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I’ve finally gone and become self-hosted at http://nidhimakhija.com. Social Media + India took a hiatus for a bit, but is now up at  http://nidhimakhija.com/blog

If you try to head over to this web address, you’ll simply be redirected to the new site (and possible a weird-looking error404 page. I’m working on fixing that!) You can also find all previous posts and comments at the new url.

I hope to see you there!

Check out what I found on the YouTube blog today:

Earlier this week, we announced the launch of YouTube EDU (youtube.com/edu), a hub for videos from over 100 of our leading university and college partners. Think campus tours, news about cutting-edge research, and lectures by professors and world-renowned thought leaders. There are also 200 full (and free!) courses, in a range of subjects, from some of the world’s most prestigious universities, including IIT/IISc, MIT, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UCLA, and Yale.

That’s right, that was IIT/IISc before MIT and the other American universities! (IIT/IISc = Indian Institute of Technology/Indian Institute of Science).(Sorry, I have a juvenile pride when it comes to anything Indian)

The IIT/IISc YouTube channel is part of the National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning (NPTel)’s efforts “to enhance the quality of engineering education in the country by developing curriculum based video and web courses.”

IIT/IISc on YouTube

The channel is pretty nifty. Over 14,000 subscribers and over 600,000 channel views, AND Continue Reading »

This is probably a little premature considering it’s only March.

But I’m inspired by the winter  weather here in Boston. Snow, wind, storm – all that good stuff. Everyone’s updating their Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, Brightkite accounts with references to snow. In fact, WeatherNewEngland.com even incorporates a Twitter stream on it’s home page. And got video blogger Steve Garfield to stream on their website.

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It got me thinking. How awesome would life be during the monsoons if we had social media tools working out for us. Say I wanted to drive from Bandra to Town side (anywhere from a 30min to 90min journey) and didn’t know which parts of Bombay were flooded. I could tweet a question and hope that someone who had just made the journey or lived in that area would get back to me. Real time help. Life would be so much easier.

Ideally, there could be a website that aggregates updates from a variety of social media sites. Continue Reading »

Was browsing news at Agency Faqs and came across an article on Voice Blogging: Too lazy to type? Voice blogging may help. The article explains what voice blogging is (not to be confused with vlogging which stands for video-blogging). And how social networking site Ibibo just introduced this feature 2 weeks ago. Then I read:

Bloggers, however, are worried about the cost of creating voice blogs. “Using a traditional voice recorder and then uploading that audio file costs nothing. But, when calling up a number is involved which is, for instance, a Delhi number, then a blogger from Kerala or Malaysia may not want to spend much,” said Neena Reuben, a blogger. Continue Reading »

It was only a few months ago that Indians used social media to unite against the November terrorism attacks. It’s great to see other groups use social media for other causes like physical attacks on women for instance. But the recent brouhaha with the Pink Chaddis vs. the Pink Condoms campaign shows how hard it can be to organize and unite Indians on the web.

Pink Condoms Poster

Pink Chaddis Poster

What exactly are the Pink Chaddis and Pink Condoms campaign?

This all started when a radical political group in Mangalore, the Sri Ram Sena, decided to take laws into their own hand. Declaring themselves the “custodians of Indian Culture,” they attacked, beat up and kicked women in bar in Mangalore. Why? Because they were in a bar, which is ‘un-Indian.’ But beating up women…. isn’t that… shouldn’t that be un-Indian too?!?!!? Continue Reading »

Notice the (+etc.) in the title of this site? This post falls into that.

**For non-Americans – Americans are in love with their version of football (more rugby than our ‘soccer’) and spend millions advertising during the Superbowl – professional football finals. It doesn’t mean the ads are the best ads, they just get a LOT of views. This year’s got around 90million viewers. The ads typically target lots of drunk men.

Miller Beer decided to spend only $100,000 on their ad, they made a One Second Ad. It was a great campaign idea, and the ad is awesome:

So are the ads that could’ve been:

@ShahRukh_Khan – is it really him?? Only time will tell.

SRK's Twitter page

I love the background image. So he has 4 updates as of now, 31 followers and isn’t following anyone yet. I wonder if it’s really him…. or is it some PR person…. and if so, I kinda wonder how much he’s paying this PR person. Because that is a job I would LOVE to have! Continue Reading »

Just got off the phone with Dushyant Bhatia, the 23 year old CEO of Blogertize.in which has been gaining quite some hype and was even featured on KillerStartups.

blogertize

ABOUT BLOGERTIZE

Blogertize is a young startup advertising firm-meets-online shopping portal. In fact, it’s only a few months old and was started in Sept 2008. They’re selling ad spaces to bloggers for $15 – $150 (Rs. 750 – Rs. 7,500) for a period of 3 years using pixel advertising – selling a certain number of pixels (2,000px, 4,000px etc.) at different prices. Bloggers can upload an image or the logo of their blog on this space. Roll over the image, and the blog description comes up. Here’s an idea of what the ads would look like. Gotta say, the design isn’t impressive thus far. Continue Reading »

Here’s a quick post while I’m working on my other, longer post-review on www.blogertize.in

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As you may have noticed, there’s a ton of Twitter apps out there and more coming out everyday. It can be a little overwhelming if you haven’t used any of them, how do you know where to start! Lucky for all of us amateur-tweople, @NischalShetty has begun to compile a list of Twitter apps at http://www.twi5.com (you can follow updates at @twi5). He breaks it down very well, explaining in simple English what the plus points of each app is. You should check the site out, even if you’re a seasoned tweeter, you may find something you’ve missed out on!

And Nischal’s  updating the site very often, since people are constantly recommending new apps for him.

Here’s one that isn’t up there yet that my friend @paulou recommended: twistori. It’s really cool, tracks all the tweets out there that have the words love, hate, think, believe, feel and wish.  The site has a gorgeous design as well – and is now my mac screensaver. Yay!

:)

Wow, it’s been a while since my last post. This one’s going to be about Slumdog Millionaire, in honor of its release in India today (even though I’m pretty sure a large number have already seen it online or on DVD!).

The movie’s pretty good, has some wonderful shots of Bombay that you don’t see in the typical Bollywood cop-chase in the slums. The movie makes the slums look so scenic, almost tranquil.  I love how the plot ties in with the show Kaun Banega Crorepati (or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire as it is in the movie). The movie was based on a book by Vikas Swarup, Q&A (Amazon for only $18 – my roommate and I are dying to read it). The plot in the book sounds a bit different, apparently Jamal goes to jail and has a lawyer. Interesting stuff.

But ofcourse, being a Mumbaikar, I had to pick up on every-non Indian thing in the movie! Continue Reading »

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