Sony Pictures Entertainment

Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. (SPE) is the American entertainment subsidiary of Sony Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Japanese multinational technology and media conglomerate Sony.

Based in Culver City, California, it encompasses Sony's motion picture, television production and distribution units. Its group sales in March 31, 2015 has been reported to be of $7.3 billion.

Throughout the years, SPE has produced, distributed, or co-distributed successful franchises such as Spider-Man, Men in Black, Underworld, and Resident Evil.

Sony Pictures Entertainment is a member of the Motion Picture Association of America.

History

On September 1, 1987, The Coca-Cola Company announced plans to spin-off its assets of Columbia Pictures, which they had owned since 1982. Under this arrangement, Coca-Cola would sell their entertainment assets to Tri-Star Pictures, of which they owned 39.6%. Tri-Star would be renamed to Columbia Pictures Entertainment, Inc. (CPE), with Coca-Cola owning 49%, its shareholders owning 31%, and Tri-Star's shareholders owning 20%. A new company was formed in early 1988 with the Tri-Star name to take over the studio's production operations.

Android TV

Android TV is a smart TV platform developed by Google. Running the Android 6.0 ("Marshmallow") operating system, it creates an interactive television experience through a 10-foot user interface. It was announced on June 25, 2014, at Google I/O 2014 as a successor to Google's earlier attempt at smart TV, Google TV.

Android TV can be built both into TVs and into stand-alone digital media players. Users have access to the Google Play Store to download Android apps, including media streaming services Netflix and Hulu, as well as games. The platform emphasizes voice search to quickly find content or to answer queries (such as which movies were nominated for an Academy Award in a specific year). The TV interface is divided vertically into three sections: recommendations on top (which update based on viewing habits), media apps in the middle, and games on the bottom. The interface can be navigated using a game controller, remote control, or the Android TV mobile app. Android TV also supports Google Cast, the technology behind Google's media player Chromecast that allows a mobile device to be used to select and control media playback on a TV.

Google Play

Google Play or Google Play Store, and originally the Android Market, is a digital distribution platform operated by Google. It serves as the official app store for the Android operating system, allowing users to browse and download applications developed with the Android SDK and published through Google. Google Play also serves as a digital media store, offering music, magazines, books, movies, and television programs. It previously offered Google hardware devices for purchase until the introduction of a separate online hardware retailer, Google Store, on March 11, 2015.

Applications are available through Google Play either free of charge or at a cost. They can be downloaded directly to an Android or Google TV device through the Play Store mobile app, or by deploying the application to a device from the Google Play website. Many applications can be targeted to specific users based on a particular hardware attribute of their device, such as a motion sensor (for motion-dependent games) or a front-facing camera (for online video calling).

Mystery meat navigation

Mystery meat navigation (also known as MMN) is a disparaging term coined in 1998 by Vincent Flanders, author and designer of the website Web Pages That Suck, to describe a web page where the destination of the link is not visible until the user points their cursor at it. Such interfaces lack a user-centered design, emphasizing aesthetic appearance, white space, and the concealment of relevant information over basic practicality and functionality.

The epithet "mystery meat" refers to the meat products often served in American public school cafeterias whose forms have been so thoroughly reprocessed that their exact types can no longer be identified by their appearances: like them, the methods of MMN are clear to the producer but baffling to the consumer.

Flanders originally and temporarily described the phenomenon as Saturnic navigation in reference to the Saturn Corporation, whose company website epitomized this phenomenon. Flanders writes, "The typical form of MMN is represented by menus composed of unrevealing icons that are replaced with explicative text only when the mouse cursor hovers over them".

Boman Irani

Boman Irani (born 2 December 1959) is an Indian film and theatre actor, voice artist and photographer. He is widely known for his comedic and villain roles in Bollywood movies such as Don, Munna Bhai MBBS, 3 Idiots and most recently PK and Happy New Year.

Early life

Irani was born on 2 December 1959, in Mumbai. He finished his schooling in St. Mary's School, Mumbai. He is a graduate of Mithibai College in Mumbai. After his polytechnic diploma course, he joined the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower and worked there as a waiter and room service staff. Thereafter, he joined his mother to run their ancestral bakery shop between Novelty and Apsara Cinema in South Mumbai.

Irani turned to photography in 1987 and continued until he turned into an actor.

Career

Irani began his acting career in theatre and moved to film in 2000. Irani gained attention for his role in the 2003 comedy Munna Bhai M.B.B.S. He later appeared in Lage Raho Munna Bhai for which he received several IIFA award nominations and in 3 Idiots opposite Aamir Khan which earned him a Filmfare Award and a Star Screen Award for Best Actor in a Villainous Role. He is the host of Bollywood Ka Boss.