Mumbai After The Bombings

Saw this today morning when I woke up.... my POD airing on Current TV. Nothing much to say though...

Apple reveals iTV

Why I love Apple:

"The surprise came in the form of a preview of an unfinished product: The iTV, a small, sleek box that will let people wirelessly move digital movies, TV shows, music videos and photos from personal computers to big-screen televisions.

'I hope that gives you a little bit of an idea of where we are going,' Jobs concluded after talking for about an hour.

Jobs called the iTV 'the missing piece,' and marks the clearest signal how Apple plans to leverage the success of content through iTunes (more than 1.5 billion songs have been downloaded and 220 television shows are available) and the broad appeal of the iPod (more than 60 million have been sold) to stake its claim in your living room. Jobs said the iTV will be available in early 2007 for $299....

.....

Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies, noted that Apple's new device will let people move videos from their computers to their televisions using only six buttons -- versus the 56 needed for the Windows XP Media Center, which was released almost two years ago with similar ambitions to be a hub for home entertainment."

Is this the beginning of the end of Satellite Television and media monopoly? I think so.

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/15503747.htm

The Camel Fair

Two years ago, when I reached Pushkar, Rajasthan on the first day of the Camel Fair, I was stunned by its grandeur and beauty. What also surprised me was the fact that there were barely any Indian tourists. Of course, everyone from the neighboring towns in Rajasthan was there, including the pilgrims who had come to visit the only Brahma temple in the world.

The small quiet town had literally transformed itself into one giant… eh… fair… with about 50000 camels, equal number of horses and ten times more people. It was also a perfect opportunity for photographers, filmmakers and journalists, with all the Rajasthani colors and flavors, and the full moon night when the pilgrims take bath in the holy lake.

This year, the dates are from Nov 2nd-6th, and I am planning a second trip. It’s hard not to, if I am in the country. Drop a word if you are reading this, and plan to be there. We could sit and chat by in the havelis and down a glass of bhang lassi one of the nights. ;)

Last time, I created several video blogs to give an idea of the atmosphere. One of them won the leaderboard in Current TV recently. You will find more in my video blog.

Machinima! Machinima!

Till now relatively unknown, Machinima films have been coming to fore for the last few months, specially after the sudden mushroom cloud of online video sites started spreading in the blogosphere. From the (semi) official website,

"As you probably learned before, machinima is filmmaking in a virtual environment. To clear things up, let's talk a bit more in detail about how machinima movies can actually be produced and what ways there are to do machinima.
Generally speaking, there a two main ways to produce a machinima movie:

Live Action Machinima

The action takes place in a networked computer game, mainly using a FPS game. Every player controls a virtual character via mouse and keyboard commands.
Each actor uses a headset with a microphone to perform dialogue, if there is any. Though, sometimes the dialogue is added later in "Postproduction".
One of the players is serving as the cameraman/-woman. His/her point of view is recorded to tape (or harddisk) and represents the "film-footage".
Most of the time, the settings and characters are taken from the game that's being used for filming.

This way of making machinima is easy to learn and feels close to "real-life" filmmaking. It has room for spontaneity and improvisation and adds that human touch to the behaviour of your actors."


A highly recommended one is Red Vs. Blue series, which is a must watch. I have been trying to figure out if I could create Machinima films using my Mac laptop, but am yet to find the right gaming engine for it. One day...