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500 Words Before 9

Alagappan — Sat, 10 Mar 2012 12:14:48 +0000

I came across Kiruba Shankar’s blogpost a couple of days ago where mentioned about an writing experiment of his. Kiruba is a well known speaker and author who is actively involved in various unconferences and similar events.

Internet is driven by content creation and it is one of the prime reasons for the staggering growth of internet startups. Photographs, Videos, Podcasts, Designs, Blogs everything is content. Most of the websites rely on the content created by its users and try to enhance how others interact with it. Twitter’s Tweets – content. Facebook status update – content. Flickr photo upload – content. Blog post – content. Email – content.

I for my part have been contributing a little content once in a while. Either through one of the rare blog posts here or through tweets or through comments etc on various blogs that I read regularly. I also regularly take photos when I travel. Though the photos are not equal to that of a pro, it serves its purpose of preserving memories and capturing the fun of the moment.

So when I came across the blog post about Kiruba’s experiment of writing 500 words before 9AM, I was influenced. I too decided to try out the experiment. I hope to write everyday. But not necessarily before 9. I’m not exactly a morning person (with the exception during trekking when I get up before sunrise to enjoy the feeling). With greater quantity it would be easy to improve on quality. So I will write. It can be a blog post here or an entry in my personal online diary, Oh Life or probably a set of tweets or some or all of them.

Headers on My Old Blog

Alagappan — Fri, 29 Apr 2011 12:33:26 +0000

I was going through my Picasa Web Albums when I came across an album which included some of the old headers that I had designed for my old blog which was hosted at blogger.

I did these when I was in college. Most of them in the middle of the night in a sleepy mode. Some of them are outright silly.

Gravatars for you

Alagappan — Sun, 03 Jan 2010 13:50:08 +0000

Gravatars are Avatars which you can use on your blogs, on other blogs where you comment and anywhere on the internet. Having an image associated with your mail ID enables you to easily use it in other blogs and websites without having to upload one on each of them.

Why am I telling you this?

This is because it gives you a complete blogging experience. Whenever you comment on other blogs you are given a plain image or a random image as an avatar. Instead, wouldn’t you like to have your image or an image of your choice follow wherever you post and comment? When I see comments on my blog posts I see a rather boring gravatar logo adjacent to the user’s name. I often wish that it’d be more interesting to have all my friends own an avatar for themselves and hence this post is an attempt in making them do so.

Just check out a small screen shot. Notice how having a gravatar gives that extra something to your comments.

What are Gravatars?

These are Globally Recognized Avatars which is a service provided by gravatar.com which is owned by Automattic.

How to get one?

Visit Gravatar.com.
Sign Up with your E-Mail ID.
After confirmation, upload an image to the gravatar site.
Resize and adjust you image as needed and submit it.
And you are Done.

Give a face to your name and your mail id. Its fun. Just try it out.