Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

Los Angles: Britney Spears appeared in a tattoo parlour in the San Fernando Valley near Los Angeles with her head shaved completely bald. Video on KABC-TV showed the newly shorn Spears with tiny tattoos on the back of her neck as she sits on Friday night for a new tattoo, a pair of red and pink lips. Derrik Snell, who works at the tattoo parlour, said Spears showed up without notice and stayed for about 90 minutes. “I didn’t really notice (the hairdo) at first, she had a hood on when she showed up.” Before heading to the tattoo parlour, Spears grabbed an electric clipper and shaved her own head at a San Fernando Valley salon. “I tried to talk her out of it. I said, ‘Are you sure you’re not having a bad day and tomorrow you’ll feel differently about it?” salon owner Esther Tognozzi said. “She said ‘No, I absolutely want it shaved off right now’. Next thing I know, she grabbed the buzzer and she went to the back of my salon and she was shaving off her own hair,” Tog nozzi said.

Samsung Electronics new Co. has unveiled a mobile phone that features some of the sleek design and functions of Apple Inc.’s much-hyped iPhone . Samsung’s Ultra Smart F700 will be exhibited at next week’s 3GSM World Congress, a telecommunications exhibition in Barcelona, Samsung spokeswoman Sonia Kim said on Friday. (AFP) M ? usic firm EMI Group PLC has been talking with online retailers about possibly selling its entire digital music catalogue in MP3 format without copy protection, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing numerous people familiar with the matter. (AFP) ? A stelephones and mobile picture-taking digital movie cameras grow ubiquitous, Internet users worldwide are being recruited as citizen news reporters. In December, Yahoo launched YouWitnessNews, a website that posts offerings from users after the submissions pass muster with pro fessional editors.

GPS_Embedded_Shoes : Isaac Daniel calls the tiny Global Positioning System (GPS) chip he’s embedded into a line of sneakers “peace of mind.” He wishes his 8-year-old son had been wearing them when he got a call from his school in 2002 saying the boy was missing. The worried father hopped a flight to Atlanta from New York where he had been on business to find the incident had been a miscommunication and his son was safe. Days later, the engineer started working on a prototype of Quantum Satellite Technology, a line of $325 to $350 adult sneakers that hit shelves next month. It promises to locate the wearer anywhere in the world with the press of a button. A children’s line will be out this summer.

If a screeching buzzer is not enough to get you moving in the morning, consider Clocky. This alarm clock doesn’t just make noise, it breaks the snooze-button habit: after the first snooze period, Clocky rolls off the nightstand and runs away. Clocky generated Internet buzz in 2005 when it was just a conceptual design project by Gauri Nanda, then a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It is now an actual product, available for $50 at www.nandahome.com . The clock can survive a two-foot drop and the alarm beeps randomly, ensuring that its frantic squalling won’t be easily forgotten. It comes in white, light blue and light green.

Hollywood: Former Playboy model and oil heiress Anna Nicole Smith died Thursday after collapsing at a hotel. She was 39. According to her attorney. Smith, was unresponsive and was rushed to the hospital on Thursday while staying at the Seminole Hard Rock Cafe Hotel and Casino in Hollywood, Fla., hotel officials said. Smith was mourning the death of her 20-year-old son who died in her hospital room last year . Anna Nicole Smith, the pneumatic blonde whose life played out as an extraordinary tabloid tale — Playboy centerfold, jeans model, bride of an octogenarian oil tycoon, reality-show subject, tragic mother. She was stricken while staying at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino and was rushed to a hospital. Edwina Johnson, chief investigator for the Broward County Medical Examiner's Office, said the cause of death was under investigation and an autopsy would be done on Friday. Just five months ago, Smith's 20-year-old son, Daniel, died suddenly in the Bahamas in what ...

Filmmaker Ram Gopal Varma is a happy man, now that he has finally got Abhishek Bachchan to make an appearance in his film Ram Gopal Varma Ki Sholay. Abhishek was to play the role of Veeru, played by Dharmendra in the original, but unfortunately had to opt out of it. The immensely popular Mehbooba Mehbooba number rendered by R.D. Burman and filmed on Amjad Khan and Helen in the original, will now have Amitabh Bachchan, Urmila Matondkar and Abhishek dancing and crooning to it in Ramu’s venture. Choreographer-turned-singer Ganesh Hegde, who for the first time has also scored the music for this number, said, “When Abhishek heard my track of Mehbooba Mehbooba, he was impressed and told Ramu that he also wanted to be a part of the song along with Amitabh and Urmila. To have Amitabh and Abhishek on a song that I have scored music for, is like an honour for me. What more can I ask for?”

Expressing gratitude to Amitabh Bachchan for his “stunning” performance in the yet-to-bereleased Eklavya, the film’s director Vidhu Vinod Chopra on Wednesday gifted the actor a Rolls Royce Phantom worth Rs 3.5 crore. The silver car was presented by Chopra at Mr Bachchan’s Juhu office.

Barbara McNair, the pioneering black singer-actress who hosted her own TV variety show and starred with Sidney Poitier in the early 1970s, has died. She was 72. McNair died on Sunday in Los Angeles after a battle with throat cancer, her sister, Jacqueline Gaither, said. “She was very family oriented,” Gaither said. “She was more than just a star or a famous personality. She was a person of her own.” Gaining fame in the 1960s as a nightclub singer, McNair graduated to film and television as opportunities were opening up for black women late in the decade. She made her Hollywood acting debut in 1968 in the film, If He Hollers, Let Him Go. She later starred with Elvis Presley in his 1969 film Change of Habit and as Poitier’s wife in the 1970 film They Call Me MISTER Tibbs! She found movie acting “a more rewarding kind of work than singing,” she told the Washington Post in 1969. “When I’m working in a club, I must go from one song to another rapidly and I don’t have much time to express my...

After Rajinikanth turned down the offer to play the powerful character of Ravana in the epic film Ramayan, director Raj Kumar Santhoshi has cast actor Prakash Raj in the role. While Ajay Devgan and Kajol have been selected for the role of Rama and Sita, Rekha will play the key role of Kaikeyi. A visibly thrilled Prakash says that Santhoshi has offered him the role of a lifetime. It is reported that the director will be taking the key members of the cast, which includes Prakash to Australia next month for a special training programme. Meanwhile Prakash Raj is also busy with the release of his home production Mozhi and is happy with the way the film has shaped up. He is certain that Jyotika, who plays a deaf and mute girl in the film, will win a National award for her performance.

Legend has it that the 16th century Rajput ruler Maharana Pratap had survived in exile by eating rotis made of grass. In 2007, Gangaram Gautam , a daily wage labourer in Kanpur , seems so inspired by Maharana Pratap’s example that he eats 2 kg of grass every day, and thrives. “I was around 7 years old when I first ate grass. I liked the taste and gradually increased my intake without letting my family members know about this habit. I had heard about Maharana Pratap eating ghaas ki roti and I thought I would eat it too,” he says. Now, at 41, Gangaram feels “incomplete” unless he has eaten his staple diet of 2 kg of grass. “Initially I would eat normal food along with the grass, but for the past four or five years I have been eating only grass. After eating grass, I walk at a speed of 15 km per hour in order to digest the food,” he explains. Every day, when he feels hungry, Gangaram goes to nearby parks and gardens and “grazes” till he has had his fill. “In the beginning the gardeners ...

Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams and I nternational Space Station commander Mike Lopez-Alegria went on a seven-hour, 55-minute space walk in the first of an unprecedented three outings in nine days. The duo returned to their home in space through the Quest airlock at 4.39 am on Thursday after working on the reconfiguration of the station’s power and cooling systems, US space agency Nasa said. They are scheduled to take their second space walk February 4 and the third February 8. While flight engineer Williams — wearing an all-white suit — reconfigured electrical connections, Lopez-Alegria — in the lead in a suit with red stripes — worked at the “rats’ nest”, an area near the base of the Z1 Truss with numerous fluid and electrical connections. As the space walkers stood by, the ground control retracted the starboard radiator of the P6 Truss. After retraction, they installed six cable cinches and two winch bars to secure the radiator and then installed a shroud over it. William...

MPaper' gives the option of browsing the pages of 11 Indian Leading English newspapers HYDERABAD : A pioneer in providing access to newspapers over the web, city-based Pressmart and IMImobile , on Wednesday launched `mPaper' giving the option of browsing the pages of 11 Indian English newspapers to mobile users on WAP-enabled phones . "Tired of waiting to hear the thud of the daily newspaper in the morning and rushing to open your main door? mPaper is the answer. Browse through the pages of 140 newspapers," said Sanjiv Gupta, CEO, Pressmart, at a press conference here on Wednesday. In just 15 months, Pressmart has a presence in 21 countries, with people in 214 nations accessing newspapers and publications of their choice, with `ePaper' thanks to the initiative. Mr. Gupta said their target in two years was to enable access to a 1,000 newspapers, periodicals and other publications over a mobile phone. IMImobile A.R. Vishwanath, CEO, IMImobile, said that based in Hyd...