India Blog Watch

The motto behind the launch of the Cricketology in simple terms is education, entertainment, and enterprise. Cricketology has been launched by a new technology start-up named Skilworth. The team behind the start-up answered few of my questions. Here are they. What’s the simple motto behind the launch of Cricketology? What does the average cricket fan get out of cricket, for all the hours he spends watching, debating and following the ins and outs of cricket. NOTHING! The fan who is responsible for the millions of dollars in cricket, gets nothing back.He either gets joy or sorrow based on the performance of the team. We wanted to turn that around and give the fan something back for his knowledge and expertise. It is a scientific and logical skill game where you apply your knowledge to make predictions on the outcome. It is for real cricket fans who understand the various factors that go into the outcome of a certain match and take decisions based on their knowledge. You have to answer only one cricket question a day and unlike a quiz, our questions are not about obscure cricket trivia. The real highlight of Cricketology is what we call "Bonus Factors". These are the multipliers offered against each outcome, which act as incentives for a cricketologist to believe in his analysis and make a prediction even if that seems a difficult choice. What sort of response are you expecting? Given that our offering revolves around cricket and the game appeals to a very basic instinct of all Indian fans to prove their expertise in some form, we would like to believe that getting numbers is only a matter of time. Right after the World Cup, we are scheduled to launch a very simple SMS based mobile version of Cricketology, which should cut across demographics and strike at the heart of India. With the internet version during the World Cup, we have a conservative target of 10,000 real users and we are on our way to achieving this Well, they didn’t spoke much about the user friendly features. But, it looks like they have got a good user interface and since the World Cup has begun; I assume that they can reap the most of the responses they are expecting.

WATBlog.com is an emerging social media networking site in our country, which mainly hovers around Web, Advertising & Technology. To know about the site and its intricacies, we contacted Rajiv Dingra, Founder and Chief of WATBlog.com and had an email interview with him, which goes as… 1. When and how did the idea behind WATBlog.com originated? Rajiv: The rationale behind WATBlog was thought of around June last year. At around that time I was reading a lot of blogs myself and could perceive that there was a dearth of good quality group blogs that focused on Web, Advertising and Technology. The reason I think group blogs are great is because it brings collective experience and expertise of different people, with different perspective on a single platform. 2. Rajiv, what kind of response are you getting from masses at large? How far have you reached in growing your community? Rajiv: WATBlog has been consistently growing since its inception in July last year. We currently are getting around 2000 unique visitors daily on our blog and we have over 10 bloggers who contribute to WATBlog. Our blog also brought about the inception of WATConsult, which consults web2.0 startups and other traditional or online companies. We have also been quoted in the offline and online media off late. 3. What special efforts are you people making which would be instrumental in making your readers coming back to you again and again? Rajiv: Original content, Analytical review and a personal perspective are instrumental in building good readership. We have conducted some intensive research on various topics related to web2.0 and made it available on WATBlog. We delight our readers with exclusive interviews, analysis and quotes from industry leaders on a regular basis. Besides that we make sure our content is more India centric. 4. Your site hovers around ‘Web, Advertising & Technology’; don’t you think it would be more feasible to integrate more blogs of different arenas into it? Rajiv: WATBlog as you mentioned stand for Web, Advertising and Technology. We feel the focus on Web advertising and technology content is what will be the differentiating factor for us. We see the internet and mobile industry growing and consequently a growth will be seen in people’s interest in content related to internet and Mobile industry. 5. Keeping in mind that the world out here on internet changes with blazing speed and also, everything reaches a culmination point sooner or later, we would love to know your views on the concept of blogging as a whole, how far do you think the concept will enjoy its success (if you really think that the way it has emerged, a success) and what’s fresh waiting to gobble it up? Rajiv: As far as India is concerned Blogging is still nascent. We recently did a 3 part report on Blogging where we have tried to uncover Blogging and its adoption among internet savvy users. I think the concept and use of blogging will continue to grow also giving rise to the number of serious bloggers. Also companies that take a plunge into blogging through the medium of corporate blogs would benefit as well. There are possibilities of various mashups like the recent innovation called twitter which primarily addresses like, what are you doing? form of question and could be classified as micro blogging sort of an engine would come up and be suited for different preferences of users. 6. Rajiv, the whole Internet, of course, as a media, is moving towards Web 2.0. How far do you think the phenomenon has emerged successfully? And where do you find WATBlog.com in this wide gambit? Rajiv: There is still time for web 2.0 to mature in India. Currently, globally successful applications are being adopted by early adopters in India. As far as Indians creating state of the art web 2.0 applications is concerned we have still a long way to go. WATBlog is supported by our web 2.0 strategy consulting arm WATConsult which helps and guides web 2.0 startups and internet companies build better web 2.0 applications. We also work with traditional companies in the areas of corporate blogging and also consult them in building an online engagement strategy with their target audience. Also with WATBlog itself we see that there is tremendous scope in both building a stronger community and better content which will place it in a league of its own. 7. What is the future of this networking? Any predictions on growth pattern? Rajiv: Internet has a dynamic environment so any individual or company who has the ability to foresee trends would be able to exploit them better. Even in networking one needs to look beyond what every other person is doing. The growth of networking in India would depend on how the businesses can drive value from it by reaching out to its target audience or by using networking themselves to benefit business. 8. Finally, we would like to have your thoughts on the Instablogs News Network and all its related sites. Which one is your favorite? Rajiv: It’s a good site which brings together different types of content on a singular platform. Before signing off, I’d like to thank Rajiv for this excellent interview and would like to wish him luck for all his future endeavors.

Here is another rank list out in the press. This time this is on the freedom of the press. The Reporters sans frontieres’ Annual Worldwide Press Freedom Index – 2006, says that India is ranked 105 among 168 countries in the list. These rankings mostly ignore the ground realities and the levels of conflict in a country and clinch criticism most of the time. Neha has written the detail of the report here that is mainly based on the incidents between 1 September 2005 and 1 September 2006. The ranking report does not look at human rights violations but at just press freedom violations in different countries. She writes as I wonder if there is a similar index for comparing Press Freedom in different states and regions. It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation between degree of economic freedom, level of conflict and freedom of press. Further, one wonders how many instances of violation actually get reported in many parts of India. Plus, can one actually measure arm-twisting of the Media? What about instances of corruption within Media at the level of institutions, where decisions are taken about not reporting events, manipulating reports etc. and this knowledge may never reach the public domain anyway.

The new site IndiaNewsBox.com has been launched in the beta. The site hopes to be a news aggregator with an inimitable proposition of offering the content in a single page, but yet preserving the segregation in news source. For now, they have aggregated the news from 9 news sources but have plans to merge more regional content aggregation service (Kannada and Hindi being offered currently). Well, the idea is indeed good but they will have to speed up as it merely aggregates news from a couple of sources. If they really wish to roll out something like the MySpace News, they really need to work a lot. I really liked the easy to use interface but they somehow seem to have missed some of the points. When you open the home page, page seems to be blank except the feature tabs. The news from the news sources are cited below and the half of the page seems to be unused. Well, the site is in beta phase and I came across a few bugs when I went to the Indian Blogs section. They could even put more emphasis on the Indian Blogs section as blogging is catching up at a swift pace in India.

Archita Hegde has showed here a list of the top 100 most populated cities of the world. The list shows that there are eight Indian cities present in the top 100 list. The cities are as (Names of the Indian cities given with their ranks in the list of 100 cities of world) 3. Mumbai, India – 18,042,000 9. Calcutta, India – 12,900,000 14. Delhi, India – 11,680,000 31. Hyderabad, India – 6,833,000 32. Chennai, India – 6,639,000 39. Bangalore, India – 5,544,000 57. Almadabad, India – 4,154,000 77. Pune, India – 3,485,000

On the October 31, 1984, the then Prime Minister of India, Mrs. Indira Gandhi was coming from a hectic documentary film shooting. Then she had the schedule to meet James Callaghan and his wife. A dinner was scheduled for Princes Anne at 8.30 pm at her official residence. But destiny was saying something different on that day. Two bodyguards suddenly fired 16 bullets to her. She died on the spot. Today is 22nd anniversary of his death. Sepia mutiny writes as on the death as well as the anti-sikh riots following Indira’s assassination.

March 5 will be remembered as a big day in the Indian blogosphere as a group of desi bloggers have brought down the big Yahoo! India. The issue started from the day at least 5 recipes from a food blogger Suryagayatri’s Kariveppila blog were taken and slightly modified to be placed on Yahoo’s Malayalam Portal without any go-ahead or acknowledgement. The news of the plagiarism crowded the entire Indian blogosphere within no time. After that, a mighty campaign called a ‘Remove Plagiarism’ was started by the desi bloggers and turned into an online protest on March 5. Yahoo! surrendered in haste and sent an apology to Surya Gayathri. Note: Surya Gayathri hasn’t received a personal apology from Yahoo!. Visit the bloggers’ discussion board at Dining Hall to sport their protest. Well, A Yahoo! spokeswoman claimed the imitation of the content to be unintentional and blamed the incident on Webdunia.com (India) Pvt. Ltd., the content provider to Yahoo. But, the triumph didn’t come as easy as Yahoo! after getting a hint of the incident had silently deleted the felonious content without acknowledging the plagiarism. This is surely a great win for Indian bloggers and those who have fallen prey to plagiarism. Via: Desicritics Image: Kariveppila

The new social networking site IndyaRocks has been launched in Beta. Before continuing with the post, I thought to take a test drive so I entered my profile to get the invitation, which I received within an hour. The registration part was a bit lengthy as they asked for almost everything e.g. your interests, subscription options, and education background (though some categories were optional). Apparently, IndyaRocks might turn out to be MySpace for the Indians around the world. Well, the site has almost all the features, which one may find on MySpace. The home page features different sections including My Diary, Graffiti Wall, My Calendar, My Message Center, My Friends, My Bookmarks, and Browse Profiles. The ‘My Diary’ function can be updated with text entries. But, the thing that makes me ponder is that though they allow the users to subscribe to everything a user shares except the fact that you won’t be able to subscribe to other users’ notes. The ‘Graffiti Wall’ feature works like the Facebook’s Wall. The free SMS integration is all about getting a text message left by someone for you through the web. One of the captivating features in almost all the sections of the site is the editing toolbar that lets the users to customize his profile. This feature adds to the friendly user interface of the site. You can share photos, blogs, forums, and classified with other users of IndyaRocks. They have an array of user friendly features which I think a social networking site should possess especially the enhanced customization. I think they need to work a bit more with the design of the page. But still, IndyaRocks rocks is its own way and it could possible become a MySpace for Indians.

Now this is Rajdeep Sardesai’s turn to speak on the issue of Ram Jethmalani’s decision to defend Manu Sharma in the connection with Jessica Lal murder case. He is completely aware about the hue-n-cry over the issue in Indian Blogsphere as he writes that the matter appeared to have set off such an avalanche of comment in the blogosphere. Rajdeep has chosen the sensitive issue to justify the often-criticized media role in this case. He writes under the title In the name of Ram as What is distressing is the manner in which he chose to heap abuse on the media, while suggesting that an ignorant media, and pesky 24 hour news channels in particular, had no business to be "interfering" in the judicial process. Jethmalani is not alone. In recent times, more and more highly influential Indians have discovered a new "enemy": the 24-hour news channel. Everybody hates television news (ah, so superficial, so tabloid, so clichetic!) yet nobody seems to be able to stop watching television news. From edit page writers to self-appointed television critics, from top politicians to film and sporting celebrities, for a majority of them, the news channel is soft target practice. Its ok Mr. Rajdeep, you and your organization is doing better but please don’t provide shelter to others, who often do wrongs…

Indian entrepreneur Manish Arora has launched a web 2.0 family social network called Kincafe that endeavors to bring families and friends together. It’s all about connecting, bonding and cherishing loved ones, the ones you grew up with, the ones you care at center of your heart. The user interface is too good and the registration process is so simple. The site also allows the users to share stories, news, blogs, photo albums and videos. They have a FAQ page, which I suppose will give answer to all of your queries. Still, I wanted to know a few more things. So, I approached Kincafe team with few questions. 1. There are a number of social networks seeing the day’s light everyday. How do you see the future of Kincafe.com? We are a Social network for families with a blend of genealogy 2.0. Central to our offering is a highly connected family tree that families can build collaboratively. Members can also build their own private social network of relatives and friends and share family treasures like photo albums, birthdays, anniversaries, recipes, announcements and family stories. Our family tree is an interactive navigation wizard to reach to content published by family members without having any need to remember numerous different URLs and links to family published content. Our service enables geographically distant family members to stay in touch with loved ones around the globe. We keep track of latest updates from one’s network and provide that information right upon login. 2. Is it very much like the MySpace and the other social networks or is there something unique? Content wise our focus is family generated content like photo albums of a new born, video clip of your toddler’s first steps and grandma’s recipes etc. that people want to share securely with other family members. Users have full control of what content is shared with whom. For example one may decide to share full birth dates (including year) only within your direct network; only day and month with your 2nd degree connections; and none at all with public. 3. Could you please highlight the "user interface" and "technology part" of your site? Our UI is based on web 2.0 technologies, in particular we are using Ajax, yahoo UI library and DHMTL, and our backend is based on very robust and scalable infrastructure. Some of the key features in UI include: *Drag and drop based photo album creation *Themes and layouts for photo albums *Rotate, Zoom and reposition pictures within the album *Navigation controls in family tree *Integration of TinyMCE editor for writing stories, recipes et Well, it would be interesting to know how they are going to execute the things, check for the copyright issues primarily with video clips though they shay users will have full control over the content. Time will tell the rest and I wish all the very best for Kincafe’s bright future.