Dream On !

The 1999 movie Fightclub, starring Brad Pitt and Ed Norton, has inspired underground bare-knuckle fightclubs in US. Youth is resorting to such things to vent out their frustration. They want to feel different by doing something different.

Ivy League degree holders turn into vicious street brawlers in a real-life, underground fight club. They beat each other mercilessly in a garage.Then, bloodied and bruised, they limp back to work in the morning.

Police in certain parts of US, came to know about these fight clubs when they posted the videos of their fights online. Some teenagers were selling DVDs of the videos.They were also caught.

America is a free country, so adult groups go untouched. These fights take place on private properties and nobody reports them. Only if someone reports the fight or someone gets hospitalized, action can be taken.

One of the fighters exclaimed that you get to be a superhero for a night, you have the freedom to do what you want to do.

A sociology professor blames the video games, cartoons and movies. The usual suspects ;).

Though Dinesh Prasad has a different reason. He joined the club because he wanted to get over the fear of fighting. He said it has worked for him. He is a much tougher man now. He has been a regular from last 5 years.

The good fighters always get the glory and the woman.
The full article is here on CNN.

Once touted as the mother of all mergers has been called a "Bull" by the president of Time Warner, Jeffrey Bewkes. The merger was the talk of the town in 1999. Everybody that includes all media gurus, business analysts were thrilled about this marriage. Wall Street has given the green signal by pushing the stock of the concerned entities. Those were the days of bubble. Steve Case was a hero, a new media mogul. It was said that now they own up both content (Time Warner) and distribution (AOL), they are going to sweep the market. But it all turned out to be a "Bull".

Fast forward to 2006. The synergies between the two entities (AOL-Time Warner) never took off. Blame it on technology or on people who dont want to see a choppy video on internet. What they want really want is a painless experience.
And now Time Warner has abandoned all pretense of "synergy" between its various media divisions, the failed concept that was the sole justification for its merger with AOL.

But if AOL is such a big load for Time Warner then why dont they sell that part of that business. AOL, last month has also launched a clone of YouTube known as UnCut. Does this give a signal about the differences between the two managements?

In fact the latest trend is that big content owners like Disney, ESPN, CNN have no plans to partner with internet giants (Google, Yahoo) for distributing their content. It was back in bubble when internet was considered a rocket science. But not now. Moreover, the CEO of Yahoo, Terry Semel, is not even a tech guy but a media person. All big media houses have their own internet strategies. Infact they are thinking beyond internet and very aggressive in mobile space also. This was shown by series of announcements of MVNOs - ESPN mobile, Disney Mobile etc.

This all, only shows that media industry is in a big flux. Only time will tell which marriage was "Made in Heaven".

Swarm shows you what websites people are visiting, right now.

Swarm is a graphical map of hundreds of websites, all connecting to each other. It updates itself every second with where people are going and coming from. As sites become more popular, they move towards the center of the swarm and grow larger. Conversely, sites that lose traffic move away from the center and grow smaller.

Website traffic is symbolized with thin lines. Each time you see a line appear, it means someone has moved from one site to the other. You can gauge how many people are swarming around based on the number of lines.

It is pretty interesting. Check it out here.

Saw these at - OkTataByeBye.com