Vision India 2020: Elixar

I have always been fascinated by Pixar. “The Incredibles” enthralled me. “Ratatouille” mesmerized me. Apparently, they also seduced many others. The former, with a production budget of $92 million, grossed $631 million worldwide. The latter, with a production budget of $150 million grossed $621 million. I have asked, how?

Deal Radar 2008: BitTorrent

BitTorrent—founded by Bram Cohen and Ashwin Navin in September 2004—is one of the players in the peer-to-peer content delivery industry. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company invented the BitTorrent protocol and runs a peer assisted content delivery system based on the protocol.

India’s Film Industry

The San Francisco International Film Festival is under way, and this weekend, we saw a couple of movies there. Of these, one was a 3-hour Bengali film called Calcutta, My Love by Goutam Ghose based on Samaresh Majumdar’s acclaimed novel, Kalbela, which I had read in my teens.

What’s WRONG With Publishing (Really)?

Why am I down on the publishing world? It’s starting to make little sense why I would write something that while widely read could be given out in a “cleverer” format. Doing a book with a major corporation just starts to seem…odd, given the proclivities in which I do everything else now. With that far-reaching statement, and by means of explaining my thought process, here is why publishing, as the kids say, needs to man up and change itself.

Is Jennifer Lopez The Bellwether?

By Richard Laermer, Guest Author As we move from mediocrity (the 2000s) into a decade of fabulous, forward-thinking, show-us positivism, we’ll always remember the star from these years who turned our cynicism into a beloved trait, none other than J. Lo “Don’t Call Me That” Lopez. People who work in media-could be you-constantly shake their

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Viacom – Discovering its Mojo

We did a lengthy review of Viacom’s (NYSE: VIA-B) vertical strategy in the Fall. Meanwhile, revenues were up 24% in 3Q07 to $3.27 billion. Adjusted net earnings grew 20% to $437 million and diluted EPS were $0.65, a 27% increase over 3Q06. The solid performance was due to the DreamWorks-Paramount blockbuster Transformers. Earlier this month,

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Microsoft + Hollywood

Don’t be surprised if the rules of the content business change dramatically in the future. For example, a successful movie may be turned into a book!