A newly launched digital streaming service lets users watch Indian Movies in the privacy of their homes anywhere around the world.

Databazaar Media Ventures (DMV), a Kolkata based online movie rental and streaming service allows users to stream Indian movies on their PC’s and Internet TV services like Google TV, Roku and Boxee.

The service has a wide range for subscribers to choose from. Apart from popular Hindi movies, regional cinema like Bengali, Tamil, Malayali and Marathi movies are available for viewing.

Using a high bandwidth Internet connection, users can watch the titles at their convenience. A one week free trail is provided after which members can choose to continue at a fee of $7.99 a month.

A lot of members have already registered themselves on the website. But according to Executive Director Devasish Ray,

“This catchment will go up considerably when they tap iPad owners – said to number around 30 million”

DMV users modern technology to make sure piracy is curbed through their service.

“We have invested in Microsoft’s latest digital rights management (DRM) technology, to encrypt every content, and block downloads”,

says Oney Seal, one of the founders of the service.

Membership to the service can be obtained from the Databazaar Media Ventures website where users can also browse through the various titles on offer.

Currently, with Netflix being the most popular online video service globally, DMV may just manage to provide significant competition with their cheaper services and wider selection.

The digital space has recently witnessed a new and unlikely pairing after pop icon Lady Gaga teamed up with Executive Chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt. The two personalities will begin a new start-up called ‘Backplane’ which has raised above $1 million in funds.

Lady Gaga who is now Schmidt’s partner currently holds 20% of the start-up, as reported by The New York Times.

Backplane is start-up which is designed to develop online communities pertaining to music artists and sports teams with integrated updates via social media platforms such as Facbook and Twitter amongst others. Troy Carter, who is Lady Gaga’s manager is the co-founder of Backplane.

The idea surfaced post a meeting to duscuss about Ping with Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple and the ‘Judas’ hitmaker last year.

We are all aware how vital a role online communities play when it comes to music stars. Social media is now an instrumental platform that musicians can make use of to reach out to their target audience as well as develop their brand name.

Lady Gaga’s latest album, ‘Born This Way’ released on May 23rd 2011 to mixed reviews.

With around 500 digital titles already there, the publication house wants to tap the potential of Indian market that they feel is a tough one for doing business largely because book prices tend to be lower coupled with the looming threat of pirated editions freely

available even before original copies are placed at the bookstores.

The digital distribution thrust has become necessary as the aggressive march of e-books –Apple’s iPad and Amazon’s Kindle reader – can well threaten offline publishing the very way the Internet altered the whole dynamics of the music & entertainment industry.

Penguin India is mulling to embed audio, video and streaming for ebooks on the iPad, particularly for the children’s titles. “We’ve to face the fact that this is a generation, which learns to swipe on touchscreens before the first steps are taken,” quips John Makinson, and adds that there is clear lack of solid physical distribution especially in Tier 2 and 3 cities.

Penguin will tweak its current marketing strategy backed by a dynamic digital marketing team. Extensive use of social networking sites will mark the new strategy. The company will release video interviews with established writers on video streaming sites or come up with teasers of upcoming book on the Web. A website or a Facebook page for promoting certain book titles is also under consideration. They have also decided to turn books into apps with live ‘online communities’ for fans, chat between readers and a host of multimedia effects.

The world’s largest software firm spotted a software backup provider based in Chennai for its advances version of BizSpark. Vembu Technologies Pvt. Ltd is now amongst the official start up firms from over 10 countries for this latest initiative.

The previous version called BizSpark was launched way back in December 2008. Companies can utilise such tools for better prospects and data back-up. Over a thousand companies in India have already opted for this program.

Microsoft has hand-picked those firms that previously used the BizSpark program. This decision is solely upon these companies potential to rise above in the global market.

Microsoft’s Start-up Engagement for Strategic and Emerging Business Team, Senior Director Matthew Clark stated, “There has to be some alignment of what these start-ups are doing with Microsoft’s products and services, as well as with our business and goals.”

A constructive initiative such as BizSpark is bound to create business deals with investors assertively.

In my opinion this Spark will surely brighten up the prospects for the worldwide market.

99labels is founded by three partners; Ishita Swarup, Ankur Prakash and Anchal Jain, with Ishita as its CEO.

The venture works on an ‘event based sale’ module that revolves around sales that last anywhere between five to seven days wherein the ‘members only’ website will notify it’s users about upcoming sales a couple of days in advance. 99labels promises an interactive ‘online showroom experience’ where members can evaluate a product with options like zooming in, size matching systems and guide charts specific to individual brands with multiple payment options like cash on delivery, net banking and credit card payments.

Click here to get an overview of the module and service on offer at 99labels.

IAmAGenius’ monthly winners are showcased on the ‘Hall of Genius’ section within the website and every participant that passes level 1 has the chance to become the member of a parallel digital world called ‘Digital Geniuses’. Launched on the 26th of September 2009, the digital world received close to 4000 hits a day and is meant specifically for the quiz contestants. When asked about the purpose behind the website, Dhananjay said, “Imagine how it would be if the able, interested, intelligent and knowledgeable like minded souls get to interact with one another freely. It would definitely make a world of a difference to the real world that we live in. Thekkiam and Digital Geniuses would definitely help bring this above said community closer to one another. This site helps one send & receive mails within the community, create and join Groups and Companies, make friends, Blog, 2weet, Advertise, inform events, hold their thoughts etc., – all under one roof. Also, DeeGees (digital money earned through ‘IAmAGenius’ contests) helps one determine their strength in the community.”

Dhananjay works as an online consultant for an advertising agency in Chennai and a BPO at Bangalore. Over the years the 40 year old Civil Engineer has worked in varied advertising fields (Mainline, Direct Marketing, Outdoors and Online) gaining expertise in Oracle 8.0, C, C++, Java, JavaScript, VB, ASP, XML, Adobe and Macromedia software. Both Thekkiam and Digital Geniuses are an independent project with merely designing duties being outsourced. As far as monetization goes he mentioned, “Presently, all the expenses for the sites have been borne by me as I’m able to afford my personal expenses and also the managing of the sites, I do not plan to monetize if this continues. But in due course, if the site expands and it grows beyond what I could afford, I might think of monetizing” Meanwhile the ‘one man workforce’ continues to develop newer projects ‘Parallel Time Zones’ and ‘Many More Lives’, both of which we will be looking forward to eagerly.

The trio has finally launched the Beta version of Fachak.com. The highlight of the new beta version is the Mashbox. Well this is similar to the “Related Links” scroll on YouTube which lists related videos. While describing the product the press release reads, “MashBox would enable you to pick up your favourite content from across the internet and make it accessible through a single embeddable player”. From video playlists to image slideshows and document collections to presentation packs; MashBox lets you showcase mixed format compilations.

The best part is that Mashbox can be embedded on any blog or website with ease. This adds a lot of value to your presentations to clients or compilation of research and study material. Plus users can make use of Fachak’s basic hosting service in case content is not already uploaded on supported sites.

The MashBox reminded me of Dipity which lets you hare the YouTube videos, latest news, Tweets, Flickr photos etc., which will eventually be compiled into one long video and as per timelines. So with Dipity you could list content as per the timeline. For example there was a great compilation of new items, tweets, videos on the Mumbai Terror attacks listed as per the date and time. While Dipity is a complete different platform the functionality matches that of MashBox.

Fachak claims that users can create a Mashbox in under 30 seconds. But I guess it took a while when I tested the same. Though I like the MashBox I would like to advice Fachak to propagate the same in a bigger way.