A Little Kid
Kailash Nadh, a little kid who happens to be a mallu, is the author of the popular blogging tool boastology ( which in many ways is an apt name for a blogging tool )Indians are everywhere :-)
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Indians are everywhere :-)
India
“…its diversity weaved into a unity, a myth which became (is becoming?) a reality… the belief in a ‘concept’ of India which perhaps exists (and is taking roots) only in the minds of its people, a contradiction which is internally consistent… a belief, which is simultaneously ridiculous and sincere.”
Madhukar's Musings
A blog to watch out for.
Living In India : A new community blog
“What is Living In India?
Living in India is a new community 'blogzine' produced by a cooperative of bloggers and writers with a focus on India. It is being developed in conjunction with the team behind Living in China.
A blog (short for weblog) is a web page made up of frequently updated and chronological posts . The content and purposes of blogs varies greatly from links and commentary about other web sites, to news, personal diaries, photography and mini-essays.
Bloggers provide alternative voices to mainstream media. This site aims to showcase the wide variety of opinions and experiences of people living in and writing about this large and important nation.
Content is a combination of original material and syndicated 'RSS Feeds' from our ever-growing network of participating blogs.
We invite all bloggers from India and beyond to participate.
”
Living In India // About Us.
Interesting. Let us see how it evolves.
28th Bharateeya Blog Mela
“Bharateeya Blog Mela is a celebration of the best content in the Indian blogspace. The latest Mela is always available at this URL (bookmark it).
This page is the 28th edition of the Mela. It's archived at this URL.
Any type of feedback is always appreciated. Leave a comment.
This is a spoof of the Indian Express. Please don't bother warning me about it.
The 28th Mela was brought to you by the brewers of...”
28th Bharateeya Blog Mela
Blogs Opening Iranian Society?
“So Derakhshan, a 28-year-old Iranian expatriate now living in Toronto, Canada, ported some basic blogging tools from ASCII to Unicode, enabling Iranians to blog in their own language.
Derakhshan's efforts are just one example of how Iranians are using the latest technology to modernize their society and adopt Western ways without giving up their heritage. There are now roughly 12,000 Farsi blogs created by Iranians, Derakhshan said, with more coming online every day.”
Blogs Opening Iranian Society?
Been a while
Its been a while, I know.As I sit down to write, I find precious little to say.
My life is at a standstill. If I were to blog about it, I would only write about the early morning trips to office, the countless hours spend in front of a machine, sipping caffeine, following the orders of someone sitting thousands of miles away ( will we ever be free ? ), the numbing mental lethargy at the end of the day, the countless hours spend wondering what the hell was happenning with my life and the uneasy sleep at the end of the day with unanswered questions waging a losing battle in the mind.
Life was not supposed to be like this. Not very long back, I still had the remnants of my childhood dreams with me. The child has long since disappeared into mists of the past, the dreams brutally suppressed by a society which moulds individuals into predefined roles.
CUT CUT CUT.
This is precisely the reason I was not blogging. Too much of pentup frustration inside. I could almost sense that I would fill up these pages with meaningless negativity, the sort seen above. I was keeping myself on a hold. It was not to be.
Anyway, for all those who wondered where I am, this is where I am.
Trying my hand at making money online.
At the least, it is an interesting deviation which will keep my mind occupied for a while. At the most, I will end up being rich which is not bad at all.
Most likely, I will earn precious little and lose interest before the winter sets in :-)
Silence
The reason behind the lack of updates on this site can be summed up in two words : world cup. When all you do is to track the scorecard during the day and rush home in the evenings to catch whatever little action is left, you dont have much time left to do anything else least of all blog.It feels great when sachin is in such fine form, isnt it ? I read a while back a stock broker proclaiming that the BSE sensex shoots up whenever sachin scores a century. Just the other day, I was reading an article saying the viewership on setmax goes down by 20 percent when sachin gets out. It is amazing how much power one man holds over the collective psyche of a nation. Is he the most popular man to have walked on the surface of the earth since Jesus ? If you go by just the sheer numbers of his fan following, I would say yes :-)
Masala gets a new url : netlife.tamizhan.com. From my referrer logs, I can see that people tend to make the mistake of thinking that the name masala implies content, the sort of which is found on sites like these ;-).
Last week, something interesting happenned on my site which even I failed to notice till yesterday. For some time now, I have given the option to advertise on my site. Never thought somebody would actually do so. So imagine my surprise when I found out that somebody has done just that. There is indeed an advertisement there now. So if you are not doing anything in particular, do go there and click on the ad. Since it is a CPC ad, I need to get another 25 odd clicks before I get money from my advertiser.
Thanks goes to my sponsor. I hope, you got something out of this and even better, keep doing this again and again :-)
Before I wrap up this entry, there is one surprise news. We had an impromptu indian blogger's meet yesterday at koramangala, bangalore :-). Shyam was in town. So was nilesh. Vignesh is always around. So we decided to meet up and the conversation went on expected lines atleast for me :-)
Shyam was the observer. He is a lot similar to apna vignesh, though to be fair to him, a lot quieter :-) Nilesh was the thinker and he reminds me of sreekanth. Both have a serious air to them though the smile is never far away. Suresh as always kept all of us smiling.
A major portion of the conversation was around my still to be released article titled Thrill Vs Peace. I have been teasing vignesh about this for a while now since he plays the main role of the thrill seeker. I get the author backed role of Peace Lover. This article is going to unleash the flame war to end all wars ;-) The moment I decide how to end this article, I will be publishing it. So stay tuned.
Information Gateway
Well, As expected the google takeover is shaking up the blog world. Enough time and words have been spend on what it means, why it was done and what we will see in the days to come. There is probably nothing more to be said and no angle left to be probed. Still, I will make a couple of points which stuck me as pertinent.Google's traditional model is to wait for information to be created and then go and look for it. There is a significant time lag in this process which might prove to be critical when an user needs information and needs it now. Once google gets into the business of content generation ( courtesy an army of mostly free volunteers ), they no longer need to go out looking for it. They will be the first to know when new content has been created and will be in the best position to function as an information gateway which I think is what they are aiming for. This perhaps is the single most best thing to come out of the whole thing.
But for all this to succeed, Blogger must regain its once pre-eminent position. Blogger is only a few features ( comments, categories, titles, trackback ) away from doing so. And once you have those google PhDs developing for blogger, who knows what they will conjure up :-)
News for too long has been diluted by the commercial aspirations of the news reporters. It is time to set news free.
Bloggies
The nominations have been announced..I was disheartened to find that not a single indian blog made it to the final five.
I was part of the bloggie panel which was asked to narrow down the list from 20 odd nominations in every category to the current five. Madhoo and Mahesh were part of the top twenty for the asian blog category. I did my bit and voted for these two. Unfortunately, it wasnt enough. I think ( i am not sure ), I was the only indian blogger on the panel. So we went unrepresented in this year's list.
But not to worry. I am sure next year will be ours :-)
Update : Blogsnob and Anil are part of the nominations. ( Thanks kiruba! )
The new rediff.
I was pleasantly surprised to see that rediff has re-designed. And even more pleasantly surprised to find that they have given their blog service such a prominent place on the main page.This augurs well for the indian blogland. A few people I know visit rediff daily but have never heard of the word blog. This might the stimilus needed to bring such people into the blogging world. Kudos to rediff for spotting this trend at such an early stage.
I havent taken a close look at their tool but i must say that the lack of commenting option is disappointing especially since their main site now supports comments beneath all articles. It wouldnt have been difficult to add that here as well, isnt it. Maybe, in a later version.
All in all, good days ahead for indian blogland.
Now if only, humblog would take off ...
Third Annual Weblog Awards.
Third Annual Weblog Awards.I had a good time there nominating my fav indian blog sites for the awards. Unfortunately, journals are not accepted Most indian blogs are journals rather than a collection of links which is the accepted definition of a blog. Still I did bring sites like kiruba, sathish, mahesh, sachin and nilesh to their notice. All well deserved and I hope one of them wins the best asian weblog award or in one of the other categories I nominated them in.
Update : I saw a category called best non-weblog content in a blog site and so ended up nominated kanchana, shyam and syl.
The Bangalore Blogger's Meet.
It all started with a mistake.Me and suresh went to the Prestige Meridien Coffee Day instead of the bombay store one :(. After carefully scrutinizing the crowd there, we came to the conclusion that the big fat guy smoking a cigarette and watching us intently was not Sathish :-)
It turned out that we were right for Sathish was patiently waiting for us on the steps of the Bombay store, with a warm smile on his lips. It is another fact that I ended up scanning him from top to bottom in the hope of finding a camera (which was what Arun was supposed to have in his hands) :-) Fortunately, Sathish indentified me correctly and so we got started on what was going to be a long night.
A few words about Sathish. An extremely warm and easy going guy, He is a pleasure to talk to. A genuine nice guy which is indeed the rarest of things in this kaliyug :-) We went about the first few minutes chattering about our jobs, blogs and what not. Soon it dawned on us that the others have not come yet. It is indeed frustrating to stand waiting for someone without knowing how the person whom you are waiting for looks like :( Anyway, at this moment, indra chose to make his entry. Since we know each other well, There was no problem in identification.
We continued our chat for well over twenty odd minutes only to notice that the time was around 6:40 and none of the others were in sight. At this point, by mere chance, I happened to notice a canon camera in the hands of a tall bearded guy. I must admit that at this point, overjoyed at finally seeing arun, I ran towards him and shouting his name. I dont know what went inside his head but he took a step backwards :-) Soon though, we shook hands with him and harris and found out to our great dismay that arun and harris were standing at the other side of the store from 6:00 PM onwards. A quick phone call to ayesha confirmed the fact that she was on her way. Soon she made her entry with a beige colored bag, the color of which was fiercely debated upon during the whole night :-)
So started the Bangalore Blogger's meet.
The next few minutes were spend on top floor of the bombay store discussing varied stuff like the color of ayesha's bag and the interesting birth date of harris ( Dec 25th ). Unfortunately, Sathish had to leave early lest sooraj throws a tantrum at not seeing his favourite person in the whole world :-)
We continued a few moments there and then decided to move to a place where we can get something to eat. After a lot of thought, we settled upon the ICH. The waiters were not exactly pleased when they saw a bunch of people walking in towards closing time and made their displeasure known by scaring ayesha :-)
At this point, I must digress and say a few things about the others. I have already talked about Sathish and chose not to talk about Suresh and Indra ( good friends :-) ).
Arun is a tall, well built, bearded guy with a serious air to him. He exudes a quiet confidence and a serious manner. A measured talk, a deep voice and a silent yet strong presence marks him out. He was ofcourse the photographer for the night. With his skills, We are all bound to look like bollywood heroes :-)
Harris is someone who reminds me very much of vignesh. I am sure they will become best buddies if and when they meet up. The best word to describe him will be cool. A genuinely funny person, he was making us all laugh with his interesting comments and funny one liners :-) I must say that he was a tad pre-occupied with all those pretty girls walking past us but hey so was I :-) Towards the end of the day or should I say the night, We even had a decent technical discussion. All in all, A really cool guy, just like his blog :-)
And finally, a bit about Ayesha, the oldest member of the group at 27. She is a librarian which incidentally is something that I wanted to be during my childhood days :-) She comes as a intelligent person with a learned background and a lot of reading behind her. Unfortunately, Since we were at opposite ends of the table, we couldn't get much time to talk during the whole meet.
During the course of the dinner at MCH Arun, Ayesha and Harris expressed an interest in starting a community blog centred around indians. I expressed doubts at whether this will take off since I already had a failed community blog behind me :-) What do you guys think ? Is it worth starting one ? Any ideas on that ?
So after finishing a small dinner at ICH, we parted ways in front of the foodworld with solemn promises of keeping in touch and meeting again.
All in all, A night to remember and hopefully the first of many to come.
A request.
I talked about it a long time back. We even had a discussion a while back. Only now I got around to doing something about it.At this point, I would like to make a request.
Post a few lines in your mother tongue on your blog. Atleast make an attempt. You may be suprised to see how much you enjoy doing so.
Suresh Pallavur Hariharan.
At some time in our life, Every one of us must have taken a look at the mirror, hated what we saw and wished we were someone else. Sadly, I have had this occur to me on numerous occasions. I would always end up wishing I was more like one of the following two.The first was my father.
The second is someone who goes by the name Suresh Pallavur Hariharan.
You must have heard me refer to him here as my bestest friend. On rare occasions, he has even commented on my site under the name God ( Dont even ask why he uses that name :-) ).
To say that we are different is to put things mildly. If I like something, it is more or less guarenteed that he will not like it and vice versa :-) Just a look at the colors used on respectives our sites is a good hint about our personalities. I prefer black. He prefers White. We are that different :-).
If I were to write an entry about the bad qualities in me, I am sure it is going to take more space than what my webhost provides me :-) It is easier to point at suresh and say that all the bad qualities that are missing in him is in me :-)
There are few recorded seconds in the history of Time when there has not been a smile on his face. Rarely ever have i seen him angry or say no when someone asks something or some help from him. All in all a truly nice guy.
After months of cajoling, I have finally persuaded him to start a blog. I am sure you will find him to be different from all other bloggers you have seen till now.
Hop over to suresh.tamizhan.com and start smiling.
Nostalgia.
Did anyone know that I was a blogspotter once ?Does anyone remember the first design of itismylife.com ?
Or even this or this ?
After a long period of drifting aimlessly, I have reached a point where I am satisfied with my blog tool and host. Only the design will change from now onwards :-)
Punar Janmam.
Lately, I have been reading MY blog. Strange as it sounds that is exactly what I have been doing for the last three days. Before you guys put me in a straightjacket and pack me off to the nearest asylum, let me clarify myself :)As you all know, I have this terminally ill and close to dying site called Tamizhan.com. After briefly entertaining notions of building a community site built around it, I have dropped the plan for lack of time, energy and motivation. But I cannot sit idly watching that site die :( So I decided to approach the problem seriously and do a complete re-organisation of that site and along with that, this site. So I have been reading my blog to solve the question of how to re-organize my sites.
Here is what I found out ( Nothing earth shattering really :-) )
Three things happen here :
1. Every once in a while, I manage to write something reasonably long and worth reading. This is a rare occurance and happens mostly once or twice in a month :-)
2. I post a lot of links to other sites/stories. This happens frequently.
3. Rarely, Very rarely I write about myself. The archives show me that this has happenned maybe less than 10 times in the last six months.
Now I have two sites and three types of articles.
For the first type of articles, I have re-designed Tamizhan and am re-opening it. ( PS : I am not the kid in the photograph there :) ).
For the second type of posts, I have started a new chota blog at masala.tamizhan.com under the name masala : netLife. This should be the most frequently updated of the three.
And the third type of posts, the ones which talk about my own life, will remain in this site. I hope to write a lot more of what happens in my life in an effort to create an archive of my own life so that at a later point in life, I can look back and laugh at myself :-).
So thats it folks.
Hop over to Tamizhan and Masala to see the newly opened sites. Not much of a design there actually. Something barely enough to hold the content. A more complete design will be put up shortly.
Do tell me your views on all three :-).
Blog of the day.
A small milestone in my short blogging life : I have been selected as blog of the day as can be seen here. Taaliyaan :)This will surely inspire me to blog more .. Yeh dil maange more :)
Thanks Arthur : for the honour ...
Nairomia
Sachin writes about why he blogs.I have this feeling that people like me ( the opinionated ) will get sick of their own pointless ranting in time and go away while people like Sachin and Sathish, who just use their blogs as a window into their lives without being judgemental, will write for a long time to come. Born writers like Kanchana and Shyam will always have an audience because they see life just as we all do yet manage to put it in words in a way we can never do.
I guess, It is time to rethink on what I put in my blog or maybe, time to stop thinking. :-)
New standards
Mahesh had asked me a question here seeking advice about blogging tools. I responded with this answer. Not a word was written as a reply to it. And Today, as i read this, I cant help saying that Mahesh, you are setting new standards for decency.Mahesh, Good luck on your new blog.
The last immigrant song ?
Yet another blogger has given up. One has to admire his honesty in the end. I would have loved to read his ( honest and most probably brutal ) review of this place.Man, This blog retirement thing is getting contagious !