Soon came the prohibition of SMS, that were too drafted in that act to provide additional layer of the comfort to all user that the respect for privacy comes along in made shapes and shades…the shady work continues as operators now send me SMSs using a character name of sender so that your can not identify the number from where they were sent as well as you can never complain against them… the saga continues raising the tolerance levels as I continue to change and learn patience… the program which should have been called NATIONAL TELECOM USERS STRESS MANAGENT was yielding results in the context of useless words and never even successful marketing initiatives amidst the unsolicited calls… the years passed by!!

As a matter of fact I now have learned to accept that each of such calls make me speak to someone who also is under the same stress management program but gets paid to do so. The aggression has tamed down and given my way to politeness eventually…I learnt it hard way and thanks to “whom so ever” drafting the act and the process thereof” I continue to be polite, indifferent to the callers and the principle who continue to boost corporate social responsibilities by their honchos yet enable triggers that ring in me time and again…!!

Every time I drive by MG Road, or CMH Road for that matter, I wonder how long it’s going to take before we see an actual “Namma Metro” flag-off. I’m not keeping track of it every day, but here’s someone who is. Ravi Kumar who was on the author team at Metblogs is so driven about the Namma Metro project that he has two dedicated blogs – to give you regular updates. This way you can track the progress made, wherever you are in the world.

Workmen fix a gantry with the aid of two cranes near the Old Madras Road station on Route 1 of Bangalore’s Namma Metro project. Photo contributed by former Bangalore Metblogs author, Ravi Kumar, as he tracks the progress of Bangalore’s Metro project: Namma Metro at http://nammametrotales.wordpress.com. You can also see pictures of the project at his photoblog: http://nammametrophotoblog.wordpress.com

I now see a new and encouraging trend in a company’s efforts to be visible in the marketplace. And I’m not talking about press, outdoor, film or television. The new recipe has carefully hand-picked ingredients that can even get a steak to sizzle : bloggers. Bloggers, specially invited to a freewheeling session that is informal, interactive and informative.

I was recently invited to a product curtain raiser for bloggers and my invite gave me a sneak preview of two new Lenovo products. The new IdeaCentre A600 and IdeaPad Y650 – just off the blocks from the Lenovo launch pad. After the presentations were concluded, the bloggers were invited to test drive the two machines and interact with the Lenovo team on features, specs, support and compatibility with typical user profiles.

One of difficult things about a bloggers’ meet with a corporate agenda is the actual handling of the event – especially in terms of presentation logic. It can’t be orchestrated, or formal. It can’t be to a script. And it can’t be blow-dried. So, it has to be open-ended, freewheeling and meandering – with no timers set on presentations and discussions. And that is exactly what this bloggers’ meet was all about.

BlogCamp Bengaluru. Here’s an invite from Ajay Jain to get together,
brainstorm and share opinions about blogging technologies, trends,
micro-blogging, photo-blogging, video blogging, social media …
everything about the world of blogs & new media that
interests us.

This is the first edition of BlogCamp in Bengaluru. Participants
are strongly encouraged to give a demo, handle a session, or help
with one. You can help by taking notes on the wiki, blogging the
event, helping promote the event, or helping with logistics.

When
Saturday March 14, 2009
(Might extend for a second day to March 15)

Where
St. Joseph’s Boys’ High School, Museum Road

SCHEDULE FOR THE DAY (subject to change)
Registration: 9:00 – 10:00 am
Log On – 10:00 am
Lunch Break – 1.30 pm (1 hour)
Log Off – 5:00 pm

For more info and to register, check out the Bangalore
Event Wiki: http://wiki.ibnms.com/BlogCampBengaluru.

Ajay Jain
President, IBNMS
Mobile: +91.99100 44476
Email: ajay@ajayjain.com

You will find all details at:

http://amoghavarsha.com/workshops/agumbe/

The Agumbe Rainforest Research Station is an awesome place, where there’s an ongoing telemetry project to track the King Cobra…..and there’s also Agumbe town itself, a picturesque place with the heritage home, Dodda Mane, where “Malgudi Days” was shot. The sunrise from Agumbe mountains is a photographer’s delight. This is a beautiful time of year to be in the Western Ghats.

This is primarily a wildlife expedition, so photography won’t be “taught” as such, though Amogh will always be on hand to give you tips!

If you are interested, you could look at my field trip reports:

Snakes and Frogs of Agumbe:

http://deponti.livejournal.com/472912.html

Flora of Agumbe:

http://deponti.livejournal.com/448910.html

Agumbe…Natural Beauty:

http://deponti.livejournal.com/447765.html

Dodda Mane in Agumbe:

http://deponti.livejournal.com/472912.html

Of course, you would see different things, or the same things, differently! Each of us who attended the last expedition had very different images and memories of the trip..

Take a look at his photo gallery at

www.amoghavarsha.com

Do book your seats early; last time there were a few people who couldn’t be accomodated at the last minute.

For details, visit

http://barcampbangalore.org/wiki/Main_Page

And if you want to know in detail what a Barcamp is, go to

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp

I have earlier been a little hesitant to join in, thinking that it would be full of tech stuff…but each time, I found more than enough to hold and kindle my interest! It’s a great atmosphere, and one can jump into whatever one finds strikes a chord (yes, there are also impromptu jam/music sessions!)

Be there….

* The walk will happen on 1st June 2008 between Ravindra Kalakshetra and the erstwhile Central Jail
* We begin at 7:30 am sharp – it’s a slightly longish route and there are too many things worth photographing on the route so I think we should start early
* From what I see, I think it’ll be a building-oriented walk. Lots of good buildings in the route
* Some of the buildings that we’ll see during the walk
o Ravindra Kalakshetra
o Sir Puttannachetty Town Hall
o The LIC Building
o The Corporation Building
o Bux-Ranka house
o Hudson Church
o YMCA
o RBI (though I’m not sure if it’s safe to photograph it)
o Daly Hall
o UVCE
o Central Jail
* We should end the walk by around 10 am near the Central Jail, following which we will proceed to Kamat Yatri Nivas for breakfast
* All are welcome. You are welcome even if you don’t carry a camera and are just interested in walking along with us on a nice Sunday morning. Of course you should be prepared to walk
* I’m not sure of parking facilities around the Ravindra Kalakshetra. The nearest bus stop is Town Hall, to where you should get buses from all over the city
* As usual, you don’t need to pay anything. Except for the breakfast of course.
* I would advise you to carry a cap, a water bottle and a camera. I would also advise you to wear comfortable footwear.
* There is a yahoo group I’ve started. it’s called blorephotowalk. Join. I need to approve your membership though
* I request you to give more publicity for this walk. On your blog or website or maybe even in some papers or something :P .
* RSVP. Either leave a comment here (with your name) or mail me at skthewimp[at]yahoo[dot]com
* The latest issue of Bengaluru pages, and citizen matters have carried reviews of the first walk. The CitizenMatters article is at

http://www.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/180-walk-click

Karthik has a very interesting blog at

http://skthewimp.livejournal.com

Four prominent personalities associated with Kannada in Computer/Internet addressed the gathering.

Dr. U.B. Pavajana. Former scientist at Bhaba Atomic Research Center, now editor of world’s first online Kannada magazine Vishwa Kannada. He shared his experiences about his work for the usage of Kannada in computer field. He shared many anecdotes right from Eureka moment when he successfully e-mailed the word namaskara in Kannada script. In later part of the talk he stressed the need for more developments w.r.t to Kannada in the field of information technology. The tools used by major newspaper houses are still not Kannada Unicode complaint. There is a need for development of Kannada in the field of DBMS, natural language processing and in open source software such as gimp, scriber etc. Also there should be a standard vocabulary for translating technical terms from English to Kannada. Finally he concluded the talk by saying that we should all work in cooperative manner leaving behind our ego.

Hariprasad Nadig. Creator of online community sampada.net, has worked a lot for supporting Kannada in open source platform. He is the man behind starting Wikipedia in Kannada. Addressing the audience he mentioned that there is a need for development in Kannada in the following areas – social networking sites like orkut, standard spell checker, online advertisement(Adwords) in Kannada. Even though there are more than 300 Kannada blogs but there is hardly a blog dedicated to scientific and technological articles.

Abdul Rasheed. Creator of kendasampige.com talked about his experience in creating the site. Later he talked about the contents in Kannada blogs. Many Kannada bloggers limit themselves to literary thoughts and stay in comfort zone. Since there are more than 2.5 lakh BSNL broadband subscribers in Karnataka, atleast 50 percent of them will be interested in reading Kannada blogs, so let’s not restrict ourselves literary articles.

The final talk of the day was by S. K. Shyamshankar, editor of thatskannada.com. He shared his experiences of being a journalist in the Kannada internet magzine for 8 years. He also iterated that there are not many readers of Kannada articles because there are no authentic articles based on everyday life which connects to the common man. The future growth of internet in India will be in vernacular languages. Kannada bloggers should break the jinx and come out of kanasugara tag.

In between there was a interactive Q&A session. One of major point put across by noted Kannada writer Ki. Ram Nagaraj. He mentioned that many people speak Kannada but not all of them read and write because of complexity created by too many characters. Why can’t we have simple Kannada with no mahaprana?

To conclude, the event was a good initiative by members of Pranati. In my opinion these kinds of events have to be conducted on a regular basis so that the efforts are channelized and internet reaches to people in all strata of society. One of the positive developments atleast what I would like to see is coming up of more authentic and ‘down to earth’ Kannada posts in blogosphere.

Also read:

All the people who write, read and follow Kannada blogs have planned to meet up as per the above mentioned date, time and venue. In the program Dr. U.B Pavanaja, S. K. Shyamshankar(editor of thatskannada.com) and Hariprasad Nadig(of sampada.net) will be present.

Source:
ಬೆಂಗಳೂರಿನಲ್ಲಿ ಕನ್ನಡ ಬ್ಲಾಗಿಗಳ ಸಮ್ಮಿಲನ
ಬಾರಿಸುವ ಕನ್ನಡ ಡಿ೦ಡಿಮ…

Please find the route map of the venue here.