ZooZoos are the latest creations of Vodafone ads that are being showed during the Indian Premier League (IPL) matches. The ZooZoo ads were created to show various value added services of Vodafone. The ZooZoos are innocent people who live in a world similar to that of human and they have emotions like human beings. The laugh at loud, feel pain and sadness and they are something in-between the world of animation and reality. They are funny creatures with egg-like heads and thin limbs like sticks. The ZooZoo ads have become favorite among people. They created a huge fan following in India and it is rising day by day.
The first campaign of Vodafone stars a cute female pug named Cheeka and a boy. Cheeka follows the boy everywhere. Cheeka was actually from the United Kingdom and owned by Vishal and Lisa Bambekar. The couple bought the dog from a friend in UK and they paid £ 1,000 (Rs 76,000) for her. The dog earned Rs.150,000 for the Hutch campaign. The popularity of the ad saved Hutchinson from a $19 billion buyout. The pug became so popular the in many places in India the pugs were kidnapped. It all happened due to the Hutch ads popularity.
And now the ZooZoo, which created equal popularity same as Cheeka. Each day, a new ad is shown during the matches.
The ads were created by Ogilvy & Mather, an international advertising, marketing, and public relations agency based in New York. Oglivy & Mather is owned by the WPP Group. It has 497 branch offices in 125 countries around the world and employs 16,000 professionals. O&M created the ad for Vodafone, one of the major broadcast sponsors of the Indian Premier League.
Bangalore based Nirvana Films shot the ad. Shooting of two or three commercials took place in one day. The entire ad film series took two and half months to make. The ad films was shot at 20 frames per second. This made the Zoozoo’s movements hurried and comical. In total, 30 TV commercials for ZooZoo. All the commercials were shot in 10 days. The entire project, including the pre-production, took a little more than one month. It was entirely shot at Cape Town, South Africa. Every day during the IPL match, 300 seconds of ZooZoo ads are shown on TV. The ad film was directed by Prakash Varma. The shoot cost Rs. 30 million. Vodafone decided to produce a series of films that will be shown each day. They made 30 ad films, 13 of which are on the air. O & M spent Rs. 2.5 billion for making the ZooZoo ads.
The biggest shock is the white big-headed characters you see on the screen are not animated figures. They are real people, actually ballet dancers, dressed in white suits and wearing huge head gears. In order to get the thin animated looks of the characters, the ad film makers used slim built adult women. Occassionally, they used children. To make the characters look small, a large sized set was built. They women were actresses in local theatres. One of the major problems they faced while shooting was, they could not see anything. The head gear was huge. In the beginning, very often they made mistakes. They walked out of the camera frame as they could not see anything. Gradually, they became used to the blindness. Very often, the actresses have to put down the head gear to breathe because there was no space for breathing.
The expressions on ZooZoos faces (smile, cry, pain) were simple and limited in number. They were made in rubber and pasted on their heads. Had they been done with animation, it would have taken several years to complete all the thirty ad films.
Prakash Varma, owner and director, Nirvana Films, took three weeks of pre-production days to conceptualize the whole ad film. For the body suits of the actors-two different types of fabrics were considered. One fabric was rejected because it had too many wrinkles and was shiny. The white body suit was stuffed with foam in some places. The head peace was made bigger to make the characters look comical. A hard material called Perspex was used to build the heads.
” At a time when almost 90 per cent of my Satyam friends are cribbing about the fraud and betrayal by (former Satyam chairman) B Ramalinga Raju, I have a slightly different opinion.
I know it is bold of me to write this in black and white, but this comes straight from my heart, and experience.
Let me start by quoting an example from 2006. Most of my friends were unemployed, with 50-60 per cent plus marks, with a B.Tech degree from an average university, and madly hunting for a job. Whether people accept it today or not, the truth is that Satyam was the ONLY saviour and the only mass recruiter who was ready to accept students who had backlog. It also did not put a very strict ‘minimum-marks’ criterion.
And this was true not only for my small college in Lucknow, but also many such colleges across India.
Satyam is the fourth-largest IT company in India. Looking at India’s population and the rising unemployment, I really want to thank Raju for giving some 54,000 Indians jobs at least for all these years.
He was the reason for the revival of confidence and the reason for the bread-and-butter for many a family.
Also, Satyam training was renowned all over India. The STC (Satyam Training Centre) created numerous love stories and unexpected rekindling of a youthful environment where girls and boys were more independent than in their colleges.
I remember most of my Satyam friends felt that they made better friends during Satyam’s three-to-six month training than they did in the four years of studying B.Tech.
Unfortunately people forget to thank God in sad times. I know what Raju did is deplorable, and unpardonable. He should have treated the business more formally, and not dealt with it like it was his family affair.
He should have straightened up at least a couple of years ago. Why did he hire so many non-potential candidates and keep them on the bench? When were the managers last told that if they don’t work hard, they will lose their job? Business cannot be run in such a lousy fashion.
I have a lot of friends at Satyam, both male and female. Moreover I network a lot and thus am fairly well clued into what is happening at the company.
I have seen how people tailgate to Satyam, how they give their cards to others to be swiped on their behalf, how female employees have gone home sharp at 6 p.m., irrespective of when they landed at the office. . ., how employees sit at home for months at a stretch, prepare for all kind of post-graduate entrance exams and still enjoy a full month’s pay, how often they went for movies at local theatres at office hours, how often employees went to office just to sign on registers in the mornings and the evenings, how often they faked their health certificates, how often they put unlimited fake medical and house rental bills. . .
How can we blame just one man when EACH AND EVERY person was disloyal? How can we exclude the auditors like PricewaterhouseCoopers? How can we exclude the then board of directors who tried to wash their hands off of the whole affair?
How can we exclude banks who gave hefty loans without true verification? How can we exclude the Andhra Pradesh chief minister who was lenient towards Raju ahd his fellow businessmen? How can we exclude the managers who were never able to trace which bench employee under him had been away from office and for how long?
Yet, how can people forget this is the same man whose ideas and potentials gave them an identity for the past several years? How many couples found the right match at an IT industry, courtesy Satyam, and how many Andhra farmers benefited from their huge investments in Satyam shares.
How can people forget that Satyam launched its offices right at the doorsteps of a residential colony, where people could simply walk to work?
The most gruesome experience that I had was when a Satyam tag wearing person was waiting to attend an interview and I overheard him saying that he was in a business meeting at the MyHome Satyam office when he was sitting right in front of me in a totally different company (little knowing that I too was a Satyam employee).
When employees themselves show such a lousy attitude and don’t care a damn for the brand they carry around their neck, how can they expect others to care?
I am not saying that ALL Satyam employees are bad. I have known very dedicated people too, but my point is simple: before pointing fingers at others, introspect a bit. There are thousands of people who have completed certifications at the cost of Satyam, got trained at Satyam, got better jobs because of Satyam. . .
What Raju did was to keep the business of Satyam going at any cost. I see a smart man in him when he realised that it would be better to accept his mistake than be caught and tried under American laws.
I see a selfish father in him too that he put a lot at stake for Maytas. However, he resigned with dignity: it does take courage to accept your mistake in public.
But one cannot deny that he did create employment, which led to many others benefiting too: the tiffinwallahs, the transport people, those who rented their houses, etc.
Today Satyamites call Raju a fraud.
Well, the true and loyal Satyamites surely have all the reasons to call him a fraud. But the rest, who sucked every rupee out of Satyam without doing any value-addition, need to ask themselves: who is the bigger fraud? “
It has been written by an unnamed Satyam employee. This article has been doing the rounds on the Internet.
Militants armed with automatic weapons and grenades attacked luxury hotels, hospitals and a famous tourist cafe in India's commercial capital Mumbai late on Wednesday, killing at least 101 people.
* WHO IS BEHIND THE ATTACKS?
The attacks were claimed by a previously unknown group calling itself the Deccan Mujahideen in an e-mail to news organisations. Deccan is an area of southern India.
But it is not clear if the claim is genuine, and analysts say the bombings are almost certainly the work of a different group.
The most likely perpetrators, they say, are either the Indian Mujahideen or Lashkar-e-Taiba.
* WHO ARE LASHKAR-E-TAIBA?
Lashkar-e-Taiba is one of the largest Islamic militant groups in South Asia, based in Pakistan and fighting Indian rule in Kashmir. Security analysts say it is a well-funded and highly organised group that sympathises with al Qaeda.
Lashkar-e-Taiba denied being behind the Mumbai attacks and said it condemned them.
The group was blamed for bomb attacks on markets in New Delhi that killed more than 60 people in 2005, as well as an assault on India's parliament in 2001 that brought India and Pakistan to the brink of a fourth war.
* WHO ARE THE INDIAN MUJAHIDEEN?
Indian police say the Indian Mujahideen is an offshoot of the banned Students' Islamic Movement of India (SIMI), but that local Muslims appear to have been given training and backing from militant groups in neighbouring Pakistan and Bangladesh.
SIMI has been blamed by police for almost every major bomb attack in India, including explosions on commuter trains in Mumbai two years ago that killed 187 people.
Police said the Indian Mujahideen may also include former members of Bangladeshi militant group Harkat-ul-Jihad al Islami.
The group first emerged during a wave of bombings in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh in November 2007, sending an e-mail to media outlets just before some of the bombs exploded.
They have since claimed responsibility for multiple bomb attacks in Jaipur, Bangalore, Ahmedabad and New Delhi.
* WHO DOES INDIA BLAME?
Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said the attacks were probably plotted by a group based in a neighbouring country.
But Indian governments often blame neighbouring Pakistan or sometimes Bangladesh for supporting or harbouring militant groups which have launched attacks on Indian soil.
* WHAT CAN BE INFERRED FROM THE ATTACKERS' TACTICS?
The Mumbai attacks were unusual in that they involved coordinated attacks by gunmen on multiple targets, hostages were taken, and foreigners were specifically targeted.
Several analysts say these tactics point to Lashkar-e-Taiba as being involved. The attacks on symbolic targets designed to gather maximum publicity, and the specific targeting, point to a group following al Qaeda ideology and tactics.
The attacks also show a considerable degree of sophistication, another factor pointing to an experienced group like Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The Indian Mujahideen have also surprised police with the sophistication of their attacks, however, although until now these have always been bomb attacks on Indian targets.
In May, the Indian Mujahideen made a specific threat to attack tourist sites in India unless the government stopped supporting the United States in the international arena.
The threat was made in an e-mail claiming responsibility for bomb attacks that killed 63 people in the tourist city of Jaipur. The mail declared "open war against India" and included the serial number of a bicycle used in one of the bombings.
* WHAT CAN BE INFERRED FROM THEIR DEMANDS?
A man speaking Urdu with a Kashmiri accent phoned an Indian TV station, offering talks with the government and accusing the Indian army of killing Muslims in Kashmir. This suggests the attackers are involved with a Kashmiri group like Lashkar-e-Taiba.
The demands of the Indian Mujahideen — like their targets — have always tended to be much more domestic. The group issued an e-mail threat in September to attack Mumbai but directed its anger at the Mumbai police anti-terrorist squad, accusing them of harassing Muslims.
"If this is the degree your arrogance has reached, and if you think that by these stunts you can scare us, then let the Indian Mujahideen warn all the people of Mumbai that whatever deadly attacks Mumbaikars will face in future, their responsibility would lie with the Mumbai ATS and their guardians," it said.
Two of the most powerful men in the computer industry, Bill Gates (Microsoft) & Steve Jobs (Apple Inc.) are being interviewed together for the first time in history at D5 conference which was held on May 2007.
While the whole of America and the rest of world is celebrating the historic victory of Barack Obama in this year's presidential election, here in Kochi, an advocate has expressed absolute delight over the news that his 1991 Harvard Law College classmate has won the race to the White House.
M. Ajay, an advocate by profession, settled in Kochi City, who hails from Calicut District in Kerala has reason to rejoice today.
The first word he expressed on Obama's victory was: "This is a breaking point in history, it is like man in moon I am absolutely delighted, I cannot be otherwise and I am sure other friends will be feeling the same around the world".
Ajay, during his studies in 1990 to 1991 at the Harvard Law College, happen to meet Obama as he became popular after being the first African American to be elected as the Editor of Harvard Law Review, a famous on campus magazine.
He says, though it is difficult to remember each and everyone during college time, but his fame and ability made him popular Generally, it is difficult to remember each of your classmates around 18 years ago, but Barack was the first African American to be elected editor of the Harvard Law Review and it was the main focal point in the entire campus so we had a chace to note him love and adore him during those days," said Ajay.
According to Ajay, Obama's was a great planner organiser, an expert in bringing people together and had an ability to make people forget their differences. Maybe, that is what which made helped him to get to this point, he said.
"He was a great organiser, he has the uncanny ability to make people forget their differences come and vote together as a team take them along as friends and reach their objectives in a planned manner and has all the ability to become a great man and there he is as the US president elect".
Ajay is now looking forward to meeting Obama at the White House, though he is aware that it will be very difficult.
Hi Pals, how would it be to take part in the science mission and place our names in orbit for years to come.
Here is Special News from NASA,
For people who want their names to float around in space, NASA has created a website that would enable anyone to place their name on the agency's Glory satellite.
The "Send Your Name Around the Earth" Web site enables everyone to take part in the science mission and place their names in orbit.
Participants will receive a printable certificate from NASA and have their name recorded on a microchip that will become part of the spacecraft.
NASA's Glory satellite is the first mission dedicated to understanding the effects of particles in the atmosphere and the sun's variability on our climate.
The Glory satellite will allow scientists to measure airborne particles more accurately from space than ever before.
The particles, known as "aerosols," are tiny bits of material found in Earth's atmosphere, like dust and smog.
"Undoubtedly, greenhouse gases cause the biggest climatic effect," said Michael Mishchenko, the Glory project scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York. "But, the uncertainty in the aerosol effect is the biggest uncertainty in climate at the present," he added.
Glory will carry two scientific instruments, the Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor, or APS, and the Total Irradiance Monitor, or TIM, and two cameras for cloud identification.
The APS instrument will help quantify the role of aerosols as natural and human-produced agents of climate change more accurately than existing measurement tools.
The TIM instrument will continue 30 years of measuring total solar irradiance, the amount of energy radiating from the sun to Earth, with improved accuracy and stability.
Understanding the sun's energy is an important key to understanding climate change on Earth. Glory is scheduled for launch in June 2009 from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Glory will orbit as part of the Afternoon Constellation, or "A-Train," a series of Earth-observing satellites.
Forget about that $44 billion takeover bid for Yahoo. Microsoft's latest assault on Google is slier.
Since May Microsoft (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) has been reimbursing people up to half of the value of items they buy using its search technology. The gimmick isn't working. In July Google (nasdaq: GOOG - news - people )'s share of all searches jumped to 60% from 53% a year ago, while Microsoft's share slumped to 12% from 13.6%, according to Nielsen Online.
Now comes Chief Executive Steve Ballmer's latest would-be Google-toppling tactic (after his failed bid to take over Yahoo (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people )): a sneak attack using the newly launched version of Microsoft's dominant Web browser, Internet Explorer. Ballmer isn't portraying the updated browser as a Google destroyer, but many of its features turn out to be a crafty way for people to get around using the most popular search service.
"We didn't design this with Google in mind," insists Internet Explorer head Dean Hachamovitch. He adds: "It's not clear what the consequences might be."
The engineers in Redmond deserve a little more credit than Hachamovitch wants to give. The new browser comes with a search box in the upper right-hand corner and, just below that, a row of tiny logos for various search destinations, such as Yahoo, Ebay and MySpace. You can select which destinations you want to include here.
If your search will likely end up in Wikipedia, for instance, with a single click over a little "W" you can search only that encyclopedia. Amazon.com (nasdaq: AMZN - news - people ) displays items for sale. The New York Times shows snippets of stories. So far 27 Web sites have joined the drop-down column, including Facebook and Digg.
Microsoft is, uncharacteristically, keeping its hands off, giving Web sites the option to serve up results and customize how they appear. It also magnanimously lets those sites take all the revenue from ads alongside the results. That's a sly stab at Google's business, though this kind of searching–where users already know where they want to go–doesn't yield especially lucrative ads for Google.
Another Google-dodging feature in the new browser: Highlighting a street address on a Web page launches a map, with the default set to Microsoft's Live Maps (though you can change this default to Google Maps).
Internet Explorer is the most widely used browser. This gives Microsoft a nice advantage over Google. Just as Microsoft used its dominance in operating systems to get its browser onto millions of computers, it now can rely on that browser to offer Web software. Microsoft needs that weapon as Google encroaches on its turf with freebie Web versions of word processors and spreadsheets.
Best do this while the dominance lasts. Firefox's market share jumped by a third in the last year to 19%, while Internet Explorer lost 6 percentage points to 73%. Still, even that rival gives it a little credit for the new browser. "They're playing catch-up, but I'm glad they're playing," says John Lilly, chief executive of Firefox publisher Mozilla.
Blu-ray, also known as Blu-ray Disc (BD), is the name of a next-generation optical disc format jointly developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA), a group of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer and media manufacturers (including Apple, Dell, Hitachi, HP, JVC, LG, Mitsubishi, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, TDK and Thomson). The format was developed to enable recording, rewriting and playback of high-definition video (HD), as well as storing large amounts of data. The format offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer disc. This extra capacity combined with the use of advanced video and audio codecs will offer consumers an unprecedented HD experience. Recent development by Pioneer has pushed the storage capacity to 500GB on a single disc by using 20 layers.
While current optical disc technologies such as DVD, DVD±R, DVD±RW, and DVD-RAM rely on a red laser to read and write data, the new format uses a blue-violet laser instead, hence the name Blu-ray. Despite the different type of lasers used, Blu-ray products can easily be made backwards compatible with CDs and DVDs through the use of a BD/DVD/CD compatible optical pickup unit. The benefit of using a blue-violet laser (405nm) is that it has a shorter wavelength than a red laser (650nm), which makes it possible to focus the laser spot with even greater precision. This allows data to be packed more tightly and stored in less space, so it's possible to fit more data on the disc even though it's the same size as a CD/DVD. This together with the change of numerical aperture to 0.85 is what enables Blu-ray Discs to hold 25GB/50GB.
Blu-ray is currently supported by about 200 of the world's leading consumer electronics, personal computer, recording media, video game and music companies. The format also has support from all Hollywood studios and countless smaller studios as a successor to today's DVD format. Many studios have also announced that they will begin releasing new feature films on Blu-ray Disc day-and-date with DVD, as well as a continuous slate of catalog titles every month. For more information about Blu-ray movies, check out our Blu-ray movies and Blu-ray reviews section which offers information about new and upcoming Blu-ray releases, as well as what movies are currently available in the Blu-ray format.
Technical specifications
Physical size Single layer capacity Dual layer capacity Note 12 cm, single sided 25 GB (23.28 GiB) 50 GB (46.56 GiB) Standard disc size 8 cm, single sided 7.8 GB (7.26 GiB) 15.6 GB (14.53 GiB) Mini disc size
Recording speed
Drive speed Data rate Write time for Blu-ray Disc (minutes) Mbit/s MB/s Single Layer Dual Layer 1× 36 4.5 90 180 2× 72 9 45 90 4× 144 18 23 45 6× 216 27 15 30 8×* 288 36 12 23 12×** 432 54 8 15
As of August 27, 2008 more than 780 Blu-ray Disc titles have been released in the United States and more than 480 Blu-ray Disc titles have been released in Japan. By the end of this year, there will be a total of 1192 Blu-ray Discs released.
