If we’ve said it once, we’ve said it a million times.
When it comes to smartphones, Apple’s iPhone is King of the Heap.
All the other vendors (HTC, Samsung, Blackberry/RIM etc) are merely playing catch up.
Market researcher Nielsen put out a report today and the numbers show Apple iOS ahead of its nearest platform competitor (RIM/Blackberry) by a wide margin.
Only when all Android smartphone vendors are combined does the Android platform manage to push the Apple iOS platform to second place.
Here’s the Nielsen survey graphic on smartphone marketshare:
The number crunchers at Nielsen found that 44% of all U.S. mobile subscribers now have smartphones.
It seems 56% of mobile phone purchases in the last three month were of smartphones.
We just subscribed to the iPad version of Encyclopaedia Britannica for a princely sum of $1.99 a month.
Well, what do we think we did first.
Yes, schmucks, yes.
We searched for our Bollywood stars on the Encyclopaedia Britannica.
Guess what?
There are some surprises here.
Real big surprises!
We found separate profiles for trash king Akshay Kumar, that preening budda Amitabh Bachchan, Raj Kapoor and Ashok Kumar.
But not Shahrukh Khan, the King of Bollywood.
Isn’t it strange that the Akshay ‘Chutiya’ Kumar (who makes money off stolen Hollywood shit) should find a place but not the Pak-loving Chutiya Shahrukh Khan.
As even the dimmest of Indian dimwits knows, compared to the fame and name of Shahrukh Khan, both in India and with the diaspora, Akshay Kumar is a jeero (as the Indians pronounce zero) in Bollywood.
Another notable personality missing in the Encyclopaedia Britannica is Lata Mangeshkar, who’s sung countless melodic songs in countless Bollywood films.
It’s a mighty shame that both Shahrukh Khan and Lata Mangeshkar find only a passing mention in other articles.
If you’re curious, other notable Bollywood personalities that find a place in the Encyclopaedia Britannica include Padmini, B.R.Chopra, Johnny Walker, Nasir Hussain, Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Satyajit Ray, Feroze Khan, Aishwarya Rai, A.R.Rahman, Raj Kumar and Vijay Tendulkar.
In the free Wikipedia age, are there people who’d care to pay for the Encyclopedia Britannica?
Although the jury is still out on that question, we’re inclined to believe that the answer is No given the masses’ disinclination to pay for online content.
But that doesn’t mean the folks at Encyclopaedia Britannica are easily conceding the battle.
They’ve just put an iPhone app that’ll provide users access to all 80,000 articles in the Encyclopedia, the ability to download information to read offline, save and send articles, store favorites and search history.
For those who are not interested in forking out $1.99 a month, the app provides free high-resolution images, maps, access to 100 free articles plus the first 100 words of every article, and a “link map.”
Android and Microsoft versions of the app are expected to come out early next year.
Test Drive
We downloaded the iPhone app and tested it out.
A search for Rahul Gandhi pulled up his mother Sonia Gandhi.
The listing on India (part of the 100 free articles) is 1,568-pages long on the iPhone.
By the way, Encyclopedia Britannica has an iPad app too.
In a long life, we’ve watched many kinds of rape scenes in movies.
In Hindi films from the 1970s, we watched Prem Chopra and Ranjeet smacking their lips as they fall upon the helpless girls, and then in the 80s we witnessed the suave cold-blooded Raj Babbar rape the two sisters in Insaaf Ki Tarazoo. We’ve also seen the crude, garish rapes in Tamil movies featuring Satyaraj et al.
But never have these old eyes fallen on a rape like the one in the Korean film Going By the Book.
The short-rape scene in the Korean film is what we’d call nonpareil.
If pressed, we’d say it belongs to the push-up genre of rapes and makes for one of the hilarious moments in the 100-minute movie.
More than Gore
Their fame in the violence genre notwithstanding, Korean films are not all about blood, decapitations, gore and revenge.
Nice as bloody films like I Saw the Devil, The Chaser and The Man from Nowhere are, Korean filmmakers also put out other movies.
Movies like Going By the Book, for instance.
We watched Going By the Book (2007) on Netflix Instant Play the other day and considered it a decent film.
Directed by Ra Hee-chan, Going By the Book is a crime film, albeit an unconventional one.
Since Sampo town is hit with a wave of bank robberies the new police chief Lee Seung-man decides on a novel drill to restore public confidence in the police department.
When the chief picks a traffic cop Lee Seung-man to play the robber, it’s clear this drill is going to be like no other.
You see, Jeong Do-man is a serious, dedicated cop who goes so much by the book that he doesn’t hesitate to issue a ticket even to the new police chief on his first day in town!
Previously on the crimes investigations department, Jeong Do-man has been demoted for investigating corruption allegations centering around the Governor.
Jeong Do-man prepares and goes about his new assignment with the same fastidiousness that is his hallmark, much to the irritation of his senior colleagues.
As the drill continues, the ‘robber’ makes the police force and the SWAT team look grossly inept and provide for some interesting comic moments.
Much of Going by the Book is filmed inside the bank or just outside its doors where the police and the SWAT team have gathered.
Jeong Jae-yeong who plays the robber, Son Byeong-ho as the police chief and the rest of the cast do a good job.
But the script by Jang Jin and Lee Gyu-bok could have been a lot better. It tends to drag on occasion and the last 20-minutes or so was a bit of a letdown with ‘dead’ cops driving the getaway bus.
Also, it seemed odd that given the initial focus on the spate of bank robberies so little attention should be focused in that direction, except in a clumsy way toward the end.
Despite these inadequacies, SearchIndia.com still recommends Going By the Book for its offbeat crime story, the comic touches and the decent acting.
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