I read the book “Five Point someone” around 2005-06. The book was fun-read. Quite liked it and have read all 4 books written by Chetan bhagat since then. 3 Idiots is based on that book! Everyone who have read the book can connect with some scenes in the movie. The movie also gave credit to the author as per the contract, which goes like this:

It shall be obligatory on the part of producer to accord credit to the Author in the rolling credits of any audio-visual moving image software (of any form in any media or medium) produced by the Producer in terms of the exercise and execution of the Rights granted as under:

Based on the novel
FIVE POINT SOMEONE
by
Chetan Bhagat

True to the contract, I guess the movie had the rolling credits for the author. All is well So, going by the success of the movie, Chetan wants to grab the limelight. I dont think he has been cheated. He claims that 75% of the movie is based on FPS. But I found lot of new stuff in the movie which was not there in FPS. Most of the comedy scenes which gave life to the movie was not there in the book. The screenplay was very well adapted for the movie.

I personally think Chetan Bhagat is trying to cry foul here and wants to promote his name alongside the movie and clearly making hay while the sun is shining. His name is now known to a larger audience than before! I wonder even if his name was shown in a much highlighted fashion in the beginning of the movie, he would have got the popularity that he has achieved now!! What’s more annoying is the fact that he made couple of posts in his blog stating that he has been cheated and that he is going to fight for the truth and that he is Arjuna and blah…blah…Within few days, he wants to make truce and says he is going to move on and close the issue once for all…What happened to the holy battle of dharma that he said he will wage over these bollywood folks?? Well, I think he lost quite a few fans with those conflicting behaviours exhibited through his blog posts…Bad show Mr. Chetan Bhagat! I will be fan of your books but I lost that ‘good’ impression I had on you…

BTW, do checkout the following link and the video.

25 Reasons why 3 Iditos is not FPS

While this controversy dies down slowly, the power of social media has proven its might in broadening the stage for discussion and debate with everyone chipping in with their views! Just see the site http://www.thefourthidiot.com/ to see for yourself!

https://www.google.com/comparisonads/mortgages

This feature is currently available for mortgages only in US (in select cities). But it’s just a question of time before Google rolls this out across various industry segments and geography. All those comparison shopping engines in travel, loans, insurance, books, products will be definitely affected. The middlemen will be eventually eliminated and Google will become the central hub between sellers and consumers. The users will definitely be happy about this feature. Google is beginning to deliver more and more content from within its site. I am having a bad feeling about this trend…

What’s your take on this…?

Can Google Stay on Top of the Web?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_41/b4150044749206_page_2.htm

Interviews with Google Folks
Google’s Udi Manber: Search Is About People, Not Just Data - BusinessWeek

…Udi Manber, Google’s vice-president of technology for core search, joined the company almost four years ago after stints running Amazon.com’s A9 search project and serving as chief scientist at Yahoo. He, like some other leaders on the search quality team,……

Google Search Guru Singhal: We Will Try Outlandish Ideas - BusinessWeek

…Inside Google’s search quality group, Amit Singhal runs the core ranking team, which is responsible for those algorithms you hear so much about. The team ran some 6,000 experiments last year that tried tweaking those mathematical formulas, ultimately producing between……

Matt Cutts: How Google Deals With Web Spam - BusinessWeek

…It’s up to Matt Cutts and his team at Google to keep search results as free as possible from Web spam, those pages full of Viagra ads or even malware. A 10-year veteran of the company, he got into this……

Google’s Scott Huffman: Many More Search Features Coming - BusinessWeek

…Scott Huffman runs one of the least-known units at Google: the evaluation team that measures the impact of every little proposed change to the leading search engine. And with some 6,000 experiments run annually, he’s pretty busy. Not to mention,……

There are handful of blogs in India which cover the digital space in india, especially internet. The prominent ones I can think of are medianama.com, pluggd.in, watblog.com, alootechie.com, trak.in. All these sites cover product launches, company announcements, new features, corporate activities and internet trends. Amazingly, a very large proportion of posts attracts only critical comments. The product/feature would have been launched after months (in some cases years) of hardwork, pressure and toil. But as soon as an user reads about the product news, his fingers involuntarily types “Whats new?”, “Oh! not again..yet another…”, “No innovation”, “Bad product” and so on! The benefit of doubt is never given to the product/startup! Even if the criticism is constructive, there’s some merit in it….Invariably, most of the comments are thoughtless ramblings…Non-constructive feedback. It’s very rare to see a thoughtful, constructive and open-minded feedback.

Why are we so destructively critical? Running a startup or launching a product is not a joke! You need to have balls to run the show! If we have to nurture the spirit of entrepreneurship and develop an environment for research and innovation, then we have to learn to be constructive in our feedback.

Feedback is essential for evolution and improvement. But if the feedback is just ‘NOISE’, it’s not going to benefit anyone, except may be to the commenter whose ego might get an illusionary boost!

Thoughts?

Last week, we soft-launched a comprehensive Educational Portal Studytimes.com. Studytimes contains information regarding 25000+ colleges and more than 400,000 courses. We have spent the last 10 months to research, gather and curate this content. To facilitate user to find colleges and courses easily, we have also provided a good search facility where we have classified colleges into various ranks.


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Since “Study Abroad” is a huge section in itself, we have created a sub-site for the Study-abroad section.


To keep up with the openness of the web world, we have all the user-favoured elements like reviews, ratings, suggestions, feedback, forums in place. The whole idea is that the users - predominantly students and parents - should have CONTROL.


There are already few players in online education space like studyplaces.com, shiksha.com, pagalguy.com and various online test preparation sites. But no one is offering a comprehensive solution. Studyplaces is focussed on study abroad, while Shiksha doesn’t have complete coverage of institutes and courses, Pagalguy is focussed too much on MBA crowd!


It’s our humble attempt to provide that ‘missing’ 360 degree, comprehensive, high-quality educational website for Indians. I guess, we Indians deserve that…After all, education has been our strength


Being an online education portal, there is only so much you can differentiate on the user interface element. We do not want to fiddle around with things that have been well-established and proven. We cant differentiate on every single User Interface elements and classification system, just because we have to be unique. So, we have chosen the Classification systems and User-interface elements that would make the life easier for the users. However, we have focussed our efforts on putting together a high-quality content and making studytimes a user-powered site, which in the long-run would make us unique and useful.


Play around with site, let me know your feedback. We would be glad to take every single feedback, however minor it may be.


PS: Studytimes is still in beta.