Category Archives: Etc.

Deepika, the new queen of Bollywood

“My general philosophy these days is not to expect too much, but I can’t deny that [the attention] feels nice. People now tend to look at me beyond the glamour and the looks,” she says, shrugging her shoulders.”The morning after a film releases, your phone is flooded with messages. It’s a beautiful high. But you can’t let it get to you. You have to get right back to work.”

Less than 15 minutes before I’m meant to arrive at her home, Deepika Padukone sends me a text message asking if we could delay our appointment.

“Can we meet half an hour later? Flying out to Macau for IIFA tonight. Have errands to run,” she tells me.

Some 40 minutes later, I’m in the elevator heading upstairs to meet Bollywood’s new queen.

It’s been a turnaround year for the 27-year-old actor, who’s had four back-to-back box office hits in 12 months (Cocktail, Race 2, Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani, Chennai Express).

More at Vogue.com, from Rajeev Masand’s interview with Deepika Padukone

 

How telcos lost the media plot

Where are the telecommunications companies? About five years ago, the bets were that telecom companies would become media majors – that they would acquire big media firms or destroy them through the sheer force of disintermediation. This is because selling entertainment and news on the mobile phone was till last year a Rs 25,000-crore business. Telcos that are bigger and more profitable than media companies controlled the billing, the consumer and, more importantly, over 80 per cent of revenues, earned by selling ringtones and so on. Unlike newspaper or television companies, telcos were not dependent on advertising revenues. Mobile phones reach almost 900 million Indians, and are, therefore, the single largest device in consumer hands after the radio. So it shouldn’t have taken Bharti Airtel or Vodafone long to overtake the Times Group or Zee in the Rs 83,000-crore market for media and entertainment in India.

It hasn’t happened.

Click here for the complete article at Business-standard.com

The Accident That Created An App Millionaire

One night in 2009, Chad Mureta, a real estate agent from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina was driving down the interstate in Charlotte, North Carolina on his way back home from a basketball game. It was his first vacation day in two years.

As he drove, with just his thoughts for company, his mind drifted to earlier in the evening when he observed others at the game happily socializing, and realized something was seriously amiss with this own life.

Eighteen-hour days at his real estate office had taken its toll: he was miserable, disconnected from family and friends, and with the housing bubble-bust, his finances were in dire straits.

I need to make a change, he thought, but how?

In the very next instant, out of seemingly nowhere, a deer crossed his path and in an attempt to avoid it, his car hit a median and flipped over four times.

Two lives came to an end that night.

The deer died on impact and while Chad did survive, his old life, as he knew it, was over.

More at Forbes.com