Start Blogging and Continue Doing It

[This is my first post in the company blog]

Its a good thing that my company introduced blogging to its employees. It was high time that this passion of a ‘netizen‘ was recognized. I see a lot of posts coming up and the enthusiasm was just simply WOW!!!. The fact is, most of the people lose their steam after the initial boost on writing. They come over enthusiastic and over time, they just don’t find what to write, some times intimidated by the way top bloggers write and the responses that they get and simply give up on blogging. “I cant do that, look how many hits (number of visitors to a blog) that person is getting.”

“So you a first time blogger… uhh????”, whats the big deal, write dude write!!! Thats what blogging initially is about. You need to write, write and write. Let that be anything about the good looking girl you found in the bus and wondering if u had her name can check her details in TedWeb, or how you burnt your break fast any damn thing goes into that. Novice bloggers - Just keep writing. You may not find any theme to write about, just write the crap that you feel like. May be no one is going to read it. So what, write.

“So you are not new to blogging…!!!”, still keep writing. As you ‘mature’ (i hate to use this word), you will find out yourself that what you want to write about them most, what you like blogging about. May be its Mallaika Sherawat or Bipasha Basu , who cares write about them. Play with words. Frame some wacky phrases like - “Bipasha threw ambers of jealousy at young damsels”, just make sure that you girlfriend doesn’t read this and i’m not responsible at any cause.

The next thing that you should focus is - ‘Give and Take‘ principle. Go visit other’s blogs, read their articles, drop a comment or two at their blogs and posts. Trust me just by mere visiting no one is going to know that you visited their site. Build a community on the web. Join groups. There is a bangalorebloggers called as the Blog’a’loreans at Google.

Last, visit the top blogs around and read how they write and what draws the crowd to them. What is so special in their writing? Who are these people. I suggest - Digital Inspirations - Amit Agarwal, he is India’s first professional blogger, Kiruba Shankar, Silkboard, Seth Godin etc. These are some of my favorite. Silkboard esp. has an uncanny way to report on the bangalore traffic . There are some Community driven blogs too like - Mutiny.in(i write here ), Sepia Mutiny too.

“So you a pro blogger.. uhhh???”, great!!!. Keep writing and help others too. Its always fun to get people into blogging. The way i did it for my roommate.

I Am Legend - Review

Thought i already reviewed the Movie… But as it turns out i reviewed it only in my head (like everything else it was in my head… which includes my secret love for this girl in office…) and i forgot to post it here.

I Am Legend, the first half of the movie was totally Will Smith and his dog. He is a talented actor beyond any questioning and he kept me right at the seat’s edge. But the later half turned out to be sort of a disappointment. The makers of the movie just seemed to run out of money and they just finished the movie in a click. Just like that. The only thing that stood apart was the theme and Smith’s acting.

This review by my friend Arun (simply sophisticated) will explain the rest. Clearly he wasnt pleased by the whole thing.

I am legend ??

The movie opens with a news clip showing a mad scientist boasting of finding a cure to cancer by “reprogramming a virus” (how lame could that be… but wait the movie gets lamer every minute)… haan so where were we… yeah she grins all the time expecting a Nobel for her miracle virus. Fast forward 3 years… every human is dead except for our MAN… Willy is the only dude alive on this planet !!!! … (read on …)

WOW !!!!

Who ever took this photo, has the shot of their life.. simply awesome…

Image source - Ramjee @ so-did-i : One in a Million

Hardcore Twitterer? You need this …

Of lately the craze of twittering has creeped in on me. I just love doing it. Even though i’m late to start using it.

Initially it was the question - Why do I?. ‘Coz i already have so many accounts and its tough time remembering the passwords and in no way i’m going to keep the same password for all the sites. In short if i have 100 accounts i’ll be having close to 90 different passwords.

With my net connection, which is a big time sucker, i needed to have a twitter client that is -

light weight - i dont want it to use suck up all the system power

fast - updates and posts happen in an instant

user friendly - i shouldnt spent time in configuring it

appealing - it shouldn’t be eye sore

I did a quick search on the net and 2 desktop clients popped up. Some thing in me said that there will be twitter clients for Firefox too. So did a search at the Addons page of Mozilla too- Voila!!! There too i have 2 clients. Finally in less than an hour of using all the four, i’m good enough to give the verdict.

TwitBin is a firefox plugin. Light weight, fast, user friendly and appealing. It opens as a left side bar.

It lost in the only fact that the typing font is too large.

Then there was Twitterbar, again a firefox plugin. Its light weight, fast , quite user friendly. You need to post something in twitter just type it in the address bar and click the (+) button to post. This is no longer under development as the developer says that there are many clients swarming the net, he just stopped the development.

The fact that you cant see yours or others messages is no problem for me. Imagine you are in a conf and want to twitter without catching anyone’s attention. Type in the address bar and then click.

The biggest disappointment was the two desktop clients that i tried out.

Swallow was hanging at times, the refresh was not happening properly, showed error while trying to post a message. Well i really ran out of patience. But its a product at its alpha stage, still a long way to go. So its definitely not my choice.

Then it was Pwytter. Its quite massive with the 6MB download file. Regular windows installation process. It takes time to come up before you even login. Refresh showed errors with the slow net connection(the same time TwitBin was running fine). The advantages i see are buttons for “Direct” and “Reply” messages. The application looks cool too.

My choice a combination of Twitbin and twitterbar…

Barcamp Bangalore - Random Shots - Day2 - Morning Session

Amit, Sanjukta and Sky (yes, that’s Her name!) …

Sandy’s laptop on a ‘VERY LOW’ connectivity, and currently on Ganti’s lap

Gantiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, the official BCB5 Colgate Ad

The Secret Service was here too …

BCB5 - Various Moods

Mela mein bichdey huey … BarCamp mein miley …

BarcampBangalore -Day2 - Pre Lunch Updates

Saunday morning .. yaawwwnnnnnn!!!! .. But its the day of Barcamp… no sleep… So i dragged my ass out of bed.
Its the day of CAT exams and by the time i woke up, at around 8am all my roommates had in fact left for the test. I have to say that i was one of the first persons to reach.
After a quick lunch with Abhishek Thakkar , who is having this talk on SMS Gupshup, the SMS way of twittering, i’m back in front of the discussion boards.
What is with the WiFi???- It keeps failing at times, on systems for no reason at all and then comes up all by itself.
Now that people are finally arriving and rooms are getting booked up, i see energy again in the atmosphere.
Bloggers decided to have discussion at D4 - 11am. It turned out that Sky was already there. She was trying to set the time zone and the WiFi connection on her laptop. Then people started dropping in thinking its some discussion and Vola!!! everyone is giving a self intro.
Then Nitya of Muziboo, complained that generally indian bloggers are reluctant and unwilling to help someone. She quoted her own experience as an example.
They started the Muziboo and she personally approached bloggers and asked them to do a review on the site and its features. But unfortunately of the 100+ people that she asked only 2 did it for her. This eventually became a hot topic and there indeed some discussion on that. People started dropping by with the noise level that we created. So finally everyone was sorry for the state of affairs and promised to help each other, starting with Muziboo.
Before we knew it was Lunch time and off we go to hog like pigs …

Barcamp Bangalore - Random Shots - Day1

I’m Speaking too

Getting the WiFi connection

The Mutineers …

E-Governance Session

Post Lunch ..

Barcamp Bangalore - Day 1 - Post Lunch Session

The bloggers collective has started at the L21 room (Cappuccino).

Amit Agarwal - Digital Inspirations, is talking on monetizing blogs. He is having no slides, no laptop, no geeky gadget, just talking. He is the first professional blogger in India.

 

So one advice from him - don’t use TextLinks in you blog as it wont help you in the long run. Rather than reblogging, write an original stuff at least once in a while, coz reblogging and linking will make people leave your site and go after the original stuff.

People are just walking into the collective and the strength is building up.

Now amit is getting swarmed with questions…

And i’m still looking for the 2 guys who approached me b4 lunch for the blog review.

Barcamp Bangalore - It Started

After a lot of confusion, which is apparent to any barcamp, we have kicked off officially. What is barcamp without confusions ….
As on the collectives part, there is a windfall of discussions happening.
Now i’ve the wifi finally up and connected with 2hrs of struggling, heregoes the first post of the day.

Now after a discussion by Swamy on Intro into Blogging for non bloggers. That was a good start.
Now its Gurugeeks by Navjot, he is bringing all the minds together under one community. He calls himself the - crazy eccentric web geek. He is desperately calling for some help in building up the site and the community.

So anyone who is willing to help him.. please go ahead.

I’ll be doing a blog review - through out the day. So if you want you blog to be reviewed and have suggestion, do contact me at 99860 12830

Here is the cool GuruGeeks.

RAM, Sethu and Ravan

I’m definitely not trying to bring up the whole controversy of the Sethu and the the proposed sea route ..
But this one is hilarious…

nice one Vikram