Its been an okay PR update for me as I dint make real efforts and also dint update the blogs regularly, so I am kind of happy.

How did your sites/blogs fare in the PR update?

If you havent checked your PR’s as of yet, you can use this tool to check the PR of any site/blog or webpage.

Venue:Indian Institute of Mass Communication, JNU new campus, Aruna Asif Ali Marg,New Delhi – 110067
If you are attending the event,spread the word and show your support sporting these badges on your blog/website.

These nice posters were made by Abhinav aka The Photoshopper, who also made the logo for this blog!
So register yourself at the wiki and, see you there!

Well I could not attend the first day of the event as I had exams going on im my $hitty college (more on my college coming soon) but I was fortunate enough to attend the second day of the event. And what an expirience it was. 

The day started with me reaching the venue, Adobe office, NOIDA just 5-7 mins before event was scheduled to kick of. And just when i was tweeing my status, i met a guy whom i met earlier this month at twestival. Then we moved along and went inside the hall where along with other who were present. The event dint start which gave me enough time to configure and connect my SE P1i to wi-fi connetion
provided by Adobe which later proved all important as I was able to tweet live updates and pics.

Soon we began (already late) with Priyanka (aka twilightfairy), one of the main organisers, delivering the welcome address and also apologising for the delay. The fist session was by Ankesh Kothari on “Turning your WP blog into a business”.

It was followed by the best session of the day by Mr. Pavan Duggal who is a advocate in hon’ Supreme Court of India, speaking on “Copyright and Intellectual Proprty Rights”. We knew it would be an interesting interactive session as it is a topic of high importance given that bloggers need to know their rights and limits so as to help better deal with plagriasm, but little did we have the idea of how rocking it was going to be. He started off with the recent Noida MMS and then got entangled in some serious debate and discussions with the wordcampers who were shooting questions one after the another at him,and he never ducked a question,satisfied every soul which had a question on his/her mind. Questions were varied and covered almost every aspect of online world. 

Pavan Duggal on copyrights and IPR

Next was Aditya speaking on WordPress and AIR.He said the Adobe AIR app TweetDeck (for twitter) is a mess and uses a lot of resources.(thats true BTW). He also almost started a browser war.

Then we had a snack break and then came a great opportunity to meet Amit Agarwal. He was talking to a few guys (everybody wanted a piece of him). When i got a chance I shook hands with him. Then i talked to him about a few things including his Adsense earnings. He said he earns money sufficient enough to help him lead a confortable life. He says he drives an SUV and he is happy with it. When i asked if its $x,xxx or $xx,xxx /day, he says its not above $10,000 which makes me believe he bags something in higher four digit figure. (though i still believe he is atleast in lower five digits/day,he just dint disclose it ). I asked Ashish to click me a photo with Amit.

Me with Amit Agarwal (labnol.org) dream come true!

Then we had lunch and food was good.

Then we went in while there was another session was about to start on Adobe. I left in between as we planned a tweetup with wordcampers while tweeting live. hehe. I met abhishek,Ashok (of ewebguru), Rohit Khurana, and a few others too. Whilw the disscussion was still on,i dint realise it was time for session on “writing wordpress plugins” as i was very keen to attend so as to get started with it and have a little background info. Anyway,bad luck there.
We were also asked to write down a few suggestions for Matt on what we would like to see added to wordpress in future releases and Matt would pick one as the best and give a prize to the person. And as i was outside at mini tweetup,i missed that too.
Matt actually read all the comments/suggestions and said he really liked the handwritten comments and will take them back home.

Matt Mullenweg reading suggestions given by wordcampers

After that came the guy himself, Matt Mullenweg holding a session on wordpress.tv. He also talked about how “taxonomy” works.
About Matt,he is a very funny guy. He kept cracking up witty one-liners which made every one present there a fan of him. He is very humble,always smiling and very attentive to whatever whoever had to say (which was a lot,given the kind of celebrity status he enjoys in blogging community). He is a good listener. He was very cool about all of bugging him for getting pics with him.Infact, i had 3 photographs with him ( yay).

Me with Matt. Mission accomplished!

Whatsmore,I even asked him to click a photo for me from my SE P1i as i knew he is a good photographer. I asked him to click a random picture and this is what he came up with:

pic clicked by Matt from my SE P1i at wordcampindia

 I also thanked him for giving an awesome platform like wordpress and making our lives easy. I questioned Matt how much in advance he and his team thinks for new features to be incorporated in future wordpress releases and whether v 2.x.x and v 3.x.x will be hugely different? He said, he usually plan two releases in advance and every release is a big release and its not like 3.x.x will be hugely different from 2.x.x He said for them, 2.6 to 2.7 was a huge upgrade (it really was, v 2.7 is just awesome)

Anyway,we also saw a great panel discussion on “Will blogs replace mainstream media-India v/s US perspective” The panelists were (in pic from left to right) Mr Sanjay, Mr N Madhavan (Associate editor- Hindustan Times),Om Malik , and Matt. They laid down some intersting points and arguements,specially Madhavan and Om. Frankly speaking Matt was not looking as if he was enjoying the session (may he had a flight and wanted to get it over soon).
The last was the star of the day, Mr Pavan Duggal again on Indian IT act. Needless to say it was amazing too.
Then the winners of the feature suggestion contest were announced and the prizes were water calculator, colour changing coffee mug, torch set in that order for 1st, 2nd, 3rd prize. Matt and Om gave away the prizes and also other gifts to speakers. There was a lucky draw too (for wordcamp attendees) which had two prizes of 1 domain with 1 year hosting.
With that and a signing off note by Priyanka and Matt, the first ever wordcamp of India came to an end.
It was such huge success. people are still talking about it on the net. #wci was trending on twitter for both the days it was live. And I was one of the trend setters too!

As much as I loved the second day,I still regret to not be able to make it to the first day as first day had sessions by Matt (the founder of WordPress,the world’s most famous blogging platform),Om Malik(of GigaOm),Amit Agarwal (of labnol / Digital Inspiration)

I hope wordcamp India is back again next year with even more awesomeness. Congratulations and thanks to all the organisers Mayank Gupta,Priyanka,Sanjay,Abhishek,Delhi bloggers bloc for giving us such an opportunity! Hope you guys will be back next year with wordcampindia delhi 2010!

Here are few more pics:(click on images to see them full size)

attendees at wordcampindia before the event began

(anticlockwise) Me with Pavan Duggal,Matt and Om

Matt and Om working on their laptops talking to Priyanka and Mayank

More pics at my Flickr photostream 

P.S. If i mentioned your name and dint link to your site/blog,drop me a mesage with your blog name. If i dint mention your name and we met at wordcamp,drop me a message and ill include your name with your blog/site as well.

If you dont know, Delhi has this month already hosted Mozilla Camp on 10th Feb for which I was not fortunate enough to be able to attend it though I wanted so badly as I am a Firefox fan.

Then Delhi was host to Twestival too on 12 Feb 2009, which was a global event organised simultaneously in 175 countries to support charity:water.

And now, a real treat for wordpress users,fans,developers in Delhi and all over India: India’s first ever Wordcamp is being organised in Delhi on 21st and 22 Feb!

The mega event is being organised by Delhi Bloggers Bloc.
Now the best part. The highlights/biggies of the event are:
- Matt Mullenweg, the founder of WordPress, will be joining us! Its once in a lifetime opportunity to meet the brain behind the world’s most popular blogging platform.
- Om Malik, named one of the 100 most influential bloggers by cnet.
- Amit Aggarwal, of labnol, the BIG name of Indian blogosphere and the most successful Indian blogger.

Even if you dont use wordpress or you dont use wordpress, the above mentioned celebreties are themselves reasons enough to attend the event. (Just in case you dont know what wordpress is: WordPress is a state of the art blogging platform and is the preferred by most number of bloggers around the world. The power of wordpress lies in the customisation it offers by the means of plugins to enhance your blog’s virtually every aspect and turn it into a full fledged CMS. If you dont already use wordpress or are thinking of starting blogging, wordpress is all you need,look no further)

The event venue is Adobe, NOIDA: [map] (Adobe is also the sponsor for the event along with AUTOMATTIC)

            I-1A, Sector 25A
            Noida, U.P. 201301
            India
            Tel: +91 120 244 4711

Timings: 9:00 am to 6:00 pm

If you are interested,

You can also register on the spot, thought the fees will be slightly higher.

The agenda from the event page:

Day 1
09:00am – 10:00am: Registration/giveaways
10:00am – 10:05am: Welcome Address by Priyanka/Twilight Fairy – founder Delhi Bloggers Bloc
10:05am – 10:15am: Keynote by Om Malik, Gigaom
10:15am – 11:00am: “State of the word” by Matt Mullenweg
11:00am – 11:45am: Using WP to implement a radio site – Shreyas, from RadioVerve
11:45pm – 12:30pm: Implementing SEO in your WP blog : Abhinav Gulyani
12:30pm – 01:15pm: LUNCH
01:15pm – 02:00pm: How to get started after installing WordPress by Abhijeet Mukherjee, Jeetblog
02:00pm – 02:45pm: Optimising ads on your WP blog : Amit Agarwal, Digital Inspiration
02:45pm – 03:45pm: Interactive talk – Intellectual property rights/copyrights : Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme court of India
03:45PM – 04:00pm : Tea/coffee/snacks
04:00pm – 05:00pm : quiz for attendees + press interviews by Matt/Om
05:00pm – 05:45pm : Open house discussion with Matt & Om
05:30pm – 06:00pm: Closing of day 1

Day 2

09:00am – 09:30am: Registration /giveaways
09:30am – 09:35am: Welcome Address by Priyanka/Twilight Fairy – founder Delhi Bloggers Bloc
09:35am – 10:15am: WordPress as CMS for business sites : Ravish Ahuja, justskins.com
10:15am – 10:45am: WordPress, a lifestyle – Praval Singh
10:45am – 11:15am: Personal galleries and social networks with WP & Adobe AIR – Aditya
11:15am – 11:30am: Tea/coffee/snacks
11:30am – 12:00pm: Feature suggestion contest for WordCamp with Matt
12:00pm – 12:45pm: WordPress.TV – by Matt Mullenweg
12:45pm – 01:30pm: Writing WordPress plugins – Karthik Bala
01:30pm – 02:15pm: LUNCH
02:15pm – 03:00pm: Interactive talk – the amended India IT act 2000 – Pavan Duggal, Advocate, Supreme court of India
03:00pm – 03:45pm: Adobe’s new AIR apps – Adobe representative
03:45pm – 04:00pm: Tea/coffee/snacks
04:00pm – 04:45pm: Panel discussion moderated by Rajiv Dingra, WATBLOG – topics, speakers to be announced
04:45pm – 05:30pm: How to secure your WP blog by Mayank Gupta
05:30pm – 06:00pm: Feedback/closing of the event

Please note, the schedule may vary slightly on the actual day

Dammit, i am having my exams till 21st Feb and my exam will be over at 5:00 pm. SO i wont be able to attend 1st day. I cant believe i will miss Amit’s sessions

Anyway, if you have sometime, make sure not to miss it. (And dont forget to capture day one and share it with me)  :)

BTW, that is not all. Delhi will also be seeing a BarCamp from 28Feb-1March and a blogcamp from 7-8 March. I will write about them later.

To avail this offer, go to GoDaddy.com

Here is the prize list:

1st prize:

An elegant, fresh and beautiful premium wordpress theme: “Content Press – Premium Magazine/News Style WordPress Theme” woth $75 sponsored by wordpressland.com. The theme is well coded and 100% Valid XHTML/CSS and is ready for easy modification. Theme is also plugin and widget ready. The Content Press premium WordPress theme also includes a fully prepared theme for bbPress, a forum that ties into WordPress. (DEMO)

2nd prize:

An elegant, fresh and beautiful premium wordpress theme: “Magazine News – Premium Magazine/News Style WordPress Theme” woth $49 sponsored by wordpressland.com. The theme is well coded and 100% Valid XHTML/CSS and is ready for easy modification. Theme is also plugin and widget ready. (DEMO)

3rd prize:

$5 cash via Paypal (sponsored by Knayam)

4th prize:

1000 Entrecard credits (sponsored by Knayam)

5th prize:

500 Entrecardcredits (sponsored by Knayam)

All you have to do to enter the contest is:

1. Make a 40-50 word blog post about this contest at Knayam while also giving a link (no “no-follow” tags allowed) to wordpressland.com.(worth 2 points) Also, talk about wordpressthemes market is getting into the premium WordPress themes market in Japan with the site wordpressland.com (worth 2 points)

2. Subscribe to the feeds (of Knayam) by email.(1 point)

3. Leave a message here (1 point)

So you can earn upto 2+2+1+1=6 points.

You can just leave a message here in this post to be eligible for the contest but that will fetch you just one point. Earn more points for better chances of winning.

Winners will be chosen by a draw by me and the video of the same will be put up on the blog.

P.S. The themes will be the english versions,the same as the demo links and not the Japanese versions.

The contests ends 31 Jan 2009 at 23:59 IST.

P.S. All your links should be “no-follow” free.

Good luck!

SocialSpark is such a perfect idea that its a win-win formula for everyone, the bloggers and advertisers alike. Bloggers can chose the advertisers they want to write about and advertisers can also look for the bloggers with desirable niche. The main advantage is that unlike on other similar sites, most of the people will not shy away from writing about you from SocialSpark. Why? because they wont be getting spanked as SocialSpark allows them to use “no-follow” tags. So you can build a buzz about your product far far easily and for less as compared to other get-paid-to sites because bloggers will find themselves more comfortable writing about you with no-follow tag. They wont have to think about their Page Rank against your product, if thats worthy, ofcourse.

The system is very transparent. Whats more? It can work as a social networking tool as well.

So what are you waiting for? Just sign-up at SocialSpark.com and advertise your product today.

As for me, i would love to see some IT giants and manufacturers like Intel to chip in.

WordPress 2.6 codenamed “Tyner” was released yesterday. This was quite a quick release by the wordpress team given that their previous version 2.5 was released not more than 3 months ago!

The new wordpress 2.6 includes many cool features as compared to v 2.5.1.
Some of the features are:

1. You can

track changes

to a post in a la Wikipedia manner. You can track the various changes, restore them and also compare the different versions! Its particularly very useful when you are running a collaborative blog i.e. with more then one authors.

2.

“Press this” button

You can add a “Press this” bookmarklet to your browser’s tool bar and write a blog entry right from the page on which you find an interesting thing you think you should blog about by just pressing the “Press this” button. A pop-up will appear and you will be able to blog from right there and will be able to extract the photo or video from that page,if available.

3.

“Turbo” charge your blog

Gears is an open source browser extension project started by Google that developers like us can use to give you features we wouldn’t normally be able to. There are a lot of things we can do with Gears in the future, but in this release we’ve stuck to using what’s called a “Local Server” to cache or keep a copy of commonly-used Javascript and CSS files on your computer, which can speed up the loading of some pages by several seconds (they just pop right up!). You can install Gears for Firefox or Internet Explorer, with support for Safari and Opera pending. WordPress works just fine without it, you just get a little extra juice when you have it installed.

4.

Preview themes

You can now preview the themes before activating them so you can really experiment with your theme(s) before making the changes visible to your audience.

5.

Image caption

WordPress 2.6 gives you an option to add a caption to your images.

6.

Word count

You can now see the length of your posts while you are writing them.

7.

Bulk management of plugins

Activate or de-activate plugins in bulk. Phew thats very important.

Other features are:

#A completely revamped image control to allow for easier inserting, floating, and resizing. It’s now fully integrated with the WYSIWYG.
# Drag-and-drop reordering of Galleries.
# Plugin update notification bubble.
# Customizable default avatars.
# You can now upload media when in full-screen mode.
# Remote publishing via XML-RPC and APP is now secure (off) by default, but you can turn it on easily through the options screen.
# Full SSL support in the core, and the ability to force SSL for security.
# You can now have many thousands of pages or categories with no interface issues.
# Ability to move your wp-config file and wp-content directories to a custom location, for “clean” SVN checkouts.
# Select a range of checkboxes with “shift-click.”
# You can toggle between the Flash uploader and the classic one.
# A number of proactive security enhancements, including cookies and database interactions.
# Stronger better faster versions of TinyMCE, jQuery, and jQuery UI.
# Version 2.6 fixes approximately 194 bugs.

And oh, by the way BT-G.com: The Everything Blog has upgraded to the latest version 2.6 of wordpress. We were late to upgrade last time but very quick to do it this time.

If you wish to upgrade then follow these easy steps here. Or you could also use this excellent plugin: WordPress automatic upgrade.