The Dark Knight - A Review

I finally watched "The Dark Knight" three days back. Since then i have watched the movie twice and yearning to watch it once more. The movie has lived up to all its hype. I hated superhero movies until i watched "Batman Begins", this movie revolutionized the scripting of all superhero movies, the Nolan brothers proved that superhero movies are more about plot and characterization than just super powers and gadgets. The "Dark Knight" is yet another feather in their cap.
The "Dark Knight" follows up from where the first edition ends and takes us through a well crafted dark (this is not just a metaphor, most of the sequences in the movie are shot in the dark) and a gloomy ride. The last time i felt the darkness engulf me in a Batman story was during the Batman cartoons, some of which were really dark. Kudos to the Nolan brothers, the dialogues supplement the darkness of the plot. They are undoubtedly the best, be it the direction, the screenplay or the dialogue. The background score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton bring a sense of foreboding in every scene. Christian Bale seems to share a great rapport with the Nolans', Bale suits the character of Batman well. The self doubt, the urgency and the fear of losing all are well enacted by him. Maggie replaces Kaite Holmes in the role of Rachel and graces the screen with her ravishing looks. With all the talk about Batman being the Dark Knight who saves Gotham, actually the word aptly suits Heath Ledger who steals away the show with an impeccable performance. He is indeed the Dark Knight of the movie. Credit to the Nolans' for scripting the Joker to be a psychotic hoodlum, but no strategy is a success unless executed perfectly, and Ledger beholds and craves out a stunning performance. The dialogues accessorize his psychotic self, which by the way lends to the Dark outlook of the movie. The scenes where he attempts to narrate the story of his scars are gems strewn across the movie. The conversation with Batman in Gordon's cell just blows your mind out. The rational arguments that Ledger puts forth to make Batman believe he is a freak, as Joker is just staggering. I find no reason why Ledger should not be give a posthumous Oscar for this brilliant performance.
Bottom line, two indispensable reasons to watch this edition of Batman - Heath Ledger (Joker) and the Nolans' (for the brilliant screenplay). Apart from these, Christian Bale , the action, bat mobiles and of course Maggie Gyllenhaal. "The Dark Knight" is really a grim tale, with the irony in the climax that is bound to haunt your cognitive memory for a long time.

Web 2.0: Revolutionizing Enterprise Applications

Information technology has become more of a cause rather than a catalyst in today’s business models. Many successful businesses on the web like Amazon, e-Bay, and the likes have reinvented traditional business models, that leverage the power of the web. Yet another set of businesses like Facebook and YouTube have revolutionized the way business is done on the web. These businesses are riding the wave of innovation, continuously creating new applications and services that provide value to the users. On close introspection we find that emerging business models in the e-business space are exploiting the participative aspect of users on the web. These emerging businesses are driven by the construct “Web 2.0”. In a broader sense the Web 2.0 is a meme that is guiding business innovation on the web. Web 2.0 has clearly made a mark in the global network, restructuring many consumer applications and services that we use today. But it’s presence in the enterprise domain is very limited, though many aspects of Web 2.0 work on the collaborative nature of the nodes in the network it has still not gained a wide acceptance in the enterprise. The growth of SOA based software in the enterprise is a clear indication that more and more enterprise applications are migrating to the web ,breaking the traditional barrier of desktop software that enforce limitations on desktop hardware, system software and prerequisite software libraries. Web 2.0 capable of creating highly interactive and rich user experiences is expected to design new innovative enterprise applications and redefine the existing ones.

Web 2.0 – The Buzz Word

There has been so much speculation and hype surrounding the term “Web 2.0” ever since it was introduced by O’Reilly Media in 2004. So what is Web 2.0 actually? In a true sense relating Web 2.0 to a few web development techniques or application designs will only restrict the broad nature of the term. Web 2.0 means many things on different levels. Looking it on a philosophical dimension it refers to community participation and open sharing of information across the web that breaks the shackles of information silos. In a technical perspective it means the use of new technologies like Ajax, SOA, Web services and the likes that have converted the web browser into an application container virtually making it possible to use the applications anywhere. Finally on a business level it represents the flexibility to tailor existing models and capability to create ad hoc business models and successful business patterns that provide value to customers. Web 2.0 works on the concept of collective intelligence, the power of the web lies at the edges. The latest innovations on the web such as blogging, RSS, social networking, wikis and content tagging are all off springs of the Web 2.0 construct. These new ideas have revolutionized various aspects of business apart from creating new models. Online marketing is one aspect today that heavily relies on blogs and social networks.

Enterprise 2.0 – The New Face of Enterprise Applications and Challenges

With so much speculation surrounding these emerging web applications the question to ask is, Can Web 2.0 make it to the enterprise? The 2007 McKinsey survey on Internet Technologies reveal that 80% of the companies have heavily invested in Web services, 48% on collaborative software applications and a very meager amount of 33% in Wikis. Even industries like pharmaceuticals and financial services are expected to invest in these technologies. All these statistics clearly establish that Web 2.0 is clearly making inroads in the enterprise sector.

The new generation web based applications promise a radical redefinition of how information is created, stored and shared among the enterprise community. Although only 33% have invested in Wikis, in the future we can expect more investment in this area. The reason is simple, Wikis provide an easier platform to create and share knowledge rather than the existing knowledge management portals. The existing knowledge management portals are built on heavy weight application models that do not allow community editing and have information stored in large data  repositories which makes it quite impossible to aggregate information across different areas of the enterprise. Companies like Wipro, and many others have Wiki based portals for each of their strategic business units which capture the latest trends, projects, documented cases and many more valuable information relating to that business practice in an easily accessible form. The most important significance here is that, this information gets updated and reviewed continuously. RSS though not used in many enterprises today, definitely will find more application in the future. These feeds can be used to update users on new posts to their selected blogs and wikis, hence keeping the employees in the light of information changes.

The second most significant phenomenon is the SaaS (Software as a Service). Enterprises have used networked applications ever since the emergence of the client server era. These applications, in the client server era required a client program to be running on your desktop to access the application on the server. But today the web browser has become a container for applications giving rise to a new kind of software that is viewed as a service. Google and Zoho provide online office applications; it is quite surprising to notice that Zoho’s latest offering is a web based light weight CRM solution for SMEs. Software is no longer a product; businesses like Zoho have created a new dimension of software that can be provided as a service over the web. Very rarely is a document or a spreadsheet authored alone in an enterprise, generally documents are authored collaboratively, but then we still rely on the use of standalone software for our productivity. This practice is expected to change with the advent of enterprise wide SaaS, the Office 2.0 in the near future might just require a web browser.

Enterprise Web 2.0 is imminent, but it has many huge barriers to dissolve before it can become widely accepted and used. One salient feature that differentiates the World Wide Web and the enterprise network is; the web is built on open standards like Java, Ajax, TCP/IP, HTTP and many more as compared to the enterprise network. An enterprise network is a heterogeneous mix of legacy systems, proprietary software solutions and hardware that pose a huge integration challenge. Although many integration software vendors like IBM and Tibco provide SOA components in their suite of products to make applications web enabled, there still lies a huge complexity and expenditure in transforming the entire enterprise network to harness the power of internal corporate web. Another major concern is the security related with these emerging web applications, corporate data repositories are a store of highly confidential information. Making these data shareable publicly within the enterprise and imposing security restrictions on them is a huge difficulty.

Enterprise Web 2.0 – The Financial Impacts

Financially Enterprise Web 2.0 is expected to lower the spending on the organization’s IT infrastructure requirements. The SaaS overcomes the traditional hardware and software requirements to run the applications at the end user terminal. This breaks enterprises from the shackles of proprietary software like the Windows Operating System and its Office suite to adopt a more open source approach of using Linux based systems that can deliver performance and at the same time lower the expenditure. Linux based operating systems like Ubuntu are totally free of cost, SMEs can leverage on the use of these operating systems once the Web 2.0 enterprise applications become mainstream. Apart from the savings on hardware and software prerequisites, the SaaS themselves are extremely cheap when compared to the licensed software applications. These are only two of the significant savings, there are many more areas in which Web 2.0 can help reduce IT expenditure especially in SMEs.

The Enterprise Web 2.0 tools highlighted here, are only a few currently used in the enterprise, adopted from the consumer segment. Web 2.0 is still evolving in the enterprise domain and we can expect more innovative web applications tailored specific to the enterprise domain. It would be no surprise if you are connected through a dumb terminal to an operating system hosted by a server, in the near future.

The Holiday - A Review

A first look at the still photographs from the movie impresses you so much that you would want to watch the movie right away. The choice of colors blended with with the filters used makes them look eye candy.

Twenty minutes into the movie, you realize this is yet another one of the ordinary chick flicks. But there are surprises to come later in the movie that are quite unexpected. Though the screenplay is a cliche with so many generic elements, and nothing thrown in to make a big difference, this movie is still worth more than one watch. The cinematography is totally awesome, every frame in the movie is a picture postcard wallpaper. The photography accompanied with some astounding background score makes this movie worth more than a watch. The landscapes and locations shot are excellent, be it the Rosehill cottage in Surrey, or the ultra modern villa in LA, both are artistic and present a visual treat for the viewer. The feel good storyline makes this a "anytime watch" movie.

Into the acting department, its a great job done by all the main star cast. Special mention to Jude Law, he was very spontaneous and natural. This movie is kind of a let down for all the JB fans out there. JB comes and goes, does his part well but there was no room for the usual JB expressions in this character. However, the true star of the movie is Hans Zimmer. Its his great background score supported by the wonderful locations that makes you watch the movie more than once.

This movie comes under the romantic comedy genre, and is a wholesome entertainer. Its the kind of movie you go to on a date or watch in solace on a rainy afternoon.

Obsessed with the thought of Binary?

What is with binary and the world? Right from the ancestral ages we have been obsessed with two. Its has always been Good & Evil, Right & Wrong, Success & Failure, 1's & 0's. It has always been one thing and the opposite of it. Why cant there be another dimension to these things, why is it always the opposite or another extreme. Probably this conception has been with us from the start of the human race and is deeply rooted in our thinking process. When God created humans, he created man and woman. I really don't believe in this myth but still whoever wrote this up has limited himself to the possibility of two. When the first microprocessor was built it could store voltages in two states, either one or zero. This has limited our computing speed to what we have today. Think about the advances we would have made if only we were able to store data in more than two states. This is what the phenomenon of Quantum Computing is offering us. If only data could be saved and retrieved in more than one state, imagine the possibilities. I think we have reached an era where binary is no longer the fundamental seed of our thinking processes. It is time we come out of the binary shell and start exploring the possibilities beyond 2. Every situation and every problem has more than one solution and more than two ways out. Its no longer DO OR DIE, as said in the Godfather there is always a reasonable solution and that need not be DO OR DIE.