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.