A.R.Rahman on Ciara's Album!

Sending a quick note to the blog because I heard A.R.Rahman's music on Ciara's latest CD! 

On her new album, Fantasy Ride, Ciara has a song "Turntables" featuring Chris Brown. The song has a not insignificant sample from A.R.Rahman's Bombay - the song "Kehna Hi Kya" (the Hindi version of "Kannalane").

Check it out if you get a chance. I suspect this is just the beginning .. 

Btw, I'm heading to Seattle-Vancouver for the weekend. Should be good, spending time with old school friends. 

New Honda Insight Ad

I remember a few months ago there was an iPod touch ad on Yahoo that had portions of the Yahoo home page (outside the video boundary) moving in sync with the ad. It was a first and it was interesting. Now, here's the new Honda Insight ad on Vimeo that takes it to the next level.

http://vimeo.com/4281939

Click on that one to see what I mean. The ad itself is quite interesting too.

Highlight of today: UP Steam Locomotive 844

We took some time out of our normal day today to watch Union Pacific's Steam Locomotive 844 a.k.a "Living Legend" as it made its way through the Niles Canyon on its Western Heritage Tour.

Anjali loves trains and I didn't want to pass on the opportunity to show her a real steam locomotive in action. Plus, it was going to be not far from our home (a couple of miles away). The train did not disappoint. The locomotive itself was imposing and awesome; I also loved the gleaming yellow cars that were so inviting. I only managed a grainy video on my cellphone. Here's a video of the 844 I found elsewhere.

Where did the "GPS bundle for PSP" go? *

Sony has long been teasing us folks in the USA with news of this GPS addon for the PSP. It looked like a product was actually close to release last year. See Gizmodo's report for screenshots and details.

However, it has now been 11 months since that report with nary a word from Sony about this addon. The silence about significant PSP news and the rumours in the market about a PSP successor make me think that Sony is indeed about to release a UMD-less PSP console this year. It would be typical Sony to focus all their efforts on a new product and ignore the millions of PSP owners out there today. As the owner of two PSPs, I sure hope this is not the case!

* Title written in Anjali-speak!

This Scarpar board-thing looks fun!

Electric too! Check them at scarpar.com

This will be my hybrid vehicle of choice!

I've been talking about this to pretty much everyone around me but haven't blogged about it yet.


I like the Piaggio MP3 and I think when the hybrid version comes out later this year I'd really like to make it my primary commute vehicle. I have a Google News alert set up but no one seems to have any on-road tests yet..

PopSci has some good things to say about the hybrid MP3 today.

That 140 mpg fuel efficiency has me drooling :)

Remix of Jai Ho

And the western pop commercialization of A.R.Rahman's music begins..
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_7AyQpsukM

Personally, I think Rahman would've done better to let someone in Europe mix this one!

10 questions for A.R.Rahman

A.R.Rahman is the subject of Time Magazine's 10 Questions feature.
See video here.