This is a good time to look at the highlights of 2009, and share some thoughts about the future.
Highlights Of 2009
This has been a busy year. 75 posts on An Unquiet Mind in 2009 with about 1,500 comments! 46 posts at MakeUseOf.com and 30 on my newly started tech blog, Skeptic Geek, both of which involve several hours of work. Have I become a writing machine? I hope not.
The biggest news was of course, setting up two blogs on my own domain here.
The most popular series of posts here was undoubtedly the A-Z of Films Meme, now enshrined on its own page at Favorite Films A to Z. Thanks to all of you, for your participation, critique, suggestions, and involvement, that made it so memorable!
Unlike Krish Ashok and Asuph, I am not a good writer of humor. I did take a stab with my own attempts at satire, with Virtues of Politicians, Rulebook for Indian TV News Producers, The Straight Dope FAQ on Indian Elections 2009, and How To Become A Spiritual Guru.
There were two serious ethical inquiries that garnered a lot of feedback and commentary. The look at Religion vs. Gender Equality and Feminism remains one of the most popular posts. In Mentally Challenged, Raped, Pregnant. Abort?, we confronted difficult moral and legal issues surrounding the trial about an unfortunate victim.
Outside the blog, some of you have approached me via email occasionally for technical assistance with blogging, while I have had the fortune of meeting some of you in real life. Blogging has now permeated my real life. Some of you have placed trust in me, and I hope that I have respected your privacy despite solicitations for contact or other information.
The Social Networking Challenge
Blogging may be getting increasingly popular, but among my network of Indian Bloggers, it faces challenges from micro-blogging and social networking. From my blogroll, outstanding bloggers like Gauri (42), Rambodoc (A Twist of Word and Mind), Paul (Café Philos), Shefaly (La Vie Quotidienne), and Ruhi (Time and Again) have become sporadic. Some are active on Twitter, while others don’t use it at all. Some spend a lot of time inside Facebook, while others have recently started using it. Nita (A Wide Angle View of India) who is not into social-networking, is the most regular on her blog. Others, like Amreekan Desi, Priyank, Gauri, Atul, Prerna, Harini, and Poonam are fairly regular at blogging as well as online social networking in one form or another. Very few, like Asuph, seem to be able to strike A Fine Balance between blogging, Facebook and Twitter.
At present, I am pulled in multiple directions online. Apart from my two personal blogs here and my writing for MakeUseOf, I am active on two Twitter accounts (professionally as @ScepticGeek, personally as @Palsule). I also try to keep up with friends on Facebook, and now spend very little time on FriendFeed, once my beloved network.
I read all blog posts from all of you blogger friends, but I don’t spend time commenting on each of them as much as I’d like to do so. One of my goals for 2010 is to seek that elusive balance between my online activities, though I suspect it will always remain a struggle.
Blogroll Update
The concept of the blogroll held different meanings for different people, and now it has largely become meaningless. There is no point in me having you on my blogroll if you don’t read my blog or engage with me online and the same applies the other way around. There is no point in me sending visitors to your blog if you don’t blog regularly. I actually wonder if there are any such people who come to your blogs via mine. So, I am thinking of doing away with it altogether. Let me know your thoughts.
Blogging Networks
In my initial blogging days, I was an active blogger with Indian Mutiny, which has now gone into print media. Harsha, who introduced and pulled me to that network, no longer blogs himself. I had put a lot of effort and time into serious blogging for Indian Mutiny, particularly with my posts surrounding the Indo-US Nuclear Deal. Once bitten, twice shy, I have stayed away from networks like DesiPundit, DesiCritics, and BlogBharti.
However, current trends indicate that blog networks will play an important role in acting as a platform to take your blog to a wider audience. Some of you are active on these networks. I confess I am largely uneducated about these Indian blog networks and will appreciate your thoughts in this regard.
Subject Matters That Don’t Matter
Looking ahead to 2010, I see cynicism as one of the challenges for this blog. In my first two years, I wrote substantially on current affairs and politics. I have now realized that blogging about Indian politics doesn’t make an iota of difference to anyone in real life. Why take the time to write about it at all? Hence, at least at present, I don’t see myself writing much about current affairs and politics on this blog, except with satire.
I will continue to engage myself and my readers in fundamental issues within the spheres of society, ethics, democracy, psychology, and law. Writing is a means towards clarity of mind, and these posts and your comments help me refine my understanding of such issues.
A Time For Gratitude
Finally, I would like to express my gratitude for taking the time to read my blog posts, comment on them, disagree with my perspective, teach me new ways of thinking, and sharing your thoughts.
This blog is where an unquiet mind has shared itself, and you, my friends, have often made it quiet again. Thank you.
If I were a book, you will put me in a bookshelf after you’ve read me. Later, I’ll probably lie in an attic and find my way to a library. My life would span a few decades, or even more. If I’m exceptionally good, I’ll be a timeless classic.
If I were your personal diary, I will probably last your lifetime, even if you stop using me after a while. You’ll keep me under lock and key, and no one else will read it. You will always treasure me.
If I were a real greeting card, you must have looked at me fondly, caressed me as if I were precious. You may not look at me again for many years, but I’ll be stashed away in some drawer of “memories”. Some day, you will enjoy nostalgia going through that drawer.
If I were a photo from your childhood, I will be stuck in some family album. This family album will be a great source of joy during holidays when the whole family is together.
If I were a blog post, I will live for a few years at best. That is, unless my blog is hacked or accidentally wiped out. I will be happy if your children know the name of my blog.
If I were a JPEG, I’d be one among the millions on Facebook or Flickr. Some people you’ve never met in real life may look at me and write comments. If I offend the sensibilities or political opinions of the owners of such social networks, I may be deleted.
If I were an email, my life in your inbox will be a few hours. After you’ve read me, I will be deleted or archived, and forgotten forever.
If I were a status update on a social network, I’ll be real-time, one among many that flow like fallen leaves in your friends river of feeds. If I’m good, I might be “liked”, extending my life by a few more minutes.
If I were an IM or chat conversation, I am real-time. I exist for a few fleeting minutes. I am usually used just to say Hi, or pass a link. Nobody ever looks at me again, as I vanish from this universe usually without leaving a trace.
If I were a tweet, my value usually lasts a few minutes. I may be short, but I am real-time. If I am any good, I will be passed around, shared among people who don’t know much about each other beyond their 140 character bios.
[Cross-posted from Skeptic Geek]
Take a look at these numbers:
- This is my 267th post.
- There are 2962 authentic comments on this blog.
- My posts have 203 tags in 39 categories.
- Total views crossed 100K quite a while back.
- These numbers usually don’t mean much to me. But I always use a trick while climbing a mountain. When I am exhausted and feel like I can’t go up any further, I turn and look the other way around. Seeing how much ground we’ve covered and how much height we’ve attained, is a re-energizing technique that works.
- However, the need to look at these numbers now did not arise because I’m exhausted writing on this blog. Since I started An Unquiet Mind over two years back, I have written exclusively here. And now I’ve come to a fork in my path.
- Discounting my professional writing at MakeUseOf.com, I have decided to start a separate personal blog exclusively focused on technology, specifically social networking and social media websites and technologies.
- Since I began a writing career, I realized that being an early adopter of new technologies, I needed to participate in online communities of like-minded technology enthusiasts and industry influencers.
- While Twitter has been one vehicle to achieve this, FriendFeed has been more empowering. To retain the intellectual flavor of An Unquiet Mind undiluted, I decided to post technology related content separately. Also, it did not make sense to direct the 90K+ MakeUseOf subscribers interested in cool websites, software, and internet tips to An Unquiet Mind!
- Since I am known as the Social Geek in these tech circles, my technology blog is of A Social Geek. I chose Posterous rather than Wordpress as a platform since it’s flexibility suits my needs better. Feel free to follow/subscribe to A Social Geek if you’re so inclined. Posts from there are also displayed in the sidebar here. Thus, my blogs reflects my two personae on Twitter – @SocialGeek maps to A Social Geek, @Palsule maps here.
- At this milestone I also decided to experiment with a different theme, primarily for one reason: it gave me the push to do the necessary housekeeping of this blog that has been on the backburner for a while. I have reorganized my categories, which are now displayed at the top. Hovering your mouse over them reveals sub-categories too.
- I think this will help An Unquiet Mind remain unquiet about things that matter. I think unquiet minds rule over matter, but never mind.
Image: Janus, the two-faced Roman god of beginnings and endings.
A few weeks back, HyperActiveX asked me something on Twitter.
“What is your data flow? Have you mapped it yet?” or something to that effect. This had been on my mind for quite a few months and I always pushed it to the back burner. Quadrant I vs. Quadrant II. The usual story.
But his tweet pushed me over the edge. It led to two MakeUseOf.com posts (How to Define and Manage Your Social Networks), which weren’t popular, but were noticed by a few select people. So here’s a big thank you to HyperActiveX for goading me, and I now have my online social life mapped out on a page.
Comments are closed for this post, since I want to consolidate/track comments (if any) on that page itself.
(Cartoons courtesy: Geek and Poke)
Many folks asked me for an update on Pune’s Blog Camp, after the previous photo-post. How was the experience? Was it worth it? Who was there?
Not being diplomatic, I can say that the experience was an interesting one for me, with positives and negatives. I had never been to any blog camp, bar camp, or Tweetup before, so I did not have any expectations, and that probably helped.
There was an interesting discussion going on even before the blog camp in the comments to Navin Kabra’s PuneTech Why You Should Attend Pune Blog Camp post. At the other end of the spectrum, post-event, the insights from the camp led to Dhananjay Nene’s Why I was disappointed with Pune Blog Camp 2.
Some others have shared their experiences too. Sandeep has a largely positive thank you note at his blog The Mousetrap. Anant has a detailed write up on his blog, Rahul has an update on the Devil’s Workshop, Aniket has shared his awesome feeling about the camp at Melody in Dissonance, while Deep Ganatra raises an important concern about unintentional session-hijacking. Almost all of them have written about the various sessions that took place, so I will not repeat them. Nor will I remember the names of all the presenters! So I will just share a few of my thoughts. You can also read Pune Mirror and TOI’s coverage.
A word of thanks to the organizers is a must. Tarun Chandel led the tone of the camp beautifully, making people get comfortable with his opening presentation and stepping in to facilitate whenever he could. I think the facilitation needed more support – it seemed he was the only one intent on facilitating.
Meeting In Person
There were a few specific people I wanted to meet and that was one of my motivations for going to the camp. There were a few surprises too. I knew about sites like Wogma and Track.in, and it was good to meet online entrepreneurs Meetu Kabra and Arun Prabhudesai in person. I met fellow Twitter contacts like Amit Paranjape, an entrepreneur who shares myriad interests like me, who was busy with his Smartphone throughout the camp as I’d expected! Dhananjay Nene, a software architect, was another Twitter contact and meeting him personally was a surprise as he wasn’t as old as he looked in his avatar!
Friends in need are friends on Friendfeed. I recognized Sandeep Gautam instantly, even if we had only recently started following each other on Friendfeed. Sandeep writes on psychology and neuroscience while being into software development and poetry, at The Mousetrap. Sneha Gore has done a survey-based research into motivations of young bloggers which I found interesting, and meeting Pune Mirror’s Vishal was also good.
Negatives
- Despite what the self-analysis kit says, the camp was not centered around a theme or purpose. Blogging is a wide umbrella term for any camp to succeed without having a theme – SEO, journalism, the ubiquitous ‘musings’ – some theme is needed for greater audience-presenter harmony.
- Despite all the marketing-SEO focused presentations, the Golden Rule of SEO was not emphasized at all, or I missed it altogether. Content is king. Period.
- No talk of the future of blogging. Yongfook, author of the popular open-source self-hosted Lifestreaming application SweetCron has proclaimed The Blog is Dead. Wired magazine advised not to start a new blog, and to pull the plug if you already had one. ReadWriteWeb asked if the future of blogging is lifetreaming. I thought these topics will come up in a ‘blog camp’, but either they didn’t or I missed them.
- Sometimes, I felt disenchanted with the perspective of an SEO/Marketing oriented pro-blogger that looks at readers as pure numbers and statistics on a graph. Rather than a birds-eye view of traffic flowing on a freeway, I prefer seeking the company of people actually driving those cars – those who take the time to comment and share their ideas and opinions on my posts. But that’s just me.
- Despite the monetization related talks, there was no talk about writing. I take the blame for this. As a professional writer who is making money out of writing on a blog, and not looking at promotion, marketing, or SEO, I could have talked about how you can earn money as a blog writer without being keen on SEO.
Positives
- Meeting lots and lots of bloggers! And especially meeting the few I wrote about above.
- The passion and entrepreneurship of youth that I witnessed was inspiring. Young people in their 20s have .com domains and are discussing SEO. Wow. I actually felt out of place.
- Navin and Vishal’s presentation on what newspapers can learn from blogs and vice versa.
- Sandeep’s presentation on niche science blogging.
- Regional focus – Shantanu Oak talked about Devanagri spell-checking.
- Seeing lots and lots of newbie or wannabe bloggers.
Lessons
Bloggers should be on Twitter if they want to expand visibility of their blog. - Some folks try to make money out of blogging. The clever folks make money from bloggers.
- The ‘blogger elite’ usually doesn’t comment on each other’s blogs. They use Twitter to keep in touch with each other.
- I personally feel there should be disclaimers within the presentations on monetization, when a lot of impressionable young peo
ple are in the audience. I could sense that many such people got the feeling that one can easily make money out of blogging, if one is geeky enough and knows a few ‘secrets’. - In a blog camp, the law of two feet is very important. I did it successfully – rather than being felt obliged to listen to sessions that I was not interested in, I preferred spending one-to-one time with people, which is what worked best for me.
- If I go to a blog camp again, I will present. In retrospect, I could have shared:
- My experience with plagiarism
- The intense debates on this blog surrounding female foeticide, right to free speech, whether poverty is the root cause of terrorism, the legal implications of blogging, and paranormal phenomena. How these thoughtful discussions with readers have enriched me is very precious to me as a blogger.
- My experiences of blogging at Mutiny.in especially when defending the Indo-US Nuclear Deal. There are distinct differences between blogging on your personal blog and doing it on a high-visibility group blog.
- As mentioned earlier, writing to earn money, which I think is a dream quite a few people might have.
A few days back, Asuph asked how one can reduce the page rank of one’s blog and I replied. I would have loved to see the reactions if this exchange had happened at the blog camp!
Thus, all in all, an interesting experience. Will I go to another camp? If it is not centered around a specific theme, definitely not. Else, depends on the theme!
Here are some photographs I managed to click at Blog Camp Pune 2 when I could disengage myself from the talks. Snaps are hosted on Flickr, please click to get higher resolutions. My thanks to all the ‘un’-organizers of the event for making this such a flawlessly smooth event!
A lot of things have been happening at An Unquiet Mind. A journalist quoted me in the Hyderabad edition of The Hindu. AUM is now on Twitter here and you can see my tweets in the sidebar.
I have been chosen to contribute to MakeUseOf.com on a trial basis. I have loved MUO since a long time, and I am eagerly looking forward to writing about “Cool Websites, Software and Internet Tips”.
MakeUseOf.com has 54K+ subscribers, and is part of PC Magazine’s “Top 50 Blogs”.
This is my first foray into professional writing since 1996. Wish me luck! 
PS: Do you like the new About Myself?
Very few people I know blog about death. It is not a pleasant subject, and essentially, one reads blogs to be happy. But let’s face it, death is very real. Though cyberspace was once known as the virtual world, it is becoming increasingly real, and the overlap between online and offline is getting increasingly complex.
As bloggers, gamers, sellers, artists, online community participants – we are increasingly living very real online roles. We have our own avatars. Our own bookshelves. Our Facebook personae. Our LinkedIn profiles.
So what happens when we die? Death is sudden and unexpected for most people. What happens to their blogger friends? How do their Facebook or Orkut friends know? What about items they have put up on sale on eBay? What if they’re part of an open-source development community and are actively contributing to projects?
Don’t take this lightly. Sudden disappearance in the virtual world can cause a great deal of concern and have a wider impact than one may suspect. Our social world and legal systems take care of the eventualities in our offline life, but what about our online life when we really go offline? Who are the legal heirs of the copyrights to our creative digital content that we so meticulously safeguard?
CNET’s Technically Incorrect blog post inspired this post. It describes two website services that send out emails you’ve composed after you die. Deathswitch has a free account option with one recipient and no attachments. With a tagline of “Bridging Mortality”, it encourages you not to take your secrets to the grave. SlightlyMorbid does not have a free account, but has a “Free Trial”.
Startup Concept – WebGraveyard
How about WebGraveyard.com? When fully functional and out of beta, Web Graveyard can offer:
- My GraveSpace – automatically imported social networking profiles like Facebook and MySpace
- My Memoirs – a diary of your blogs on Blogger/Wordpress
- My Graveiti – comments on your blog and by visitors to your eGrave
- My YouTomb – the videos you’ve uploaded to YouTube
- My Gallery – automatically imports your Picasa web albums, Flickr photos, etc.
- My GraveRoll – links to eGraves of your friends
- My Graveatar – automatically imported Gravatar
- GrMail – automated email reminders of significant events in your lifetime like anniversaries
Premium Services
- Users can import your birthdays and anniversaries into their Google Calendar or Outlook
- High-resolution gallery of Tombstones
- Templates for great Epitaphs
- Users can drag and drop flowers on your eGrave from an abundant gallery of beautiful arrangements
- GPod – automatically import and create a replica of your iPod
- Your favorite last.fm playlist plays in the background when visiting your eGrave
Any takers for funding this startup? Any more ideas how it can be made more ‘user-friendly and productive’?
As Paul points out, the Intellectual Blogger Award is gaining traction thanks to the gracious and kind support of remarkably intelligent bloggers. I thought it would be a good idea to maintain a list of the awardees at a central place for reference. This list would be like an Intellectual Bookshelf – a rich and varied source of great ideas, when you’re hungry for food for thought.
So I have updated the Intellectual Blogger Award page to list all the awardees. I once again thank everyone for their support in taking this forward.
Nita has kindly tagged me for listing strengths of a writer that I aspire to have. I read a few excellent writers who’ve contributed to this before, like Suburban Life, The Individual Voice, Joe Felso, MariaCristina, and of course, Rambodoc. I liked MariaCristina’s way of listing each strength along with an example. All these writers excel at their craft, leaving me dumbfounded. So as Nita suggested, I will start by blanking out previous insights and starting afresh.
- English is my second-language. I couldn’t write basic, decent English till I was 17 years old. The Wren and Martin grammar they taught us in school was an insipid, laborious, meaningless exercise. It was several years later that I discovered The Elements of Style, and entered the world of English writing. If anyone asks me which is the one book to read about English writing, that is it. This "little book" can be read here for free.
- Be intimately knowledgeable of William Safire’s Rules for Writers.
- Read. After you’ve read, study it as a writer. Reading as a reader is different from reading as a writer. You cannot write unless you read. You cannot write well unless you study writing as a writer. Over time, you won’t need to read twice.
I learnt the above by applying film appreciation skills to the art of writing. Watching movies doesn’t make anyone a better actor or director or script-writer. Only if you watch the movie from a script-writer’s perspective will you learn about the art of script-writing. - Honesty, passion, sincerity, and practice. I need not say more.
- Voltaire said "If you wish to converse with me, define your terms". We may not want to be as unreasonable as that in our daily lives, so let’s just say "If you wish me to read your writing, you better be able to back up your words with definitions". There is a difference between ‘knowing’ the meaning of words to be able to make good conversation, and knowing the meaning of words you use to write.
- I meet two kinds of people. On one hand are passionate lovers of words and language. They are finicky about whether they prefer Oxford or Merriam Webster. On the other hand are those who respond "whatever", when you painstakingly explain the precise meaning of your interpretation of a word. If you wish to improve vocabulary, subscribe to A.Word.A.Day – I joined in 1995.
If you wish to write well, overcome inertia and proactively refer the dictionary and thesaurus. In the pre-Internet era, we used to have these huge reference books by our side to refer when we were writing. Now, it’s so simple! - Writing is 99% thinking and 1% typing (or penning). What this means is that you can engage in the act of ‘writing’ when your commuting, or having a shower, or lying in bed. I often think of topics, structure, elements of the content, and the key message, while I’m away from the computer. When I do get a chance to type, it is just a matter of crystallizing what you’ve already thought through.
- If the 1% typing takes 99% of the time, you need to learn typing. I learnt typing on a physical typewriter in my 10th grade, when I decided on IT as my career. Then I improved my speed using typing tutor software. It has paid handsome rewards. I’ve met people who fumble at the keyboard and proudly talk about how their hands can’t keep pace with their fast-thinking minds. I wondered why their smart minds never gave priority to improving their typing skills.
Improving your typing speed helps you write faster and better, since you are not distracted with typing and can let your mind flow freely, while your hands automatically type it for you. - Be comfortable. Do not confuse external environmental factors with your ability to write. Have you slept well? Is the background noise or lack of sufficient light hampering you? Don’t get frustrated and give up. The negativity may be an external influence, not an innate inability.
- I initially used to have trouble imagining my reader while I was writing. Then I learnt to write ‘to myself’. I no longer visualize or imagine a reader, I write as if it is for me to read.
- Use the right tools to improve your efficiency. Choose the chair, keyboard, mouse, and screen according to your ergonomics. I use the Opera browser as its inbuilt shortcuts help me tremendously in referencing and researching while writing. Select your tools as per your convenience and use them efficiently.
- If you’re Indian, you might want to check this presentation I’d made about avoiding common English errors. People from the same culture where English is a second language tend to make similar mistakes. This essentially works like a meme. A typical Indian example is ‘updation’, which can be commonly found in Indian English, but is not an English word.
The above are factors that help me to write better. It is a never-ending road, so I too need to revisit each of the above regularly. As Nita correctly and graciously pointed out, I’ve a desire to learn about the craft of writing and am still learning.
To take this further, I’ll tag Asuph, hoping that his blog gets well soon!
(Image Credits: Details of a Waterman 42 Safety Pen, public domain.)
-
-
An Unquiet Mind by Mahendra Palsule is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
