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In the past one year or so, blogs were seldom used to settle scores. At least not in Indian national scene. Senior politicians would reflect on others' actions and try to justify their own stand on political or social matters. It was time when BJP stalwarts, Advani, Jaitley and Modi wrote good blog posts on myriad matters. Some posts were excellent by all standards.  In those times, the job of shouting at each other by politicians themselves or their fans or trolls or back-end boys was done through Twitter. Now we might see a new trend. Politicians, at least of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), are fighting on blogs [Yogendra Yadav, Mayank Gandhi, Rakesh Parikh...]. The pour out their sentiments and disparage those of opponents on their blogs. That has happened in the last one month or so. We think, it might have to wait to become a trend, as no other party is undergoing tumult at present; they all have either total authoritarianism or disarray. Twitter, as a medium is much more ins...

The film 'Daughter of India' is banned in India and yet is available freely on the net. People are crying hoarse that  the film tries to put the Indian society in poor light and is insensitive to a girl who was raped and murdered, and  why such films must not be shown. On the other hand, a large majority says, banning the film is an attack on the freedom of expression. BBC website We bring you the facts and leave you to decide what is good. The only comment we'd make is that banning it has only brought the government in poor light and made the documentary more popular than it should otherwise have been. #Nirbhaya documentary factsheet In 2012, a girl [now known by 'Nirbhaya', not her real name] was gang-raped and then murdered in Delhi. Mukesh Singh is one convict, awarded capital punishment by the court. In early March 2015, a documentary was made by Leslee Udwin and was slated to be shown on the International Women's Day (March 8) on BBC. The f...

We have this shocking piece of advice for friends who have 'fallen into' blogging for wrong reasons.  You will agree that when commitment, focus, proper tools and adequate time and energy are not there, even the best things in the world are likely to fail, and blogging is no exception.  So, bloggers, stop blogging if you suffer from any of the following: 1. Someone forced you into blogging but you hate it You are a kid and your mother feels blogging will improve your writing skills, and you do it though you hate it. Or you are a student who is forced by the teacher to keep your 'student blog' active. Or you blog just to show off your intellect because you fear that otherwise your peers or friends will look down upon you. In all such situations of forced blogging, your mind and heart will not be into it, and you must quit it and feel relieved. If you cannot leave it, do it at the minimum level that is acceptable, and relieve yourself of the burden. But be...

We knew that captcha is a dirty word among bloggers, but only during the current survey of blogosphere for compilation of the best blogs' directory have we realized that it is an extremely hated thing among blog visitors. We all are annoyed by the twisted, unintelligibly written, confusing text and numbers that we have to enter before we are allow to go ahead, e.g. before filling an online application. Captchas reside everywhere: utility sites, online forms, comments on blogs and other interactive websites, etc etc. Captchas annoy no ends when they are extremely undecipherable and when our correct answers are rejected by the site. Some of us are put off at the sight of captcha and would run away from the site unless we are forced to bear it because we want to do some online transaction. But blog posts are seldom a necessity for a visitor. He can run away if he does not like something in the blog or in a particular post. So, should we force a captcha on the visitor wanti...

There are some questions that come up again and again, however much you answer them. One such question, relating to use of graphic file-format on websites, is whether to use .png or .jpg images. As technology evolves, the answers are also likely to change as has happened in the case of .gif format. Nobody now asks whether to use.gif in place of other formats, unless it is a simple animation. We’ll try to give all that a lay blogger needs to know, in simple terms. PNG and JPG are both widely used graphic formats and both compress images to make them small, without perceptible quality loss for the purpose of websites. So which of the two to use on your blog or website? Use PNG when the picture has objects with sharp edges and there are not too many colour gradients. That includes computer graphics and drawings. Use this format also if you want transparency; that means, the transparent parts of the graphic will show up the background under it, as shown below. We placed a PNG f...

LinkedIn now allows you to post on it like you post on your blog. A slight correction: LinkedIn did it last year for members in the US and has opened the posting ‘long form posts’ to everybody now. It boasts that in this one year, over one million posts have been written. This biggest professional networking site in the world says, long form posts let members underscore their professional expertise. We believe that to be true.  Writing original posts on LinkedIn is like blogging on one’s own blog. And, like blogging, a well-written post presents the author’s character, strengths and weaknesses, talent and skills as much as his expertise. LinkedIn membership is now over 330 million strong, most of it free. LinkedIn allows its ‘premium’ features only to paying members. The ability to write long form posts gives especially the non-paying members an opportunity to showcase themselves better.  People have used this opportunity to write on myriad topics: sharpening resume,...

A number of studies have shown that web readers seldom read the text word by word. They scan it for relevance and look intensely for the matter they’re looking for.  Most readers, thus, have their brains trying to get the maximum value without big effort that goes in serious reading. That means, you must write text in a way that catches readers’ attention in the first go. Headlines and visual content are two major ways to catch attention, but this post focuses only on a third important aspect - catching attention to the written content . 1. Put sub-headings , and bolden the text, enlarge it or give it another colour. 2. Highlight words and phrases: use different formats such as bold, underline, italics, another font, large font, colour, putting within quotes, putting in a box, etc 3. Use simple and small sentences, and simple words. Simple language leads to greater reader comfort. 4. Keep paras short ; in a para, give only one thought. Short, focussed paras lead to c...