Express Features
First Published : 05 Mar 2010 12:48:00 AM IST

KOCHI: Blogswara , the internet music community that acts as a common platform for amateur musicians, has released its sixth album.

The album has 14 songs sung by 22 new artists in four Indian languages.

A free music movement where visitors/ listeners can listen and download mp3 files free of cost, Blogswara (www.blogswara.in) began as a blogging initiative by a few people around the globe, who loved to sing.

Till date, many of the singers associated with Blogswara have not met each other.

According to Joseph Thomas, who was one of the first to launch the concept of Blogswara, the attempt is to showcase the hidden talent of amateur singers before the world by producing original music and sharing it over the internet.

“Soon after the release of Blogswara version 5, we had begun with the work of the 6th album. For the first time, we have included a Telugu song, last time we had included a Kannada song. It’s the first time that so many amateurs are joining the effort, last time we had 15 new singers,” says Joseph.

Professional singers like Pradeep Somasundaram and TV anchor Divya have also rendered their voice for the album.

Blogswara proves that people, wherever they are or whatever languages they speak, can come together for a cause – here the cause being music.

And the digital age has made it easy for them to collaborate, the blog says.

True to its tagline, ‘United in Music’, the album has many lyricists and music composers from across the globe, who worked from their respective places together to come up with the album.

News link here

Our special thanks to Jyothis E for his continued support in providing the space to host the songs and to Pradip Somasundaran for all the technical help extended. Thank you folks!

Visit http://www.blogswara.in to listen to the V6 songs preview!

With 14 songs in 4 Indian languages, Blogswara’s 6th online album is releasing on March 1st. Listen to the song teasers from the player given below and share the buzz with your friends. Tweet it, blog it to support the best platform for free independent music and let the Blogswara saga continue!

Follow us @Blogswara for Twitter updates.

On another news, we have received 15 song submissions so far for our latest album V6. The songs evaluation is about to begin and keep watching this space for more details!

August 24, Monday, 2:30 PM
August 25, Tuesday, 5 AM & 9:30 AM

The massive growth of horizontal (or mass-market) networking sites like MySpace, Orkut, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Twitter etc. or vertical (niche) ones like Dogster with their primary focus on User Generated Content (UGC) has led to the phenomenon called the “social web“.

But (contrary to what some believe), just having a presence on each of these sites would not be sufficient in terms of exposure or awareness from a SMM point of view. Such a belief would be the real-world equivalent of opening a store and expecting massive footfalls from day one. That does not happen and more so in the case of an online presence, where distraction (or competition) is just a mouse-click away.

SMM, for any business, including social media sites themselves (after all, some of the biggest online advertisers are online companies), involves a strategy that takes into account the peculiarities of a particular online platform, including the type of content it generates, the demographics of the audience it caters to, the ebb and flow of its traffic based on time zones and its overall relevance to the product/service offering of the marketer. A no-brainer example is that LinkedIn may not deliver results if one were to promote a site selling cosmetics.

Also, nothing turns off the majority of the active participants on a social site as unsolicited and overt pitching of a product or service. Marketers have to remember that these are the people who could potentially be their brand ambassadors, since recent trends have pointed to fast-growing social sites experiencing the 90:10 syndrome – 90% of the content generated by just 10% of the users and it does not pay to be on their wrong side. The very nature of the “conversational web” makes it antithetical to “in-your-face advertising” and so the only effective SMM strategy is to join, listen and contribute in a meaningful way, that builds both relationships and expertise in a calibrated manner with increasing rewards down the line.

There is a key strategy that can be effective in the online arsenal of a marketer and that is to join forces with a dominant social site in a complementary manner that creates win-win outcomes. For example, Needgrub’s (a site that specializes in restaurant reviews) partnership with Sulekha for its Yellow Pages ensures that a visitor can read the review of a restaurant while looking up its listing in Sulekha’s YP. Similarly with burrp for events and TravelGuru for hotel reviews.

So, it is up to the marketer to look for creative ways to increase awareness, drive traffic and build “social capital” for the brand. Unlike the efforts used in building brands on other media like radio and TV which is akin to “carpet bombing” the audience, in the online world, especially the social one that democratizes the channels of information exchange and puts more power in the hands of the individual, the marketer has to be patient, persevering and participative, in order to be persuasive.

For at least two of the sites, I know the people at the helm – JRK Rao of Rage Communications (www.mothersspace.in) and Sathya Narayanaswamy of Parentree (www.parentree.in). The third – www.chennaimoms.com, I came to know only through the media and wanted to review it along with the other two, even though it is Chennai city-centric, only because you all know this happens to be a Chennai lover’s blog . Also all the three sites are Chennai-based (the bricks-and-mortar part).

I met JRK Rao while at Sulekha.com and have spoken to him a couple of times. What struck me was how affable he was as a person and his understated intellectual acumen, that was so evident, once the conversation started flowing freely. Rage Communications and Sulekha could have formed an alliance at that time but that didn’t happen. Rage has come a long way from that time.

As per their Press Release, “Designed and developed by Rage Communications P Ltd. (Chennai), http://www.mothersspace.in is an online portal exclusively for mothers – from the expectant ones to those who have turned grandmothers. Committed to providing up-to-date information, support and an opportunity to network, mothersspace.in is a useful resource for women before, and during pregnancy, with the bond continuing well after childbirth. The site’s features allows its members and visitors to connect and interact with each other through the open forum ‘The Crib’ (http://bb.mothersspace.in) and also ‘MUMblings’ (http://blogs.mothersspace.in/), a blog section for those desiring to wax eloquent on motherhood’s myriad demands and rewards.

Eastern cultures originally never had chairs in their grand order of things in daily life. Hatha Yoga teaches us several physical poses like Padmasana (Lotus Pose), Vajrasana (Diamond or Thunderbolt Pose), Sukhasana (Easy Pose) etc. These are the “sitting” poses. Then there are the “standing” poses and “supine” poses that are meant to be done only for the purpose of exercising, while the sitting poses came naturally for things one did such as eating, reading, writing, chatting with others and so on. Falling at the feet of elders to get their blessings was mandatory as it forced one to do a “Sashtanga Namaskar” (bowing with eight limbs of the body touching the ground), which is also part of the “Surya Namaskar“, perhaps the best exercise routine ever.

Somewhere along the way, due to the successive invasions by other cultures, we gave up our good old ways practiced over thousands of years and adopted their habits and practices. The western sitting posture as exemplified by its source, the “chair” is one such. Think about it – today, if we are not standing, walking/running or lying down in the horizontal position, we use only one posture for sitting, whether it be on a chair at home reading the paper, sitting on the “throne” to answer nature’s call, driving (including the “car seat” for the baby), the “ergonomic” chair at work and having breakfast/lunch/dinner in the same position. Where is the variation in our pose that is so needed by the body to keep it supple and flexible? No wonder we have cases of spondylitis, arthritis and other “itis” affecting people even in their 30s, since the whole body is kept frozen at a particular angle for entire lengths of the day (and sometimes the night too).

Edward Tenner in this excellent article in “The WILSON QUARTERLY” on “How the Chair Conquered the World” says – “For men and women of all stations, sitting Western-style affects more than the spine. While the water closet as we know it dates only from the 19th century, the contrast between the Western seated position for defecation and the Asian and African squatting posture has long been familiar to travelers. In this century, Western physicians and designers have subjected the commode to the same scrutiny as the office chair, and most agree that it promotes straining and constipation. (Along with diet, squatting seems to have kept the common Western inflammation of the bowel, diverticulitis, out of Africa.) The architect Alexander Kira’s definitive 1976 monograph, The Bathroom, cites overwhelming medical opinion against the throne-toilet as we know it; yet so accustomed are we to the sedentary life that no significant market has ever developed for redesigned fixtures.”

This view is also echoed by Dr. Rad Saeed, an Iranian radiologist at Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, who conducted one of the most remarkable clinical studies on toilet posture in 2002 (more on the study here). Somehow because of the cultural shift that happened that put the chair on a higher pedestal (figuratively and literally) than the squatting position on the ground, we started associating higher status with the chair and subsequently venerated it beyond its utility value (as just another way for the body to get exercise for a “brief period” in a particular pose). I use the chair too (or rather I should say am forced to use it), but realizing its limitation and its hazards, I don’t let my feet dangle over for too long and keep shifting position constantly (sometimes sitting cross-legged or half cross-legged when not having to observe social graces like at a meeting). I think that has served me well so far.

You may say it is almost impossible to give up this way of sitting, so used as we are to it and I certainly agree. But the least we can do is first have cognizance of what we are doing and why we are doing it so that we can explore alternatives as also take preemptive action to ward off any negative effects of doing so. After all, we owe our health to ourselves first, more than to others since we can have others attending on us, giving us medicines or performing surgery on us, but will have to endure the pain and suffering ourselves. If this post has at least made you think from a new angle on what you are doing daily, more from reflex than with any conscious thought put into it, perhaps it has served its purpose.