India Blog Watch

The social networking site IndyaRocks, which was launched in private beta in the month of March, is now moving into Public beta this Thursday. Along with this, they will be announcing three new features. All these features have been added to the private beta for feedback/review from the testers. The new features added are: Entertainment – This section caters to the Bollywood movies and the service will rely a lot on the user-generated reviews. The interface is pretty cool. This section also beings the latest news and gossips from the Bollywood. You can even check for the showtimes in your city. They will be introducing commercial services as part of this module next quarter. Tribes: Tribes is a group/community feature. You can join a tribe and contribute your content to the same. There are number of categories to make your search for a specific tribe a bit easier. If you are interested, you can make your own tribe. I am impressed. Mobile: The site received a positive feedback for the Free SMS scraps and Free SMS calendar notifications and has now introduced FREE Group SMS capability also. The new feature has been embedded into "My friends" link. They have also introduced MMS based Blogging, Photo uploads and My Diary. With these three new features and lot more on the way, Indyarocks is moving in the very right direction. It can be the Indian MySpace for sure.

The government of India is still in mess on the issue of hanging of Afzal. Indian Blogsphere has been almost silent on this issue. I just find October 5 post here on Afzal hanging. It writes as What do you make out of the number of protests by muslims in support of that terrorist? Will I be wrong if I say that muslims support terrorism. Moreover, so do the secular self-proclaimed intellectuals? And here, I have to pay ridiculous amounts of money to drive on our roads, or to get a piece of paper that basically says that I am a bonafide citizen of India (the passport).

We are fast catching up with the world in blogosphere. Recently the blog count in india crossed the 1 Million mark. However, this number is relatively less when we compare ourselves to other countries… Maybe we can be satisfied that with the current level of access to technology and internet penetration levels in india, this number is no mean achievement. MSN Portal and Windows Live recently conducted a survey on the status of the indian blogosphere. It threw out some interesting food for thought. With more men folk dominating the indian blogosphere, self-expression and personal-development topped the list as the intended purposes.More details here. Though many of us depend on blogs for our news and also develop views, indian blogosphere is too nascent to be called a fourth estate by itself.But there should be no doubt that Blogging will prove to be a key tool in this era of educated activist citizens.

The Municipal officials of Maharashtra government have started charging Rs 500 ($11) if anybody caught feeding pigeons in Mumbai’s Marine Drive area. The officials said that to keep Mumbai clean and disease free, this was necessary step. The officials have been circulated handbills with the warning, "Bird feeding is prohibited in public places." According to Vijay Balamwar, Mumbai’s assistant municipal commissioner, about 20 people have been already fined. Sakshi has written a post on it with a wonderful headline and a beautiful picture of Marine Drive. She has written as Seems like the Mumbai’s civic officials are also going the English way when it comes to pigeon-feeding issue at one of the most-popular destination in Mumbai city – Marine Drive.

The Indian cricket team, despite of all criticism back in India, busy in losing the game from the South African team in the tour of South Africa. Other teams of cricket playing nations may learn a unique quality from Indian team ‘How to loose a winning game comfortably from any team of the World. The recent two loss of the game (It could have 0-3 but the rain saved a game for India) has irked fans back in India and even in Parliament of India. I found a fantastic post on the performance of Indian team under the title Kaho Na Massacre Hain. The situation of the team is fit to sing a song of the super hit Bollywood movie, Kaho Na Pyar Hai that is as Ek Pal Ka Jina… for rest just see the post and don’t forget to read some interesting comments as well.

Now, you can buy high quality prints at fabulous price with just a few clicks of your mouse. The social expression and personal photo publishing company Print Camp is a platform where users can upload, share, organize, print and maintain their picturesque memories. The site offers personalized photo gifts for those who wish to show their deep love for their near and dear ones. The site basically emphasizes on home delivery of photo prints of your choice. The processing and shipping rates are reasonable and if you are not satisfied by the quality of the prints, the cost of the prints will be refunded in case you contact them with 15 days of the delivery. Other than this, you can order custom made photo mugs with your images, get personalized photo T-shirts, craft colorful photo greeting cards to revive your sweet memories. Print Camp could be the best place to get closer to your loved ones provided they continue offering the best services.

Yahoo! India was in news recently for alleged plagiarism. Yahoo had lately launched a Malayalam language Portal that featured blog entries from different blogs by Malayalam dialect bloggers. Santhosh Pillai wrote to GigaOm: Recently Yahoo! India launched a Malayalam Language Portal (along with other Indian languages), but they copied content from many Malayalam bloggers which were protected under Creative Common Licensing. None of the bloggers were contacted and it was a rude shock to us that giants like Yahoo! would do this. The thing came into limelight when at least 5 recipes from her Suryagayatri’s Kariveppila blog were taken and slightly modified to be placed on Yahoo’s Malayalam Portal. She has an entry on her blog that her content has been lifted up to Yahoo Malayalam (beta) without her consent. Groups are looking for a solution but in vain. How can a renowned site like Yahoo can be so irresponsible. Though Yahoo (or Webduniya, the content provider to yahoo) has like a ghost removed the pages, they haven’t even admitted the violation or giving a feedback to the blogger. I think Yahoo has forgotten the meaning of ‘values’.

Since when Senior Criminal Lawyer Ram Jethmalani has taken the case of Manu Sharma, the main accused in the Jessica Lal murder case, another debate has been started everywhere as does Manu Sharma desrve fair trial in this case. You can find here another post. The debate is on and every body is busy to decide whom should do what in this case. Anubha Bhonsle has written in her post as Manu Sharma has every reason to choose Ram Jethmalani but what are Mr Jethmalini’s reasons for defending a controversial accused? Is it because he truly believes Manu Sharma is innocent, or does he believe his job is to put forward the best defence for his client? Is it the thrill of defending someone who on the surface looks indefensible? Is it that he genuinely feels that Manu has been tried in the court of public opinion before he could really be tried by the High Court?

The publishing of the pictures of the victims of Khairlanji atrocity has started a fight among Indian bloggers. After Shivam Vij published the gory pictures of the deceased and left a comment on Great Bong’s post saying he had published the pictures, Gaurav Sabnis was outraged. He thought that the pictures were in bad taste as it violated the dignity of the dead women who were subjected to this savage atrocity. Meanwhile Beau Peep thought that Gaurav was behaving like an ‘insufferable snob’ and went on to give his reasons why the pictures were necessary and included the pictures too. [Warning: Beau Peep's post contains images that might be disturbing to some] I think that this issue is not going to stop here…

Although this story popped out almost a week ago but we are not going to ignore it. Indian mainstream media looks to have recognized the potential of new online media. MTV, one of the India’s leading multimedia youth platforms, in collaboration with Pepsi has announced the launch of ‘Pepsi and MTV Youth Icon 2007.’ You will be eager to know the nominees. The list includes our much loved ‘Orkut.com’ along with Abhishek Bachchan, Multimedia Cellphone, Rang de Basanti (movie), and obviously YOU. We are not just naming the nominees but trying to say that the mainstream media has finally realized the likes and dislikes of the youth. The voting is taking place at www.mtvindia.com or by cellphone messaging (SMS ICON to 6882). The voting will continue till 29th of June and I won’t be surprised if we have orkut.com (with nearly 8.6 million audience) as the ‘Pepsi and MTV Youth Icon 2007.’ Image Via: WatBlog