Top blogs

The debate on net neutrality has been going on globally for some time. It has become scorching hot in India, after the telecom regulator TRAI came out with its discussion paper on this subject and then the leading telecom company Airtel started offering a zero-cost service to netizens for visiting corporate sites and apps. Before coming to the debate and how it might even impact blogging, a few lines on What is net neutrality? Net neutrality means keeping the internet neutral, i.e. not letting internet providers favour or disfavour net services based on content, source, etc. It means, internet providers [=Internet Service Providers and Mobile Internet Service Providers or Telecom Service Providers] cannot say, they’d give more speed if you browse a particular content or a particular app and reduce the speed if you go to another site.  Now the debate on #NetNeutrality TRAI recently came out with a consultation paper [You can download the pdf  here], seeking ...

Some bloggers have asked on Quora and two on email whether they can earn enough from blogging. One query is from a new student blogger. His classmate, who has opened an SEO-crammed blog, claims that he would start making at least a thousand dollars a month from the blog within a few months. [We asked the blogger after many months of publishing this blog, and he shared that that the friend is now into 'other type of businesses' on the web!] One query is from an old blogger who has tried all tricks given on reputed websites that come up on top of Google search pages when you search for making money through blogging, but has failed to make even Rs.70 (about a dollar) a month from AdSense and almost nothing from a host of affiliates. In fact he has tried a number of other things such as being active on forums and link farms, paying money to a techie on the promise of making the blog a money spinner, himself trying monetization tricks on the blog, trying the tips given by blog...

A month back, Google announced that it would ban explicit matter on public blogs on Blogger platform. The ban was to come into effect last fortnight. That didn't happen. Google says, it has decided to live with its existing content policy. This policy allows bloggers to post nudity or explicit sex-oriented material on blogs provided the 'adult content setting' is turned on. The setting in turn warns visitors about the content. In addition, Google says, "commercial porn will continue to be prohibited".  Immediately after Google decided to ban porn, a large number of established bloggers protested, saying that the move was against the avowed policy of Google not to curb freedom of expression on the web. Many of them feared that if Google forced them to go private, they would lose all links, shared data and community participation that they had generated over years. What is Indian Top Blogs stand on this? As a decency-oriented site, are we at ITB peeved, yo...

Let’s start with the calamity, not because that makes the headline but because it is too unfortunate to have happened. Bangladesh blogger - the third one in a year - pays with life Yet another blogger, Washiqur Rahman, has been killed in Bangladesh. Remember the recent killing of Avijit Roy , another blogger, by extremists? A year back, another blogger had met with similar fate. With the murder of  Rahman , fundamentalist forces in Bangladesh have reinforced their message that criticism of fundamentalism or spread of liberal thought will not be tolerated. Rahman's Facebook page Dhaka police say, attackers brutally hacked  Rahman  to death with big knives just 500 yards from his home. The suspects are students from two religious schools of the city. Rahman blogged under a pen-name, Kucchit Hasher Channa (= Ugly Duckling). Later he shifted to Facebook where he wrote satirical pieces on Islam and joined a number of liberal groups. The pretty ugl...