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.

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.”

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Via: WatBlog

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.

BharatMatrimony.com is considered to be one of the top-most matrimonial sites targeting Indian community. Now, they have introduced a new innovative service by name of Voice Matrimony, which I think will certainly attract a lot of wannabe brides and grooms.

The Voice Matrimony is an upshot of collaboration between BharatMatrimony, Airtel and OnMobile. The new interactive service lets the registered users to record their voice and reply to the received voice messages. The person can record his/her needs and listen to the expectations of their likely partner.

The other two new services initiated by the site are the Online Diary and Travelogue, which caters to the Honeymoon experiences. Pretty interesting! I won’t be surprised to see other matrimonial sites following the footsteps of BharatMatrimony.com in the very near future.

Via: WatBlog

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.

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.

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.

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.

Well, the service is meant for both the Indian citizens as well as the Indians living abroad. The most interesting thing is that it allows users to upload UNLIMITED full resolution photographs, which is not even offered by the giants such as Flickr. Photohugs.com has an appealing and cool easy-to-interface that indeed impressed me. the registration process is quite easy with a few formalities such as name and e-mail.

The charges are very reasonable as you will just need to pay US $0.50 for uploading 200 photographs, which is more economical than using Flickr. The detailed charge list can be found here. It will be interesting to see how they execute the things and do justice with their claims of being better than Flickr on some grounds.

Note: >>>You will just need to pay US $0.50 for downloading (not uploading...my mistake...sorry) 200 photographs.

The basic idea behind the website is to help people find a great place to eat in their city, when and where they want to. They are trying to provide the information they need to find the right restaurant, using the tools they need like extensive search options, extended information, maps and more. Its essentially a restaurant guide. The key being that the users not only get other user’s opinion about a restaurant, but also having Professional Food writers to give their opinion about a restaurant, the information on the writers and critics will soon be published online.

Here are a few questions that I asked from Anu Parthasarathy.

1. Are you going to cover the luxury restaurants, hygienic places, or everything that will come your way?

To us, any place that serves food or drink comes under our roof. We encourage any eatery to be listed on our website. Our target audience is from any walk of life, thus providing a wide variety of places to eat is key. Also, our team strongly believes that even the smallest road side stall has something to offer to people. We are trying to focus on getting from the smallest of restaurants and the big star rated restaurants get the same visibility on the internet. Of course, we list them at slow pace, so our food writers can catch up with the places we enlist as well. We eventually will be the ICON and reference point in understand restaurants and eating out in India. Our focus will stay within in the food industry.

2. Your comments on recent “Yahoo! India Plagiarism” that is witnessing a strong protest from desi food bloggers

Oh, I totally agree with the bloggers. Plagiarism is obviously not acceptable. I am a blogger myself, not too active, but I do voice my opinions when I have to. Using somebody’s content without permission is of course not right. All it probably takes is a few minutes to write to the blogger to get their permission to print their content. So, yeah I understand the bolgger’s frustration over this issue.

So, it’s the time you start writing your reviews about the restaurants for the foodie people. And, you can find the best one for yourself too.

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.

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

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”.

HimVani.com believes in presenting and debating the true state of things in Himachal, and to act as a catalyst to trigger social consciousness among the natives. They don’t just take Himvani.com as a mere website. Instead, they name it grassroots journalism since Himvani has been an effort to work at the grassroots and bring solutions for those areas.

By augmenting resources, people at Himvani are firm to offer a surfeit of services which will sport entrepreneurial activity in the state focusing on use of resources that are already present in the community.

Another good thing I like about the site is that everyone is contributing for free. It is a voluntary effort just for the passion and love they have for the state. We can safely call it a smaller Wikipedia.

I am totally swayed away by the noble initiative taken by Himvani to promote citizen journalism in such a small state (not in terms of resources). But the real problem that the guys at Himvani are facing is the non-availability of internet in remote areas. Owing to this reason, many of the potential grassroots journalists are not being tapped. It would be great for Himvani and many other rural projects if internet reaches every nook and corner of Indian states.

My best wishes are with the Himvani community and I would love to write on them at their second anniversary.

Via: thebizofcoding