Thursday 26 September 2013

Attarintiki Daredi Moview Review ~ Rating

Review : Atharintiki Daaredhi – Hilarious Perfect Family Entertainer.
 


Release on:
 27 September 2013
BtechStars Rating : 4/5
Director : Trivikram Srinivas
Producer : BVSN Prasad
Music Director : Devi Sri Prasad
Starring : Pawan Kalyan, Samantha, Pranitha
Power Star Pawan Kalyan and Samantha have teamed up for the film ‘Atharintiki Daaredhi’. The movie has been directed by Trivikram Srinivas and BVSN Prasad is the producer. The movie has released across the world today, so let's check it out.
Plot:
Goutham Nanda (Pawan Kalyan) is the grandson of a very rich business magnate based in Milan, Raghuram Nanda (Boman Irani). Raghuram has everything in life, but he's not happpy. At 78 years of age, all he wants is reconciliation with his estranged daughter Sunanda (Nadhiya). Despite repeated attempts, Sunanda refuses to meet her dad.
Goutham now heads to India to try and convince his Atthayya Sunanda to come back. Sunanda is a headstrong but kind lady and Goutham must now do all that he can to convince her. He joins her house as a car driver tries to win her affection.
Sunanda has two daughters, Sashi (Samantha) and Prameela (Praneetha). What does Goutham do? Whom does he end up with? Can he win the affection of his Atthayya? That forms the story of this ‘Atharintiki Daaredhi’.
Plus Points :
Pawan Kalyan is simply outstanding in AD. He is stylish and he has good energy levels in this movie. But more than all that, Pawan Kalyan’s emotionally charged perfomance in the climax sequence is something that will have a very strong impact. Pawan carries the simple and linear story line on his shoulders and takes the film to another level.
Samantha is very cute in the movie and she looks gorgeous as always. She has a limited role in the first half,but gets prominent placement the second part. Her scenes with Pawan Kalyan are adorable.
Praneetha looks good,especially in the Bapu Gari Bomma song. Nadhiya has given a classy performance. Boman Irani and Ali are neat.
Brahmanandam steals the show in the second half with the Ahalya drama episode. Comedy quotient in the movie is very good, especially in the second half. Trivikram’s dialogues work well.
The interval sequence and climax episodes are really nice. Trivikram has succeeded in maintaining good tempo throughout the film. He has also presented Pawan Kalyan in a way that fans will love.
Minus Points :
The VFX scenes are not upto the mark and they could have been avoided altogether, especially in the fight where the jeeps dive into the river.
Technical Aspects :
Cinematography is a big asset for the film. Prawin Pudi’s editing is good. DSP’s music and background score are big assets for the film.
Trivikram needs to be applauded for handling Pawan Kalyan’s stardom in the right manner. He has penned some really nice dialogues and his direction is also good.
Verdict :
Atharintiki Daaredhi’ is a clean and hilarious family entertainer. You will see a new energetic Pawan Kalyan in the movie. Samantha’s glamour, Trivikram’s humour and DSP’s music are all bonus points. Go watch the film this weekend with your family. It is worth it.
BtechStars Rating – 4/5

Tuesday 24 September 2013

Ruchi Sanghvi - The First Female Software Engineer of Facebook

Digital Indians: How Ruchi Sanghvi engineered her rise


Ruchi Sanghvi Ruchi Sanghvi came from a family of entrepreneurs
When Ruchi Sanghvi arrived at the Facebook office in California for a job interview in 2005, she found a menu card outside saying: "Looking for engineers."
The start-up was located above a Chinese restaurant in downtown Palo Alto. It was modest looking place filled with gawky engineers, black sofas, lava lamps, and walls covered with murals and movie posters.
Earlier that year, the computer science engineer from Carnegie Mellon University had fled a job with a bank on Wall Street after three weeks. "I had panicked. I wanted to be in a business that was dependent on my core skills," she says.
She had flown out to California, interviewed with Oracle and started out there, when a friend had told her about Facebook.
"I didn't know much about them. I didn't even know that they had moved to California. I thought they were still in Boston working out of Harvard dorm rooms," she says wryly.
Scooter culture
We are sitting in the hip Dropbox office in downtown San Francisco, where Ms Sanghvi, 31, works as a vice-president of operations.
Employees at the online storage firm whizz through corridors on skates and office scooters, some take time off to play pool and video games, and a plush music room is ready for a karaoke contest.
But, for the moment, we are talking about how Ms Sanghvi got the job at Facebook and became its first female engineer.

"When I started out in Facebook, it had only 20 people. I saw it grow to a thousand employees and from five million users to over a billion users. I saw it evolve from a service that served college students to one that served the world," she says.
"It was extremely chaotic, but it was a wonderful experience. I learnt everything there."
At Facebook, she was part of the team that developed the news feed.
How was it, I asked, being the first female engineer at Facebook?
Ms Sanghvi says she was used to being in a minority: at engineering school, she was one of the five female students in a class of 150.
But at Facebook, she says, she truly came into her own.
"You had to be opinionated, you had to make sure your point of view was heard, you had to ask questions. Sometimes people would tell you were stupid and you'd start all over again," she says.
"But it was, by and large, a meritocracy. It had one of the best environments for learning."

Ruchi Sanghvi: Silicon Valley’s pioneering woman
Facebook was also where she met her future husband who was the first Indian engineer the company had hired.
I ask her for a story about Mark Zuckerberg, one of the founders and chief executive. She frowns, thinks hard, and says she doesn't quite like talking about Mr Zuckerberg. Then she relents.
It's a story about how the news feed launch outraged users and nearly killed it.

Start Quote

The journey from employee to entrepreneur was a complex and taxing one for an immigrant like me”
Ruchi Sanghvi
"We had less than 10 million users when news feed arrived. Mark was at a press conference (announcing it) and over a million users began protesting against it," she says.
Last year, Ms Sanghvi spoke about the time in vivid detail.
"Groups with names like 'I hate Facebook' and 'Ruchi is the devil' had been formed. People camped outside our office and demonstrated. But we realised the very people who hated it were able to spread the word because of the news feed," she told a talk.
But Mark Zuckerberg stuck to his guns, Ms Sanghvi tells me.
"Typically in any other company if 10% of your users decide to boycott a product you are obviously going to reverse the changes or do something about it. But Mark was really adamant about his vision about the potential of news feed."
Mark ZuckerbergMark Zuckerberg 'was adamant about his vision' for Facebook, Ms Sanghvi says
When Ms Sanghvi left Facebook in 2010 after an itch to start her own company, the social networking site had more than 1,500 employees and more than 500 million users.
As a young girl growing up in India's industrial city of Pune, she had dreamt of taking over her family business.
Her father, a second generation businessman, runs a heavy engineering company. Her grandfather ran a stainless steel business. "We are an entrepreneurial family," she says.
But now, she was in the US, having studied computer science and worked at Facebook. The world beckoned.
So she went ahead and set up her own company, Cove, with her husband in 2010. There, helped by a team of engineers, they made "collaborative software" for communities and networks.
"The journey from employee to entrepreneur was a complex and taxing one for an immigrant like me," says Ms Sanghvi, who has been lobbying US authorities to ease immigration laws.
"When I started Cove, I spoke to three immigration lawyers who gave me a long checklist of things to do before my company could hire immigrants."
Diverse roles
Two years later, in February 2012, Cove was bought by the cloud-sharing service Dropbox.
At Dropbox, a six-year-old company with more than 175 million users, Ms Sanghvi has diverse roles. She has led hiring - "only great people can make great products," she says - and managed marketing and communications.
I ask her if she plans to do anything back home in India.
"I'd love to do something if it was easier to do it. It is difficult to do exciting things in India. There are a lot of issues and barriers, simple things like a good internet line to the office," she says.
"It doesn't seem as easy as Silicon Valley where you have an idea you can simply execute it with hard work. But I admire folks who are doing things in India. It requires a lot grit and determination.
"You know I think I have had it pretty easy here in US actually," she adds, with a laugh. Then she skates away for her next meeting.
Ask the innovators
On 25 September at 20:15-21:00 India time [02:45-03:30GMT], we will be holding a final hangout of the series with some of the digital Indians you have met so far, including Ruchi Sanghvi.
This hangout will provide the opportunity for you to put your questions to the experts.

Thursday 19 September 2013

Charlie Chaplin - Let Us All Unite

 Charlie Chaplin's 1940 anti-fascist speech from The Great Dictator, as a song. 
Charlie Chaplin in Let us all Unite

The Great Dictator's Speech ...



Lyrics : 
I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone.. I should like to help everyone - if possible - Jew, Gentile - black man - white. We all want to help one another. Human beings are like that.In this world there is room for everyone. And the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.
Greed has poisoned men’s souls
Has barricaded the world with hate
We think too much and feel too little
More than machinery, we need humanity
More than cleverness, we need kindness
Without these qualities, life would be violent
And all would be lost
Do not despair
The hate of men will pass
And dictators die
And the power they took from the people
Will return to the people
Let us all unite!
Let us fight for a new world
To do away with greed
Now let us fight to free the world
To fulfill that promise
Let us all unite!
Soldiers, don’t give yourselves to brutes
Men who despise you and slave you
Tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel
Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle
Don’t give yourselves to these unnatural men
Machine men with machine minds and machine hearts
You are not machines
You are men
You the people have the power
To make this life free and beautiful
Let us use that power
To make this life a wonderful adventure.

Thursday 12 September 2013

Eleven shades of an entrepreneur

This article highlights the characteristics of an early-stage company entrepreneur in 11 shades. “Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.”- Winston Churchill. Do you have what it takes to make a complete colourful journey of entrepreneurship? There are many more shades which I will share in my future articles. These 11 shades are good to begin for assessment’s sake.
color_wheel_pencils
1. Focus on a specialisation shade in a niche. Be a leader in your field of expertise. Many times entrepreneurs spread themselves too thin with multiple products and offerings. It is good strategy to go after the specific areas where the momentum is good and build big on it. Narrowed market focus helps address customer requirements in depth hence can command premium pricing. Generalisation vision of doing everything for everyone is sure-shot death for a startup.
2.  Avoid mixing shades of business interest with near relations like friends and families. Offering discounts, accepting late payments are usually seen when one does business with friends. Relationship clouds the decision when hiring. Design your startup founding team with good complementing professionals whom you can make friends with and will become your so-called extended family.
3. Announce the shade of commitment about your startup’s vision in public.Entrepreneurs who do it are considered serious as they have put their personal reputation at stake. Startup is THE life of entrepreneur. It does not have a predictable end. Commitment with total immersion is required from founders. It evokes lot of trust for in its team, customers and investors equally.
4. Shade of planning should be for best and worst outcomes equally. Things which are beyond your control – look at them in a pessimist way. Things which can be managed, created and steered – look at them optimistically. Entrepreneurs should invest in capital expenditure for better future and cut operational costs assuming worst scenario. If the desired success is not achieved, then plan for the downside as athletes do. It spurs them to take on the next big opportunity.
5. Entrepreneur shade of willingness to gain knowledge is important. Startup founders will be expert in technology, and design, but may lack financial acumen. Learning helps open minds to new and fresh ideas. Hence, learning, reading, and understanding financial management are important for scale, growth and investment value creation. A wise entrepreneur will be eager to learn to increase his wisdom; fools resist teachings and remain ignorant.
6. Entrepreneurs many times are very rigid in their ideas, processes and partnerships. Unable to adapt to situations results in loss of time, opportunity and relationships. Very often entrepreneurs are at cross roads with multiple options to select. There are times when conflicting guidance, approach to a problem is given to entrepreneurs. It is of utmost importance to maintain shade of flexibility along with persistence.
7. Priority shade brings in the value of saying NO to all which does not matter, and what is not useful and not good. Entrepreneurs should learn to say ‘No’ without feeling of guilt. Do not try to please everyone at the expense of the startup’s interest. Entrepreneur’s first and only goal is realising its vision. It is not considered rude if one is not able help, give time, and entertain, due to business priorities.
8. Entrepreneurs should learn the shade of active listening. Listening is not merely hearing the words but interpreting the underlying message. Good listener will be able to know unsaid or partially said communication, which is common in startups. Listen without bias, for ideas, for knowledge to become efficient and effective. Talk less, listen more.
9.  Shade to focus on good quality content in all modes of communication.Startups value increases with its ability to generate high quality content. Entrepreneurs’ focus on technology skills is very high. It misses out on creating content related to its products or services. Content is extremely important to engage and attract customers, investors and employees equally. Great entrepreneurs build arsenal of content recipes like good chefs which leaves a lasting taste on its readers.
10. Intuitive shade is like shadow which follows the entrepreneur all the time. Internal voice of entrepreneurs is very strong signal for actions when in early stage. Intuition helps entrepreneur innovate in unchartered territories. Education trains to believe in analysis, data and experts, but entrepreneurs have relied otherwise on gut feelings while taking decisions.
11. Shade of being imperfect is a gift within every entrepreneur. One has the right to do mistakes, but not to repeat the same. Do not wait for the perfect moment, perfect product, perfect team and perfect investors to land up. ‘I will release the product which is perfect, complete and flawless’, we hear entrepreneur speak many times.  It is ok launch products even when it has fewer features and not a perfect one. Perfections are a myth and enemy of good.
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain.