by Udit. And Udit's voice has been a frequent choice for the 'ghaanaa' numbers of the Tamil movies. We all still remember how he shot to fame in Tamil cinema with his inimitable voice in Shankar's, 'Kadhalan', the song, 'Kadhalikkum pennin' and his recent folk number with Kamalhaasan - 'Ye Le Machchi' (Movie - 'Anbe Sivam').

My Udit favorites are in Hindi. 'Gazab kaa hai din' from 'Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak', the movie that heralded the birth of a star Udit Narayan among the others like Aamir and Juhi, is an all time favorite. Other national favorites are 'Pahalaa nashaa' (Movie - 'Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander'), 'Ghar se nikalate hii' ( I dont remember the movie name), the super catchy number 'Mehndi laga ke rakhna' (Movie - 'Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge') and the haunting piece 'O Re Chori' (Movie - 'Lagaan').

Well, for a voice as enticing and cute as Udit's, all Tamil mis-pronunciations and hindi-flavoured-accentuations can be endured or if I can say - overlooked. There has been a lot of hoo-haas on his pronunciation and mis-pronunciation of Tamil words. But hell, lets go by the spirit of things, not just the rule. After all music is said to have no languages.

I watched a disaster yesterday. 'Thirumalai'. Hopeless is the word to describe the movie. All that I ask for is a 3 hours long movie that can be watched without having to look at the time on my watch every half an hour. Am I asking for too much ? Am not even asking for any logic in the movie. But the characters must fit in their roles somewhere, right ? Their characters must be clear atleast to the makers, right ?.

Well, nothing was strong in the movie. The weakest among the weakest was the characterisation of the villain 'Arasu' and the heroine's father (supposedly a media person). And I thought that its this villain's character around which the entire plot has been spun. Vijay was the only saving grace of the movie and Jo hardly had a role in it. The major point is that there's no feeling left in you when you exit the theatre. Zero Conviction. Zero entertainment.

The Hindu celebrated 125 years of its existence on the 13th of September.

Several groups stand up to defend the freedom of the press and media on the 8th of November.

Editor-in-chief Ram says the newspaper would not be fazed by this outrageous misadventure and instead move the courts for justice.

Early Riders of the Enterprise Service Bus technology call it the Enterprise Nervous System. By leveraging emerging [web services] standards for communicating, connectivity, transformation, and security, an ESB delivers a powerful, affordable, standards-based solution throughout the enterprise and across partner organizations. The biggest merit that I see of the ESB is - "Simpler development models that rely on standards and are suited to generalist developers". Looks like Web services-based ESB is going to rock. And throw the hub-and-spoke Integration Broker on the rocks. :-(

The LooselyCoupled Blog has lotsmore on ESB. And so does Techmetrix.com.

The shift to ESB is being actively championed by Sonic Software ( the company that makes the JMS-based SonicMQ MOM). IBM has already jumped into the band wagon and plans to release its enterprise service bus soon leveraging its MOM - Websphere MQ (what else !). And Microsoft's version of ESB will be the "Indigo" programming model. Truely, there are just two groups - Microsoft and Non-Microsoft ! :-)

My take - EAI solutions integrate applications, while ESB solutions can integrate applications as well as existing disparate EAI solutions. So clearly ESB is the next step.