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It was a handful of old, rusted, brownish B&W photographs that my sister showed me as I entered the house. An assorted collection of our family pictures which were taken at several occasions of the last 24 years. She is planning to take those selective pictures along with her to her in-laws house as fond memories of our family. A couple of them were really enthralling pics which my dad shot durng our childhood. It brought back some great times we had during the childhood. Especially a pic where she tries to hold our pet cat in her hand. I was so scared to pose with holding the same cat in the hand. She keeps saying, even being a elder brother, I didn’t have ‘guts’ to hold a cat while she was very gutsy. More on these memoirs, still to come.

Why is it that always the two-wheeler driver recieves a call on his mobile when driving. While he is busy yapping on the phone, the poor pillion rider stares elsewhere and tries to pretend that he isn’t listening.

Boys are here to rock :

Just listened to the Shankar’s Boys music samples through a link sent by my friend. The first one called Boom Boom (not the Vengaboys…this is simply Boys) rendered by Adnan Sami and Sadhana Sargam. Boom Boom has a fresh new feel. The second one is the Theme of Boys. This one is fully instrumental and is with hard beats. The song Girl Friend rendered by Karthik seems very much inspired but it is very catchy. It’s tough to judge based on these samples.

Lets hope Rahman rocks!!

Writer Sujatha, in his column Katrathum Petrathum for Anandha Vikatan, remarks that it’s been 25 years since he and Kamalhassan had met first. He briefs about his recent chat with Kamal about the digital cinema happenings for Tamil films. Kamal’s latest movie Sandiyar, which is now put on hold due to the opposition from caste based politics, was supposed to be shot as a digital film only. Already P.C.Sriram, the ace cinematographer, is shooting his latest flick Vaanam Vasappadum as a digital film. This film is based on a Sujatha’s novel.

Kamalhassan’s forethought extends to a time when there would be many small cinema interest clubs, which will feature movies that are based on the common interest. And there wouldn’t be this normal formula of songs, comedy and fight into the same movie. Instead movies will become diversified by genre. And each genre of movies will cater to a small section of this large cinema-going crowd.

Kamalhassan who was recently in Cannes film festival had released few of his movies in Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi) format. This format is becoming more popular in the west as it makes cinema watching a less tedious one. As he remembers, when the steady cam was introduced there weren’t many who were ready to use it. Steady cam, as we know is a camera that could be tied to one’s body and would help him to move around and film. This would make the shots more realistic when compared to a fixed camera. Kamal and Sujatha’s joint effort Vikram, which flopped in the box- office, was the first movie to use the steady cam technology. But now after those experimental films, every movie uses steady cam technology. He is very confident that similarly, digital films will also become the need to the day in near future.

Hostile Takeover:

Oracle, the second largest software maker , has launched a hostile takeover attack on <a href="http://www.peoplesoft.com&quot; target=new391PeopleSoft. The bid would roughly cost $5.1 billion for Oracle. Oracle is offering $16 cash per share for each share of PeopleSoft, a roughly 6 percent premium over PeopleSoft’s closing price last Thursday of $15.11. Larry Ellison, CEO of Oracle, made clear in a press meet that Oracle has no intention of keeping PeopleSoft alive as a separate brand, after the buy out.

On the other hand, PeopleSoft has made a deal to takeover its rival ERP software company, J.D. Edwards for $1.7 billion. The proposed combination of Peoplesoft and J.D. Edwards could increase competitive pressures on Oracle and ERP software market leader SAP.

Hostile bids in this IT business are unusal but not unheard of. Some eight years ago, IBM launched a hostile offer for Lotus Development that resulted in a $3.5 billion acquisition of the software maker.

So as things advance, it looks like, should the deal go through, PeopleSoft would takeover J.D.Edwards and PeopleSoft inturn takenover by Oracle. This combination of the Oracle + PeopleSoft + J.D.Edwards would result with an annual revenue of $2.8 billion for Oracle. Currently Oracle is just marginally ahead of PeopleSoft in marketshare by revenue. It has 13% of marketshare while PeopleSoft has 10% and J.D.Edwards is at 4%.

Being a PeopleSoft proffesional, I personally feel this would affect a lot of PeopleSoft professionals around the world and also the PeopleSoft customers. Even now, many of my onsite counterparts are skeptical and worried about the future of PeopleSoft. But some are sure this would be an anti-trust case against Oracle.