Beth Watkins is a self-confessed Bollywood addict, and is part of a growing tribe of Bollywood fans in North America. Her interest in Bollywood underscores a growing trend that Bollywood films appeal to a wide audience who are not necessarily from Asia or Africa, the traditional domain of Hindi films.

Pico Iyer summed it up very nicely when he said, "The notion of America is so large that often when we ask people about American culture they say Michael Jackson and Madonna. But American culture at this point has also incorporated phenomenon's like Bollywood and Ravi Shanker." In his first book, "Video Nights in Kathmandu," (1988) Iyer recounts how in his travels around the world one of the first questions that he is asked is about Hindi films.

Beth's fascination started about a year ago when she watched her first Hindi movie "Mujse Dosti Karoge?" (Will you be my friend?). The three hours of of histrionics (as critics of Bollywood like to describe Hindi movies), and the song and dance routine, the whole package worked for her, and Beth became a convert to Indian films.

Interestingly, Beth reads up about Bollywood from another American's blog called Gorilla's Lament. Beth can reel of names of movies, actors, songs, locations...she knows everything about "fillums."

"The top few I can tell you, though, and they switch around in order - Kandukondain Kandukondain, Dil Chahta Hai, Hum Tum,, and Main Hoon Na." She struggles to name her favorite stars since so many vie for her attention. Rani Mukherjee is one of her favorites, and she likes Lillet Dubey. "I haven't seen Aamir Khan in very much but he's so impressive, no matter what he's doing"

She counts Saif Khan as one of her favorite actors. I asked her, "What about King Khan, Shar Rukh?" Beth replied, "And despite my initial confused reaction to him, I have a very hard time resisting the charm of Shahrukh, of course, and I almost always really enjoy his performances (especially Swades -that was amazing)."

Beth's fascination with Bollywood has translated into a general fascianation with India, and when she is not watching films, she is busy catching up on her reading on India. She hopes to travel to India soon, and also is keen to organize an India exhibit in her university town, where she works at the musuem of world culture.

I guess that Bollywood is no longer the opium of the Indian masses alone.

TalkNewsIndia has a podcast on Adam Greenfield.

Adam Greenfield is the author of a new and fascinating book called, "Everyware." Adam says everyware is "information processing embedded in the objects and surfaces of everyday life." Naota Fukasawa san famously describes this kind of behavior in an elegant and simple way: "Design dissolving in behavior." That is, our actions are so unconscious that we are not even aware of the underlying technology that makes our unconscious acts possible. These devices are essentially invisible, or attain near invisibility that we don't pay attention to them.

Everyware is an umbrella term that Adam coined to capture the unfolding of this fast moving phenomena that many of us are not paying attention. An interesting upshot of this everyware technology is that people are unaware that they are using it. An old example of this is the cell phone, but that has been replaced by new and nifty devices that we use in our everyday life, and we are not even aware of it points out Adam.

Some of them include the touch and go pay system credit card that Chase Bank has introduced in New York; the RFID technology that is used to tag goods, and in some cases used to tag people (some patients have RFID chips embedded in their arm that help doctors get instant access to their medical history and prescription); the instrumented floors used to build houses for senior citizens in South Korea...these are just a few examples of how technology is increasingly meshed into our lifestyle. Adam labels this development as "colonization of everyday life."

And with the coming of the IPV6,, the next generation Internet, Adam thinks that every grain of sand in the world could have an IP address. Every device at that point could have multiple IP addresses. Currenlty, we are using the older IPV4 technology, where we are running out of IP addresses for these rapidly proliferating devices. The fact that every object in the world could potentially have an IP address is partly what worries Adam.

Through this book Adam wants to create awareness of the unintended consequences of everyware and the impact that it will have in our collective lives. One of the worrying aspects of this development is that all kinds of information can be gathered, tagged, stored and searched for future reference. So, every action of yours persists in some kind of a meta database for a long time. That in turn has him worried about privacy issues, and how that will impact society.

Adam is also worried that the User Interfaces being created for such devices are not-so-friendly and can have unintended consequenes. By addressing these issues early on in the debate perhaps some of these issues can be addressed and corrected is Adam's line of reasoning. Adam is in some ways advancing and pushing forward a debate that Howard Rheingold of Smartmobs started a few years ago with the coming of IRC, mobile phones and PDAs. Adam was involved with the first Moblogging Conference that took place in Tokyo in 2003.

Adam's book is available on Amazon and will be releaed next week: Feb 18, 2006.

More on ubicomputing:

The father of ubiquitous computing is Mark Weiser, who worked at Xerox's PARC Lab in Palo Alto, California. Weiser spoke about how computing will pevade our life, and become nearly invisible. It was his seminal research in ubicomp that triggered research in mobile computing.

Here is what Weiser said in Scientific American article titled "The Computer for the 21st century"

"The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it. "

And here is more:

"Whenever people learn something sufficiently well, they cease to be aware of it. When you look at a street sign, for example, you absorb its information without consciously performing the act of reading.. Computer scientist, economist, and Nobelist Herb Simon calls this phenomenon "compiling"; philosopher Michael Polanyi calls it the "tacit dimension"; psychologist TK Gibson calls it "visual invariants"; philosophers Georg Gadamer and Martin Heidegger call it "the horizon" and the "ready-to-hand", John Seely Brown at PARC calls it the "periphery". All say, in essence, that only when things disappear in this way are we freed to use them without thinking and so to focus beyond them on new goals. "

Mike Kuniavsky of Orange Cone has outlined defintions of ubicomp, pervasive, and physical computing, and what constitutes ambient intelligence.

Talk News India brings you a podcast interview with Mr. Azim Premji, Chairman of Wipro Ltd, from the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) on Wall Street. Mr. Premji and Mr. Suresh Senapaty, CFO, rang the closing bell at NYSE this evening. Others who witnessed the ceremony included Catherine Kinney, President and co-COO of NYSE; John Thaim, COO, NYSE; Sudeep Banerjee; President, Enterprise Solutions, Wipro; Sridhar Ramasubbu, Investor Relations-US; Timothy Matlack, and CEO, Consulting Services, Wipro.

The occasion marks the fifth year since Wipro listed at NYSE, and earlier in the day the company held its 2006 Analyst Meeting.

The closing bell ritual is about 10 years old explained an NYSE media person. The room where the bell is rung is about 100 years old. The bell is rung at precisely 4.00 pm and it is a 10 second event. In fact, it was a bit of an anti-climax when the bell rang. I think you get a better sense when you this 10-second event on TV.

This was the fourth time that Mr. Premji rang the closing bell at the NYSE. "And, all four times we took the market up," commented Mr. Premji with a smile.

Afterwards Mr. Premji came to the members gallery and spoke to the media, where he answered question about Davos, Outsourcing trend etc.

(Mr. Premji a low-keyed billionaire rarely gives interviews. He took over his family's business when his father unexpectedly died in 1966. At that time he was studying Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, California, and did not get to complete his studies. The company has grown and expanded to offer BPO and IT services, and is today the third largest IT company in India.)

Wipro is focussed on non-linear growth commented Mr. Premji. Focussing purely on linear growth could eventually become a challenge he said. Recently Wipro acquired two companies, one in the US, and the other in Europe he said. While he resisted on giving any kind of figures on growth he did that the company plans to do better than the industry forecast of 28%.

Recently General Motors announced a $15 billion outsourcing deal, and has already awared 50% of the deal to various vendors including Wipro. When asked if he expects to bag any further order from GM all he would say is, "No comments."

Mr. Premji has been on the road for the past few weeks and attended the World Economic Forum event at Davos. "I think India put a very good show," he said. He specifically mentioned the bhangra dance event on the last night, and said that from 11.30 pm to 5.00 am about 500-600 Americans and Europeans were out on the dance floor dancing to bangra music. "It completely stood out in warmth...in comparison to China," he said.

He said that India has about 65% share of the outsourcing market currently, and expects to earn about $23 billion this year from outsourcing according to Nasscom and MacKenzie. He however cautioned that India needs to stay one step ahead of emerging competition from China and East Europe. Wipro recently opened offices in Beijing, China and Bucharest, Romania he said.

Besides me, others who asked Mr. Premji questions included Swapna Vora, Lalith Jha of Indian Express, Uttara Choudhary of Daily News and Analysis, Abha Singh and Anita Ghai Malhotra.

Technorati tags:Wipro Aziz Premji India Technology Davos Outsourcing NYSEBlogs Podcasts Talk News India India Podcasts

Rebecca MacKinnon is a co-founder of Global Voices, and a recovering TV reporter-turned blogger. Global Voices is a non-profit citizens' media sponsored by Berkman Center for Internet and Society of Harvard University. Currently, Global Voices averages about 10,000 visitors a day from all over the world.

Rebecca became interested in blogging about two years ago, when she first read Joi Ito's blog . Subsequently, while on a sabbatical at Harvard University Rebecca started her first blogging project called North Korea Zone .

Prior to entering the world of blogging, Rebecca worked at CNN for 12 years, and served as bureau chief at both Tokyo and Beijing.

I met with Rebecca in January, 2006, when she was in New York. In this podcast Rebecca shares with us on what it was like to spend her formative years in Asia, and how she came to develop an interest in covering international news. Disappointed with the way in which international news was being covered, Rebecca turned to blogging, where she finds that contributors are optimistic, enthusiastic, and want to listen to the on-going global coversations.

Disclosure: I am a Global Voices contributor.

On January 30, 1948, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) was shot dead. He was on his way to his evening prayer meeting at Birla Mandir in New Delhi. He was 78 years old.

Flower Silliman was a student at Lady Irwin College, New Delhi, during the mid-1940s. She was part of the choir that sang during Gandhiji's prayer meetings in Birla Mandir.

In this podcast Flower shares her memories of Gandhiji.

In our previous podcast Flower spoke to us growing up in India as part of a tight-knit Baghdadi Jewish community.

Flower Silliman, mother of Jael Silliman, is a third generation Baghdadi Jew, who was born and brought up in India. She currently lives in New York.

Flower talks about her experiences growing up in India before 1947. During World War II Flower lived in Delhi, where she studied at Lady Irwin College. The reason she was sent to study at Lady Irwin was because Hannah Sen , the principal of the college was of Jewish descent says Flower.

In our next segment we will be talking to Flower about her days at Lady Irwin and Mahatma Gandhi. Lady Irwin College was a hub of activity during the freedom movement says Flower.

Jael Silliman of "Jewish Portraits:Indian Frames" talks about the Baghdadi Jewish community of Calcutta. Once a thriving community in Calcutta, the Arab-speaking Jewish community has dwindled to a handful of people points out Jael.

In her book Jael chronicles the Baghdadi Jewish community of Calcutta through the lives of four generation of women in her family. Jael's great-grandmother Farah moved from Basra, now in Iraq, to Calcutta after her marriage; her grandmother Miriam lived in Calcutta, London and finally migrated to Israel; while her mother Flower lived in India, Israel and now lives in the USA.

According to Jael, the first Baghadadi Jew to arrive and settle in Calcutta was Obadiah Ha-Cohen. Cohen came from Aleppo, Syria to India in 1798, and Jael's family traces their roots to him. Over the next 250 years Baghdadi Jews continued to migrate to Calcutta, and by early 20th century had emerged as a tight-knit, prosperous community. But, today there are no more than a handful people that live in Calcutta, many of them have migrated to Australia, Israel, UK and USA.

In this podcast we speak to Jael about her book, the women in her family and the Baghdadi Jewish community of Calcutta.

We have a scoop and you heard it first on this podcast.

Google unveiled the Google Video at the 2006 Conssumer Electronic Show in Las Vegas.

"Waterborne," an independent film produced by "Smriti Mundhra" and directed by "Ben Rekhi," is one of the first films to be available on "Google Video."

The film stars Christopher Masterson, Jon Greis, Ajay Naidu and Shabana Azmi.

You can watch a trailer of the film here. In this podcast we speak with Smriti Mundhra about the film and Google Video.

Welcome back!

Street perfomers,including including street dancers, can be found in almost any subway station, park or street corners of New York.

In this podcast we talk to three "street performers" from "New York." Rick, Ray and Lavelle, the b-boys or breakdancers have been performing for over 20 years and they are an utter delight to watch.

The next time you visit New York try and spend sometime watching these street performers, a unique feature of this vibrant and dynamic city.

You can always find a couple of them either in Times Square subway station or out on the streets.