Scientists have repurposed a 50-year-old drug to revolutionize bone marrow
transplants. “Today, agonizing searches for a matched donor are largely a
thing ...
Is It The Social Web That Gave The Verdict In Oscars Vs Baron Cohen?
The independence of The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and of the United States of America is admirable. The sheen on its prestigious Oscar awards night, as the second most watched event in the US, has only got brighter in recent times. However, it looks like the social web can now influence how the Oscar award ceremony is conducted and will continue to do so in the future.
Every year the controversies around the award night, which surface both before and after the gala event, generate more interest and discussion than the event itself.
Every year the controversies around the award night, which surface both before and after the gala event, generate more interest and discussion than the event itself.
This year it was the turn of Sacha Baron Cohen to kick up the storm and grab his share of attention by intending to appear in the outfit of his role in his upcoming movie "The Dictator" with an urn of the 'ashes' of his friend, the real world dictator Kim Jong-il, even as many people felt that it was too much self serving and the Academy threatened to refuse him admission
Proving how the academy worried about the disruption to the biggest event in the industry and the fall out in its reputation, the Academy President Tom Sherak has issued a statement dismissing the speculation that the Academy was somehow in on the whole stunt of Baron Cohen.
"I'm telling you the truth, this is not a stunt that we were involved in at all. We can have another conversation about how things happened and whether we overreacted - but trust me, it was not like we helped make this up."
That raises the question why did the Academy object to the request of Sacha Baron Cohen to appear in his now famous uniform in the first place? Judging from his contribution to the motion picture industry and the record of box office success of his films, the Academy had only reason to welcome him as an honoured guest, especially as a cast member of Hugo, which received several recommendations and was considered a front runner for the top award.
It seems his reputation as a 'Controversy's child' and his Jewish origin have more to do with the reticence of the Academy than a mere intention to let his pranks annoy the guests and ruin their show. As mentioned in a piece on the Wiki about Baron Cohen:
"Aside from the comic elements of his characters, Baron Cohen's performances are interpreted by some as reflecting uncomfortable truths about his audience. He juxtaposes his own Jewish lineage with the anti-Semitism of his character Borat."
No doubt, the character of Admiral General Aladeen could have had unpredictable reactions in a world unsure about the gentle breeze of the Arab spring, which the Academy was in no position to judge and perhaps causing nightmares to its members who were trying to foresee the repercussions.
No doubt, the character of Admiral General Aladeen could have had unpredictable reactions in a world unsure about the gentle breeze of the Arab spring, which the Academy was in no position to judge and perhaps causing nightmares to its members who were trying to foresee the repercussions.
The Academy also has failed to reckon the genius of Sacha Baron Cohen, who perhaps unintentionally, has blunted any adverse reaction by releasing his famous clip but certainly meant to underscore his main theme of ridiculing dictatorship by the act of spreading the ashes of Kim Jong-il on the famous red carpet and thus send his real message to the whole world.
However the 'viral' and positive reaction to his clip of objection released on the web two days before the Oscar night must have given as much relief to the Academy members as the pressure of negative world opinion, if he were to be banned from the event for his prank which more and more people were ready to accept as such.
It appears that, after all the showing up of a "Dictator" for the Oscars could be a funny prank and nothing objectionable, thanks to the collective wisdom of the social web, which has the sea change in attitude towards dictatorship the Arab world has recently witnessed to its credit.
Baron Cohen was not alone to get an admission to the Oscar 2012 night thanks to the power of the social web. Uggie, the ten year old dog who was refused an entrance to the event on grounds many people will consider frivolous on the part of the Academy, finally got to share the Oscar and the stage with his co actor Jean Dujardin. The appearance of Uggie on various shows like the TMZ live before the night prompting public appeal on TV and the public outcry on and off the web has earned Uggie the fame and place in history he so well deserved.
With sentiment analysis tools like Wisewindow, which can listen in on the 'chatter' on the social web and analyse with natural language algorithms, is now possible to gauge what the world thinks and how it intends to act on various issues.
Applying such sophisticated tools on the social web allows you to anticipate the winners, taking some of the surprise and excitement from the award night gala. But, more importantly, the social web is also silently changing the politics and morals of the Oscars.
There are in fact plenty of reasons why the Academy should listen to the voice of the world.
There are in fact plenty of reasons why the Academy should listen to the voice of the world.
Article first published in The Huffington Post as Has the Social Web Tamed the Oscars if Not Sacha Baron Cohen?
Follow Sreedhar Pillai on Twitter: www.twitter.com/lastingrose
Baron Cohen Has Made His Point, But Will "The Dictator" be There?
Will Sacha
Baron Cohen upset the 2012 Oscar gala and the celebrities?
That seems to be the question on everyone’s mind this weekend rather than who
will be taking the prestigious award home in the prime categories.
Though Sacha was assured to be declared as a person
non-grata, if he turned up in the costume of Admiral General Aladeen of Wadiya
from his movie The Dictator, which resulted in strong protest from Sacha who
released a clip on the internet to register his protest, apparently the
organizers have sensed the public mood and sent him the entry passes.
Though the objection to Sacha Cohen’s appearance in the
now famous costume was officially declared as being “promotional” for his yet
to be released film, it is not difficult to see the huge global political fall
out and the repercussions in an already strained and thinly balanced international
relations, and the embarrassment the organizers are desperately trying to
avoid.
Whether Sacha will decide that his immediate aim has been
met in terms of gaining publicity and that taking things too far will only
eventually hurt his cause, is a matter to wait and see till the award night.
Apparently Sacha Cohen is not the only thorn in the
famous celebrity feet which will grace the famous red carpet tonight.
There is a widespread feeling that the Oscars, the
biggest and most anticipated and prestigious of awards, and the most watched
award ceremony itself are somehow ignoring the very aspects of the movies which
endear them to millions of viewers.
The case in
question is how Uggie,
a ten year old sweet doggy, who has stepped in to make “The Artist”, a silent
movie and hot contestant for the award in the best movie category, so much more
lovable to viewers around the world, is refused an attendance at the
prestigious night.
Apparently, more famous and
privileged invitees of a different species objected to the presence of Uggie
and the potential loss of camera focus on themselves due to the angle they will
be at to catch Uggie who will be closer to the floor level than they are!
However TMZ
Live has taken upon them the cause of Haggy and gave Uggie and his trainer
and Owner a touching slot on the show. The host Harvey Levin even made an
appeal to the Oscar hosts on behalf of Uggie.
A lot of people may not miss
Sacha if he didn’t turn up for the Oscar Night, but millions more will be
disappointed if they won’t be seeing Uggie steal the whole show.
Article first published as Baron
Cohen Has Made His Point, But Will "The Dictator" be There? on
Technorati.
Did Whitney And The World Love ‘Whitney Houston Going Home.’?
‘Whitney Houston Going Home.’ Did
Whitney And The World Loved It?
Judging from the paltry coverage
of her funeral service by the world media at large, except by celebrity sites
like TMZ,
it looks like much has been already said and written
about the ‘Going Home’ ceremony of another of 20th century Icons, the
much loved pop singer Whitney
Houston. So what more is there to say?
There are many events and
occasions which have left indelible marks on human memory for the visuals and
voices they carried and in some cases for profound changes in world opinion and
attitude.
However, certain occasions like
the Kennedy assassination and the death of Princess Diana spring to mind as
events which left the world shocked out of wits and saddest at the time but
somehow despatched the real grief home only during the funerals, which were
grimmest of affairs in grandest of settings.
The funeral service of Whitney
Houston turned out be an ordinary affair in an ordinary church, yet caught the
attention of the world and evoked feelings of loss and bonding of a different
kind, which has made Whitney more endearing and human to millions of viewers
who have turned more sympathetic.
Like thousands of others, Whitney
Houston probably died of a quiet heart attack, after eating a ham burger with some
satisfaction. An ordinary event in the life of a celebrity, which shot out of
proportion and shocked the world thanks to the aura of negativity given by the
media and the instant technology at its disposal today.
The bottom line is, Whitney actually
belonged to a station in life which is home for a large majority of the people
in the world. Like in the case of Lady Diana, it was the special corner of love and sympathy Whitney
somehow managed to secure in the hearts of millions which sent the pain around
in huge dollops rather than the heights she could carry her music with her
wonderful melisma.
That is why, the ‘Going Home’
ceremony so affectionately and caringly organised by her mother and relatives
turned out to be something the world could watch and relate to and something
which would have made Whitney Houston enormously happy.
It was in fact a Home Coming
celebration for some one who completed a very successful journey in life which
Whitney Houston, accomplished diva and singer was denied by her untimely death.
It was entirely in order to give her a send off where everyone could have
thanked her and she could have thanked everyone who helped her along and the
right thing to do.
More than anything else, the
speeches and the songs sung in her praise by other famous performers like
by Kevin Costner and Stevie
wonder have put on some wonderful colour and shades to the caricature,
perhaps somewhat distorted, the world had in its mind. At the end of that entire protracted event, the
diva of Newark
Perhaps one of the biggest
rewards of living in the 20th century and carrying on in to the 21st
is the enormous shock, grief, despair, anger, excitement or joy one get to
share with the whole world simultaneously from events defining our times around
the world, which wouldn’t have been possible without the marvellous 20th
century inventions in communication.
Article first published as ‘Whitney
Houston Going Home.’ Did Whitney And The World Love It? on Technorati.
What On Web Has Changed For President Obama This Election?
Twitter is no longer enough
to win an election.
Move over Google,
Twitter and Facebook. Enter WiseWindow, Arktan and Percolate. Search, tweet and like are out. Sentiment analysis, taxonomy, social
stream, passive curation and second screen conversation, are a
few of the new buzzwords President Obama and anyone else aspiring to win the US
These innovative
technologies, with amazing data collection, filtering, analysis, curation and
interaction capabilities, can tell what people are thinking right now and their
intentions before they become action, enabling you to curate and chose what you tell them
and how you interact with them so that you can shape the world and the market
place the way you need, all in real time. That is why who wins the next US
WiseWindow,
which specialise in sentiment analysis, is in fact ahead of the presidential
candidates. Partnering with The Daily Beast (now a part of Newsweek), they have
created the "Election Oracle," which scans 40,000 social media sites,
listening to millions of daily comments, and creating a 10-day moving average
that is mixed with traditional polls to create their predictions.
Apart from President Obama and
artists like Lady Gaga who has a fan base of about 20
million, who will need these new, mind boggling technology products of branding
and influencing human race? Well, in the words of WiseWindow, anyone with
management responsibility that belongs to the C-suite:
• CEO - Chief,
Chief
•COO - Go-to-Guy
• CIO - No.1 Nerd
•CMO - Brand Boss
• CFO - Money Mogul
• Consumer Researchers
• Customer Support Personnel
• Common people, that's you and everyone else!
•
• CIO - No.1 Nerd
•
• CFO - Money Mogul
• Consumer Researchers
• Customer Support Personnel
• Common people, that's you and everyone else!
In reality you, the consumer, are most benefited by the new
collective power derived from the application of these technologies, to
influence like never before in the history, what the media, politicians,
entertainers and the Industry at large will deliver.
Any organization, politician or brand aiming to stay ahead of the market and fickle
consumers and supporters, whose tastes change seemingly overnight, will need to
heed to this collective power, which is already flexing its muscle in the media
and entertainment industry.
Reuters recently launched 'Social Pulse', a new social media hub designed to show you the
most talked-about news, companies and influencers across the Web, which
features, with technology and service provided by WiseWindow, a revolutionary
stock sentiment module, based on opinions from hundreds of thousands of sources
captured and curated, clearly demonstrating the predictive abilities offered by
the technology.
Using Percolate, Reuters has created
Counterparties, a way to build more engagement with two of their finest
journalists, Felix Salmon and Ryan McCarthy. A combination of algorithmic
filtering of most interesting content which they react to allows an audience to
follow along and engage with these editors all day.
Universal Music Group, who
manage Mindless Behavior, Jennifer Lopez, Lady Gaga, Dr.Dre, Justin Bieber, and
their official websites is using Arktan's Life stream to deliver aggregated and
curated content on the official websites of the artists. With the ability to
add comments and reply to posts, the social influence of the artist sites has
grown dramatically.
WiseWindow, a sentiment analysis/measuring company, turns the chaos
of online chatter, what people are saying online now in blogs, tweets, status
updates, and reviews, in to a database which illuminates consumer sentiment
across hundreds of dimensions and then provide a stream of consumer sentiment
and intention data that can be integrated with business intelligence systems so
that organizations can become more agile and responsive.
Arktan on the other hand is
primarily about building "interactive" curated social experiences.
Arktan provides very deep interaction capabilities, like the ones on the
websites of Lady Gaga, with the ability to respond to comments, likes,
social sharing, aggregated conversation, etc in real time. These much richer
curation capabilities, which give brands the control they want and sentiment
analysis capabilities including Natural Language Processing as well as
analytics, set Arktan's technology apart from passive curation tools.
Percolate which is
primarily about letting a brand build passive curation experiences, scrapes
five million sources daily, turning a brand's strategy into the interest engine
and using proprietary algorithms to sort and bubble up only the most relevant
and interesting content for a brand editor to comment on and publish to social
platforms and websites.
If you are excited and want
to have a quick look at how these breaking technologies can affect you, check
out TweetSentiments.com which provides Sentiment
Analysis on tweets using Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning technologies
and Storify where
you can have a go at curation and create your own article with content from the
web.
Article first published as How
Has the Web Technologies Changed for President Obama This Election? on
Technorati.
Do You Want The Guys At TMZ To Serve Up Hot News Even Hotter? They Can!
Technology is changing how
celebrities like Lady
Gaga build up a fan base of 20 million and then interact with them to keep
them hooked to her magic. Now the guys
who follow the celebrities and serve up the news they make like TMZ.com are
learning a thing or two about the ways celebrities use social media.
Taking a leaf out of the new book
of how to get the hook swallowed even deeper, TMZ has added a much greater and
innovative punch to their delivery. The TMZ
live is a terrific example of how you can spice up what you serve with
what is available on the social media right now and create an ever increasing
fan base of loyal followers.
The show which is presented as a talk show
actually cuts in to the studio workplace and gets everyone else to chip in
making it wider and give it an ambiance of an office. Everyone can relate to
this as this is very real and what happens in every day life in any office
where people work together.
The show is brisk, informal, and chatty and
dwells on the hottest topics for just enough time to keep them hot.
(
(
(
(26:30) The Heart Attack Grill -- which sells an 8,000 cal. burger -- had a diner literally have a heart attack there this week.
(28:45) The owner of the restaurant calls in -- defends his gut busting menu to an inch of his life.
(32:12) Our fatty good loving staffers totally have the owner's back on this one. Shocker.
(34:30) Is Kate Upton too big for
(38:00) Another argument to wrap up the show -- is buying $100,000 handbags the biggest waste of money ever?
The hosts take in live calls and get the
callers to participate in live discussion.
A simultaneous twitter stream lets anyone
farther away, even on other continents, like the UK
A live stream of comments gives you an in
depth feels of what those who are eager but can’t jump in and speak their mind
have to say.
To boot it all, a live survey with related
questions, sort of gives you a chance to put a line under, say a last word on
the topic.
Overall, the entire combination
has turned TMZ, which has started as a blog, to a totally new category of
media, yet to be christened but sure to be imitated.
For millions of people, celebrity
gossip and news is addictive
like drugs. Their life depends on a sizable doze of it which was being served
by tabloids before the internet and social media. Now they are hooked to it
even more because modern technology can provide the experience of being with
the news makers where the news happens in real time and even interact with them
as on the website of Lady Gaga, where her ardent followers even have a
backstage entrance to interact with her.
Did Whitney Houston Plan The Grandest Of Her Exits?
It may be too soon to speak
without being disrespectful to the departed, but whether the diva, famous for
her sensational concert exits often with her signature piece “I will always love you” wished it to be
or not, her death in reality has turned in to her grandest of exits!
“A
surreal scene unfolded at the hotel as the party continued while Miss Houston's
body remained in her room on the fourth floor, which was sealed off with yellow
police tape.”
No one in history, except Julius Caesar,
perhaps had his or her praise sung to the world and immortalised, while the soul
which was separated from the body must have been looking down on it and smiling
in greatest of joy at the fulfilment of the life just ended.
"Whitney
Houston, simply put, had the greatest voice in the world. She was a gift of
God. Hearing her sing was like listening to magic. If it wasn't for Clive Davis,
the world may not have known about this miracle voice," Combs
It must sound cruel and uncaring
to think of still holding a party
when an invited has just departed, especially if it happened in the next room.
But in the case of Whitney, who has been honoured with six Grammy awards, it
was not just a party she was supposed to attend that evening, it was her mentor
and music producer Clive Davis's customary pre-Grammy party, typically one of
the most fun-filled highlights of the week leading to the music industry's top awards
ceremony
For Whitney, it would have been a
party held by her mentor who made her the Whitney Houston the whole world pines
for, where she would have found herself the happiest. How could Whitney have
asked it to be stopped, if her soul could, it would have sung “I will always
love you” for all in the party hall to hear!
"Simply
put, Whitney would have wanted the music to go on and her family asked that we
carry on,"
Though some statements have been issued by the coroner about the cause
of Whitney’s tragic death, and we may never ever know exactly, one thing seems
to be true. Whitney Houston may not have asked for it but God has granted her
the best stage she could have wished for a final performance.
Article first published as Did
Whitney Houston Plan The Grandest Of Her Exits? on Technorati
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