CITY www.bangaloremirror.
com/city
Kannada classics for your ears only
Five audio books, including Samskara and Dharmashree, will be released at the Kannada Sammelana next week
F
S Shyam Prasad
shyam.prasad1@timesgroup.com
ive other audio books of writers U R
Ananthamurthy, S L Bhyrappa,
Chandrashekara Kambara, Masti
Venkatesha Iyengar and Sudha Murty
will be released during the Vishwa Kannada
Sammelana in Belgaum next week. This is the
first time, children’s stories apart, that audio
books in Kannada will hit the market, thanks
to the efforts of Lahari Audio and BooksTalk.
Lahari Audio’s Velu says, “In the US, there
is a vast market for audio versions of popular
books. Somehow, it was not replicated in
Kannada though the technology existed for
decades. Audio companies and book publish-
ers never got together. But, it’s better late than
never. The books being released are considered
classics. So, there should be a good response.”
Jayashree Mantri Easwaran, a corporate
accountant turned co-founder of BooksTalk,
says this is a big test. “The audio book market in
Indian languages is non-existent. We are releas-
ing five books each in Kannada and Bengali. The
BuyI Get
According to BooksTalk, the potential for audio books is vast because many do not read books as they
either cannot read the language or do not have the time
Kannada books will be launched at the
Sammelana. It was C R Simha who helped me
get the rights from the Kannada authors.”
She says the potential for audio books is vast
considering that many people do not read
books because they either cannot read the lan-
guage or do not have the time. My cook and
driver who have never read a book in their lives
are now hooked on to the audio books. Many
of our children have grown up without learn-
ing how to read and write the mother tongue
though they speak it at home,” she said.
AA
BangaloreMirror | FRIDAY, MARCH 4, 2011
Authors will get a royalty ranging between
10 and 12 per cent from the sales. The books,
priced at Rs 125 each, are in MP3 format and
the duration is anywhere between six and 13
hours. “S L Bhyrappa’s Dharmashree is one of
his shortest novels. But that itself is 13 hours
in the audio format,” says Jai Madhukar
Zende, another co-founder of BooksTalk.
This is one of the things that could prevent
piracy. “These are not songs that almost every-
one seems to be copying. Only those who are
interested will have a copy,” reasons Jayashree.
CM promises
another cricket
stadium for city
C
ricket lovers need not fear lath-
icharges while queuing up for tickets
anymore. The state government is
planning to build aninternational-level
cricket stadium in the city with a capacity
to seat up to 80,000 spectators.
Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa on
Thursday told the assembly that efforts are
on to locate 60-70 acres of land for the pro-
posed stadium with a seating capacity of
70,000 to 80,000.
“I have already spoken to KSCA presi-
dent Anil Kumble,” he said.
The present Chinnaswamy Stadium in
the heart of the city was built more than
four decades ago and can accommodate
around 38,000 spectators.
The chief minister’s statement came
during a discussion on the lathicharge of
frenzied cricket fans on February 24 as
chaos broke out during sale of tickets
ahead of the February 27 India-England
World Cup tie.
Several members cutting across party
lines demanded constitution of a House
committee to probe the ticket sale mess as
well as affairs of the KSCA, run by Kumble
and Javagal Srinath, who is its secretary.
Yeddyurappa stressed the need not to
»
send a “wrong message” (that Karnataka
could not manage cricket affairs) and said
he would convene a meeting, inviting agi-
tated members as well as the KSCA man-
PTI
agement to resolve the issues.
Gene that
makes you
hit the bottle
PAGE 15
4
WEEK’S TOP
5
MANU PRASAD
TECH WRAP FROM THE WORLD WIDE WEB
liked/hated this column? write to
bmfeedback@indiatimes.com
HEIR APPARENT
15 million iPads were sold last year, so it was no
wonder that the world was looking forward to iPad2.
The iPad2 is slimmer than its
predecessor, and with a new A5,
dual-core processor, slightly
updated OS, front and rear fac-
ing cameras, a cool new custom
case and no change in price, this
one looks a worthy successor.
Apple has also updated the MacBook Pro with next
generation dual and quad Core processors, high per-
formance graphics, Thunderbolt technology and
FaceTime HD. The only dark cloud, a fight with
Microsoft over the trademark of App Store.
DEFILED PROFILE
Google plans to revamp Orkut's look and feel and
might have given Profiles a new look and better
search options, but its
own profile took a beat-
ing. Its major algorithmic
change to weed out con-
tent farms and improve
search results wasn't on target as many sites like
Mahalo and Associated Content, considered notch-
es above content farms were downgraded and con-
tent factories like Demand Media remained relative-
ly unaffected. Meanwhile, some 40,000 Gmail users
(0.02% as per Google) found their inboxes wiped out
last week. Google has restored access to most users
and is working on fully resolving the issue.
COUPON BATTLES 2.0
After rumours of an awkward situation,
Gaopeng.com, the joint venture of group buying
giant GroupOn, and
China's largest inter-
net company Tencent,
finally opened its
offices. Interestingly,
the third partner in this venture is Yunfeng Capital,
started by Jack Ma, chairman of Alibaba, which had
its own share of controversy recently. On another
front, the online division of the New York Times is
preparing to launch TimesLimited, a GroupOn-like
service offering daily deals via email. Meanwhile,
GroupOn recently appointed Starbucks founder
Howard Schultz to its board.
LIKE IT?
Facebook have completely replaced the 'Share'
button with the 'Like' button, which means click-
ing 'Like' now publishes a
full news feed story
instead of just an one-line
Recent Activity story. It
also rolled out a revamped
commenting system for
websites, which uses social signals to surface the
most relevant comments, has new moderation
tools and the provision for comments to be syndi-
cated out of Facebook. It has also acquired a text
messaging start-up - Beluga. Meanwhile Palestinian
Prime Minister is using his Facebook page to crowd-
source his cabinet!
GAME ON!
After a round of funding last month that put its
valuation at $10bn, social gaming giant Zynga , the
makers of
Farmville, is on a
roll. Last month, it
had tied up with
Mentez, a social game publisher in Brazil to sell pre-
paid cards in more than a million locations in Brazil
and the rest of Latin America. It has has now tied
up with MOL AccessPortal Berhad (MOL) to launch
Zynga Game Cards in 500,000 outlets in six Asian
countries including India, as an easy way for play-
ers to pay for virtual goods in Zynga games. In
India, the cards will be available at MOL affiliated
cybercafes such as Sify Cybercafes.