Idea Cellular Ad – Use Mobile, Save Paper

Seen the newest Idea Cellular advertisement featuring Abhishek Bachchan as a tree, exhorting people to Use Mobiles and Save Paper?

Its part of the “Save Paper” campaign by the Aditya Birla Group – http://usemobilesavepaper.in/index.php. Exactly how they we’re to go about doing it is still a bit unclear to me maybe a part II of the campaign will be unveiled soon.

For starters, Idea themselves can stop selling their chota recharge vouchers on paper and do away with the booklets and manuals that accompany a new connection

What an Idea, sirjee!

Secure Your Online Credit Card Transactions…Register!

People…starting tomorrow – August 1st 2009, your credit card transactions will be more secure, thanks to the Reserve Bank of India’s guidelines making it mandatory for all such transactions to be accompanied by additional authentication/validation by providing information that is not visible on the cards.

All credit & debit cards of all banks have to be registered under the Verified by Visa or Master Card 3D-Secure program before 1st August, 2009 to continue using them for future online transactions. Once registered, users will need to provide the PIN/Password specified at registration time to transact at any merchant site in India.

All you need to do is log onto your bank’s website or contact them to complete the one-time registration formalities. Your password/PIN during the registration process will be needed whenever you make an online transaction thereafter. After 1st August 2009 onwards, after entering your credit card details during payment process, you will be redirected to your bank’s Visa/MasterCard authentication page where you will be prompted to enter the details. Upon successful authentication, you will be redirected back to the website you made the transaction with.

My Wierd Wired World’s Wordle

Nah! That ain’t a typo. “Wordle”, as I came to know a few days ago, is a kind of word cloud or a tag cloud (IMHO, it stands for word-jumble). It is created by providing some words which are then arranged in a kaleidoscopic manner, all user controlled. In its own words:

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and colour schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. [Wordle Website]

I’d bookmarked this site sometime ago but took time out to explore it today itself. Was too lazy to type so used the two ‘automatic’ options therein to create a some wordles – one from this blog’s feed and one from moi Technorati tags (click on the images after the jump for the larger version):

Windows Live Writer 2009; trying out few plug-ins

Long time since I’ve updated few of the s/w’s on moi laptop. I usually update the NIS and run Windows Update once in a while and that’s it! So I went on an updating spree today and downloaded & installed newer versions of some of the stuff. That includes the software from where I’m posting this! I Installed the Windows Live Writer 2009 today and going out on a whim, installed few of the plug-ins also. This post is just to tryout those and see how far usable they’re…

Ghajini Website

“Remember” – now this is a word one can readily associate with Ghajini – the movie. Given the lead character’s short term memory loss, he has to remember lotsa things. And the promos have also been asking the viewers to remember the release date – December 25. So its no big surprise that the official website of the movie has been modelled on the remember keyword! The official website of the movie Ghajini is http://www.RememberGhajini.com. Pretty cool, huh? Moreso since the Ghajini.com domain has already been taken up by a cyber squatter and web site names such as ghajinithemovie.com and ghajinithefilm.com sound pretty mundane.

As of now, the site just contains the theatrical trailer and the media invite page wherein media persons are required to upload a pic alongwith  their details so that in the press conference, Aamir can identify them easily! He has short term memory loss remember

AdLabs is now BIG Cinemas

A few weeks ago, I went upto the multiplex in Ameerpet and it was called AdLabs Cinemas then (am trying hard not to recall that it was for Drona ). Tomorrow, I’ll be going there again for watching Quantum of Solace but it will be called BIG Cinemas now! They recently had a rebranding exercise and all the various AdLabs theatres were renamed as BIG Cinemas.

 

Adlabs Films Limited, a member of the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group and India’s largest cinema chain announced today the launch of BIG Cinemas with the tagline “Ab Bada Mazza Ayega”. The entire rollout will happen simultaneously on Tuesday, 28th October 2008 across BIG Cinemas’ 73 properties throughout the country, totalling 186 screens and 71000 seats. [Press Release]

I must’ve missed the announcement or the news items… I only realized that when I’d logged in earlier today to book tickets for QoS. Though I must say the ‘AdLabs’ name was much better. Of course, many people back in my hometown believe that I work there (owing to the very close resemblance of the name of my actual workplace to that!) but it has nothing to do with that. Just that PVR, Prasadz, AdLabs sound like a theatre name when compared to BIG Cinemas. When you say “I’m going to the Big Cinema”, people may end up asking “Really? How Big?”

MTV Fully Faltoo Film Festival – Bechaare Zameen Pe, Cheque De India, Jadoo Ek Bar

Remember MTV? The Music Channel. Remember the spoof-y programme that used to air on it – Fully Faltoo? A series of mini-movies which spoofed the popular and cult movies and genres and characters and sportspersons and whatnot…Chhole, Ghoom, Sachin Childulkar, Makdimanav and others included. Now its come up with not one, but three spoof movies based on three popular hit movies. Called the MTV Fully Faltoo Film Festival, it will telecast the three mini-movies starting this Saturday. You can guess the originals from the spoof names – Bechaare Zameen Pe, Cheque De India and Jadoo Ek Bar

I came across the ads a few days ago and the web is full of news article and announcements and photographs of the launch so I won’t write much else, except that out of the three, Bechaare Zameen Pe sounds the most er…um…promisingly funny (duh!) what with Cyrus Sahukar as Pareshaan Awasthy! One interesting tidbit I noticed is that the actress playing Jadoo in the spoof of Jodhaa Akbar is Shambhavi Sharma…she of the MTV Roadies (in)fame(y)! The telecast’s at 7 PM every Saturday, starting the 20th September, on MTV.

Official Website

Aamir Khan’s Tata Sky Ad

Sometime in July came the announcement of Aamir Khan being signed on as the brand ambassador for Indian DTH Cable TV service provider Tata Sky. Many had viewed it as being in direct competition to rival Dish TV – whose brand ambassador was Shah Rukh Khan. Few gossip magazines had even labelled it as a new era in the Khan Wars! Anyways, the latest Tata Sky Ads featuring Aamir Khan have hit the screens few days ago and I must confess that from a consumer’s PoV, Aamir’s ad is far more wacky and saleable than Shah Rukh’s.

The Ad features Aamir enacting the two characters of a Punjabi bride and her hubby, squabbling for a cable connection choice. Bride Aamir insists on Sky whereas groom Aamir insists on Tata. They reach a consensus in the end. It is conceptualised by Rediffusion DY&R. Interestingly, Aamir doesn’t have a double-role in it but enacts a  two-faced character! Confused? See it for yourself after the jump.