Hayden's boo boo

Ah how good I felt after going through news portals last week.

What started with an angst against the passionate yet unruly Indian cricket spectators as well as the presumably lethargic Indian batsmen has now become a platform for us to showcase our achievements.

Reactions follow a typical pattern:

An introduction leading up to Hayden's comment.

The next paragraph features why Hayden's comment is factually wrong, with links to the relevant statistical data.

The third para demands that Hayden issue an apology; followed by some kinds words directed towards his mother.

Since the second paragraph would also unfailingly mention our wonderfully executed lunar mission, Hayden can give himself a pat on the back for contributing to this unique SEO method for promoting Chandrayaan-1.

Those trying to bank on satire have been dealt with severely, for example Their reaction to his post forcing him to apologize for his actions (seen in the update section of the post).

Akram is pissed and so is the BCCI. Australian Cricketer's Association has even suggested a shrink accompany the team on every tour to tackle the stress their players encounter on such tours. Though the ACA have not mentioned explicitly mentioned Hayden's name here, the implied reference should not be missed.

But then there's the other side of spectrum too. People from all walks of life are coming forward and joining Hayden's Sympathisers Anonymous (HSA). This tweet by a BBC Mastermind winner who has been identified solely by his initial J, says it all

Removing Blogrolls!

Innovation seems to be the most used jargon word in today's world (entrepreneurship loses out by a whisker). Every day I see newer feed reading products in their beta stages get their twitter accounts and advertise endlessly and find newer ways to make people use their products. The other day Nayak was telling me about a feedreader called Fresh and about a Twitter client called Alert thingy. Simultaneously I have been checking out a lot of new products too.

All this has made me think. Do we still need traditional blogrolls? Blogger Buzz updates me with this:

Today we’re releasing a new page element for Layouts blogs: Blog List. The Blog List improves on our Link List page element by using blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets.

And this works well with podcasts, twitter accounts etc too.

But now the question arrives, what if I have a huge list of feeds that I follow on my reader? And I have a list of friends on my blogroll who don't really update.

This is what I do.

One way or the other I do keep on checking blogs that are relevant to me(either students from my college or people I have met or people who link to me), but you don't really need a blogroll for that. (Google status messages, Technorati etc are helpful there). So in order to give my sidebar a more virgin look, I am cleaning up my blogroll and on leaving behind very very few links, mostly because, they're the only ones updating/or if they are really close pals.

Archer's blogging blunder

Image via Wikipedia

I guess not much needs to be said about celebrity blogging. Everyday as I read my feeds, I find another name from popular culture entering the blogosphere. Recently I had heard somewhere that Jeffrey Archer had his own simple blog which he was updating quite regularly. It was quite well maintained. With running commentary about his recent visit to India and tryst with Indian cricketers amongst others, the blog got me pretty hooked. And this was only the beginning. It was really this post that got me sitting up straight.

971 emails were awaiting me when I arrived back in the UK- the vast majority of them from India, and I must say that having been teased about calling Mumbai, Bombay, could someone please explain to me why they've changed the name of that city? And indeed Madras to Chennai? But it seems that Calcutta is still to be Calcutta - which I am much looking forward to visiting next year when I shall be opening Landmark's new bookstore.

Clearly not many people seem to be reading his blog for only four kind souls decided to retort saying that Mumbai and Chennai were the original names. It was only once HRM invaded our land that the names were changed. I will not even come to the Calcutta bit, but then this is where I start thinking. Is it Mr Archer’s lack of awareness of global changes showcased here or the global trend? As in, does the world really care whether Bombay became Mumbai again? Besides that, I’m pretty sure a lot of Indians still consider the IT hub of India to be called Bangalore.

Jeffrey, always a gentleman, readily accepted his blunder and apologised in the comments section.