Infosys Technologies has rolled out a new managed information service called ShoppingTrip360 to let retailers and consumer packaged goods companies gain greater visibility into in-store activity through the use of wireless sensor-based applications.

Infosys described ShoppingTrip360 as a platform that enables a suite of managed-information services to create a 360-degree view of real-time in-store shopper and shelf activity.

The service also spies on customers by providing information to retailers on shoppers paths inside the store, their interests and the like. Infosys claims the service is permission-based.

Manu Thapar has joined social networking web site MySpace as Senior VP of Engineering.

At MySpace, Manu is responsible for overseeing the company’s infrastructure, security and high priority projects, as well as creating an offshore development team for MySpace.

Before joining MySpace, Manu served as VP of Engineering for Yahoo, where he was responsible for software infrastructure engineering, operations, test, product and program management teams of more than 250 engineers.

Prior to his Yahoo years, Thapar worked as senior director of engineering at Cisco.

MySpace is part of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire News Corp.

MySpace’s COO is a 26-year-old Stanford mechanical engineering graduate called Amit Kapur.

Philadelphia-based life science venture capital firm Quaker BioVentures has promoted Geeta Vemuri to Partner.

Vemuri was earlier a Principal at the firm.

Geeta Vemuri

Before joining Quaker in 2003, Vemuri was an associate at Toucan Capital, responsible for investments in seed and start-up biotech companies. She’s also worked as an associate analyst at Salomon Smith Barney, where she focused on specialty pharmaceuticals, and at First Union Securities, specializing in healthcare.

At the outset of her career, Vemuri was a research scientist at

Continue Reading…

Like most Indians, there are two things we are passionate about - Bollywood and food (no, cricket is not that hot on our list).

In a long life, we’ve watched several hundred Bollywood movies (Hindi and Tamil) and dined at hundreds of Indian restaurants in Asia and North America.

North Indian or South Indian, Gujarati or Indian Chinese, Chettinad or Andhra style, the smell and sight of Indian food in any of its myriad flavors sends us into raptures.

From the Mexican border to the Canadian border and even into Canada, we’ve dined at scores and scores of Indian restaurants. It’s an addiction that comes from our DNA.

So it was no surprise that during our last visit to New York City, we headed to Curry Hill, the area of Manhattan famous for its concentration of Indian restaurants.

This time, we decided to make Chinese Mirch on Lexington Avenue (corner of Lexington & 28th St) our port of call.

As its name suggests, Chinese Mirch is the place for noodles, chop suey, fried prawns, Gobi Manchurian, Szechuan Fried Rice and a host of other exotic Indian Chinese items.

Its neighbors include Curry in a Hurry, Copper Chimney, Pongal, Indo Munch, Chennai Garden, Tamil Nadu Bhavan, Banana Leaf and Diwali.

No sooner had we stepped into Chinese Mirch than we were quickly ushered into the upstairs seating area. The place was almost empty as it’d just opened for lunch.

Famished as we were, we quickly ordered a mix of Continue Reading…

Anil Ambani’s Reliance Globalcom (a division of Reliance Communications) intends to provide content delivery network (CDN) services in India and has partnered with a U.S. company Internap Network Services for the underlying technology.

The CDN services will let Indian businesses add graphics, audio, streaming video and live events to their Web sites and Internet applications.

Internap will build and operate a CDN point of presence (PoP) in Mumbai.

Reliance Globalcom and Internap will jointly sell and support the Reliance Globalcom ‘powered by Internap CDN’ services in selected regions.

The Visitor
Actors: Richard Jenkins, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Jekesai Gurira and Hiam Abbass
Written & Directed by: Thomas McCarthy
Language: English
Running at: Cinema Village, E.12th St, New York City (as of July 26, 2008)

There is drama in every human life.

Not high drama in all cases, but every life has some interesting moments.

The principal failure of Bollywood (we include both Hindi and Tamil movies here) is the failure to capture the myriad dramas of human life on the big screen.

Unimaginative Bollywood filmmakers have shoveled the same tripe for decades with minor variations in actors and locations.

So fatigued as we were of crappy Hindi and Tamil movies, we decided during our recent visit to New York City to take a break from crap and watch an English movie - The Visitor - about which we had heard some nice things.

Written and directed by Thomas McCarthy (of The Station Agent fame), The Visitor is the moving story of an economics Professor and three immigrants in the U.S.

Richard Jenkins plays an economics professor and widower Walter Vale from Connecticut who has lost the joie de vivre and is just plodding on in a listless existence.

As Vale confesses at one point in the movie:

I have been teaching the same course for 20 years. I pretend to be busy.

But things begin to change for Vale when he’s Continue Reading…

Remote technical support services provider for consumers and small businesses iYogi has raised $9.5 million in a Series B round led by SAP Ventures.

Canaan Partners and SVB India Capital Partners also participated in the latest round.

For an annual subscription fee of $199.99 per desktop, iYogi provides support for different technologies including PC hardware, Windows, software applications, peripherals and multifunctional devices.

Personal offshoring, or the kind of consumer-focused technical support provided by iYogi, is touted as the next wave of India’s outsourcing success story.

iYogi claims to have 50,000 customers and a 93% satisfaction rate.

Multiple bomb blasts rocked the South Indian city of Bangalore today.

Early reports suggest that at least two people were killed and several others injured.

Seven low intensity bombs exploded in crowded areas across the city.

The blasts occurred in the areas of Madiwala, Nayanadhalli, Adugudi, Rajaram Circle, Anepallya and Ashok Nagar.

Capital of the South Indian state of Karnataka, Bangalore is known as the Garden City and IT hub of India.

 Kuselan - Judas Rajinikanth Spits on Tamil Movie Fans

Kuselan featuring superstar Rajinikanth, Pasupathy, Vadivelu, Meena 
and Nayanthara is set to release in theaters across U.S. on July 31 / August 1.

Here are the showtimes for Kuselan Tamil movie in the U.S.:

Kuselan Movie Showtimes in New Jersey

North Bergen, NJ

Columbia Park Cinema 12
3125 Kennedy Blvd.
North Bergen, NJ 07047
Ph: 201-865-1600

Aug 7 | 4:00 PM|8:00 PM
Aug 8 | 2:30 PM|6:00 PM|9:30 PM
Aug 9 | 2:30 PM|6:00 PM|9:30 PM
Aug10| 2:30 PM|6:00 PM|9:30 PM

East Windsor, NJ

Multiplex Cinemas at Town Center Plaza
319 Route 130 North
East Windsor, NJ 08520
Ph: 609-371-8470

Aug 7 |  1:00 PM|4:00 PM| 8:30 PM
Aug 8 |  3:00 PM|6:30 PM|10:15 PM
Aug 9 |11:30 AM|3:00 PM| 6:00 PM|10:15 PM
Aug10|11:30 AM|3:00 PM| 6:00 PM|10:15 PM
Aug11|  1:00 PM|4:00 PM| 8:30 PM
Aug12|  1:00 PM|4:00 PM| 8:30 PM Continue Reading…

More than 28 million people in India (age 15 and older) accessed the Internet from home and work in May marking a 27% increase over the same period a year ago, according to comScore.

Since Internet users in India represent only 3% of the population there is significant potential for continued strong growth.

According to comScore executive VP Jack Flanagan:

India truly represents one of the most promising emerging Internet markets, given both the size and technological sophistication of the population. While global Internet brands like Google and Yahoo! currently reign as the most visited Web properties in India, several local players also have strong positions in the market.

Other findings from the comScore study include:

- Average Indian Internet user visited the Internet 25 times during the month and was online for 28 minutes per visit.

- Those between the ages of 15-24 were the heaviest Internet users among all age segments. They spent nearly 12 hours online per month on average.

- Some of the fastest growing Web site categories during the past year included Maps (up 64%), Sports (up 60%), Entertainment — Movies (up 55%), and Finance — News/Research (up 52%).

Top 15 Web Properties in India Ranked by Unique Visitors
May 2008 vs. May 2007
Total India - Age 15+, Home and Work Locations* 

  Properties                        Total Unique Visitors (000)

                                   May-07    May-08   % Change

  Total Internet : Total Audience  22,805     28,886    27

  Google Sites                     14,597     19,746    35

  Yahoo! Sites                     14,664     18,704    28

  Microsoft Sites                  10,800     11,980    11

  Rediff.com                        7,740      9,246    19

  AOL LLC                             N/A      6,325    N/A

  NIC.IN                            5,675      5,953     5

  Times Internet                    5,002      5,948    19

  Wikipedia Sites                   4,353      5,264    21

  Naukri                            3,295      5,105    55

  eBay                              4,204      5,020    19

  Indian Railways                     N/A      4,454    N/A

  CNET Networks                     3,194      3,841    20

  Ask Network                       3,155      3,444     9

  BharatMatrimony.com               2,336      3,420    46

  Monster Worldwide                 2,854      3,301    16

*Excludes traffic from public computers, such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones/PDAs
Source: comScore World Metrix

Kismat Konnection has failed to resonate at the U.S. box office.

No surprise, indeed. Kismat Konnection is after all a piece of trash.

As SearchIndia.com wrote in the review of this crappy movie:

There is nothing in Kismat Konnection that lifts it out of the usual Bollywood trashy mold.

The story is banal, the acting pedestrian, the music mediocre and overall Kismat Konnection is a piece of crap that has no justification for ever seeing the light of the day.

Kismat Konnection opened in 62 theaters in the U.S. and notched up a weekend gross of $282,122.

The movie’s average per theater worked out to $4,550.

Kismat Konnection came in Continue Reading…

Mongol
Cast: Tadanobu Asano, Sun Honglei, Khulan Chuluun
Director: Sergei Bodrov
Now Playing at: Ritz Five Philadelphia (as of July 20, 2008)
Language: Mongolian (with English sub-titles)

One of history’s colorful characters, Genghis Khan a.k.a. Temudgin was the great Mongol leader who lived from 1162-1227.

Released in June in the U.S. to mostly favorable reviews, Sergei Bodrov’s Mongol is a sympathetic portrait of Genghis Khan, a man often reviled as a brutal monster in the West.

Filmed in some of the desolate spots on Earth in Mongolia, China and Kazhakstan with a diverse cast of actors hailing from several countries, Mongol is a decent historical movie that brings to life a man who united the disparate nomadic Mongol tribes under his leadership.

Mongol, the movie, is the sweeping account of a man who sought to provide basic laws for the Mongol tribes.

The movie begins when Temudgin is nine-years-old and, according to the tradition of the day, time to look for a bride. So accompanied by his father Esugei (Ba Sen), a tribal leader, and a handful of close associates, young Temudgin (Odnyam Odsuren) embarks on a journey to pick a bride from the Merkit clan.

For Temudgin’s father, it’s also a way to make amends - and more importantly peace - because many ago before he’d stolen for his bride, a Merkit warrior’s wife.

But young Temudgin has different ideas. Continue Reading…