Top blogs

As we announced earlier,  we will bring out the 2012-13 edition of the    Directory of Best Indian Blogs  by May 30.  In the process of surveying the blog world for good blogs and then scrutinizing individual blogs, we always get wiser about the status of the Indian blogosphere and the habits of bloggers. We plan to bring out a number of posts on what we are observing this year. First, our journey so far.  By the end of April, we had compiled a database of nearly 50,000 Indian blogs. We kept on adding new blogs to the list so that we didn't have to recheck blogs already checked by us. But a database with majority of  entries that do not meet our criteria was proving a drag rather than a help in scrutiny of individual blogs. So, at the start of our short-listing exercise this time, we decided to drastically clean the database. After removing mirror blogs, blogs that have not been updated for over a year, blogs with automated content and ...

It is long since we talked about blog design ( website design by implication). In this post, we’d talk about how important it is to keep the design simple and how great companies are going about it. Judgment first, discussion later ;) . It helps in numerous ways to keep a website or blog clean and simple. It helps navigation, reduces clutter and so allows the viewer space to breathe and reduces his / her chances of getting irritated, keeps viewer focus on the most important thing you want to say, and yes it tells the viewer that things are straight here and he / she will not likely be misled. Simplicity and cleanliness go together but are not synonymous. A simple design is the one that does not have too many elements and the elements are not too sophisticated. You have not used too many shades and hues, effects, cute buttons, smart apps, advertisements in the garb of news, etc. The visitor finds in one or two clicks what he or she intends to find. In short, s imple means '...

This is an old post. Even while transitional old posts have been removed from TopBlogs, this one is being retaining it as it serves an archival purpose. In 2013, Technorati used to bring out such reports, Google Plus was buzzing. One takeaway, however, is very relevant all the time for blogging: blog regularly and produce high-quality content. This post is based on a TechnoratiMedia document, called ‘2013 Digital Influence Report’. This latest study by Technorati gives very interesting insight into the behavior of brands and consumers when it comes to their engagement with social media. Facebook, Google+, Twitter or blog: whom do the consumers trust most? One question that the report tries to answer is what platform do the consumers trust the most in taking buying decisions on the net. The answer – obvious to us ;) – is blogs! Blogs are trusted by consumers more than Facebook and Twitter, and we sort of knew it, but it comes to us as a surprise that blogs ran...

You can build a food blog easily and maintain it with just a little effort. It can also earn you some dollars. But to make a food blog successful and to make good money from it, you need to take care of something extra .  What's that extra that differentiates a great food blog from the ordinary? Before discussing that, let us recapitulate the food blogging scene. What is a food blog? How do food bloggers maintain blogs? A food blog is a blog that deals with human food. That is too simplistic a definition of food blog, because food blogging covers a vast area including  maintaining a kitchen garden picking up the best veggies and fruits ingredients: their types, usage recipes/ cuisines: differnent types according to location (English/ Scottish, Continental, Asian, Indian, Chinese), ingredients (vegan, non-veg), base (mutton, pasta, gluten free, dairy), cooking style (baked, fried), serving time (breakfast, lunch), taste (spicy food, sweetmeats/ desserts), etc foods for speci...

We get many blog review requests everyday. In a recent one, the blogger asked us two specific questions and one of them was - 'Is my blog too gaudy and colorful?' We have dealt with display aspects of blogging in a good number of posts, but have not answered the specific question of when a blog turns too gaudy.  Overall display of a blog, including colors, depends on personal preferences. However, we often do not realize that our own choices of color, font size etc may not be liked by many visitors especially if we use elements that do not suit our type of blog . For example, while a kid blog may look very good if it has doodles, splashes of primary colors, balloons hanging from all corners, a duck floating over the title and weirdly twisted text. But these elements will look totally out of place on a blog on scientific aspects of skin diseases. This could be an extreme example, but doesn't it show that we should not ignore this aspect on the blog ? Coming speci...

Happy, unhappy and uninteresting moments in our life come again and again: some pass by and some leave us either hyper-excited or frustrated. In either case, we need to give vent to our feelings so that we do not end up doing something injurious or stupid but return to our normal self. Blogging is a great way out for immediate calming of nerves as well as long-term emotional well-being!    Personal blogging I mean, not a professional or corporate blog. How to relieve stress and anxiety with blogging I suggest that you open a blog, a personal blog. Use Blogger or Wordpress - the top free blogging platforms. I would recommend blogger for a stress-buster blog, because it allows you to experiment and not remain sober (as happens with Wordpress). Even if you are scared of technology or have never opened a blog, you cansee this article on how to  open a new blog in just five minutes  and learn how to spruce it up. Use your personal blog as your punching bag. Make it th...

This post has been updated in 2018 end. The historical perspective and facts of 2011 are retained while links and obsolete information has been updated.   Now that we are in the last leg of compilation of the Directory of Best Hindi Blogs , we present before you our detailed observations on the world of Hindi blogging. Like they say in journalistic parlance, we can get major details on a news event by asking 5 W’s and 1 H [what, who, why, when, where and how], we’ll try to share our findings in that manner, answering the first question here and the rest in one or two next posts. ITB’s is perhaps the only team that has manually checked over 35,000 blogs, examined a quarter of them for specific attributes and reviewed nearly 600 blogs in fine detail. We tend to be very nasty in our comments when we review blogs. However, in these two posts, we will avoid sharp value judgments or advice. What types of blogs are there in the Hindi blog world? What is written on Hindi...