varnam

the next blog mela showcasing the best of indian blogs will be hosted
here on mar 19th. so please send in your nominations (you can nominate
your own blogs) to jk at sulekha dot com. also make an announcement on your blog.

we also need a volunteer to host the blog mela on mar 26th.

Found this interesting bit in this news from The Hindu Newspaper

Anna University, which is the first university to recognize and include blogging in its curriculum will have a national level panel discussion on blogging.....

(link via kiruba, who does not provide permlinks, see mar 12th blog)

• It the selection of what you think is a collection of the best indian blogs for the week
• One volunteer agrees to host it.
• Others nominate best blogs (individual posts, not the whole blog).
• You can nominate your own blogs
• In reality, the person hosting does all of the above as no one sends any nominations (hopefully, as more people get involved, this will change)
• On wednesday, the blog mela is put on the host's site and is mirrored
• If you would like to host next wednesday's blog mela, just let us know through the comments section
• the previous three mela's were hosted at realwomenonline
• We request you to add a link every wednesday to the place where the blog mela is hosted.
• Blog Mela was started by Ashwini and Shanti

Update: Ashwini clears up the doubts: I think there seems to be some confusion here as to what this Blog Mela is about. This is not an official �award� function type feature. No one is judging anyone or their posts in this case. That was not our ( Shanti�s or my intention) when we started this. It is supposed to be a fun thing where the bloggers themselves nominate their best post of the week. The Blog Mela will simply be a collection of such posts. That would give people to showcase their own posts and allow readers to simply visit one website and read a fairly good collection of posts. All posts were to be accepted unless, there was profanity involved. You act as your own filter. No one is �judging� anyone�s post here.

Ratheesh Krishna Vadhyar gives us his thoughts on garbage, garbage collection and garbage disposal. He is not talking about Java Garbage collection, but with respect to plastic bags. (See Mar 12th blog)

Suman Palit tells why India should NOT be a part of UN Security council. Ravi Kiran tells us why India should be part of it.

the mallu devil explains why bandhs and hartals are good for the country.

Suman Kumar, takes a look back at how he started watching television.

Hrishikesh Ballal has a photo blog, which I think is the only one in Indian Blogsphere.

Zilch Zilch writes on some important issues covered in Indian Newspapers.

If you would like to host next week's Blog Mela, please mention it in the comments. The previous three blog mela's were hosted by realwomen

Ashwini is hosting the next blog mela. Please send your entries to her by Tuesday March 25th. If you want to know what the heck a blog mela is, take a look at this week's one

Dan Gillmor has a list of warblogs

Update: Was it Uday in the bunker ? (link via mercury news blog)

Ashwini has hosted this week's Blog Mela, a collection of some good Indian blogs. Please check it out. Also please blog about it today.

Update: The Department of Media Sciences, Anna University, Chennai is hosting a national conference on Blogging. (Link via Kamat)

Ravikiran will be hosting the next blog mela. So send him your nominations and also spread the word.

Q: What is a blog mela ?
Q: Can I see some samples ?

This week's Blog Mela is hosted by Ravikiran. Do visit and also blog about it.

The Hindu : Want to blog today? is an article on Blog 03, a national panel discussion on blogging organised by Anna University's department of Media Sciences in association with rediff.com. (Link via Kiruba, the permlink-less one)

Update: The next blog mela will be hosted by Sameer

Blog Mela #7 is up at sameer's place. Check it out. There is nice new banner also now.

Blog Mela #8 showcasing the best of indian blogs will be hosted here on Apr 16th. so please send in your nominations to jk-at-sulekha-dot-com by April 15th. Also make an announcement on your blog. Please nominate a blog entry and not the complete blog.

Q: What is a blog mela ?
Q: Can I see some samples ?

As the "peace lovers" change their stand from "We hate war, We love Uncle Saddam", to "We hate Saddam, but we also hate war" to "We hate America, all other wars are OK" to "I don't hate America. But why didn't we kill Saddam directly", to "I love America, I opposed the war only because I thought it would upset the camels in Basra", here is this week's Bharateeya Blog Mela -- The Candles of Marina Beach

Last week I visited the offices of Sulekha.com in Chennai. I have been a regular columnist there for almost two years now (with occasional six month breaks). This was the first time I was seeing the human beings with whom I had interacted via e-mail over the years. One piece of information I got while I was there was this - Sulekha has launched a weblogs section. Please take a look and send your feedback.

The 19th Bharteeya Blog Mela will be hosted here on July 2.

Directions for nominating entries for the Mela

* Email jk @ sulekha. com

* Drop it in as a comment to this post

* Please send your nominations to me latest by July 1, 7 pm PST.

* The entries have to be dated between June 25 - July 1.

The Rules

* Posts must either be made by Indians or must focus on India or Indians.

* Send in permalinks to the individual blog entries only, not just the URL. If
the permalink is not working, send me the title and date of the blog entry.

* You can nominate your own posts or someone else's.

* You can submit any type of posts except personal journal entries.

For more on the Blog Mela, here's gyan from a founder's blog. Also check what I wrote long time ago. The earlier melas are archived here.

Here are some of the best Indian blog entries for this week.

smorgasbord in his post My Hinduism, Your Hinduism says "My Hinduism has nothing in common with the narrow views defined by Ashok Singhal or Bal Thackeray, who are undemocratic, ignorant and self-serving demagogues". He also has another nomination The Star Spangled Indian connection which brings out the connection between the American national anthem and India.

Indian Ink has two nominations as well. Fruit Labels solves the mystery of identifying conventional, organic and genetically modified food. There is also a recipe to prepare Badam Laddu.

Sandeep takes off from where I left and dissects Pritish Nandy's racist article against the NRIs in this entry titled Pritish Nandy's Jokes

Niraj explains why Israel should not snub the BBC "I personally believe Israel should maintain relations with the BBC because it is better to get your views across, no matter how the BBC may spin it, then not saying anything at all. Why cede the argument to the other side?"

Shanti writes about Multiculti hypocrisy and says "It is extremely irritating for me to hear how proud someone else is of my culture and heritage, to the point that they won?t condemn or worse, let me condemn even the bad things about my own culture or about other cultures I see around me."

Lazy Geek has a review of film music and movies

That's it for this week. If you wish to host the next Blog Mela, please drop a comment. We need volunteers. If no one volunteers, I threaten to host again.

Been busy at work. Please read the Blog Mela no 21 hosted by Gaurav. The next one will be hosted by Shamit Bagchi.

Gene Expression has posted the 23rd edition of Bharateeya Blog Mela. We still don't have a volunteer for hosting the 24th blog mela.

This week's Bharateeya Blog Mela is up at Yazad Jal's place and guess who is sharing the Blogger of the week title ?.

The next Blog Mela is a special patriotic mela, where we hope to highlight India's achievements and bring out unknown people and events responsible for us getting Independence. To see a sample of that please visit here and here.

We have reached the 25th Blog Mela. Since this coincides with the Indian Independence Day, we will be having two Blog Mela's. Shanti will be hosting the patriotic version, with blog entries related to Indian Independence. Here at varnam, we will be hosting the regular blog mela with entries related to rest of the world both on Aug 15th. So please send in your entries as soon as possible, either as a comment to this post, or by e-mail to jk at sulekha.com.

This week the Blog Mela is split into two parts. This is the non-patriotic part of the Blog Mela. The Patriotic one is hosted at Dancing with the Dogs

Guru Subramanyam doesn't want to Push the Fizz Away, while Ravikiran has more on Coke and Pepsi

Smorgasbord talks about Free Enterprise

Ratheesh has a review of the new Aparna Sen movie Mrs and Mr. Iyer (Aug 10th)

That's it for this week.

This week, the 26th Blog Mela is hosted by Sameer, the Opti Mystic. As usual, great posts.

The 27th Blog Mela is up at Jivha's place. A lot of nominations this time. The next one will be hosted by Mahesh Shantaram

Shanti has created a permanent URL for the Blog Mela. So bookmark http://realwomenonline.com/blogmela.

Mahesh Shantaram is a very creative person. Look at how he has presented the 28th Blog Mela. This is what Dave Barry would call Shock and Awwwwww.

The 29th Blog Mela is up at Dancing with the Dogs.

The 30th Blog Mela is up at Vinod's place

The 32nd Blog Mela is hosted by Patrix

Some of these are high-value jobs. Some are low-end, but will employ many people. Some require you to work odd hours. Some rely on the time difference, and you have to work normal Indian hours for them. Some of these are essentially temporary (Process migration experts - will become redundant after a few years because all processes will have been migrated) some are permanent. Some will soon be automated, some will always require human skill. The same as in any other industry really

But trust the Resident Idiot to pick only those that suit his thesis.
Such things make you wonder whether he is in fact shilling for American and British unions who are concerned about job losses. But let's give him the benefit of doubt. Let's just call him a useful Resident Idiot.

Ravikiran, though newly married, takes time to fisk the Resident Idiot

The new and improved blog mela is up at Dancing with the Dogs. This time the blog mela entries can be voted on and whoever wins get a $10 gift voucher. Please vote for me and ignore this plea by Ravikiran. I have more alphabets than him in my name.

My opponent, since he knows that he is going to lose this battle has switched to negative campaigning. If I were to stoop to his level, I would have said that Ravikiran is an admirer of the Resident Idiot and even wears a T-shirt with his (RI's) picture on it. I would also allege that he is a blog-grabber. For example, he has his own blog, but instead he encroaches on Yazad's blog. He says he is married, but where are the pictures ? Even Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei could not find them. Rumor has it that it is buried under the Syrian desert. But I am not into negative campaigning and personally insulting someone is not my forte.

"You and I can change America, That's what this election is about. It's about building the America you and I believe in and making our country work for all of us again. Because right now, there are two Americas. One for the powerful and another for everyone else." Ooops! That was a speech by John Edwards. Cut and Paste problemo.

Anyways, vote for me (everyday, from both home and work, till Jan 23rd). I will use the money to buy a closet.

If you are a student in any institution in this world or an alumni of any of the IITs, please participate in Sulekha Saarang Blog Fest 2004

Your blog can be as witty as it can get, or a serious idea, a thought or a plot, a story or a strategy -- could be anything that reflects your opinion, the way you look at things... SO start now and happy blogging!

Everyday one gift hamper will be given away to the most popular blog. Gift hamper will include Sulekha Select, Gift Voucher from landmark and music world worth Rs 500, and Gift Voucher from hamaracd.com worth Rs 150.

Similar to The Onion, we have an Indian blog. Checkout The Banian.

This is what the world needs -- more humor.

Sandeep is on a roll. He has three posts against some well known whiners - Sitaram Yechuri, Resident Idiot, and Anita Pratap

The queen of desi blogs, Shanti, had a baby. If you have not seen the picture of Neel Vavilapalli, please visit his mommy's page. My guess is that he will start blogging before he gets potty trained.

Thanks to Ravikiran, I now have a GMail account. Now I don't have to sell my house or swap my soul to get one. This selfless act of Ravikiran will be remembered by me as comparable to renounciation of the Prime Minister's chair by Sonia Gandhi.

What's great about GMail ? Besides the 1GB storage, here are things done the different way, the GMail way.

• Each message you send is grouped with all the responses you receive. Grouping related messages creates meaningful 'conversations.' When you open a message in a conversation, all of your messages will be stacked neatly on top of each other, like a deck of cards. We call this 'Conversation View.' As new replies arrive, your stack of cards grows. Grouping messages this way allows you to quickly retrieve related messages and view all your messages in context.
• Instead of folders, Gmail uses labels to give you the functionality of folders, but with more flexibility. In Gmail, a single conversation can have several labels, so you're not forced to choose one particular folder for each message you receive. That way, if a conversation covers more than one topic, you can retrieve it with any of the labels that you've applied to it. And, of course, you can always search for it.
• You have a variety of search options that return speedy, accurate results. Gmail features built-in Google search, and as with Google's keyword-based web search, Gmail returns fast, accurate results. As long as you archive instead of delete, you'll be able to find any message you've ever sent or received. Having reliable search also eliminates the need to create elaborate folder structures. Now you can just stick a label (or two or three) on a conversation and search by label, keyword, date range or a host of other options.

I am in the middle of a Job Change/Relocation this week. So blogging will be sporadic. Details will come up soon.

After living for 18 months in Los Angeles, I have moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area. In terms of blogger speak, this means that I moved from CalPundit's neighborhood to Dan Gillmor's neighborhood. This time my employer is one of the software giants. (As you may have observed, I am not very generous in revealing personal information). I don't know if it is offshoring or a bad economy, the traffic on the freeways are much better. Or maybe it is because I come from LA, which has traffic jams at 5 am on a Sunday Morning.

I will miss the high speed car chases, gang violence and random gun shots in LA. Bay Area or Silicon Valley is a very sedate place which boasts more Indian restaurants than Gas Stations. The Internet access from home will be available only from the weekend, which is when blogging will resume.

On the Job front, the market has improved. You will get a job if you know someone. So my advice is to network. Also you need to have the right qualifications. Salaries are going up too.

Now that I am back here, I can catch up on all the Malayalam movies I missed in the last 18 months.

At some point mt-blacklist stopped working for me and spammers took over. So I pulled the old blog down and upgraded to MT 3.0. The look and feel is the default one and I will slowly bring back my old templates.

Now that my Wireless network is working and the new Dell laptop is in my hands, the regular postings will start.

When you blog about something, that entry stays on your main page for a few days and then it sinks down into your personal blog blackhole almost never to surface again. I found two plugins to bring some of those entries back to the surface again.

• OnThisDay brings up old entries blogged on the same day in previous years. (Example on the sidebar)
• RelatedEntries is a tag on the Individual Archive Page and displays 3 (configurable) entries in the same category.

Also speaking of MT, there is an excellent blog called Movalog by Aravind on customizing MT. (He is only 15 years old)

One of the best Indian blogs, The Acorn is one year old. With his insightful commentary and analysis, Nitin has definitely enhanced my knowledge. While bloggers tends to write about everything under the planet, Nitin has stayed with just a few Categories (7), and hence there is more depth to his writing.

Congrats!

The Blog Mela is up again, this time outsourced to Mumbai. There is a prize of $10 for the winning entry and rigging the polls are welcome. As the winner of the first rigged blog mela, I should say, it is worth it.

Madhu Menon is hosting this week's blog mela. You will find many Indian blogs worth adding to your blogroll. The complete schedule of the blog mela is available at Shanti's place

While on the topic of Blog Mela, Yazad has some musings on the issue of awarding $10 to the winner and the role of the host of the mela.

This week's blog mela is hosted by Aadisht Khanna. Some interesting entries, some not so interesting.

Next week's blog mela is hosted by Yazad

This week's blog mela is up at Yazad's place. I tried reading some of the Hindi blogs and could not proceed beyond a few lines. For me reading Hindi on paper seems to be easier. As usual I picked some good blogs to add to my bloglines list.

The next one will be hosted by Ashish Hanwadikar. Please send him your nominations.

This week's blog mela is up at Ashish's Niti. This time there are couple of entries from non-Indians as well. The next one is up at Opti-Mystic

While on the topic of Indian bloggers, Rojo is a new online service for managing your RSS/Atom Feeds, similar to bloglines. When you login to Rojo you get an initial list of blogs in various categories to subscribe to. Now they have new Indian Bloggers bundle for subscribers which includes feeds from AnarCapLib, EMERGIC, Jivha (Who does not blog anymore), The Examined Life etc.

Even though it was me who sent the mail to Chris Alden, this blog is not in the list :(

For some reason Movable Type on my host (powweb.com) has started flip-flopping in its behavior. So now I cannot post an entry directly. If I publish an entry it does not appear on the main page. I have to an explicit rebuild which looks ridiculous.

The category archiving has failed completely. Comments do not work. The worlds are colliding.

My hosting provider graciously declined to help which means I am on my own to debug.

So I have to explore other options like

(a) Fix the problem
(b) Move to another hosting service

Till one of them happens there will not be any more posts. If you have suggestions for a good MT Hosting Service please mail me at tiptronicus [at] gmail dot com.

I have changed my hosting provider and within few days blogging should be back to normal.

Yesterday was a productive day as we found solutions to the world's most pressing problems. By we I mean me and Ravikiran. Though he had made fun of Mallus many times I decided to meet him here in the Bay Area where he was visiting. But instead of giving me his phone number at the motel, he gave his fax number. I let it slide as well, afterall he gave me the GMail invite.

Though I was scared that he would knock me out with his PJs he turned out to be quite a affable person. We talked about blogs, A Roy, Nehru, and MadMan (I don't remember exactly how Madhu came into this discussion). We also discussed the dangers of Communism, solutions on eradicating poverty and bringing world peace. Furthur discussions on this matter will be conducted at a Foregin Secretary level.

Ravikiran is now on his way back to India, where the challenging task of deleting spam comments on his blog awaits him.

tsunamihelp.blogspot.com is the one stop blog for all information related to aid, donations, volunteer help and all news related to the biggest disaster to strike south east asia.

This blog has been nominated under two categories at Indibloggies. One of them is for the Indiblog of the year and the other for Indiblog Lifetime achiever. Since we are not pitted against Ravikiran as we have a lame tagline, this is a time for co-operation. We will be acting as the single bribe window for the whole Indibloggies voting. (Bribes meant for Ravikiran should be marked so in the Memo section of the check)

While Sandeep has called it quits, varnam will still continue. There are many books to review, and many secularists to bash.

The Acorn too will continue.

Associated Press interviews Paris Hilton

AP: Do you read blogs?

Hilton: What's that?

AP: Um, they're these things on the Internet where people write about news and stuff.

Hilton: No, I don't really read anything on the Internet except my AOL mail. I don't like people who sit on computers all day long and write about people they don't know anything about.

AP: Paris, you just described my job.[Paris Hilton Yearning for Simpler Life]

That pretty much describes this blog too!

Indranil's parents went to Kashmir recently and he has some pictures on flickr.

Srijith taught me that, the reason they ask you to switch off cell phones on aircrafts is not because they interfere with the plane's communication equipment, but because it interferes with mobile networks on the ground.

Ratheesh Krishna Vadyar finds people yelling em pee three, em pee three (April 29th entry) in Palakkad Railway Station. Along with chaaaya and kaaapi, you also get MP3 film songs.

Twenty Onwards has the review of the new Tom Friedman book The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century.

Does the future belong to China ? Fareed Zakaria's cover story in Newsweek.

The San Jose Mercury News is the main newspaper of Silicon Valley and according to a news today, its subscription has been falling. Circulation has been falling for other newspapers as well. The reasons cited are competition from Internet and Cable TV. But what is not mentioned is that most of these newspapers are pathetic in quality. You can flip through an issue of Mercury News and find that there is nothing important to read, especially for people who are interested in knowing events happening outside Santa Clara County. The pages are filled with advertisements with some news thrown in as fillers. One of the major reasons why most people buy the newspaper is due to the discount Pizza and grocery coupons they insert in the weekend editions.

You may not get indepth coverage of world issues in Mercury News, but they do have some columns which appeal to people living here. My favourites are Mr. Roadshow and Action Line. The Mercury News staff also has two excellent blogs, Silicon Beat and Good Morning Silicon Valley for people whose lives revolve around technology.

One day they will realize that they are not making money off the print edition and need to charge people for the online edition, like how the New York Times realized

• Dan Gillmor writes that copying and pasting entire articles in blogs violates copyright laws. There are many Indian blogs which just paste articles from elsewhere without any additional commentary. Be careful
• Top Ten Reasons why Episode IV is better than III and the only Episode III review you will need
• HOWTO apply for a Java job
• The story of THX sound
• Terry Gross's interview with Thelma Schoonmaker, who has edited all of Martin Scorsese's movies

• JWZ, the ubergeek, switches to OS X. Kevin adds to the list of gripes. I currently go to Apple stores and drool at the iMacs.
• If you don't use greasemonkey, you should, and try out Book Burro. There is a greasemonkey script for checking if a book is present in any of the libraries in the Peninsula Library System and one of removing pagination in the Times of India website. You can find all of them here
• Louis explains why he is going to Google. I wish getting a job was this easy.
• Housing in the Bay Area is now so expensive that it is cheaper to buy a house far away and commute by plane.
• Kuttan wonders why the communists are against employment generation.

DesiPundit is a website by a few bloggers to showcase the best in Indian Blogosphere. With the boom in Indian blogging, DesiPundit gives you a selection of the best writing so that you get introduced to new bloggers, which might have taken you time to find otherwise. Think of it as a blogmela run everyday. The site is updated many times daily based on the selection by its four authors; but if you found an interesting post, you can always tip off the DesiPundit.

Please add DesiPundit to your blogroll and share the love.

I am happy to announce a new blog, The Palm Leaf, devoted to Indian History, hosted here at varnam.org. From now, the regular blog will cover current issues whereas time travel will be done in the history blog. This new blog has been initialized with all the history posts from the original blog.

The word, Palm Leaf, was chosen as it was a popular medium of writing in India for almost two thousand years. Letters were written on a dried, smoothed, smoke treated leaves of palm trees using a stylus and then blackened with vegetable juice and lamp black. This site hopes to be the electronic version of those palm leaves.

Even though the tagline says, A look at India's Past, I don't plan to cover each and every topic related to our history. So you will not see much mythology or discussions of various religious texts. Instead there will be archaeological news, coverage of development of language, and information on people, places and monuments. There will be more posts about the Mauryan empire, Saraswathi-Sindu civilization and Kerala due to my current interest in those areas.

On the technical side, the new blog runs Movable Type 3.2 with dynamic publishing. This means that only the main page has a physical existence. Rest of the pages are created on the fly based on the request. The style of the new blog is the same as the old one, but it will be changed soon.

The history blog, The Palm Leaf's feeds were having issues for bloglines subscribers. It has been resolved. If you don't see any updates, please re-subscribe.

Based on a suggestion by P@L, the name of the blog might change to either Talapatra (Sanskrit for The Palm Leaf) or Talapatta (Pali). If you have any suggestions/preferences/opinions, please leave a comment.

Will Oil touch 70USD/barrel at the end of this month? Will Rahul Gandhi be made a cabinet minister by the end of 2005? Will Jagdish Bhagwati win the 2005 Nobel Prize or will Hillary Clinton contest the 2008 presidential elections?

The pundits on the blogosphere and the commenters have differing opinions on questions like the above. But are you willing to put money where your mouth is? If so take a look at PublicGyan, the Public Knowledge Exchange, where you can make predictions for the future and trade like the Iowa Electronic Markets. Nitin, the man behind the idea has an excellent introduction to this concept.

The site was implemented by the man who breathes technology - Srijith (with lot of support from his wife). Currently you can join only if you have an invite from one of the members. If you need one, please leave a comment with your real email address or mail me at jk at varnam dot org.

Blogger Gaurav Sabnis quit his job at IBM India.

It all started when he made a blog post linking to an expose of IIPM and IIPM folks in a display of the superior management skills they advertise, decided to burn some Thinkpad laptops to protest this.

The Senior Executive from Lenovo, I must stress here, did not ask me to remove my posts. He asked me whether my decision remained the same in light of this communication from IIPM. I said I would get back to him after talking over the matter with several people, including my Manager in IBM. I spoke to my Manager who also confirmed that IIPM had given IBM a deadline of Monday morning, i.e morning of today, 10th October, to ensure I deleted my posts. Failing which, they would burn the laptops.[An Update]

The blogosphere is active with this news and desipundit is the focal point for this. We here at varnam.org salute Gaurav for standing up for his beliefs.

Update: Here is the wikipedia entry for IIPM

• Lifehacker's best time savers
• Apparently you don't have to order checks from your bank. I did no