A big thank you to the readers who sent in suggestions. Keep them coming, please (suggestions will be acknowledged). It makes the writing of this column so much easier for your lazy correspondent. And who knows, perhaps, like the first featured site today, I might get a book deal out of it.
News you better not use
News of the weird
It claims to be the most widely-read bizarre news feature in the USA, which I can’t corroborate. But it certainly lives up to its name. The site lists brief synopses of actual news items illustrating the, um, best of the weird, large parts of which are contributed by its devoted fan following (one more on my “why the heck didn’t I think of that?” list). Whether you choose to read it kill a little time while the boss is out at a meeting, or because it is a “ weekly chronicle of the continuing decline of civilisation ... [or] a therapeutic personal bench mark for reassuring yourself that it's all those other people (not you) who are the problem,” the site is well worth a visit. The archives are for paid subscribers, but you can read the latest column and the last 25 for free.
Blog of the week
idlewords
“Brevity is for the weak” says Maciej Ceglowski. And then he proceeds to regale the web with long, well crafted and quietly funny essays. Topics include the worst pizza places in the world (the latest essay), and a guide to best practises for time travellers (based on a person who, on IRC chat, claimed to be a time traveller from the future).
The city that doesn’t sleep
Best of Bombay
This site wants to tell you where to party in the mega city. It also features sections on books, travel, music, movies, and the like, but some of those do not seem to have been updated in a while (Arts & Culture features “Theatre in Feb” as the second item on the list when I checked) and some of the listings sound to my ears like PR handouts or cut-paste jobs. Where it really comes into its own is the night life guide, which is where one suspects the hearts of the founders really are. Oodles of quick reviews, with useful information about ambience, cuisine, prices, whether a place serves alcohol or not, even recommended dishes and drinks. Their lists are searchable by category, location and budget, and seem pretty comprehensive to me. But then, I don’t get around much, with column deadlines dangling above my head. (Grazie, Salil Sojwal)
Extinct? Not if you can help it.
The Big Al game
Have a dino-crazy young ’un getting underfoot? Take the little tyke to this site and you won’t hear a peep out of him for a long while. He gets to role play an Allosaurus, from hatchling to adult, finding food, tackling all manner of other creatures, finding out what can harm him and what he can kill and eat. Along the way, there’s plenty of links where your pride and joy can get even more information and generally contribute to your feelings of inferiority at the level of his knowledge at an age when you were still accepted unquestioningly that cows, besides rallying the RSS, could jump over the moon.
Yum
Uncle Phaedrus, Finder of Lost Recipes
Uncle Phaedrus can tell you how to make Fudge or fruitcake, Mothering Sunday Cake or Shrimp Linguine, Chocolate Decadence Cake, Moustakouloura, Kashk Bademjan, Tropkapfen, Zweiback, Coquilles St. Jacques Crepes, Croatian Hrstula, Kremówki, even food for diabetics, food allergy and other special diet recipes. The the list goes on and on, and there’s drool on the keyboard. So, bon appetit, till next week.
This column explores the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 11th June 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
Thursday, 9 June 2005
Thursday, 2 June 2005
Mousetrap - 5
Girls just wanna have fun
BadIndianGirl.com
No, it's not that kinda site. This site is dedicated to those unfortunate young ladies of Indian blood resident in the USA, who find themselves constantly compared – unfavourably – with “Good Indian Girls.” Who is a Bad Indian Girl, then? “If you have a boyfriend, are not married at 25, have not mastered the art of making your own plain yogurt, have nosy relatives constantly inquiring about your life,” you’re it. Hmm. That should interest a lot of women right here in this city. Well, girls, you’ll find a bunch of short pieces that lampoon the members of the menagerie: the perv uncle, the nosy auntie, and so on, plus Letterman-style Top Ten lists, and lots of tongue-in-cheek advice. Go girl!
Hic
Tulleeho
If it was just a set of reviews of watering holes not just in Bombay and India, but in other parts of the world as well, I’d raise a toast to this site. But it also has a nice selection of cocktail recipes, information about various kinds of alcohol, smart drinking tips, contests, and a lively discussion forum. Cheers!
Blog of the week
The Compulsive Confessor
I’m not much of a fan of the Dear Diary school of blogs. Too many people who think what they had for breakfast is something the world needs to know now! But eM (“twenty-something, single, female, journalist, with large groups of friends and who goes out for drinks pretty regularly. That's my life and that's what I write about. Okay? Okay.”) has a life that a lot of people want to read about, evidently, because she is quickly developing a a fan following. She writes with a degree of frankness that anonyblogs make all too easy, but the difference is she writes well.
Utility site of the week
Mumbai Navigator
Don't expect sleek design, pretty pictures or other frippery. The Navigator (designed by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay) is a strictly functional site that helps you figure out the public transport in this city. Pick a start and end point, and it will give you a travel plan, estimated journey time, and any changes in transport you need to make. Or simply enter a place name and find out what transport is available. Or browse the database of bus routes sorted by number, and train routes. The site hasn't been updated in the last few years, so it will deny the existence of trains to Panvel, for instance, or of the Thane-Vashi rail link. No train timetable either. And someone at IIT is a spelling purist: if you don't start place names with a capital letter, the site won't find them. (Merci, Rohit Verma.)
Take one subtext, get two paradigms free
Postmodernism Generator
Want to bamboozle the eggheads in your life? Pop by this site, and copy and paste one of the randomly generated essays it spouts. Don’t like what you see? Hit ‘Refresh’ and it’ll do you another. And when you’ve found the one you want, go over to the PoMo Title Generator and find yourself a headline. See ya next week, professor.
This column explores the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 3rd June 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
BadIndianGirl.com
No, it's not that kinda site. This site is dedicated to those unfortunate young ladies of Indian blood resident in the USA, who find themselves constantly compared – unfavourably – with “Good Indian Girls.” Who is a Bad Indian Girl, then? “If you have a boyfriend, are not married at 25, have not mastered the art of making your own plain yogurt, have nosy relatives constantly inquiring about your life,” you’re it. Hmm. That should interest a lot of women right here in this city. Well, girls, you’ll find a bunch of short pieces that lampoon the members of the menagerie: the perv uncle, the nosy auntie, and so on, plus Letterman-style Top Ten lists, and lots of tongue-in-cheek advice. Go girl!
Hic
Tulleeho
If it was just a set of reviews of watering holes not just in Bombay and India, but in other parts of the world as well, I’d raise a toast to this site. But it also has a nice selection of cocktail recipes, information about various kinds of alcohol, smart drinking tips, contests, and a lively discussion forum. Cheers!
Blog of the week
The Compulsive Confessor
I’m not much of a fan of the Dear Diary school of blogs. Too many people who think what they had for breakfast is something the world needs to know now! But eM (“twenty-something, single, female, journalist, with large groups of friends and who goes out for drinks pretty regularly. That's my life and that's what I write about. Okay? Okay.”) has a life that a lot of people want to read about, evidently, because she is quickly developing a a fan following. She writes with a degree of frankness that anonyblogs make all too easy, but the difference is she writes well.
Utility site of the week
Mumbai Navigator
Don't expect sleek design, pretty pictures or other frippery. The Navigator (designed by the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at IIT Bombay) is a strictly functional site that helps you figure out the public transport in this city. Pick a start and end point, and it will give you a travel plan, estimated journey time, and any changes in transport you need to make. Or simply enter a place name and find out what transport is available. Or browse the database of bus routes sorted by number, and train routes. The site hasn't been updated in the last few years, so it will deny the existence of trains to Panvel, for instance, or of the Thane-Vashi rail link. No train timetable either. And someone at IIT is a spelling purist: if you don't start place names with a capital letter, the site won't find them. (Merci, Rohit Verma.)
Take one subtext, get two paradigms free
Postmodernism Generator
Want to bamboozle the eggheads in your life? Pop by this site, and copy and paste one of the randomly generated essays it spouts. Don’t like what you see? Hit ‘Refresh’ and it’ll do you another. And when you’ve found the one you want, go over to the PoMo Title Generator and find yourself a headline. See ya next week, professor.
This column explores the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 3rd June 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
Wednesday, 1 June 2005
The Sula Vineyards Tasting Room
If you find yourself passing Nashik, and you feel the need to irrigate your throat a bit, drop by the Sula vineyards.
You can take a guided tour of the winery, with a tasting and a mini wine appreciation session thrown in (swirl, sniff, sip, repeat). If you wanna drink shome more, you can hook a leg on the bar rail, or shtagger out – glass door, be careful – to the sheating area, a large balcony, open on three shides, with a panra... panoram... lovely view of vineyards, lake in middle distansh, and the hillsh for, wossisname, variety. Wee li’l chairsh. You could fall off. And when you’re done, you can buy up a few botts at factory ratesh. Cheersh. Don’t drink and drive, now.
The Sula Tasting Room is open to the public (Sun, Tue-Thu: 11:00 am – 7:30 pm, Fri-Sat: 11:00 am – 9:30 pm, Closed Mondays). Tour + Tasting, Rs 100. More wine as per rate card. You can nibble at a cheese platter while you sip. No meals served, but lunch can be organised for large groups with prior notice. Email visitsula@sulawines.com or call 0253 2331663 to arrange your tour. Sula’s website - sulawines.com - has instructions on how to get there.
Photo: Abhijit Bhatlekar
Published in Outloook Traveller, June edition, as the text below a photospread.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Friday, 27 May 2005
Mousetrap - 4
Graduate School of Rock
Snobsite.com
Though it is a site meant to promote a book (The Rock Snob*s Dictionary), it stands on its own as as web destination. Meant for Rock Snobs, and the people who have to live with them. Caveat: only if said Rock Snob has a sense of humour about his (yes, it;s usually a guy) obsession, as the site’s authors do. What is a rock snob? If you know who Zimmy is, and which Beatles track it’s cool to like, you’re one of them. For the rest of us, I’ll let the site answer: “Since the dawn of rock, there have been individuals, usually young men of argumentative tendencies, who have lorded their encyclopedic musical knowledge over others.” You get a snob Term of the Day, a large chunk of extracts from the book, an inbuilt blog, and a set of links to other “vaguely snobbish” sites and blogs.
Blog of the week
Tricks of the Trade
Very high up on my things-I-wish-I-had-thought-of list. It started with a blogger who asked his readers for suggestions on tricks of the trade, little professional secrets only people in a specific industry would know. His readers sent him a bunch of suggestions, which he turned into a column on an online publication he wrote for. That column saw huge traffic and citations across the web. So he decided to turn it into a reader-fuelled blog (which in turn, he plans to turn into a book). Down-to-earth suggestions from people in all walks of life, including - random sample, this - cooks, signmakers, parents of toddlers, failed job applicants and alcohol lovers.
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be
Abandon Ware
For those of our readers old enough to remember MS-DOS games, or even early Windows games, this site is a wonderful blast from the past. An archive of downloadable games that were made by gamemakers now defunct, or made for machines that are now veritable museum pieces. Remember Dave, Digger, Prince of Persia, Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, Mortal Kombat, Grand Prix Circuit...? Well. they're all here. And free. And customised to be playable on today's lightening fast PCs. Enjoy. (Oh yes. See also: http://www.freeoldies.com/)
Their red caps are Russian
Badmash
A weekly internet comic strip created by three young second gen desis in the USA, Badmash is a favourite with the NRI crowd. Sandeep Sood, Nimesh Patel and Sanjay Shah take digs at the idiosyncrasies of South Asian culture in the US, at US politics, at just about anything in between. Aside from the standard strips, every now and then, they do an animation as well. A personal fave: the hilarious Dishoom, part of their “Green Card Party” campaign for Amitabh Bachchan for President in 2004. And yes, they idolise Mr Bachchan. [Graçias, Annie Zaidi]
Utility site of the week
The Universal Currency Converter ®
The internet is borderless. Currencies, however, are distressingly old-fashioned. This site remedies that. It lets you do instant conversions from any world currency to any other. It covers over 180 currencies in over 250 geographical locations, at live market rates, and also covers precious metals. The service is available to install on your own site in various versions from free, with ads, to a fully customised pay version. In a word, invaluable.
This column explores the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 27th May 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
Snobsite.com
Though it is a site meant to promote a book (The Rock Snob*s Dictionary), it stands on its own as as web destination. Meant for Rock Snobs, and the people who have to live with them. Caveat: only if said Rock Snob has a sense of humour about his (yes, it;s usually a guy) obsession, as the site’s authors do. What is a rock snob? If you know who Zimmy is, and which Beatles track it’s cool to like, you’re one of them. For the rest of us, I’ll let the site answer: “Since the dawn of rock, there have been individuals, usually young men of argumentative tendencies, who have lorded their encyclopedic musical knowledge over others.” You get a snob Term of the Day, a large chunk of extracts from the book, an inbuilt blog, and a set of links to other “vaguely snobbish” sites and blogs.
Blog of the week
Tricks of the Trade
Very high up on my things-I-wish-I-had-thought-of list. It started with a blogger who asked his readers for suggestions on tricks of the trade, little professional secrets only people in a specific industry would know. His readers sent him a bunch of suggestions, which he turned into a column on an online publication he wrote for. That column saw huge traffic and citations across the web. So he decided to turn it into a reader-fuelled blog (which in turn, he plans to turn into a book). Down-to-earth suggestions from people in all walks of life, including - random sample, this - cooks, signmakers, parents of toddlers, failed job applicants and alcohol lovers.
Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be
Abandon Ware
For those of our readers old enough to remember MS-DOS games, or even early Windows games, this site is a wonderful blast from the past. An archive of downloadable games that were made by gamemakers now defunct, or made for machines that are now veritable museum pieces. Remember Dave, Digger, Prince of Persia, Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy, Mortal Kombat, Grand Prix Circuit...? Well. they're all here. And free. And customised to be playable on today's lightening fast PCs. Enjoy. (Oh yes. See also: http://www.freeoldies.com/)
Their red caps are Russian
Badmash
A weekly internet comic strip created by three young second gen desis in the USA, Badmash is a favourite with the NRI crowd. Sandeep Sood, Nimesh Patel and Sanjay Shah take digs at the idiosyncrasies of South Asian culture in the US, at US politics, at just about anything in between. Aside from the standard strips, every now and then, they do an animation as well. A personal fave: the hilarious Dishoom, part of their “Green Card Party” campaign for Amitabh Bachchan for President in 2004. And yes, they idolise Mr Bachchan. [Graçias, Annie Zaidi]
Utility site of the week
The Universal Currency Converter ®
The internet is borderless. Currencies, however, are distressingly old-fashioned. This site remedies that. It lets you do instant conversions from any world currency to any other. It covers over 180 currencies in over 250 geographical locations, at live market rates, and also covers precious metals. The service is available to install on your own site in various versions from free, with ads, to a fully customised pay version. In a word, invaluable.
This column explores the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 27th May 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
Friday, 20 May 2005
Mousetrap - 3
Eye in the sky
The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
The government is reportedly waiting for satellite pictures of the city to find out whether mangrove forests around the city have really been cleared. All I can say is that don’t really need to spend all those crores. They just need to check out this NASA site and download some really wonderful high magnification pictures for free. What kind of magnification, you ask? Well, one that has Chowpatty the size of the nail on my little finger is the best I’ve found, so far. Aside from these fabulous city views, you can also view some of their ready-made collections. After all, the site claims to host “the best and most complete online collection of astronaut photographs of the Earth.”
Collaboration rules!
The Wikipedia
There are many fabulous reference sources online. Unfortunately, some of the best require paid subscriptions. Not so the Wikipedia, “the free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” which runs on the wiki platform. What is a wiki? Well, imagine a gigantic blackboard, which anyone who stops by can write on. (And also erase, totally or partially what someone else has written. Before you do that, please make sure you read their instructions!) So you have experts in different areas giving you detailed dissertations on their specialties, with links to other sites and related pages. While the English Wikipedia is the largest, there are also growing wikipedias in other languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. Other Wikimedia projects include Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikiquote and Wikispecies.
Home-grown
Kamat’s Potpourri
One of the older Indian personal websites, Kamat’s Potpourri is very much a labour of love, produced by Vikas Kamat and his wife, which includes work by his his parents, the scholars the late Dr. K. L. Kamat and Jyotsna Kamat. As the site’s FAQs say, “Among them, they share three Doctorates, Five Masters degrees and seven other University degrees, and Kamat’s Potpourri constitutes over a hundred person-years of work.” So you can expect scholarship and firm opinion for sure! There’s a vast repository of information on Indian history, art, mythology, and much else. One of the amazing things about it is that the older Kamats never used a computer. They would write up their information and mail it to Vikas by post. He would then scan pictures, retype articles, and upload. Like I said, a labour of love.
Blog of the week - Bride in waiting
BridalBeer
An anonymous (though a few bloggers I know have met her) young woman in Calcutta who “was briefly in love.I was in New York for long enough to miss it. Now I am in India, training to be a wife-for-life to a relative stranger (not a stranger who is a relative, we don’t do those).” She writes about the past with the Ex, life as it is now, and the “Would-Bes” she meets, interspersed with the occasional random link and her views on news articles.
Vita Brevis
The Death Clock
Life is precious. You sure you want to be spending all that time staring at your computer screen? Absolutely? Well, go try out this site. Enter your date of birth, weight, sex, attitude(pessimistic sadistic and optimistic are the options available) and whether or not you smoke. Hit enter, and a pop-up gives you your date of death, and a clock begins counting off the seconds you have left. Now, do you still want some more sites to look at? Come to think of it, that’s enough writing for the day. I’m off to get some sunshine.
This column will explore the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Feedback, suggestions welcome. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 20th May, 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
The Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth
The government is reportedly waiting for satellite pictures of the city to find out whether mangrove forests around the city have really been cleared. All I can say is that don’t really need to spend all those crores. They just need to check out this NASA site and download some really wonderful high magnification pictures for free. What kind of magnification, you ask? Well, one that has Chowpatty the size of the nail on my little finger is the best I’ve found, so far. Aside from these fabulous city views, you can also view some of their ready-made collections. After all, the site claims to host “the best and most complete online collection of astronaut photographs of the Earth.”
Collaboration rules!
The Wikipedia
There are many fabulous reference sources online. Unfortunately, some of the best require paid subscriptions. Not so the Wikipedia, “the free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit,” which runs on the wiki platform. What is a wiki? Well, imagine a gigantic blackboard, which anyone who stops by can write on. (And also erase, totally or partially what someone else has written. Before you do that, please make sure you read their instructions!) So you have experts in different areas giving you detailed dissertations on their specialties, with links to other sites and related pages. While the English Wikipedia is the largest, there are also growing wikipedias in other languages, including Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam. Other Wikimedia projects include Wiktionary, Wikinews, Wikiquote and Wikispecies.
Home-grown
Kamat’s Potpourri
One of the older Indian personal websites, Kamat’s Potpourri is very much a labour of love, produced by Vikas Kamat and his wife, which includes work by his his parents, the scholars the late Dr. K. L. Kamat and Jyotsna Kamat. As the site’s FAQs say, “Among them, they share three Doctorates, Five Masters degrees and seven other University degrees, and Kamat’s Potpourri constitutes over a hundred person-years of work.” So you can expect scholarship and firm opinion for sure! There’s a vast repository of information on Indian history, art, mythology, and much else. One of the amazing things about it is that the older Kamats never used a computer. They would write up their information and mail it to Vikas by post. He would then scan pictures, retype articles, and upload. Like I said, a labour of love.
Blog of the week - Bride in waiting
BridalBeer
An anonymous (though a few bloggers I know have met her) young woman in Calcutta who “was briefly in love.I was in New York for long enough to miss it. Now I am in India, training to be a wife-for-life to a relative stranger (not a stranger who is a relative, we don’t do those).” She writes about the past with the Ex, life as it is now, and the “Would-Bes” she meets, interspersed with the occasional random link and her views on news articles.
Vita Brevis
The Death Clock
Life is precious. You sure you want to be spending all that time staring at your computer screen? Absolutely? Well, go try out this site. Enter your date of birth, weight, sex, attitude(pessimistic sadistic and optimistic are the options available) and whether or not you smoke. Hit enter, and a pop-up gives you your date of death, and a clock begins counting off the seconds you have left. Now, do you still want some more sites to look at? Come to think of it, that’s enough writing for the day. I’m off to get some sunshine.
This column will explore the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Feedback, suggestions welcome. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 20th May, 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
Friday, 13 May 2005
Mousetrap - 2
A little potty
Sulabh International Museum of Toilets
Dr Bindeshwar Pathak’s wonderfully quirky little site is the web face of his real life museum in Delhi, and a delightful, um, convenience stop on the information superhighway. Unfortunately, it’s a rather small site. Just a few clumsily designed pages, featuring an essay by the learned doctor, a fawning tribute to him, and an over-before-you-know-it stroll through the virtual museum. But you get to see France’s King Louis XIII’s throne (and I am not being funny here), a portable toilet designed to look like a stack of leather-bound books, commodes with arm- and back-rests… Do use the feedback form and ask the webmaster to expand the site.
Crumbs!
halfbakery
Speaking of toilets, where do you think you’d find Schrodinger's Toilet Seat? Try the halfbakery, where all the ideas that haven’t spent enough time in the oven find a home. It is a “communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users.” Aside from that toilet seat that is neither up or down, you’ll find a Zen photocopier, Custard-Filled Speed Bumps (speedbreakers to us), glow in the dark beer, and lots, lots more. You can browse without registering, but will have to sign up to contribute or comment. (Hat-tip to Karthi Marshan.)
Myth Universe
Encyclopedia Mythica
An encyclopaedia of mythology, folklore, and religion, it offers as much to the serious student as it does to the casual surfer. Myths sorted by region, folklore in various categories, the site can keep you occupied for hours. It also has an image gallery, a fantastic bestiary that covers all manner of mythical creatures from different cultures, a gallery of legendary heroes, and even a growing set of genealogical tables. The site also has a section on Hindu mythology. And you can subscribe to its RSS feed. No, that’s not what you think. That stands for Really Simple Syndication (among other things), which is a way to read fresh news or blog feeds via a feed reader.
Forward this
Hoaxbusters
I wish I had a buck for each time I get one of those mails telling me that Microsoft, or even Mr Bill himself, would reward me financially for forwarding a certain mail, or the one about the woman who’s husband is suffering from a rare disease (with a Bombay phone number too!), or any number of warnings about worms and virii that reappear every few months. For the frequent offenders I have a particularly nasty mail that one can’t reproduce in a family newspaper. For the people you can’t offend, however, I send them to this site. A pretty comprehensive, categorised listing of hoaxes, chain letters and urban myths, it’s the polite way to tell people they’ve been had.
Blog of the week,
Improbable research
You’ve heard of the Ig Nobels? The prizes that reward scientists who have conducted actual research into phenomena that, well, lets just say the cures for cancer and the common cold don’t feature in the list. Anway, the people behind the awards also send out a newsletter, and recently, like everyone else and his uncle, they started a blog. This one, updated fairly regularly, is a good place to start your daily aimless ramble around the web.
This column will explore the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Feedback, suggestions welcome. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 13th May, 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
Sulabh International Museum of Toilets
Dr Bindeshwar Pathak’s wonderfully quirky little site is the web face of his real life museum in Delhi, and a delightful, um, convenience stop on the information superhighway. Unfortunately, it’s a rather small site. Just a few clumsily designed pages, featuring an essay by the learned doctor, a fawning tribute to him, and an over-before-you-know-it stroll through the virtual museum. But you get to see France’s King Louis XIII’s throne (and I am not being funny here), a portable toilet designed to look like a stack of leather-bound books, commodes with arm- and back-rests… Do use the feedback form and ask the webmaster to expand the site.
Crumbs!
halfbakery
Speaking of toilets, where do you think you’d find Schrodinger's Toilet Seat? Try the halfbakery, where all the ideas that haven’t spent enough time in the oven find a home. It is a “communal database of original, fictitious inventions, edited by its users.” Aside from that toilet seat that is neither up or down, you’ll find a Zen photocopier, Custard-Filled Speed Bumps (speedbreakers to us), glow in the dark beer, and lots, lots more. You can browse without registering, but will have to sign up to contribute or comment. (Hat-tip to Karthi Marshan.)
Myth Universe
Encyclopedia Mythica
An encyclopaedia of mythology, folklore, and religion, it offers as much to the serious student as it does to the casual surfer. Myths sorted by region, folklore in various categories, the site can keep you occupied for hours. It also has an image gallery, a fantastic bestiary that covers all manner of mythical creatures from different cultures, a gallery of legendary heroes, and even a growing set of genealogical tables. The site also has a section on Hindu mythology. And you can subscribe to its RSS feed. No, that’s not what you think. That stands for Really Simple Syndication (among other things), which is a way to read fresh news or blog feeds via a feed reader.
Forward this
Hoaxbusters
I wish I had a buck for each time I get one of those mails telling me that Microsoft, or even Mr Bill himself, would reward me financially for forwarding a certain mail, or the one about the woman who’s husband is suffering from a rare disease (with a Bombay phone number too!), or any number of warnings about worms and virii that reappear every few months. For the frequent offenders I have a particularly nasty mail that one can’t reproduce in a family newspaper. For the people you can’t offend, however, I send them to this site. A pretty comprehensive, categorised listing of hoaxes, chain letters and urban myths, it’s the polite way to tell people they’ve been had.
Blog of the week,
Improbable research
You’ve heard of the Ig Nobels? The prizes that reward scientists who have conducted actual research into phenomena that, well, lets just say the cures for cancer and the common cold don’t feature in the list. Anway, the people behind the awards also send out a newsletter, and recently, like everyone else and his uncle, they started a blog. This one, updated fairly regularly, is a good place to start your daily aimless ramble around the web.
This column will explore the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Feedback, suggestions welcome. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 13th May, 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
Friday, 6 May 2005
Mousetrap - 1
What was that word again?
Word Spy
You know all those I’m-so-cool words that suddenly come into vogue with the with-it corpo crowd? That get bandied about by the young B-school grads with the power ties? This site is a good place to figure out what the heck they’re saying. Seriously, though (and before my MBA friends put a fatwa out on me), the site is a fascinating repository of what’s new and happening. It calls what it does “lexpionage,” or the sleuthing of new words and phrases. And the words it chooses aren’t the made-up variety of doubtful provenance that descend into your inbox with monotonous regularity. Word Spy includes detailed citations of each entry.
Click to find
Bartleby.com
This is what the net was supposed to be: free information across borders.
This site is one of many (we’ll cover some more in future columns) that give you online versions of books, absolutely free. Bartleby is best known for the invaluable set of reference books it offers. (A small sampler: Roget's Thesaurus, Fowler's King's English, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, World's Orations, Oxford Shakespeare, Gray’s Anatomy, World Factbook, Oxford English Verse, the Bhagavad Gita, the King James Bible, and much more.) But it also has sections on non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.
Worth a virtual bookmark, hmm?
Creature Feature
Cryptozoology
Cryptozoologists study animals that are presumed to exist, ranging from the mythological to those which are presumed extinct. In this field of, um, science, these creatures are called cryptids, and include everything from the Yeti and the Loch Ness monster to the thylacine (or Tasmanian Tiger, sightings of which have been reported recently) and the ivory-billed woodpecker, recently spotted in the USA.
This site, run, not by professionals or organisations, but by amateur enthusiasts, lists many cryptids, has a bunch of interesting links and news, articles, pictures, a discussion forum, and lots more. Parts of the site are accessible only to members, but joining is free.
Sea Major
Jazz Goa
If you’re headed for India’s only truly tourist-friendly state, and you want to make sure you hear music other than techno, trance, or whatever the beach shack guys are playing these days, check out this site.
The aesthetics range from dull to chaotic (too many add-on services have been jammed in without customising the look), and the home page sounds like it’s been put together by the marketing team in a consumer products MNC.
But never mind all that. What counts is that it lists venues and musicians, has a few MP3 files by Goan jazz artists to download (and one solitary video), and best of all, a gig guide that lists coming performances.
From the badlands
The Jesustan Diaries
The tongue-in-cheek travels and travails of a desi in the Land of the Free, which he calls Jesustan. The anonymous blogger, who signs himself ‘PS’, adopts the condescending style of countless white travellers in heathen lands, taking quiet little digs at all manner of Americana. But he’s even-handed, is PS. He just as frequently turns his scathing wit on desis in the US, and on the home country too. Unlike many bloggers, he doesn’t post daily. But he does promise one post each weekend, and he does long posts, so, I guess, it’s worth the wait.
This column will explore the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Feedback, suggestions welcome. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
The first edition of a column in the Times of India's Bombay edition. Published 6th May, 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
Word Spy
You know all those I’m-so-cool words that suddenly come into vogue with the with-it corpo crowd? That get bandied about by the young B-school grads with the power ties? This site is a good place to figure out what the heck they’re saying. Seriously, though (and before my MBA friends put a fatwa out on me), the site is a fascinating repository of what’s new and happening. It calls what it does “lexpionage,” or the sleuthing of new words and phrases. And the words it chooses aren’t the made-up variety of doubtful provenance that descend into your inbox with monotonous regularity. Word Spy includes detailed citations of each entry.
Click to find
Bartleby.com
This is what the net was supposed to be: free information across borders.
This site is one of many (we’ll cover some more in future columns) that give you online versions of books, absolutely free. Bartleby is best known for the invaluable set of reference books it offers. (A small sampler: Roget's Thesaurus, Fowler's King's English, Strunk and White’s Elements of Style, World's Orations, Oxford Shakespeare, Gray’s Anatomy, World Factbook, Oxford English Verse, the Bhagavad Gita, the King James Bible, and much more.) But it also has sections on non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.
Worth a virtual bookmark, hmm?
Creature Feature
Cryptozoology
Cryptozoologists study animals that are presumed to exist, ranging from the mythological to those which are presumed extinct. In this field of, um, science, these creatures are called cryptids, and include everything from the Yeti and the Loch Ness monster to the thylacine (or Tasmanian Tiger, sightings of which have been reported recently) and the ivory-billed woodpecker, recently spotted in the USA.
This site, run, not by professionals or organisations, but by amateur enthusiasts, lists many cryptids, has a bunch of interesting links and news, articles, pictures, a discussion forum, and lots more. Parts of the site are accessible only to members, but joining is free.
Sea Major
Jazz Goa
If you’re headed for India’s only truly tourist-friendly state, and you want to make sure you hear music other than techno, trance, or whatever the beach shack guys are playing these days, check out this site.
The aesthetics range from dull to chaotic (too many add-on services have been jammed in without customising the look), and the home page sounds like it’s been put together by the marketing team in a consumer products MNC.
But never mind all that. What counts is that it lists venues and musicians, has a few MP3 files by Goan jazz artists to download (and one solitary video), and best of all, a gig guide that lists coming performances.
From the badlands
The Jesustan Diaries
The tongue-in-cheek travels and travails of a desi in the Land of the Free, which he calls Jesustan. The anonymous blogger, who signs himself ‘PS’, adopts the condescending style of countless white travellers in heathen lands, taking quiet little digs at all manner of Americana. But he’s even-handed, is PS. He just as frequently turns his scathing wit on desis in the US, and on the home country too. Unlike many bloggers, he doesn’t post daily. But he does promise one post each weekend, and he does long posts, so, I guess, it’s worth the wait.
This column will explore the wilder, wackier, weirder corners of the world wide web. Feedback, suggestions welcome. Mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com.
The first edition of a column in the Times of India's Bombay edition. Published 6th May, 2005.
The Times of India, Mousetrap
Sunday, 1 May 2005
Where books go after they’re down-sized.
New and Secondhand Bookshop
A hundred years ago, Jamalbhai Ratansi, who ran a business in the raddi trade, decided to start a shop on the Kalbadevi Road, near what is now the Metro junction. You see, along with the old newspapers, he also frequently bought bundles of discarded books by weight. So he decided to start selling them piecemeal, at prices way below the original cost, but still a tidy mark-up from what he paid for them.
Thus was born New And Secondhand Bookshop, Bombay institution and landmark. In 1917, it moved to its current location, just across the street from the now-demolished building that was its previous home.
Jamalbhai has since departed for the Reading Room in the Sky, but N&S is still very much here, run by Sultan Vishram, Jamalbhai’s grandson and the current proprietor.
Over the years, N&S has had a long string of famous customers. Sultanbhai pulls out a fat file of press clippings, and tells me that B R Ambedkar, R K Narayan, Manohar Malgaonkar, Mulk Raj Anand, P L Deshpande and Osho Rajneesh all bought books from the shop.
Ambedkar, he says, never came in, always staying in his car outside, while someone else bought his books. Rajneesh (then plain Acharya) would come in at least once a week, and spend an hour browsing, before bargaining vigorously over the books he wanted, “He would say he was a sadhu, and the books should be given free. But my uncle would tell him, ‘Aap sadhu hain, hum to sansari hain na?’”
Which is not to say, he continues, after the chuckles have subsided, that commerce ever dominated love of books. Jamalbhai would frequently told customers who couldn’t afford books, “Go ahead, pay later. Learn, learn!” And his son, Sultanbhai’s uncle, loved to say “Saraswati and Lakshmi can’t sit in the same place.”
The “New” in the shop’s name is technically accurate – they do stock new titles on certain subjects like interior decoration and art – but the tight margins in that trade make it an unattractive business proposition, so they make up less than 10% of inventory. It’s the musty smell of old books that dominates. The very rare finds are stored under lock and key. But out there in the open is the gamut from a 1955 Encyclopaedia Britannica set and Shaw’s Complete Prefaces to elderly pulp paperbacks and mildly bruised coffee-table books. (My personal finds dating back from impoverished college years include a treasured 25th Anniversary Peanuts Collection, a stack of cloth-bound Wodehouses, and much crime and science fiction.)
Sultanbhai only began managing the shop actively in the last few months, after the retirement of his manager, Chandrakant Mankame. Mr Mankame had served the shop for sixty years, starting at age 11, as the founder’s gofer. Jamalbhai had sent him to night school, where he learned English. As he grew up, he was given more and more responsibility, till he became manager.
He has a mind like a computer, Sultanbhai tells me. In sixty years, he had bought almost every book in the shelves, and could remember exactly which dusty pile in which crammed shelf in which narrow row housed a certain book. Without this human database (in January, after seeing the shop into its centenary year, Mankame finally retired), Sultanbhai has begun to reorganise the shop so that less elephantine memories can cope, rearranging sections, making out an inventory, and perhaps, if he can bring himself to go entirely modern, a computerised database.
“There’s no other proper shop like ours in Bombay,” says Sultanbhai. And, unfortunately, there soon might be none.
“The book trade on the whole is suffering,” he says, “There is TV, computers… People don’t read that much anymore. And all these books, until we get a customer, they’re just someone’s discarded junk. [The reorganisation and renovation] is my last effort. If business does not improve, I will have to close down and sell.”
Isn’t there a market for rare books, I ask him. He shakes his head. “Once, yes, we’d find some rare books in our purchases. Now,” wry smile, “people are smart. They know what’s rare.”
Yes, I murmur to myself on the way out. But then New And Secondhand is rare too. And I hope to hell enough customers keep trooping in to take it into its second century, that Lakshmi can give Saraswati the teensiest helping hand.
New And Secondhand Bookshop, 526, Kalbadevi Road, Mumbai 400002. Ph: +91 22 22013314 Fax (care of): +91 22 22072024.
Published in the Outlook Traveller, May 2005 edition, in the column Favourite Things, under the title "Old Curiosity Shop" or some such.
Tags: Outlook Traveller, Favourite Things
Travelling the world (wide web)
Imagine there’s no countries,
It isn’t hard to do
The web, brothers and sisters, has no boundaries. We’re one big, happy family, connected by Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention.
The world is literally at one’s fingertips, and for many a geek, that’s nirvana.
But, thankfully for the tourism industry, vast multitudes move their atoms and disposable incomes around the world, instead of pulling bytes to their desktop.
Today’s enlightened travellers make their own itineraries, rather than doing the despised package holiday routine. So guidebooks still figure largely in holiday plans, and travel magazines aren’t just for the armchair traveller.
But the net is now ubiquitous enough for it to have an increasingly bigger influence on travel choices. There are sites run by tourism boards and the like. And every resort and hotel worth its IT budget has a website of sorts too. For you, that’s plenty of places where you can check rates, preview local attractions, research taboos, check out possible side-trips and so on. But these are commercial sites, which, by definition, paint a seductive picture of what they’re promoting (and some can be rather economical with the truth). And there’s so damn many of them.
Where, then, does the canny netizen go to get an unbiased picture of the place s/he wants to visit?
There are sites (like the one run by this mag) with articles by specialist writers and photographers, of course. God bless ’em all, and may they prosper and continue to pay me (preferably more than they do already) to travel and write for them.
But there’s another, more democratic phenomenon which might interest you: the travel community site.
Here, ordinary people, people like you (not me, I’m a specialist, m’dear, don’t do this at home, etc.), exchange info, tips, raves and rants about the places they’ve visited or are about to, make connections with potential travel companions, show pictures, and much more.
These sites usually support themselves with ads, but are not beholden to their advertisers, since the ads are usually served by automated processes. So, while you most certainly will see bias on an individual level, you can rely on them not having a commercial axe to grind.
So, when you next wanna wander, whisper softly into you search engine’s ear, “travel community.” Happy trails.
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world.
Siteseeing
virtualtourist, aside from the standard members’ articles and pictures, features a nifty do-it-yourself guidebook. As you wander the site, you can flag stuff to be included in your personal folders, then assemble it into a PDF which you can print or save.
world66 offers the basics, plus PDF guides, and stuff you can download to smart phones, GPS systems and other handheld devices.
bootsnall is geared towards the independent traveller, the backpacker, go with the flow type.
http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com is the forum run by the backpacker world’s bible. ’Nuf said?
indiaresortssurvey, as the name suggests, covers Indian resorts. It lets you rate them, and check out other people’s ratings, and adds on goodies for regular contributors.
hermail.net is an international directory of women travellers.
flyertalk is dedicated to frequent flyer miles. As the site says, “all miles, all the time”
couchsurfing, hospitalityclub.org and globalfreeloaders all (in slightly different ways) let you link up with people at the other end of your return ticket to get yourself accommodation that’s free, cheap, or bartered on a reciprocal basis.
In addition, many online communities have channels or sub-sections devoted to travel. A random example anothersubcontinent.com, a community of (mainly) expat desis, who have, among their other fora, one dedicated to travel: www.anothersubcontinent.com/forums/index.php?&showforum=23
Published in Outlook Traveller, May edition.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
It isn’t hard to do
The web, brothers and sisters, has no boundaries. We’re one big, happy family, connected by Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s invention.
The world is literally at one’s fingertips, and for many a geek, that’s nirvana.
But, thankfully for the tourism industry, vast multitudes move their atoms and disposable incomes around the world, instead of pulling bytes to their desktop.
Today’s enlightened travellers make their own itineraries, rather than doing the despised package holiday routine. So guidebooks still figure largely in holiday plans, and travel magazines aren’t just for the armchair traveller.
But the net is now ubiquitous enough for it to have an increasingly bigger influence on travel choices. There are sites run by tourism boards and the like. And every resort and hotel worth its IT budget has a website of sorts too. For you, that’s plenty of places where you can check rates, preview local attractions, research taboos, check out possible side-trips and so on. But these are commercial sites, which, by definition, paint a seductive picture of what they’re promoting (and some can be rather economical with the truth). And there’s so damn many of them.
Where, then, does the canny netizen go to get an unbiased picture of the place s/he wants to visit?
There are sites (like the one run by this mag) with articles by specialist writers and photographers, of course. God bless ’em all, and may they prosper and continue to pay me (preferably more than they do already) to travel and write for them.
But there’s another, more democratic phenomenon which might interest you: the travel community site.
Here, ordinary people, people like you (not me, I’m a specialist, m’dear, don’t do this at home, etc.), exchange info, tips, raves and rants about the places they’ve visited or are about to, make connections with potential travel companions, show pictures, and much more.
These sites usually support themselves with ads, but are not beholden to their advertisers, since the ads are usually served by automated processes. So, while you most certainly will see bias on an individual level, you can rely on them not having a commercial axe to grind.
So, when you next wanna wander, whisper softly into you search engine’s ear, “travel community.” Happy trails.
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world.
Siteseeing
virtualtourist, aside from the standard members’ articles and pictures, features a nifty do-it-yourself guidebook. As you wander the site, you can flag stuff to be included in your personal folders, then assemble it into a PDF which you can print or save.
world66 offers the basics, plus PDF guides, and stuff you can download to smart phones, GPS systems and other handheld devices.
bootsnall is geared towards the independent traveller, the backpacker, go with the flow type.
http://thorntree.lonelyplanet.com is the forum run by the backpacker world’s bible. ’Nuf said?
indiaresortssurvey, as the name suggests, covers Indian resorts. It lets you rate them, and check out other people’s ratings, and adds on goodies for regular contributors.
hermail.net is an international directory of women travellers.
flyertalk is dedicated to frequent flyer miles. As the site says, “all miles, all the time”
couchsurfing, hospitalityclub.org and globalfreeloaders all (in slightly different ways) let you link up with people at the other end of your return ticket to get yourself accommodation that’s free, cheap, or bartered on a reciprocal basis.
In addition, many online communities have channels or sub-sections devoted to travel. A random example anothersubcontinent.com, a community of (mainly) expat desis, who have, among their other fora, one dedicated to travel: www.anothersubcontinent.com/forums/index.php?&showforum=23
Published in Outlook Traveller, May edition.
Tags: Outlook Traveller
Friday, 22 April 2005
So you want to start a (clears throat) blog
It’s been the buzz all year, this strange word that sounds, as someone I know said recently, like something stuck in one’s mucus membranes.
Never mind them technophobes. The facts are that “blog” was the most looked-up word in an online dictionary last year, that bloggers were Time’s People of the Year, that world media has started taking notice, that corporate bodies began thinking of them as marketing tools, and that everyone and their second cousins want to give you their blog URLs.
So what is a blog anyway? It’s a hybrid word, short for “web log,” and at its most basic, it is a website with dated entries, usually in reverse chronological order.
From there on, they’re what you want them to be: guides to interesting web pages; diaries; confessionals; showcases; conversations; soap boxes, pulpits; dashing white chargers to gallop to crusades on; whatever rocks your boat.
Conveniently ignoring, for the purpose of this column, the now rapidly-expanding tribe of blogs that focus on visual content, I’ll risk another sweeping generalisation.
A blog is essentially about words. And your readership – indeed, whether you get read at all, aside from you, yourself, and your alter ego – depends on a combination of your subject matter and how good you are at stringing words together.
So, given that, should writers – serious writers, professional writers – blog?
I’d give you a guarded “yes.” For several reasons.
If you take your blog seriously, it’s daily writing calisthenics. There’s only one way to become a better writer, and that’s by writing. And feeling the obligation to blog means that you park your butt in front of a computer and write. And since someone might be reading you, you better write good, you know?
Blogs are also a good way to try out new ideas, workshop your writing, and to get feedback. Feedback is not guaranteed, of course, but there are ways to get yourself noticed and commented on. That, however, is a subject that could take up an entire column’s worth of space. Besides, it’s pretty easy to go looking for how-to lessons. The Lord Google knows that the web is crawling with blogging gurus.
Being creatures of the web, blogs, by definition, are not limited to geographic boundaries. The world is very much your oyster. Not just with readership. Advances in blogging applications make it easy to collaborate across the miles, or to band together with like-minded writers from around the world, to put together a whole greater than the sum of its parts. (Personally, I have found this a very effective method, and I’ve midwifed collaborations that have met with moderate to phenomenal success. Though not strictly an example of a writers’ collaboration, the tsunamihelp set of blogs only became a world-wide clearing house for information on the disaster because they were a group of dedicated people acting in concert.)
Then, of course, there’s the recognition bit, very important for the up-and-coming writer trying to make a mark. Here, as with feedback, just being good is no guarantee that you will get any. But again, there are ways to break through, though you’d better be consistently good to keep your audience.
Oh yes, blogs can actually make you some money. Not a fortune, I hasten to add, but an ad programme can bring in a few bucks. Provided your content is compelling enough to bring in the readers.
Other business models have been floated. Like using your blog as an advertisement for your other writing. Or actually selling your other writing online, through downloadable documents, for example.
And of course, there’s the Holy Grail. The book contract. Publishers are always on the lookout for the next phenom, and many popular bloggers have parlayed their online success into fat publishing contracts.
There is, however, another side to all these arguments.
Blogs can take up an awful lot of your time and energy. It can certainly get in the way if you need to do a lot of Real Writing. The writing that pays the bills. That editors and publishers will write cheques for.
William Gibson, one of the few Big Name authors who runs a blog (at least one of the few who does it under his own name) has an opinion you might want to consider. Just before his blog went into a long hiatus, he posted this entry.
“...the thing I’ve most enjoyed about [blogging] is how it never fails to underline the fact that if I’m doing this I’m definitely not writing a novel – that is, if I’m still blogging, I’m definitely still on vacation. I’ve always known, somehow, that it would get in the way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn’t want to be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil because the lid’s been left off.”
So, should you blog? I’d say give it a try. After a while, you’ll figure out if you’re getting – or on the way to getting – pleasure, fame or money out of it.
If not, hawk deeply, and eject it from your system.
The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com/, and has founded, runs or contributes to several collaborations, which you can find links to from his blog. He founded the collaborative South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog, which created blogging history and gave him 15 seconds of fame in January ’05.
—-box--
Authors who blog.
Internationally, there’s Gibson, who blogs sporadically now, at http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/archive.asp, and Neil Gaiman at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp.
In India, Manjula Padmanabhan, author and illustrator (Kleptomania, Mouse Invaders, Mouse Attack, Hot Death,Cold Soup, Getting There, Harvest, Hidden Fires) blogs at http://marginalien.blogspot.com. Samit Basu (The Simoqin Prophecies) writes http://samitbasu.blogspot.com and http://pututhecat.blogspot.com.
Many of the new breed of Indian journalists are blogging too, about books, politics, opinion, or just for fun. A quick sampler: http://akhondofswat.blogspot.com/, http://dcubed.blogspot.com/, http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/, http://kitabkhana.blogspot.com/, http://knownturf.blogspot.com/.
Errata:
I screwed up in the People of the Year thing, as Amit pointed out to me. Darn. My only excuse is that for the last few days of December and most of January, I read very little that wasn't Tsunami-related.
And in the print edition of this piece, I managed to get Samit Basu's URL wrong (I put in ducksrule.blogspot.com). I did attempt to make amends by tying to set up a blog with that URL that would have a redirect link to his blog, but sadly, it was taken.
Tags: Man's World
Never mind them technophobes. The facts are that “blog” was the most looked-up word in an online dictionary last year, that bloggers were Time’s People of the Year, that world media has started taking notice, that corporate bodies began thinking of them as marketing tools, and that everyone and their second cousins want to give you their blog URLs.
So what is a blog anyway? It’s a hybrid word, short for “web log,” and at its most basic, it is a website with dated entries, usually in reverse chronological order.
From there on, they’re what you want them to be: guides to interesting web pages; diaries; confessionals; showcases; conversations; soap boxes, pulpits; dashing white chargers to gallop to crusades on; whatever rocks your boat.
Conveniently ignoring, for the purpose of this column, the now rapidly-expanding tribe of blogs that focus on visual content, I’ll risk another sweeping generalisation.
A blog is essentially about words. And your readership – indeed, whether you get read at all, aside from you, yourself, and your alter ego – depends on a combination of your subject matter and how good you are at stringing words together.
So, given that, should writers – serious writers, professional writers – blog?
I’d give you a guarded “yes.” For several reasons.
If you take your blog seriously, it’s daily writing calisthenics. There’s only one way to become a better writer, and that’s by writing. And feeling the obligation to blog means that you park your butt in front of a computer and write. And since someone might be reading you, you better write good, you know?
Blogs are also a good way to try out new ideas, workshop your writing, and to get feedback. Feedback is not guaranteed, of course, but there are ways to get yourself noticed and commented on. That, however, is a subject that could take up an entire column’s worth of space. Besides, it’s pretty easy to go looking for how-to lessons. The Lord Google knows that the web is crawling with blogging gurus.
Being creatures of the web, blogs, by definition, are not limited to geographic boundaries. The world is very much your oyster. Not just with readership. Advances in blogging applications make it easy to collaborate across the miles, or to band together with like-minded writers from around the world, to put together a whole greater than the sum of its parts. (Personally, I have found this a very effective method, and I’ve midwifed collaborations that have met with moderate to phenomenal success. Though not strictly an example of a writers’ collaboration, the tsunamihelp set of blogs only became a world-wide clearing house for information on the disaster because they were a group of dedicated people acting in concert.)
Then, of course, there’s the recognition bit, very important for the up-and-coming writer trying to make a mark. Here, as with feedback, just being good is no guarantee that you will get any. But again, there are ways to break through, though you’d better be consistently good to keep your audience.
Oh yes, blogs can actually make you some money. Not a fortune, I hasten to add, but an ad programme can bring in a few bucks. Provided your content is compelling enough to bring in the readers.
Other business models have been floated. Like using your blog as an advertisement for your other writing. Or actually selling your other writing online, through downloadable documents, for example.
And of course, there’s the Holy Grail. The book contract. Publishers are always on the lookout for the next phenom, and many popular bloggers have parlayed their online success into fat publishing contracts.
There is, however, another side to all these arguments.
Blogs can take up an awful lot of your time and energy. It can certainly get in the way if you need to do a lot of Real Writing. The writing that pays the bills. That editors and publishers will write cheques for.
William Gibson, one of the few Big Name authors who runs a blog (at least one of the few who does it under his own name) has an opinion you might want to consider. Just before his blog went into a long hiatus, he posted this entry.
“...the thing I’ve most enjoyed about [blogging] is how it never fails to underline the fact that if I’m doing this I’m definitely not writing a novel – that is, if I’m still blogging, I’m definitely still on vacation. I’ve always known, somehow, that it would get in the way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn’t want to be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil because the lid’s been left off.”
So, should you blog? I’d say give it a try. After a while, you’ll figure out if you’re getting – or on the way to getting – pleasure, fame or money out of it.
If not, hawk deeply, and eject it from your system.
The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com/, and has founded, runs or contributes to several collaborations, which you can find links to from his blog. He founded the collaborative South-East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog, which created blogging history and gave him 15 seconds of fame in January ’05.
Published in an edited version in Man's World, April Edition, in a section called Writer's Lives.
—-box--
Authors who blog.
Internationally, there’s Gibson, who blogs sporadically now, at http://www.williamgibsonbooks.com/blog/archive.asp, and Neil Gaiman at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp.
In India, Manjula Padmanabhan, author and illustrator (Kleptomania, Mouse Invaders, Mouse Attack, Hot Death,Cold Soup, Getting There, Harvest, Hidden Fires) blogs at http://marginalien.blogspot.com. Samit Basu (The Simoqin Prophecies) writes http://samitbasu.blogspot.com and http://pututhecat.blogspot.com.
Many of the new breed of Indian journalists are blogging too, about books, politics, opinion, or just for fun. A quick sampler: http://akhondofswat.blogspot.com/, http://dcubed.blogspot.com/, http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/, http://kitabkhana.blogspot.com/, http://knownturf.blogspot.com/.
Errata:
I screwed up in the People of the Year thing, as Amit pointed out to me. Darn. My only excuse is that for the last few days of December and most of January, I read very little that wasn't Tsunami-related.
And in the print edition of this piece, I managed to get Samit Basu's URL wrong (I put in ducksrule.blogspot.com). I did attempt to make amends by tying to set up a blog with that URL that would have a redirect link to his blog, but sadly, it was taken.
Tags: Man's World
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
