Aamir stay away from Olympics: Tibetans

 

MUMBAI  ( 2008-03-27 15:14:09 ) : 

The protesting Tibetan community in India has appealed to ace actor Aamir Khan not to run in the Olympic torch relay.
Aamir, who is one of the Olympic torchbearers, in India has been asked by the Tibetan protesters distance himself Olympics to be held in China in 2008. A teenage protester went as far as issuing threats of immolating himself.
Aamir, who is going to play the role of a torchbearer for the Olympic Torch relay in Delhi next month, has issued no statement as yet. When contacted, his representative stated that the actor was too busy shooting for his upcoming flick Ghajini to indulge in these political controversies.
With the protesters now targeting Bollywood, the China-Tibet political saga has taken an all-new turn. Perhaps one reason why the Tibetans chose to appeal to Aamir is because the star has panache for taking up social causes.
Besides, Aamir the brother-sister combo Saif and Soha Ali Khan too shall participate as runners in the Olympic relay.

OpenSocial is no longer just a Google standard.

Microsoft catches social networking religion. And most folks are wondering where Facebook will land in this mess. The larger question: Is there a business hook here somewhere?

Yup, I hear the crickets too.

Social networking remains a consumer thing. And to the blogosphere it’s an opportunity to work in a Mark Zuckerberg quip, toss in Google as a reference and navel gaze a bit about the “conversation.”

But there has to be a corporate use in here somewhere.

Tuesday’s news that Yahoo is supporting OpenSocial and Google is stepping away to assure “neutrality” and interconnect social apps is a big deal. OpenSocial can now forge ahead as a real standard. Meanwhile, Microsoft has also entered the social network standard game (boy this all sounds familiar after awhile) and launched its own initiative. The gory details are fortunately rounded up by Techmeme.

I can’t help but think that this neutral OpenSocial foundation is a good thing for the enterprise. Perhaps enterprise apps will hook into OpenSocial. Perhaps vendors–beyond Oracle and Salesforce.com–will flick to the effort. Perhaps corporations will become more social.

Until then, however, there isn’t much of a huge plan when it comes to businesses.

Last week, I spoke to Joe Kraus, Director of Product Management at Google, about the enterprise implications of OpenSocial. Even though OpenSocial will be “forever free and open” there’s a lot of work to do before this becomes even slightly interesting to the enterprise.

Among the highlights of my conversation with Kraus:

• Social networking is the new black. Most killer apps are social by nature–email, IM and photo sharing for instance. Companies have been slow to adopt these uses–beyond email of course.
• Social networking isn’t a destination site. It will branch out through the entire Web. How will corporations handle this branching out process?
• Enterprises will adopt social standards like OpenSocial to embed third party applications. The rub: “These applications will need policies around them,” says Kraus. Simply put, a lot of social applications are frivolous–throwing sheep, awarding virtual beers (what’s the point folks?) and poking people. Surely, there’s a business function here somewhere.
• How do you tighten up social applications? “Social applications are loose in consumer land,” says Kraus. “We expect them to become much tighter in enterprise land.”
• What’s the model? Consumer social applications are built around advertising. In the corporate world that model won’t fly. What exactly will corporations license?
• Whatever develops in the socialprise will begin with CRM. “Salesforce and Oracle both see the opportunity, but CRM is a social application to begin with,” says Kraus.

German minister asks Beijing to end Tibet blackout (Roundup)

Berlin - German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier telephoned Beijing Tuesday and asked China to bring the violence in Tibet out into the open for the sake of 'maximum transparency,' aides in Berlin said.

A spokesman for Chancellor Angela Merkel said meanwhile she was 'open' to a fresh meeting with the Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. Beijing has protested angrily at western contacts with the Dalai Lama, whom it accuses of orchestrating protests by monks.

The Foreign Ministry announced Steinmeier's phone conversation about Tibet with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in advance.

It said Steinmeier appealed for 'maximum transparency regarding the events in Tibet.'

Yang had replied that China had invited Western journalists on a trip to Tibet to see for themselves. Following protests at the expulsion of journalists from Tibet, Beijing announced Tuesday it would set up an escorted trip for about a dozen to Lhasa.

Steinmeier said he hoped the violence would cease permanently and called for a dialogue between Beijing and the Dalai Lama.

He had also told the Beijing official he did not regard a boycott of this summer's Olympic Games in Beijing in protest at Tibet policies as an appropriate response, a ministry spokesman said.

Thomas Steg, deputy government spokesman, earlier said calls for an Olympic boycott tended to 'distract from the need to move towards a political solution to the conflict.'

'We regard it as indispensable that both sides, the Dalai Lama and the government in Beijing, close their gap,' he said, adding that there was no alternative in Germany's view to negotiations.

Merkel had made plain 'that she was absolutely willing to meet again with the Dalai Lama on an appropriate occasion, speak to him and discuss current topics,' said Steg.

However Merkel would not be in Germany at the time of the spiritual leader's scheduled spring visit to the country.

Merkel received the Dalai Lama, who lives in India, last year in her Berlin office, prompting an angry protest from Beijing.

The German Federation of Olympics Sports, or DOSB, said Monday that there would definitely be no boycott of the Games. Athletes on the official German team voiced relief, saying the event would be height of their careers for many.

DOSB general director Michael Vesper said on ZDF television it was 'naive' to suppose people in China or Tibet would be better off if athletes stayed away from the Games.

But a senior member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party criticized the DOSB Tuesday for pledging attendance at the games and thus taking a boycott over Tibet out of play.

Ruprecht Polenz, who chairs the federal parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs, said on SWR television that given the situation in Tibet, it would have been smarter to leave attendance at the Games this summer open, 'thus not ruling a boycott out.'

Polenz is not a member of the Merkel government, a coalition of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats, but is a respected voice on foreign policy issues.

SIFF readies 200-film lineup

SINGAPORE -- Despite facing a significant cut in its annual budget, the Singapore International Film Festival that kicks off Friday will welcome more than 200 films from 40 countries.
Now in its 21st year, SIFF saw its budget drop from S$850,000 ($611,372) in 2007 to S$400,000 this year.
The program opens with a Rainer Werner Fassbinder retrospective and a collection of human rights shorts, while the main 10-day festival will open a week later on April 4 with Wayne Wang's "The Princess of Nebraska," a story of a pregnant Chinese girl living in the U.S. Other films include the critically acclaimed Golden Bear winner "Tuya's Marriage," by director Wang Quan'An, along with "I'm Not There," Todd Haynes' unorthodox biopic in which Bob Dylan is played by a number of actors.
The festival also includes an Australian Focus segment, a tribute to the late Indonesian film director Sjuman Djaya (1934-85) and a retrospective of 55 years of Vietnam cinema, ranging from such classics as "Little Girl of Hanoi" and "Mrs. Tu Hai" to the recent "The Life" by Dao Duy Phuc, in competition along with another 11 films for the festival's Screen Awards for best Asian feature.
For the first time, the SIFF is introducing a Singapore Panorama segment that will feature 14 new homegrown feature-length and short films. They include "The Olive Depression" by Joshua Lim, which captures the conflicting emotions faced by the film's protagonists before their conscription into mandatory military service, and Kan Lume's "Dreams From the Third World," about an idealistic filmmaker trying to convince a prostitute to star in his porn film