Advertising war using hoardings
Here is a very funny example of advertising wars using hoardings. This one is from Mumbai, India. The top most hoarding (in hindi) says – “Please stop hoarding wars or else planes will crash on the hoardings!”
Top 10 Indian bloggers – according to feedburner feed count
Indian presence in the blogsphere is very strong, thanks to better broadband connectivity. Also like in Information Technology sector, Indians are pretty good in blogging simply because english is the second language for most of them.
But it is not easy to find out top 10 Indian blogs. One way is to use Alexa, but it may not give a true picture. For blogs, another metric that can be used to judge traffic is the FeedBurner subscriber count. Of course not all blogs display it, but many top Indian blogs do display FeedBurner subscriber count chicklet.
Without further “blah, blah”, here are the top 10 Indian blogs when it comes to FeedBurner feed count. This may not be perfect and if you know a blog I missed, I am only too happy to modify the list 
1. Quick Online Tips by PCHere
10200+ subscribers
2. Digital Inspiration by Amit Agarwal
9800+ subscribers
3. JohnTp.com by John TP
1100+ subscribers
4. Tech Buzz by Thilak Raj
1000+ subscribers
5. Brajeshwar.com by Brajeshwar
700+ subscribers
6. India Uncut by Amit Varma
540+ subscribers
7. Domain Maximus by Sidin
400+ subscribers
8. Sree’s Tech Notes by Sreekandakumar
340+ subscribers
9. Ajay – on the road called life! by Ajay Dsouza
260+ subscribers
10. A Management Consultant’s Blog by Gautam Ghosh
250+ subscribers
As you can see almost all the top blogs are technology related. Also even the top blogs are way down when compared to blogs such as TechCrunch (369,000) or BoingBoing. But again almost all top Indian blogs are run by individuals not by companies!
Some of the blogs which would have appeared here if there was a subscriber count on them are gigaOM, desipundit, kiruba.com, indianpad, Emergic and many many more! It is surprising that most of these blogs are yet to use FeedBurner!
Google Adsense team in India
Here is a happy news for Adsense publishers in India. Google Adsense recently started operations in Hyderabad, India. Hopefully this will mean better support for Indian Adsense publishers.
Now the only thing Google Adsense need to do in India is to enable direct bank payments. This will be a boon for Indian Adsense publishers since current courier fee of $25 is too much in Indian context. Especially when your Adsense income hovers around the $100 mark!
Largest annual gathering of women – attukal pongala in Kerala
According to Guinness book of records, Attukala Pongala event is the world’s largest annual gathering of women. In 2007, it is estimated that over 2.5 million devotees attended the event on a single day!
Attukal Pongala is an annual event at the Attukal Bhagavathy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram, Kerala (Southern state of India). This event witnesses the participation of thousands of women devotees, who flock to the temple to offer Pongala.
Women gather in the early morning and boil rice mixed with other ingredients in the open field. This offering is supposed to please presiding deity.
Only women are allowed to participate in this festival. So on the pongal day, the city is virtually sieged by Women from far away places.
Check out the official site.
Kerala Blogger Awards 2006
Kerala Tips is currently running the Kerala Blogger Awards 2006. The total prize money is Rs. 10,000 and the winner will take home Rs. 6,000. The idea is to find the most popular Kerala Blog in 2006. There are even prizes for 2 lucky voters (Rs. 500 each).
Since there weren’t many nominations, all the blogs are put up for voting (35 blogs in total). I somehow hate the idea of blog jury. I think it is upto the readers to decide which is best!
The voting is open(a bit complicated) now and will close on March 16th. Please vote if you happen to be a reader of any of these blogs.
Disclosure: I am one of the sponsors for the event.
Yahoo violates copyright – steals content from blogger
If Yahoo doesn’t respect copyright, can you expect bloggers to do the same?
In this case, the localized portal of Yahoo ( based on Malayalam – an indian language) has stolen recipes from a blogger and posted it as their own. To quote from blogger,
Some of the posts from this blog are lifted word by word, without my consent and posted, in Yahoo, Malayalam (beta) , and shown as their copyrighted material. See a screenshot of both the pages, which clearly shows the content lifting (copyright infringement).
If anybody else, lifted content from this blog, and exhibited somewhere else, without my permission, please remove the same.
The blogger (who is known as Su in Malayalam blogging circles) says that he has already mailed Yahoo about the copyright violation. He is yet to get any response. Obviously he is unhappy that his posts are being copied without permission!
I guess this is done by the Yahoo’s Malayalam team who probably is working on tight schedules to generate content!
Google censors Indian installations on Google earth
Finally it happened. Google has agreed to blur sensitive military and goverment buildings in India from Google earth. This follows discussions between Google executives and Indian beaurocrats. Surprisingly, simple blurring of images was acceptable to the Indian side.
BBC report says,
In a statement the search giant said: “Google has been talking and will continue to talk to the Indian government about any security concerns it may have regarding Google Earth.
“We are pleased to have initiated dialogue with the Indian government, the discussions have been substantive and constructive, but no agreements have been made.”
It added: “We have committed to continue the dialogue”.
In fact Google had no other option. They will have to continue with the censorship. Indians are too happy to ban Websites which are considered harmful to national integrity. Last year major blog sites such as blogspot and free hosting providers such as geocities were completely blocked by Indian ISPs on government order. It took sometime before the ban was revoked.
Indian president Abdul Kalam (who considers himself a geek) expressed his displeasure with Google earth many times before. He was of the opinion that Google earth may be used by terrorists to plan and execute attacks on Indian installations!
Life of an Indian taxi driver – Horn OK Please (2006)
“HORN OK PLEASE” follows a monotonous day in the life of an Indian taxi driver named Lucky. Lucky’s goal is to earn enough rupees to buy the air-conditioned taxi of his dreams…
HORN OK PLEASE was produced in 2006 by Flickerpix Animations Ltd. in Belfast. It has already won eight international awards. This animation is a creative collaboration between Indian and Northern Ireland animators.This film is combination of stop-motion (clay) models and drawn, composited backgrounds. The whole film was shot on a NIKON D70 stills camera and post-produced in After Effects on a simple pc.
What is depicted is from the life of a Mumbai taxi driver. The cartoon does a pretty good job of capturing Mumbai life!
Note: – In India “Horn OK Please” means “Horn Please”
You can catch the Youtube video here.
Infy by night! – An interesting set of Infosys photos
Infosys is one of India’s best software companies. Started in 1981, Infosys is now one?Ç among the?Ç top 100 in Nasdaq with a revenue over 2 billion dollars. Infosys campus in Bangalore is a well managed campus with all modern facilities. Check out the following set of cool photos of Infy campus at night?Ç taken by anita bora.
Further Reading
Infosys Web site
Infosys campus
Wired’s Indian Pirate – Cipla
Wired in an article titled “The treasure of Mumbai” is calling the Indian drug manufacturer Cipla a pirate. Reason?, they sell generic copies of patented drugs. Wired goes on to say,
What Hamied does is legal in India and the countries where Cipla sells drugs. But the company is still making copies largely without permission of the people who hold the patents on the compounds. So to most of the international pharmaceutical industry, Hamied is a pirate.
The problem now is that medical field is now controlled by big and greedy companies (that includes cipla). A person must die if he doesn’t have the money to buy a drug. Even when it is possible to manufacture and sell the drug at a lower price affordable to him. Why? because we should preserve intellectual property rights! That seems pretty nasty to me.
The wired article starts with the following lines. I agree with what Hamied has said (except the skin color part, I would reword it as “just because originator wants to make more money?”).
Forty years ago, a british company called ICI Pharmaceuticals developed a potent high blood pressure medication called propranolol. It was the first beta blocker, a class of drugs that inhibits fight-or-flight hormones like adrenaline. But it was expensive. So Yusuf Hamied, a 34-year-old chemist at an Indian drugmaker, got his company to start manufacturing a cheaper version. ICI protested to the Indian government, and Hamied found himself face to face with prime minister Indira Gandhi. “Should millions of Indians be denied the use of a lifesaving drug just because the originator doesn’t like the color of our skin?” he asked her.
Driving In India
Traffic in India is utter chaos. But at the same time it is quite efficient. For example, many roads which had smooth traffic suddenly had traffic jams when signals were introduced. Want to know why? Check out the following video.
Driving in India is an adventure sport. So if you are planning to visit India, add this as an adventure item. In fact just sitting in a taxi and watching the driver or road is going to be an unforgettable experience.
To many in west this video looks frightening. But for a resident like me it is daily life. The only problem is that you cannot be relaxed when you are driving. One thing this video doesn’t show is the pedestrian behavior (they can jump any second on to the road) which is much more frightening.
Help Pooja find her parents
Missing persons, persons in need for urgent money etc. are favorite scam and spam subjects. I am getting a lot of spam mail is generated on these topics. Recently I came across a mail which pointed to help Pooja find her parents Website. Interestingly this is for real!
Someone has put up help Pooja find her parents website for a missing girl. She is 4 years old and was kidnapped by a beggar. She was rescued by police in Kerala, India. She is now in Nirmala Bhavan, an orphanage run by Sisters of Charity. But unfortunately police is unable to find her parents.
The above site has spread through email forwards across India. It has even been picked up by some of the local newspapers. Unfortunately no success so far. I think success is possible only if main Indian newspapers also pick up the story.
[Update on Nov 22, 2006 - Pooja was handed over to foster parents in Trivandrum. She will remain with them till her parents are found.]