Saurabh Garg on The New New Thing

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There was I time when I would boot my blog editor on Blogger and post about every small leaf moving with every strand of wind. And then there came a time when I would post things that are truly monumental.

As we increasingly live in a digital world where every bit of data and information you put anywhere on the Internet can be searched and indexed and retrieved easily. And moving with the times, I need to change the way I blog.

I will no longer create a new post on every small update. Now its about one place for everything related to a particular topic.

• This might mean several edits on the same post.
• This would mean trouble for people reading my blog from RSS readers.
• This would also mean comments going out of context. This would mean more trouble.

But I think the trouble is worth it. A post would no longer remain a small rant on things. It will, over a period of time, become a long page with lots of details on a particular topic. It will become Saurabh’s personal Wikipedia. In fact I had realized this long back and hence the pbWiki.

Also I have realized that juggling multiple blogs is very difficult. Apart from contributions to mutiny.in, pluggd.in, venturewoods, I manage quite a few blogs. My photoblog, personal blog, new new thing, Friends from Creativeland, value investing and probably a lot more blogs that I am forgetting (yes unofficial MDI blog, MML blog etc.). It is very difficult to juggle between all these. You tend to put a lot of effort on creating one and promoting it and as a result you ignore the other ones to die their natural, slow and painful death.

What do you think? Should I post on every small think? Or one large post with lots of data and information works?

Every Friday I will now post an update that will talk about the week that went by and what to expect on the coming weekend.

• To begin with, its 08.08.08 and its a date that I will not see for rest of my life (until someone discovers the magic formula that can extend the human life span).
• The date also marks inauguration of Olympics in Beijing, China. India has never done great things in Olympics but this time I think we will come back with at least 5 medals - one from Tennis (Paes n Bhupathi), two from shooters (Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore and Manavjeet Singh Sandhu), two from boxers (Jitender Singh, Akhil Kumar) and one from Athletics (Anju Bobby George).
• This week also saw the launch of n00b.in blog. More information about n00b.in is available here.

Hits

• Nokia E 66: Nokia sent me a brand new E66 to review on my blog. The device looks awesome, will post a complete review once I have seen most of it, but the best part is the barcode scanner. It can read QR codes and interpret data. I see this as one of the most powerful things for time to come. At Cannes this year, Korean delegates already spoke about the interesting uses they are putting QR Codes to. The possibilities are endless. Will do another detailed post on QR codes. BTW the image on this post is QR code pointing to mt blog. Try it.
• India.Alltop.Com: I bribed my way into India.Alltop.com. This means I need to be more responsible while blogging. I need to produce better content. And I expect more visitors and subsequently more discussions and since they are coming from Alltop, I expect the quality of discussions to be better.

Misses

• Had decided to participate in the Nokia USID competition. Will miss the deadline and end up disappointing self and a very dear friend who had volunteered to help. Had quite a few ideas but could not put them in perspective.

Random Musings

• Indian brands on Twitter: Fasttrack is often quoted as a brand that has done well on Twitter in India. I asked tons of people on twitter about watches and I clearly showed my intentions of buying a watch but they never reached me. Its a fail. Ideally moment I publish this, they should know that I am talking negatively about their brand and they should somehow fix it. Lets see.
• Social Media: Nokia chose me to review one of their devices. Interesting use of Social Media to get bloggers to write about their devices. Few questions, why and how did they choose me? Is this replicable for other brands as well? Is this cost effective (I can always run away with an expensive phone) etc.
• Personal work style: I realized that I relish working at night more than the day time. I think its in the psychology. I think I like the fact that entire world around me is sleeping and I am sneaking ahead of them. I dont want to be part of any race to the top of mountain but I dont know why do I feel like this.
• Wordpress: I am using wordpress for quite sometime now and I think time is ripe to start reading more about it. I will spend this weekend trying to understand wordpress and in process learn a bit of PHP and wordpres moding. Lets see how it turns out.
• TED: TED talks is one of the most wonderful things to have happened to planet since Internet. I am on this mission to see all the talks on the website by end of this year.
• Quarter-Life Crisis: Avery good friend sent this Wikipedia link and everything on that page can summarize what I think. Except “desire to have children” part.
• If I was to tag this post properly, the number of tags on this post will exceed the post size. ;P But what the heck, it helps people find relevant content here and at other places.

P.S.: Inspired in part from Sampad’s Blog. Will update this as and when I remember more things.

What started as a random message on twitter, has now spiraled into something larger.

I sent this message on Twitter asking if anyone would like to co-author a book with me using Twitter and Web as medium. Idea was to use Twitter as a communication medium to write a book. I did not have a clue what the book would be on. What the title would be. What the storyline would be. How would we collaborate. I just wanted to see if people would want to participate in this experiment. And yes, in less than an hour, 5 people had replied.

Siyab, SimplyArun, kv, Asfaq and gsik agreed to be a part of the experiment. We soon exchanged emails and figured how would be go about it. I shall keep updating this once we flesh out the details.

Keep tuned.

UPDATE ON 13 Jul 2008: Setup a wiki to help Collaboration. PBWiki Link
UPDATE ON 13 Jul 2008: Setup a blog. Twitter Book Blog

Image Credits: Flickr

Ok. Focus 2.0. From now on I am only talking about Entrepreneurship, Starting Up, Innovations, Ideas, Communication, Technology .. contd ..

Social Media, Marketing, Digital World, Advertising, Business, Investing, Photography, Gadgets, Geekdom, Travel, Books, India .. contd ..

Customers, Engagement, Activation, Gaming, Politics, Education, Media. And I will try adding to that list.

P.S.: Messages on Twitter (1, 2, 3).
P.P.S.: I am serious.