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Oscar winning musician A.R. Rahman will be a part of the historic remake of Micheal Jackson's 'We are the World' song. The music will be a part of the charity program organized to raise funds for earthquake victims in Haiti. According to reports, 75 world-class stars, including Celine Dion, Kanye West, Natalie Cole, Tony Bennett, Jonas Brothers, Pink, Barbra Streisand, Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, Jamie Foxx, Lil Wayne, Wyclef Jean, Josh Groban, Snoop Dogg, Carlos Santana, Gladys Knight and many others, will be a part of the charity anthem. The song will be recorded at the Henson Recording studio, where the original song was recorded 25 years back. Oscar-winner Paul Haggis of Crash fame will shoot the video and the album is expected to premiere during the Winter Olympics on February 12. 'We are the World' was originally recorded by the late King of Pop' Michael Jackson and Lionel Richie. It featured around 45 American musicians and has reportedly raised over $30

After acting and singing, Dhanush is all set to try his hand at writing lyrics. The actor has reportedly penned the lyrics of a song in his upcoming film Ready, directed by Mithran Jawahar and with music by Vijay Antony. Sources says that the entire film unit appreciated the actor for his clear lyrics. Ready is the remake of a Telugu super hit film of the same title, directed by Srinu Vytla with Ram and Genelia in the lead roles. The film narrates the story of Chandu, a final year engineering student. One of his friends falls in love with a girl, whose father arranges her marriage with some other person. So his friends kidnap the bride out of the marriage hall to arrange their marriage. However, Chandu's gang mistakenly rushes into the wrong marriage hall and kidnap Pooja. Later, Chandu falls in love with Pooja. What happens next makes up the rest of the film. Genelia will be the heroine in the Tamil version too.

Earlier, we have reported that the film fraternity will organize a mega event to felicitate Tamil Nadu Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi for allocating land to those connected with the film and small screen industry. The event is scheduled to take place on February 6 with a grand cultural show at the Nehru Indoor Stadium, Chennai. Now, the latest buzz is that a song has been peened by veteran lyricist Vaali in honour of the CM for his generosity towards the film industry. Guess who has composed the music for this song? None other than Harris Jayaraj. The popular musician has swung the baton for this song which will be rendered by Unni Menon, Tippu, Haricharan, Devan, Vijayagopal, Chinmayi, Charulatha, Madhumitha, Divya, Neha and Nathisha. The mega event will feature many leading stars, including Superstar Rajinikanth and Kamal Haasan. Reports also state that Big B Amitabh Bachchan will be the guest of honour. The event is jointly organized by all the associations of the film and small scre

After remaking Tamil actor Vijay's all-time super hit Pokkiri in Hindi as Wanted with Salman Khan in the lead, Bollywood's leading producer Boney Kapoor is rumoured to have set his eyes on yet another South Indian film Bodyguard (Malayalam), starring Dileep and Nayantara. According to sources, Boney recently watched Bodyguard in Ernakulam and is interested to make a remake in Hindi. Boney was quite impressed with the story of Bodyguard and wanted to remake the blockbuster in Hindi. He wants to remake it with Salman Khan as the lead and Prabhu Deva as the director. He is currently in the process of buying the rights of the film, a source said. However, when asked, Boney said that while he has definitely watched Bodyguard, but nothing has been finalized yet.

Renowned actor and director Cochin Haneefa, who died in a private hospital at Chennai on Tuesday, was interred on Wednesday evening at the Central Juma Masjid at Broadway, Kochi with full state honours. People from all walks of life turned up to pay homage to the actor as the body was brought for funeral prayers. Many were seen wiping their tears when the body was lowered into the ground after the funeral prayers with police playing the last post and offering gun salute in honour of the departed actor. Earlier in the morning, the body of Haneefa was brought to Kochi, where the actor was born and brought up. The body was kept at his residence in Pullepady in the city and later, it was placed at the Ambedkar Stadium for the people to pay homage. Kerala Ministers S. Sarma and Jose Thettayil and a host of film stars, including Mammootty, Mohanlal, Jayaram, Dileep, Sarathkumar and Siddique paid their last respects when the body was brought to his house in the morning. It is a great loss for

Writer-director Dr. Biju, who shot to fame with his much acclaimed Saira (2005) and Raman (2008) which were screened in Cannes and Cairo film festivals, is getting ready with his next film titled Veettilekkulla Vazhi, starring Prithviraj, Indrajith, Dhanya Mary Varghese and Lakshmi Priya in the lead roles. Set in the backdrop of terrorist operations in India, Veettilekkulla Vazhi is produced by B.C Joshi under the banner of Soorya Cinema. Prithviraj plays the role of a jail doctor, who comes across an awful experience with the act of terrorism. Indrajith dons the role of a terrorist while Praveena plays a social worker. Nedumudi plays a book seller. The film was shot at beautiful locations like Ladakh, Kashmir, Jaisalmer, Jodhpur, Bikkamkur, Ajmer, and New Delhi. M.J. Radhakrishnan is the cinematographer. Ramesh Narayanan is the music director. The film will grace screens soon.

After China stunned the world with the incredible show they put up for the opening of the Beijing Olympics. I do hope we in India have something at least more spectacular than our ever dependable star acts on stage. Actually they are very good and most of them (and the best really is A R Rahman's concert act) have developed very professional acts on stage. But we need to go beyond that now. What is of concern are the constant news items that keep appearing of the lack of preparation for the commonwealth games, even though I know that in India we are all used to somehow pulling everything off at the last minute. But of far far greater concern is this article that appeared in an Australian paper about child labor being used to accelerate the preparations. Of course the Western (and I guess now the Australian) press loves to put down accelerating economies like ours, but the following article is pretty disturbing : Delhi's Commonwealth Games slave labour shame

Tollywood's superstar in the making Jr. NTR has bagged the fancy number 9999' for his BMW car for a price of Rs. 5 lakhs in an auction held by the Transport Department. According to sources, the actor bought the number at this high cost as the number 9 was believed to be lucky for his grandfather N.T. Rama Rao. Some say this is all is part of his forthcoming marriage to be held in May. Jr. NTR will tie the knot with Narne Lakshmi Pranathi, daughter of Narne Srinivasa Rao (chairman of the StudioN Channel) and Narne Mallika. Lakshmi Pranathi is completing her Intermediate at a private college in Hyderabad.

Tollywood hero Tanish's forthcoming Manchivadu, being directed by Lakshmi Narayana, is indeed very special to Malayalee audiences! How? After being reluctant to many offers from Tollywood due to her language constraints, Bhama finally makes her Tollywood debut with Manchivadu, produced by N.V. Prasad and Paras Jain under the banner of Mega Super Good Films. Sources said that it was cameraman Venugopal who suggested Bhama's name for Manchivadu, in which she plays the role of Indu, a very bold and modern girl brought up in USA, who comes to her ancestral home in Andhra Pradesh to spend her vacation with her grandfather. The story mainly revolves around how the characters played by Tanish and Raji fall in love with her. K. Viswanathan, director of the path breaking film Sankarabharanam, is also playing a key role. Notably, Bhama is also making her Sandalwood entry with director Purushothama's Kannada film Modalasala, based on father-daughter relations. Produced under the banne

Writing for The New York Times , Adam Bryant conducted an interview with Tony Hsieh, the chief executive of Zappos.com. Part of the interview that intrigued me was Hsieh’s explanation of why he and his roommate sold their company LinkExchange to Microsoft in 1998. Part of it was the money, he admits. But, mostly, it was because the passion and excitement that permeated the company in the beginning was gone, and he’d grown to dislike its culture: “When it was starting out, when it was just 5 or 10 of us, it was like your typical dot-com. We were all really excited, working around the clock, sleeping under our desks, had no idea what day of the week it was. But we didn’t know any better and didn’t pay attention to company culture. By the time we got to 100 people, even though we hired people with the right skill sets and experiences, I just dreaded getting out of bed in the morning and was hitting that snooze button over and over again.” To avoid this happening with Zappos, Hsieh says

Donna Trivison, Director of IT for Ursuline College, said, “Yes, there is a business case which can be made for iPad or other convenient, easy to use tablet computers. The iPod Touch /iPad is instant on, instant off, and instant load. This aspect alone makes a compelling business case. Time is money. Though I’m not sure if that would be considered a function of tablet per se. It is more a function of iPhone operating system and multi-touch user interface, push one button, touch one icon. App loads and performs flawlessly. All apps (a.k.a., software) have a standardized look and feel… Elegant, functional, revolutionary.” Mitchell Gibbs, Vice President of Services at Advocate Charitable Foundation, said, “While I’m not sold on the iPad - too limited in functionality - the form factor has a lot of potential, especially in vertical markets like healthcare. We currently have tablet PCs in active use and making them lighter, faster, with better battery life is only going to drive the busine

When you talk to IT pros and business managers about tablet computers, the first question they tend to ask is, “Looks cool, but what I do with it?” This conversation has been happening for a decade since Microsoft’s pen-based Tablet PC was introduced at Comdex 2001. There, Bill Gates declared, “Within five years I predict it will be the most popular form of PC sold in America.” That turned out to be a false prophesy. Microsoft’s tablet never attracted a mass audience, although it has gained some niche adoption in industries such as health care, field service, and hospitality. However, the Apple iPad and the new breed of slate computers that are hitting the market in 2010 are looking to revive the tablet concept. They are doing it with a lighter, thinner form factor that uses a touch-based interface rather than pen computing. It’s way too early to predict whether the new tablets will be successful, but it’s easy to imagine some of the usage scenarios for them in the business world