When we read a contemporary thriller, we make sure the back door is bolted and the balcony grill is locked. We jump at shadows. We leave the bathroom light on. But reading about a murder that took place in another century is less scary. When the character walking down a dark alley wears buttoned-up boots and swings her full skirts out of the path of a passing carriage, we are more detached. To truly chill our blood, she would have to be shadowed by Bill Sykes.

Really cold cases

Business Standard

Who says size does not matter? Engaged in the race for the tallest skyscraper, largest stadium, longest bridge and widest highway, architecture remains obsessed with the &lsquo;macro&rsquo; in a show of power and achievement. Can you ever recall wondering where the smallest home was, a six-foot wide structure in Amsterdam or perhaps a four-feet diameter drainpipe in Navi Mumbai? Though the world is shrinking into nano particles that carry secrets of the universe within them, architecture today relies on &lsquo;the big picture&rsquo; in the hope that it will eventually percolate down to its &lsquo;lesser counterparts&rsquo;. Words such as pivots and drivers are associated with the building industry that assumes differentiators are created not in the detail but in the colossal.

'Micro-tecture', maximum city

Obsessed with The Great Escape and A Bridge Too Far, Rishad Saam Mehta travelled to Poland and the Netherlands to discover the locations of the two classic war movies and found himself fascinated all over again.

A tunnel too short, A Bridge Too Far

We need to help our children make informed decisions even as we look for ways to protect them from an overdose of sexualisation.

Not for adults only

A month of eating a certain kind of food could change you.

The junk food effect

The first meal of the day is the most important for a variety of reasons.

Eat (breakfast), lose weight

Last weekend, I made a visit to Bombay for the first time in two years, to attend a high school friend&rsquo;s tenth wedding anniversary. A fair number of alumni from Rishi Valley School (which is in Andhra Pradesh) live in Bombay, and a few of us were coming from out of town to use the occasion as a sort of mini-reunion.

Bombay, meri jawani

Awards never held Aamir Khan&rsquo;s imagination. The Hindi movie superstar, director and producer is known for abstaining from movie award nights. But he did not play down the award and recognition his recent co-production has won him. Peepli Live received kudos at a slew of international film festivals &mdash; the Sundance Film Festival, the Berlin International Film Festival, the Durban International Film Festival, the Edinburgh Film Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival.

Peepli to the people

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THE NEW

The top 10 business bestsellers

The bustling town off Pushkar lake is an unlikely place for a fast-moving consumer brand to locate an exclusive branded store. But that is where Himalaya Drug Company chose to set up an outlet for Himalaya Herbals, its range of shampoos, face washes, lip salves, moisturisers, foot creams and the like.

Cultivating a brand

The fight between HUL and Eureka Forbes is a square one in the water storage market.

Battle over water

For long advertisers have bombarded us with TV and print ads that we sat politely and consumed. But as the world turns more &lsquo;social&rsquo; &mdash; because of the Facebooks, Orkuts, YouTubes and Twitters of the world &mdash; we are breaking out of the passive-participant mould. The consumer is reacting and influencing others&rsquo; opinions. This throws up challenges for marketers and advertisers. Lucy Jameson, executive strategy director of DDB UK and chair of DDB&rsquo;s Global Planning Futures Group, believes that in today&rsquo;s socially-networked and hyper-connected world, it&rsquo;s not enough to craft a message that just touches the individual. What we produce today has to be inherently social. In a conversation with Amit Ranjan Rai, she talks about the importance of social creativity and the shift from traditional advertising.

'Advertising needs to be socially creative'

The Bollywood superstar has taken the endorsement world by storm.

Hurricane Katrina

The existing three English general entertainment channels (GECs) &mdash; AXN, Zee Caf&eacute; and Star World &mdash; account for 0.14 per cent of the total television viewership and 1 per cent of advertisement revenue. But that hasn&rsquo;t curbed the enthusiasm of new entrants to this space.

English GECs: Fast-forward

One tenth mobile subscribers in India own multiple mobile phone connections, says a report.

Some mobiles don't ring a bell

As Facebook moved past Orkut to become the most visited social media site, with close to 20.9 million visitors from India last month, it also bagged the title of being the breeding ground of online spammers and e-frauds.

Watch out for 'Likejacking' on Facebook

InterGlobe&rsquo;s Rahul Bhatia plans to roll out almost 200 mid-budget Ibis hotels eyeing the demand from young executives and the growing middle class. Will the move pay off? Scale holds the key to the plan. Rahul Bhatia, the man behind IndiGo, India&rsquo;s most successful low-cost carrier, wants to put up 6,000 rooms in 200-odd Ibis hotels in the country by 2015. These will fall in the category between three- and four-star hotels, and will be targeted at the growing army of young executives and the ever-expanding middle class. &ldquo;There is an enormous void in value-for-money lodging in the country, and we think the gap will only grow in the future,&rdquo; says Bhatia. The tariff is thus close to $100 (Rs 4,600) per night &mdash; the sweet spot between luxury hotels and standalone guest houses. Two Ibis hotels (one each in Gurgaon and Pune) are up and running. The third, near the Mumbai airport, will open some time later this year. Seven more are likely to happen next year.

Will the Ibis fly?

It&rsquo;s hard not to notice the colourful Ed Hardy phone covers that Britney Spears and Paris Hilton use to decorate their mobile phones. Someone back in India, too, must have noticed the monotonous laptops, similar variants of mobile phones or boring accessories we were being sold in the name of cutting-edge technology.

Add a little gloss to your gadgets

    Who said this about the brands he launched: &ldquo;If people find No.2 so good, they will believe No.1 to be even better&rdquo;? No.2 was launched before No.

Answers to last week&#39s quiz (#163)

    At the age of 19, DK of Old Delhi started making fountain pens, and today, his company exports pens to about 75 countries. Name the company DK founded.

The Strategist Quiz (#164)

Mobile value-added services (VAS) include messaging and premium content like music, video, TV, entertainment and information services.

KIT: The mobile value-added services market in India

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