Mousetrap – 89

Click, chop, simmer
CookingByNumbers
Recipes books are all very well, but what about those times you need to knock together a quick meal, and you haven’t the time to go buy all the ingredients? Try this site out. Simply look inside your fridge and your shelves, then come back, and click on all the items that you have in stock, and then hit “Find Recipes.” If you check the “I feel lucky” option as well, you get recipes for which you lack maybe one ingredient; up to you then to decide whether you can live without it. The shortcoming from the average Indian kitchen’s point of view is that the items listed, and the recipes, are from an average western kitchen.

Mouthful
eGullet Society for Culinary Arts and Letters
As the name indicates, this site takes itself seriously. I know a few dedicated foodies who spend a lot of time here, and they speak highly of it, which is good enough for me. The tag line of the site says “Read. Chew. Discuss.” The main deal here is the eGullet forum, where all that discussion takes place. The forums are open to anyone to read, though you’ll have to sign up to join in, naturally. You’ll find sections on culture, on cooking, and on restaurants, cuisine and travel (neatly sorted by region). You should also check out the RecipeGullet section (link right at the top, above the masthead), for RecipeGullet, “a unique repository of recipes — tested through extensive trial and error, and subjected to thorough discussion. Nowhere else will you find a better collection of clear instructions, illuminating techniques and thoughful ingredient lists.” Burp.

You will feed a hungry columnist
Weird Fortune Cookie Collection
For a minute there, I thought this was going to be one of those totally useful columns. Can’t have that, can we? Here you go: a nice, time-wasting, amusing site, its sole purpose is telegraphed by its name. For those who are wondering what a fortune cookie is, as far as I know, they’re a little gimmick that Chinese restaurants in the USA came up with, inserting personal predictions—rather like the ones we get from railways station weighing machines—into their after-dinner cookies. Much like our Gobi Manchurian, in that it is associated with Chinese cuisine, but isn’t really authentic. Worth a nibble any time, this.

Leftovers
Indian cooking frowns on leftovers, I know, but I love ’em. And I have quiet a few sites on my list, so expect more foodie suff next week. And do mail in your favourites too, hm?

Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.

Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 28th January, 2007.

Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap

We are the web

Activism, says Wikipedia, “can be described as intentional action to bring about social or political change. This action is in support of, or opposition to, one side of an often controversial argument.”

I quote Wikipedia deliberately; because that definition may have changed by the time you see it.

Wikipedia, the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit, is one of the poster children of the new web; the “participatory web” that’s about collaboration and sharing. “Web 2.0,” to distinguish it from the old web, the one controlled by the major information disseminators and portals. Don’t like that definition? Go change it. Of course, someone else may come and change it right back. But if enough people agree with you, your definition will stay there.

Wikis are part of this new web, yes, and so, most emphatically, are blogs, networking sites, social bookmarking services, mashups (sites that are the web equivalent of remixed music) and more. But this is not about the technology. It’s about what these wild new things let you do.

First, do all these virtual shenanigans have any noticeable effect on the “real” world? Let me offer you some examples.

Just after the tsunami, I was part of an impromptu group that put together the South East Asia Earthquake and Tsunami blog, to filter the vast jumble of available information and organise it for people who, like us, just wanted to help. This group of disparate individuals across the globe took what was essentially a free online publishing tool and turned it into a valuable collaborative resource lauded by many of the world’s leading mass media publications (this newspaper was one of them). Offshoots of that group subsequently remobilised in the face of other disasters: the post-cloudburst Bombay floods, the earthquake in Pakistan, Hurricane Katrina, and, most recently, Bombay’s train blasts. It expanded beyond blogs: wiki software helped present gathered data better; Flickr, a photo-hosting site, was tweaked into a Missing Persons section; Skype, a voice chat application, powered a call centre; chat rooms became war-rooms. And the group solidified—as far as anything virtual can take shape—into the World Wide Help group.

On the other side of the planet, during the run up to the recent elections to the US Senate, an incumbent Republican senator, considered pretty much a sure thing for re-election, made a racist remark about a young Indian-American Democrat who was taping his rally. Footage of that remark rapidly found its way on to YouTube (a video-sharing site), where it was adopted and promoted by some prominent American desi blogs. The wider blogosphere joined in too, as did US media. Digging into the senator’s past revealed more signs of a racist streak. Slowly, the Republican’s lead in the polls began eroding. And come counting day, guess which sure-shot Republican seat backfired and swung a very slim majority the Democrats’ way?

In India, technology-aided activism has begun to have an impact. It started with fun stuff, like personal blogs, special interest communities, user-created reviews of restaurants, movies or holiday destinations, budding film-makers and musicians releasing their masterpieces online. Now, advocates of weightier causes and obsessions—poverty, discrimination, reservation (pro or anti), economic reform, child rights, and so many others—are harnessing technology to make themselves heard.

Last year, for rather silly reasons, our government blocked several popular blogging services. Quick as a flash, bloggers, ceased their usual bickering and coalesced into Bloggers Collective, an email newsgroup, and a wiki, Bloggers Against Censorship. Mainstream media joined forces with citizen media, and much dust was raised. Not coincidentally, I think, the ban was soon lifted. (Alarmingly, though, this underlined the fact that our Powers That Be have pretty much given themselves the right to block whatever they want, and have done so for a while.)

Some more examples?

Karmayog, a mailing list and resource centre, promotes dialogue and liases with Bombay’s municipal authorities and NGOs. Delhi-based NGO Project Why canvasses through a blog and a newsgroup. A Bangalore NGO, Esha, which seeks to empower blind people, raises awareness about its innovative income generation methods through a blog.

Of course there’s negativity too. People with conflicting agendas do battle on each other’s blogs, plot campaigns through mailing lists, fight vicious edit wars on Wikipedia, set up hate groups on networking sites that get our judiciary and politicians frothing. And that’s how it should be, really. You can’t have the good without the potential for bad, though our Nanny State appears to think otherwise.

And here’s one sure sign that all this can’t be wished away. Big marketers are lumbering into the party, releasing commercials on YouTube and hoping like hell they go viral, hiring people to blog for them, slapping together special interest communities.

Yes, the entrenched opinion-makers—politicians, marketers, entertainers, media giants—are still trying to control the web.

The wiser ones are listening. Because they’ve realised that the web has begun to talk back.

——–

Peter Griffin is a communications consultant, columnist and travel writer. He also blogs (at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com), co-moderates the writers’ community, Caferati (www.caferati.com), and co-founded the World Wide Help group and Bloggers Collective.

Published in People’s Republic, the Indian Express’s Republic Day special edition, 26th January, 2007.

Tags: The Indian Express

Mousetrap – 88

Able
Ouch
One of the many great sites that the BBC hosts, Ouch is about the lives of disabled people. But what separates it from the many—most of them really good—sites out there that seek to do the same? For one, it’s not about helpful hints and tips and the like. Nor does it crusade for rights. What really sets it apart is its attitude: it does not condescend; it does not ask for quarter; it’s in your face. Its many talented columnists and its subject matter focus on “personal stuff, minutiae of everyday life and that fantastic dark sense of humour and inevitable cynicism that we disabled people tend to have. Oh, and we don’t shy away from subjects that other people might be a bit wary of.” And that’s the way it should be, no?

This is a test
Skillswise
Oh dear. Another BBC site. Well, it makes a change from Google, doesn’t it? Anyway. Way back when I was young, many people for whom the standard to aspire to when it came to spoken English was the voice of the BBC newsreader. Now, when we’re surrounded by accents of all descriptions, and (as writer friends are fond of declaiming) when English skills seem to have very low priority even with those who earn their living from the use of the language, does the BBC still have a role to play? This microsite thinks so. With a bunch of tutorials, hints, and most fun of all, interactive games — http://www.bbc.co.uk/skillswise/games/ — it makes learning a more fun process. Oh yes. It’s not just English literacy that it covers. Skillwise also helps you with math skills in similar ways. You know where to find me.

All the web’s a computer – II
Thinkfree
Last week this column told you about Google Docs. A friend sent me this site in response. Thinkfree goes one up on Google in terms of what you can do with it. Aside from word-processing and spreadsheets, it also offers you presentation software. All these are compatible with the almost ubiquitous Microsoft apps that serve the same functions (but not, as far as I could see, with Open Office programs), and permit sharing and collaboration online. It also lets you publish your documents to your blog, and to a service called Doc Exchange, which lets you share thoughts and ideas with its community via your documents. (Link courtesy Hemant Suthar.)

Arhg
Eek, a Typo!
And here’s a fun little blog to round off the show for this week. As the name suggests, this blog points out inadvertent (or ignorant) spelling errors. Not much misses its eye: I saw references to typos on TV subtitles and online message boards. And there’s an a nice little bonus to including it in this column. Now, if you find a typo here, I’ll just claim that it was deliberate, in homage to this site.

Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.

Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 21st January, 2007.

Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap

Mousetrap – 87

Take that
Concise Freeware
This piece is a leftover from last week’s column on leftover sites. The irony. It originally made way for another similar site on the 24th December column that featured freebies. Like many other freeware collectors, this one has a mix of services, applications and sites sorted into neat categories. What won me over was some unusual sections: one devoted to Firefox, my favourite browser; others on art and music and a nice set of useful articles with free info. Worth a browse, and it’s sure to get you a few items you need to enhance your PC.

All the web’s a computer
Google Docs
Yes, yes, Google pops into this column yet again. Mea culpa. Some people refer to it as the beginning of the Google Suite, the theory being that Google has its beady eyes on all our computing needs, and that soon the only software we’ll need installed on our own PCs will be a decent browser. Anyway, I like it for the ease of collaboration. At present, you can work with text documents and spreadsheets, collaborating in real time, or merely sharing your stuff with other people. The con, of course, is that you need a peppy, reliable web connection. For safety, I usually back up all docs to my own PC each time I do something major, so that I’m not hostage to a fickle ISP. I’m still hoping they build in a decent photo editor soon, and perhaps video and sound… But until then, this works fine for me. A couple of fellow editors, a designer and I just edited a book online using it, so I can speak from experience. And yes, this column as sent over to the edit desk via the “collaborate” button.

Rectangular meal
Feed A Hungry Child campaign
A friend reminds me that I haven’t featured a blog in this column for a while. And this site is a good one with which to remedy that deficiency. It’s not a blog in the conventional sense of the word (or at least as far as one can use can attribute conventions to a concept that’s less than a decade old). Rather, it uses a blog service to place its idea in front of the world. And that idea is simple. FAHC is looking for people to write and donate “heirloom recipes”—traditional and old favourite recipes that are in danger of extinction—to its cookbook project. Revenues from sales will go towards food for underprivileged kids. Go visit for updates and submission guidelines.

Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.

Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 14th January, 2007.

Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap

Mousetrap – 86

After the party season, there are usually a lot of leftovers. Here are a few sites that got dropped from various editions of this column for space reasons.

Ex Libris
Frequent readers of this column will know that I have a bit of a bias towards book- and reading-related sites. I included a few free book sites in the Christmas Eve column. Here are a few more, to keep the spirit of giving alive.
Project Gutenberg
The grand-daddy of all the free books sites, as far as I know. There are over 20,000 titles to choose from.
The Online Books Page
Another 25,000+ books here. Includes “an index to thousands of freely available online books, pointers to significant directories and archives of online texts, and special exhibits of particularly interesting classes of online books”
Universal Library
Hosted at the Carnegie Mellon University, this ambitious site (“The mission is to create a Universal Library which will foster creativity and free access to all human knowledge”) has serious involvement from India and China, who are each providing over 2000 man-years of scanning, indexing and hosting to the cause.
Million Book Project
Not quite a million yet, but there are 10,528 items as of this writing, from the Indian scanning centres of the Universal Library Project.
Digital Library of India
From what I could see, mainly non-fiction and a lot of academic works here. It is a partner of the Million Book Project.

You got rhythm?
SongTapper
(This one got left out from the column three weeks ago that focussed on unusual new ways to find things online.) Got that song bouncing around in your head, but can’t remember the name? Or, perchance, the words? SongTapper invites you to come play the beat on your keyboard and it will help you find the song you want. With links to buy it, of course. Now, while I cheerfully admit to not having even musical cartilege in my body, I did once pride myself on my sense of rhythm. But maybe the years have taken their toll, because I couldn’t get a single song right. You, perhaps, will do better. Write in and tell me about it. I will be practising my dancing.

Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.

Published in the Times of India / Outlook Traveller, Mumbai edition, 7th January, 2007.

Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap

Mousetrap – 85

2006: The year of the social web. Be warned, this is a personal list. Your mileage may differ.

The contenders

Flickr
Flickr’s been around a while, and its basic level, it’s a pretty cool photo-sharing site where you can put your pictures up, and give permission to various groups that you define to see them. It also permits embedding on other sites. But the big deal was being able to tag your shots, which made the site easily searchable, letting you discover other takes on the subject, the place, the event, whatever. Its rise was made possible with the ubiquity of cheap digital cameras, cellphone cameras and the like, and, of course, broadband and the web2.0 buzz. One groans at the memory of scanning each print, resizing and optimising and uploading one by one, back in the day.

Del.icio.us
Not as obvious a choice, I know, but it’s certainly made my life a lot easier. Since I travel often, and also use more than one PC on a regular basis, keeping a list of the sites I line up to feature here as a bit of a chore, mailing myself links so I could access them elsewhere, and so on. I now use Del.icio.us almost exclusively (take a look at http://del.icio.us/zigzackly/). The social aspect also rocks: friends and readers who also use the service can simply tag a site “for:zigzackly”and it appears on my list; and I can root around through other people’s tags to find buzzing topics and more stuff for you.

And the winner!

YouTube
When this column featured YouTube way back in March, it was already white hot. It lets you upload, store, tag and share your videos, and view and comment on videos by other members. You can also embed video from YouTube on personal sites and blogs. Over the year, we’ve seen the site coopted by vital marketers, small film makers, bootleggers and the like to get their video out to the world, and its popularity levels zoom to insane levels. After Google acquired it for a billion and a half plus some change, it’s really no contest as to what the biggest online star of 2006 was. It’s a success story born of broadband access (can you imagine downloading that stuff on dialup?), yes, but it’s also a child of the social web, or web 2.0, as some like to call it, the web that people like you and me create with our content. Yay us!

Reader suggestions welcome, and will be acknowledged. Go to http://o3.indiatimes.com/mousetrap for past columns, and to comment, or mail inthemousetrap@indiatimes.com. The writer blogs at http://zigzackly.blogspot.com.

Published in the Times of India, Mumbai edition, 1st January, 2007.

Tags: The Times of India, Mousetrap