Radio Idli version 2.0 launched

This post concerns one of my dearest projects, an achievement of my life so far - www.radioidli.net. This is a website and a project dedicated to my talented community

"We need to have our own site and total control on our content" urged Sankalp in a chat few months back.

Unyielding and stubborn as i am, i defended my choice to stick to blogger and the other free platforms that the Internet God - Google and the other angels like esnips provide.

Radio Idli had achieved early fame through a couple of press coverage by DNA and Indian Express, and a television interview by CNN IBN. Its popularity within the Saraswat community it served, grew with some good contributions. It won the support of professional performers, community institutions and the listeners at large.

My debate with Sankalp that evening ended with an indefinite tag... "Lets see".

Few months later, Sankalp decided to book our own custom domain name - RadioIdli.net (as against the older radioidli.blogspot.com). A couple of more months later, he came back saying that he had got an irresistable deal for hosting which was customized for a multimedia web 2.0 initiative like ours.

Thats where the making of Radio Idli 2.0 began. Sankalp and I both then started a journey towards selflearning of freely available open source applications that could help create a very strong medium. The journey which continues till date has been very exciting and enriching.

The first result of the same has been launched - Radio Idli Version 2.0.

Watch a community come alive on the internet - http://www.radioidli.net

Interview with K. V. Kamath

I had the fortune of taking a one question interview of Shri K. V. Kamath. He was at a community function arranged to felicitate him for winning the Padma Bhushan award.

He was very approachable and had good memory since he immediately traced our last meeting at a marriage function. He also remarked that he had visited my community blog - http://www.Radioidli.net to find the video clippings of the marriage.

You may find the photographs here: Http://picasaweb.google.com/radioidli
Today the same blog will carry his felicitation snaps and of course the interview.

Web 2.0 arrives at my workplace

Finally the day I was waiting for is here. One of the reasons why my company hired me is finally taking shape. Two of the best websites run by my employers which have been in existence well before the dotcom bubble and survived the burst, finally got curious about implementing social bookmarking to increase the reach of their wonderful articles.

The discussion happened over a small meeting two months back. And after thorough research we finally have the social bookmarking buttons added to select sections of the website. All this while i have been reading about the jargons of Folksonomy and the role of these sites like Del.icio.us and Digg as tools to increased salience on the internet. This is for the first time i would get to see it working, which i hope will work wonders on our website.

This is a small victory for me.. the larger one will be determined by the actual outcome of this.

cheers! nagesh