DesiPundit

KindFriend: We have these wonderful music sessions every weekend. You could join us if you want to
Me: Oh wow…I’d love you.
(few seconds pause)
KindFriend (terribly confused) : err..sure..whatever.

SMSese and IM conversations have their own language but it follows rules as well. Confounded Lady talks about the common typos people make on IM conversations [hat tip: Adithya].

2. People who make their feeds partially available.
5. People who ask you to link to them in your blog-roll without linking your blog in their roll.
8. People who share their own blog-post.

Ganesh APP lists his list of 10 blogger habits that he hates [hat tip: Adithya]. I must admit that I share some of his pet peeves as well and many bloggers are guilty of at least one if not more.

I do not expect anything useful to come from some domain name hoarders with no experience whatsoever in content management, much less cricket content at that. BCCI have never understood the web. They are proving that they will never understand it.

Badri Seshadri comments on the failure of various parties to efficiently tap into the opportunities of the cricket.com domain [via].

Vivek describes his experience with 3 major companies in India which are sending him confidential information of other customers through email.

As stated in the beginning, this post is primarily for me to remember never to use the services of these companies. I am not an existing customer of these companies, so except for the spam (which I’ve now dealt with) I am not really bothered. However, if any of you are utilizing their services, I think you should double-check the integrity of your private data held by these companies (especially if your name is Vivek, or your initials happen to be VK). Since there is no lack of banks or mobile service providers these days, you might also explore the possibility of taking your business elsewhere.

While the world stands and marvels at the beauty of Wikipedia, Vipul Naik takes a view contrary to the general perception. He believes that while it has actually monopolised the online encyclopedia sphere, it’s achieved this despite its so-called strengths — such as open collaboration, and the concept of wiki itself.

When we usually think of monopolies, we think of for-profit corporate companies. For instance, Microsoft, at a certain point, had a near-monopoly on operating systems software (today, there is significant competition from Linux, Apple and many others). The monopoly didn’t materialize. In a similar manner, Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, currently has a near monopoly on the encyclopedia business. Again, the monopoly isn’t likely to materialize, but it does give some very clear lessons on how to try monopolizing.

He wonders if Wikipedia would stand the test of time and competition.

Krish Ashok is rather alarmed at the increasing dominance of women in the Web 2.0 world and throws around ideas — written in the form of a fictional conversation — to help reclaim what’s rightfully the domain of men.

VV: Sad. What happened to those good old days of the All Male Web. Web 2.0 seems to be all about 2.0 chromosomes, of the X variety specifically.
SS: We must do something about it. We must restore a sense of balance to the Indian Web. We must buy up some land in the valley between Trisulam hill and St Thomas Mount and startup some Web companies that bring the machismo back to the web.

Print also has been one of the oldest forms that have been around. It has survived radio and television till date and I don’t see why it would not survive the onslaught of the internet. The Internet is more of a tectonic change that has consequences much beyond the little sphere of media, so it would be unnatural to assume that print would be left untouched by it. I think what will save print would eventually be technology.

Shyam shares a Q&A session for a journalism student’s project on the future of media.

Increasingly you find online signature campaigns for everything, ranging from supporting Tibet’s struggle against China to having a wax replica of Mr. Salman Khan at Madame Tussaud’s. HawkEye has a dig at the Signature Campaigns that seem to do the rounds on email forwards.

I had never heard of a ’signature campaign’ until then. Didn’t know what it was capable of doing. He thrust a letter in my face and the letter had 35 or so signatures in it. It was a dirty white paper with a few scribbled sentences, which actually meant “respected sir, as I was suffering from poor preparation and no problem solving experience, please give me 45 marks or more”. When I refused to sign and I was given this angry traitor look.

There are 7 such stores within the 2 km radius of my house. But since I am planning to move to a different area, I decided to look up their websites and use the store locater to find a store in the new area. But what I soon discovered was that some of these supermarkets don’t even have any official site and the only way to find a store in an area is though local classifieds (Sulekha) , local search engines (Just Dial) , Google maps and Wikimapia.

Raj at Rhythmic Dissonance is disappointed to note that none of India’s supermarket chains have a reliable website. Probably one would blame it on Internet penetration but we have seen that even the allegedly business-savvy IPL sorely lacks an Internet strategy.

It is essential for the IPL honchos as well as those of individual franchises to embrace these blogs because they will generate good buzz. The websites could also introduce a format in the mould of Guardian Sportblogs or Times Online’s Football blog, where by they could get respected writers (or ex-players) to write columns and invite comments from the fan base.

Aditya Ramgopal recommends harnessing the power of the Internet and social media sites in promoting the Indian Premier League. Given the current stone-age thinking of the BCCI, it might be a long way from even considering his ideas let alone implementing them but at least they are out there now.