Content Writing & Copywriting Blog

Yahoo has launched a Digg clone called Yahoo Buzz

Mar 04, 2008 No Comments »

Maybe it’s an old news but I just came across it. Yahoo too has jumped on the social bookmarking websites bandwagon and has launched Yahoo buzz, a website where feeds are ranked according to the votes they get. But the ranking of the feeds not just depends on the number of votes they get, it also depends on the number of times the feed is searched for or recommended by e-mail. According to the grapevine right now Yahoo buzz will feature feeds only from the members of the Yahoo publishing network but I’m not sure how much of this is correct. Anyway, we will keep on seeing such websites popping up with greater regularity whether they succeed or not.

New York Times has launched Baghdad Blog

Feb 28, 2008 No Comments »

The New York Times recently launched a new blog called Baghdad Blog to enable its reporters from the Baghdad bureau to directly interact with their readers. One of the introductory posts says:

The Baghdad bureau of The New York Times serves as both home and office for 7 to 10 Western reporters, photographers and videographers, who work with a large Iraqi staff of reporters based in Baghdad and other cities across Iraq.

We talk with our Iraqi colleagues morning and evening about the problems they face in their neighborhoods, their dreams and those of their families. At night, staff members gather for dinner and discuss the news of the day: How close was that explosion heard this morning? Which military unit is finally going home? What is life really like in certain parts of the city and in the countryside? This blog is an attempt to include readers in our conversations.

War or peace, or rescue, blogs are continuously bringing people closer to each other. Today’s irony though, is, we don’t talk to our neighbors but we regularly interact with people, through our blogs, with people from other continents.

Print-on-demand online services reviewed

Feb 24, 2008 No Comments »

At Read/Write Web. If you don’t know what print-on-demand service is, it lets you get your books printed without having to approach a traditional publishing house. One of the oldest and famous print-on-demand services is Lulu.com. A print-on-demand service not only publishes your book — for a fee of course — it also helps you distribute it among the various book retailers and shops. Amazon.com too provides such a service.

I think for a new author it is a great opportunity, provided he or she has some money to invest. I remember a few years ago I tried to get in touch with such a company that had opened a new office in New Delhi. Right now I cannot recall its name but they were so unprofessional that they didn’t even reply. Back then we didn’t have Internet companies.

By getting your book published through a print-on-demand service you can avoid the hassle and the uncertainty involved in approaching a traditional publishing house. The traditional publishing houses are not only overbooked and choosey they also take a very long time in selecting the book, getting it edited, publishing it and then finally marketing it. Hopefully by the time I finish my first book I will have enough money to afford a print-on-demand service.

What is blu ray technology?

Feb 20, 2008 No Comments »

Blu ray is the next generation optical disk format. OK, every new technology is "next generation" so whenever you get something new of the old it becomes "nextgen". Prior to Blu ray (not blue ray, strangely) we had the HD format of a burning data onto CDs. So what is a big difference? Unlike the HD DVD (high-definition DVD) format (pioneered by Toshiba) that uses a red colored laser to write data on CDs the Blu ray technology uses, yes smarty, you guessed it right, a blue colored laser (rather, blue-violet).

The Blu ray enables you to compress more data on smaller CD area. With the help of Blu ray technology you will be able to burn anywhere between 25 GB to 50 GB of data on a single CD. This is because the blue-violet laser has a shorter wavelength (405nm — nm stands for nanometer) compared to the red laser (wavelength 650mn). This quality of the Blu ray technology enables the laser to focus upon the CD area with greater precision and this further means more data can be stored on the same amount of CD space.

Major movie studios like Disney, Fox, Warner, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate and MGM have already started releasing movies in Blu ray format. So is it going to render your current DVD players useless? Remains to be seen. You can read more on the Blu-ray website.

Are digital-only newspapers possible?

Feb 10, 2008 No Comments »

I just came across a news that a newspaper has given up its print publication and now it is totally available in the digital format. I’m not sure if it is accessible on every device that can log on to the Internet but it can be surely read on your computer or laptop.

I get a paper newspaper, in fact we get two newspapers, one in English and one in Hindi. Would both my wife and I find it OK if our newspapers only came with digital versions and there was no newspaper delivery person throwing them at our door every morning? I think in our individual case we will be OK with that because we spend a considerable amount of time in front of the computer screens. We can still access all major newspapers on the Internet and sometimes we do access them whenever we are doing some research or if we want to read more about an interesting news. Although we can access possibly every newspaper on the Internet reading the paper newspaper in the morning just after or before the breakfast in our household is a ritualistic practice that we have been following since the times we started reading newspapers during our teen years. We find it difficult to give up this ritual and maybe this is a reason if somehow we cannot read our newspapers in the morning we skip reading them even when we can access them on the Internet. Of course a big reason is that if the morning is gone we are both busy in our respective works and hence have no time to catch up with the news.

In case a time comes when my favorite newspaper is only available through the Internet I won’t mind that and in fact I prefer that. My newspaper is quite thin: I think it just has 20 odd pages. There are some newspapers that have 30 to 40 pages but in India we don’t get newspapers as bulky as in the West. Reading the newspaper on the Internet will save so much paper. The paper industry cuts millions of trees with alarming frequency.

But with current penetration of technology I don’t think Internet-only newspapers are possible; at least not in the countries that have less than 1% Internet penetration. As I told above my wife gets a Hindi newspaper and they often  have it printed on the first page that it is the most widely circulated newspaper in the world. Of course this is due to the population but even when so many people subscribe to the newspaper this Hindi newspaper hardly has an online edition because more than 95% of its readers have no access to a computer leave alone the Internet.