A photo = 1000 words! It’s a phrase popular in journalism. And, now it is increasingly being taken into accounts by Nepali bloggers who have been posting photos regularly. In fact, many of the Nepali blogs feature photo-features
Maoists rebels attacked Palpa on Jan 31 night and the photos of devasted district headquarters have been uploaded in United We Blog! There are 11 exclusive photos. Continue reading…
The virtual world of Internet is huge. It’s impossible to keep track of even a tiny pie of it. There are pages dedicated to information, knowledge, wonders, dark secrets and many more. Here’s just a small collection of the websites for relaxation, laughing out loud and wondering: Continue reading…
Blogs today were all but focused on King Gyanendra’s speech on the anniversary of the Feb 1, 2005 when he took over the control of the state through a Royal Proclamation.
United We Blog! has the speech in English while BloggerNepal has the podcast. NepalInfo called the speech ‘meaningless‘. Continue reading…
“For all this, I must admit, the bloggers put pressure on us.”
These are words of Kiran Nepal, the co-ordinator of HimalKhabar.com, a Nepali news portal from Himal Media during the official launching of the site.
I am happy becasue bloggers are inspiring (‘pressure’) people to go to internet and to go in an interactive way. Rajendra Dahal, the editor of Himal, the popular Nepali fortnightly, said they want to tap the young generation by going the web-way. “Today’s youth are not reading Himal because they check news online,” he said. “We want them to read Himal, and it is only possible this way.”
Dahal added: “Though online media won’t kill print media in future, I am sure, print will live only by support from online media.” Wow!
The other thing I liked about the lauch was that I, along with Dinesh Wagle and Umesh Shrestha, were invited as the bloggers.
Roman to Nepali Unicode Converter launched today is simply a wonderful attempt that will help to grow Nepali language websites.
When I opened the mailbox this morning there was a mail from Nepali Unicode Project. It was about the Roman to Nepali Unicode Converter. I didn’t understand it first but when I visited the website (www.unicodenepali.com), I was amazed to see what it was.
When opened the site is two panes – the left is for typing Nepali in Roman (for example Ma Nepali Hun) and the right pane will convert it into Nepali unicode format. It allows people to type Nepali in Roman and get that in Nepali unicode and I hope this will not only make easy Nepali blogging for the people like me who don’t know Nepali typing. Continue reading…
Aha! It gives immense satisfaction as a blogger. United We Blog!, the pioneer blog site of the country, was named the Site of The Year 2005 by NepalVista.com. As a co-founder of UWB! its a plesure to see the site getting an award and more importantly – blogs are getting recognized. See the UWB! entry about it and the NepalVista page. Continue reading…
Let me share two emails I received today. One is from someone called Mark and its about a free blog host. I haven’t tried it yet but the advertisement suggests its promising:
Free Blogs, Done right. No Registration Fees. No Banner Ads. No Popup Ads. No Spyware. No Censorship. User Friendly Interface.WYSIWYG editor for writing with easy adding of picture and sound file. Integrated Media Management. Podcasting, automatic thumbnail generation, mass uploading of files. 60 Templates. Easy Trackbacks. Multiple User Blog.
Check it out.
The other is from UNESCO mailing list. Its about a book that UNESCO has just published – The Net for Journalists: A Practical Guide to the Internet for Journalists of Developing Countries. The pdf version can be downloaded (2.1 megabytes). Its written by Martin Huckerby. The table of content looks quite impressive.
The population of the blogosphere – the virtual world of the blogs – is 26.1 million. Blog, the shortened form of web-log, was the hottest Internet technology in 2004 which grew and matured in 2005 to become a household name.
The debate of whether blogging is journalism or not is over, as the critics have settled on the pendulum – in some cases, blogging is journalism, and in many, it’s not. The Pulitzer Prizes announced that they would accept online materials along with print ones in its journalism categories, starting with the 2006 competitions.
For many bloggers, blogging is a hobby, something that satisfies their soul by opening up their hearts. But blogs are more than that. Blogs are used for advertising or keeping intact the relations with their customers by corporate offices by what is called corporate blogging, for campaigning or advocacy, and even by many newspapers to tell the audience why something got published and others didn’t.
Instead of writing something, people record their thoughts and put them up (called podcasting) and upload the video (vblog). Blogs primarily are personal sites containing mostly news, called posts or entries, regularly updated, in the form of a diary with most recent posts at the top of the page and allowing visitors to instantly publish their comments. With many free services and tools available for blogging, it can be set up easily and is as easy as creating an email account.
For democratic nations, blogs are the media’s watchdog. In the countries with suppressed media, blogs are heralds of the freedom of expression. During calamities, like hurricanes or tsunamis or earthquakes, they are sources of firsthand information. Blogs are personal, thus biased and subjective. That very characteristic of it makes it better than traditional media in such incidents. What people prefer to read during such calamities – how many died and what are the police and government saying, or how the people are experiencing the incidents? Blogs go for the latter.
In 1998, there were just a handful of sites of the type that are now identified as weblogs, so named by Jorn Barger in December 1997. But within a few years, blogs became the buzzword – millions of people turned bloggers. Blog directory sites and blog search engines emerged along with free blog hosting services. Many freeware scripts for bloggings were introduced and the blogosphere was thus formed.
Blogs nowadays are personal identities – if you aren’t blogging, you’re missing something. Blogging is simple and blogging is easy. Blogging gives an individual an opportunity to tell the world what matter to him/her. As the heralds of free expression, blogging can take on any subject in any style and any frequency. That makes blogging popular to millions of people, and it looks like the fever of blogging won’t go down for a few years on.
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Blog jargons
Blog – Short for Weblog: A website that contains written material, links or photos being posted all the time, usually by one individual, on a personal basis.
Blogger – Person who runs a blog.
Blogosphere – All blogs or the blogging community.
Blogroll – List of external links appearing on a blog, often links to other blogs.
Moblog – Contraction of mobile blog: A blog that can be updated remotely from anywhere, such as by phone or a digital assistant.
Permalink – Contraction of permanent link. Web address of each item posted on a blog.
Photoblog – A blog mostly containing photos, posted constantly and chronologically.
Podcasting – Contraction of iPod and broadcasting. Posting audio and video material on a blog and its RSS feed, for digital players.
Post – An item posted on a blog. It can be a message or news or just a photo or a link. Usually a short item, including external links, that visitors can comment on.
RSS feed – The file containing a blog’s latest posts. It is read by an RSS aggregator/reader and shows at once when a blog has been updated.
Trackback – A way that websites can communicate automatically by alerting each other that an item posted on a blog refers to a previous item.
(From Handbook for Bloggers and Cyber-dissidents published by Reporters Without Borders)
(As published in the CityPost of The Kathmandu Post today.)
On the day when the capital city saw curfew imposed from 8:00am to 6:00pm, what to expect from the Nepali bloggers other than their experience about the curfew. For me, it was a bad day without the mobile and even internet (its just because I didn’t noticed that yesterday was the last day of my subscription!).
United We Blog! featured a photo entry with seven photos of the day. And a running blog by Dinesh Wagle about the condition of the city. Deepak Adhikari too wrote his experience about the curfew yesterday. Pradeep Chand rounds up many issues including the curfew. Deelip talks about his day under curfew.
During last two days, I could not put up the Best of Blogs and a few blogs I really liked to put includes one by Tajim about Future of Nepal. He presents eight alternatives one of which could happen in Nepal. Three interesting pictures taken at Basantpur yesterday is here.
Nepali blogosphere has just been created as a year ago, there was merely one or two blogs run by Nepalis. Blogs was a new word of technology. But now, the scene is changing with many, specially journalists, jumping into blogging. And, the journalist bloggers are not only blogging, they are looking to use mainstream media (MSM) to spread the words about blogging in Nepal.
The story of MSM publishing blog article begins with Kantipur daily when something encouraged the most popular Nepali daily to publish an article by Dinesh Wagle as the main piece in the expression page. Dinesh, who is co-founder of United We Blog!, the pioneering blogging site in Nepal, wrote a story about blogging which was much on international scenario. It was published on February 16, 2005.
I myself then wrote an article for Nepal weekly, the popular newsmagazine by Kantipur Publications in March, 2005. It was one-page write-up titled ‘Internet’s Open Diary’. The article attracted Martin Chautari, a forum of discussions, and asked us to give a session on blogging.
The next was by Anbika Giri, who still contribute to United We Blog! in Samaya Weekly newsmagazine in July, 2005. It was a two-page write-up with photos of some of United We Blog! bloggers with black band on mouth to protest the media ordinance. Titled New Source of News, the article dealt mainly with United We Blog! and how it rose to limelight establishing itself as a freer media during the time of press censorship.
KP Dhungana, the co-founder of BloggerNepal, then wrote a half-page article on Rajdhani daily. It was all about Nepal’s blogs with a little history of blogging. I don’t quite remember the date and sadly I could not find it Rajdhani’s website.
The latest in the line is Umesh Shrestha, the MeroSansar blogger. He has written a two-page article on Himal fortnightly – a very popular newsmagazine. Titled, Alternative Journalism: Blog, it is about history of blogging, Nepali language in blogs and has a list of freehosts and Nepali blogging sites. Although, it has prominently mentioned United We Blog! as a pioneering site, it has however missed to put the URL in the article.
In between, when United We Blog! organized a dinner program to celebrate its anniversary, Kantipur Television made a feature news on blogging with interviews of Dinesh, me and Umesh. Also, there was a good coverage about ‘blogging basics’ in Nepali Times weekly titled Why You Can’t Ignore Blogs Anymore by Aarati Basynat.
It looks like Nepali MSM are helping Nepali Blogosphere grow.
