500 and My Blogging Biography

This is my 500th post on this blog. Come to think of it, its been an interesting journey.

I am not a celebrity blogger as yet, and in all probability I would never be one but blogging has been a really important part of my life. I have made very good friends (Megha, Priyadarshini, Ravi, Sandesh, Sanjukta, Shankar), learned so many things, found an avenue to express my thoughts, made public my inner most thoughts, shared with the world things that I am really fond of and a lot of other frivolities.

I think it all started sometime in 2000 when I saw Aakash, a very good friend from MAC update his profile page on yahoo. I did not know that time that Yahoo has this page where you can write your profile. I still remember he was using the only computer with a pathetic dial up network in out computer lab.

I went to a friend’s place that very day and created a yahoo email account (I no longer use it – dont remember the password). And that was the beginning. After that I created my own yahoo profile, created a lot of websites for my self and for other people including my college fest, Lucky Ali and Simone Singh. I extensively used Geocities and other yahoo tools. No I knew had heard of blogging, social networking, even Google.com in those days.

Then all of a sudden Y2K happened. Along with it came a lot of new thoughts, opportunities and information. Online activity was limited to emails on yahoo mail, chats on yahoo chat rooms, games on yahoo games, websites on geocities, freeservers and buildtolearn. It’s funny how those days life revolved around yahoo and now its around Google. Wondering what would it be tomorrow.

And then somewhere in 2004, I stumbled onto blogging. Yet again because of Aakash. Started this blog and have been writing since. There are times when I post every 5 minutes and there are times when I dont write a single word for weeks. But somehow my interest in blogging never waned. I then thought one blog is not enough. And I started a blog for posting my pics, this, this and this for posting my thoughts on travel, one for stocks, one for my not-so-random thoughts, one for MDI, one for MML and a host of other ones that I dont even remember now.

Then sometime in 2005, I registered SaurabhGarg.com to move all my unofficial pages at one place. I had esaurabh.8m.com (unfortunately I have forgotten the password to this one too) and a lot of pages sprinkled on the Internet.

Then I had this itch to start contributing to more websites and getting a wider audience and discussions, I started looking for more avenues to write and express myself. Sanjukta introduced me to mutiny.in. I found what Ashish was doing at pluggdin and thoughts users at VentureWoods would be able to add a lot to my understanding of the businesses. And then I started writing for these people. It has helped me a lot already and will hopefully meet more interesting people.

And this brings me to a very interesting point now. What should I do with my blog. I have realized that blogging is one of the best initiatives that I have ever taken. And this is probably something that I have not left mid way. I tend to get bored too soon from things and there are times when I thought that I need to move away from blogging but somehow I was always back.

Now as I write this 500th post for this blog, I think I need to create a blogging policy. I need to update my blogs frequently to remain pertinent. I need to write sense. I need to think before I actually write things. Things like one post per week on mutiny.in, one post per week on pluggdin, one post per fortnight on VentureWoods, one post every two days here. Even if I dont have the ideas, I will have to think hard and come up with ideas. I need to bring a discipline in my blogging.

To end it, I can now be found on the Internet at my website, my blogs, and various other places including LinkedIn, Twitter, Tlickr, Friendfeed, Blogger, PBwiki, , Facebook, Orkut etc. Long term goal is to get listed on Wikipedia.

And hopefully reach more milestones with blogging. Signing off.

Why?

I wrote this piece some time ago. Its about time I posted it.

In my opinion everything you do must have a “Why” answered before its done.

Why “The Infinite Monkeys”?

Because there are million things on your mind at any given point in time and there is no way that you an keep track of them on paper notebooks. Maximum you can scribble them. Chances are that you would misplace the notes and then they would be lost forever.

Logical question is that isn’t blogging tougher than scribbling .. ? Answer would be .. yes it is but it gives me an easy retrieval system. Better than text files and notebooks. Data is all about retrieval. Without retrieval, its plain old information. And information by itself has no real value.

TIM is an attempt to collect online, all thoughts and things that can be helpful. It could be a news clipping, an article, a link, an interview, a piece of thought, a doodle. Anything.

Why online?

Its easier to read later. Recollect thoughts.

Why blog?

Ideally I would want a system where I can post my current moods, locations etc. This would make it very easy to recall at a later date. Since I don’t have a system like that, anything that is close enough serves the purpose. And hence Blogger. I can post things with an email address and can write and edit at will. I can also put categories to the posts and all thoughts would be in context. I can make tag clouds. I can hunt for similar posts and get feedback and opinion from people.

Tags

Tags

Advertisements, Apple Computers, BarCamp, Benjamin Franklin, Biking, Bill Gates, Books, Business in India, Cartoons, Charlie Munger, Comics, coolHunting, Cricket, CSS, Customer Service, Delhi, Design, Evolution, Idiot Box, i-pod, Hockey, Humor, History, Google, Geekdom, GapingVoid, Gaming, FlashFiction, India, Innovation, Internet, Interviews, K.K., LinkedIn, Lyrics, Malware, Marketing, Markets, Music, Mumbai, Movies, Mental Models, MDI Gurgaon, MBA, Post-It Notes, Prof. Bakshi, PseudoSocial, Politics, People, Quotes, S.R.K., Seth Godin, Simpsons, Social Networks, Steve Jobs, Super Mario Bros, Stocks, Sports, Social Psychology, t3ch-N0-logy, Think Tank, Third Eye, Thoughts, Travel, User Generated Content, VCs, Virals, Warren Buffet, Web 2.0, WishList

The Future of War of Words

I have been blogging on War of Words for quite some time now. I have talked about everything under the sun. From personal things to rants against people to photography to investments to lyrics to even one-liners.

War of Words has changed form ever these last four years. It has evolved form a personal journal to a pot pourri of thoughts, opinions and news. A brief history would be

When I started a blog, I did not know what am I supposed to do with an online journal. I posted everything I could think of.

Somewhere down the line, I thought you could make money out of a blog with Adsense. I started working towards it. Obviously with 1000 things on my mind, it failed.

Then I thought I would contribute to the wave of open journalism and citizen reporters. I did not have quality or the depth to make a dent and become the next Ragahv Behl.

Next was becoming an evangelist (probably the single most overused, abused and misquoted word after “strategy”). I did not become one.

And this is where I stand today.

I get about 20 unique visitors a day. Mostly land here from search engines. Not a single friend, colleague or a neighbour is a regular visitor. Only person to have bookmarked War of Words with a RSS Reader is myself. People have landed here searching for Pictures (India Unity Pictures), Advertisements (Keep Walking), Guitar Tabs (Saawariya), Famous People (Sachin Tendulkar) etc.

I have not made a zilch of difference to anything or anyone with this four years old online presence. I sure have developed a super-inflated ego, opinion on things and a biased view of world.

A decision needs to be taken on future of War of Words.

Blogadda.com spamming blogs

Just got this comment on one of my posts and obviously this is a spam comment from Blogadda.com

This is second attempt in last few days (after MapmyIndia) when someone has tried using comments advertising.Get your act together guys. Think of a better way of advertising your service aka product.

These guys should learn from Saawariya. Saawariya took permission before they posted advertisements. They entered blogs through a subtle route rather than praising posts that have no merit.

Looks like lots of Web 2.0 companies out there need lessons in Web 2.0

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Kiran < noreply-comment@blogger.com>
Date: Oct 31, 2007 5:02 PM
Subject: [The War Of Words] New comment on iPhone iTouched.

Kiran has left a new comment on your post "iPhone iTouched":

I really liked ur post, thanks for sharing. Keep writing. I discovered a good site for bloggers check out this www.blogadda.com , you can submit your blog there, you can get more auidence.



Posted by Kiran to The War Of Words at Wednesday, October 31, 2007 4:08:00 PM

I Can Not Live

People Tree has got some of the best T-shirts anywhere in India. Located on the Janpath in Caunnaught Place (aka CP – I can never get the spellings right) in Delhi, I have been frequenting this store for about 7 years now.

Yesterday I got this another T, it reads …

I can not live
if I have to do things just because
I am expected to do them,

I can not breathe
if I have to do things
just the way they are
supposed to be done

I can not make
life – a mere happy
existence, a fixed
pattern of rituals –
a set of rules

Constantly
I will fly
I will dream
I will achieve realize
& I will LIVE …

I always thought it was difficult to capture what I thought about life. But the guy who wrote these lines humbled me. Interesting thing is that he has been able to connect with me. I feel exactly the same way about life. “I can not make life a mere happy existence”.

Point to ponder is that are there more people who think like this … ? Do I have company? Anyone cares to share their dreams … ?