The Hindu Business Line : From wooden floats to floating thoughts

From St Joseph's Boys High School, Bangalore, to Blogeverywhere.com. That, in brief, is the story of Sabeer Bhatia, the Indian who co-founded Hotmail in 1995, along with Jack Smith, and sold `the original free e-mail service' to Microsoft two years later for $400 million.

Bhatia, whose trajectory has been through BITS and Stanford, was in news years ago for his other dream, Arzoo, which is Urdu for `wish'.

Launched in 1999, Arzoo, as Bhatia had wished, was supposed to help software development companies across the world benefit from the expertise of experts. But it bit the dust two years later.

Yet, now is perhaps Bhatia's "busiest period of new business activity since he forfeited $30 million by unlocking a golden handcuff with Microsoft in February 1999 and starting out on his own," as Khozem Merchant wrote on March 7, in Financial Times (http://news.ft.com).

"Sabeer Bhatia is now working on at least five new projects," notes Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org) and lists six, viz. Navin.com into voice mail services; BlogEverywhere.com to let you read and write comments on any web page; InstaColl.com as a contextual collaboration solution; Hotseasons.com to focus on hotel ratings; VoiFi.com using VOIP; and telixo.com to turn your mobile phone into a personal organiser.

HOT IN NEWS

Just the time to come to terms with `blog' before it is everywhere! And the word is hot in news. For instance, Dai San Ge Biao and Milk Pig are two of China's most adventurous blogs that met with censor wrath on Wednesday.

China has a cyber police force watching for politically sensitive postings, informs a Reuters report dated March 8. Meanwhile, Jefferson Morley writes on http://blog.washingtonpost.com about the blog blockade by the Pakistani Telecommunications Authority, instituted on the orders of the Supreme Court.

Seventy-nine per cent of editors find their sources and their story ideas from blogs, says Suzanne Falter-Barns in an articled titled `How to Set Up a Blog the Media Will Love', dated March 7, and posted on www.dailyindia.com. Catch up also with Hendry Lee's `Step by step starting your first niche blog' on www.speroforum.com.

In all probability, your Word may still be redlining `blog', leaving you with no option but to add the word to your dictionary.

Strangely, Encarta doesn't show up when searching for `blog' on www.onelook.com. Yet, on http://encarta.msn.com, blog appears after Bloemfontein, and is defined thus: `Same as weblog', meaning `to create or run a weblog'.

Intransitive verb, this is, so you may say blog, blogging, and blogged. Blogger is one who blogs. "The World Wide Web environment in which bloggers communicate with each other" is blogosphere.

And blogware is "computer software tools for creating a weblog," such as, Blogeverywhere that Bhatia offered through Pune-based KPIT on Monday. Must read is List of blogging terms on http://en.wikipedia.org.

BLOG BY-WORDS

Weblog in Encarta appears amidst other web-by words such as webcast, webisode, webliography, weblish, webmaster, webphone, webworm and webzine.

It refers to "a frequently updated personal journal chronicling links at a Web site, intended for public viewing."

Blog is time-lined 1998 by Online Etymology Dictionary. "Short for weblog (which is attested from 1994, though not in the sense `online journal'), from (World Wide) Web + log. Joe Bloggs (c.1969) was British slang for `any hypothetical person' (cf. US equivalent Joe Blow)."

The word weblog was coined by Jorn Barger in 1997, says www.langmaker.com. One learns that Barger coined the term weblog to describe the process of `logging the web' as he surfed, as Wikipedia informs about the editor of Robot Wisdom.

"The short form, `blog,' was coined by Peter Merholz. He broke the word weblog into the phrase `we blog' in the sidebar of his weblog in April or May of 1999."

Since its appearance in 1995, blogging has emerged as a popular means of communication, affecting public opinion and mass media around the world, opines The Free Encyclopedia.

Log is dated from 1398, though of `unknown origin'. It seems Old Norse had lag meaning `felled tree' (from stem of liggja `to lie'), but on phonological grounds etymologists deny that this is the root of English log, informs www.etymonline.com.

"Instead, they suggest an independent formation meant to `express the notion of something massive by a word of appropriate sound.'"

The etymology reference informs that logging, the `act of cutting timber' is from 1706, and that logjam, `congestion of logs on a river', is from 1885. But isn't log a verb, meaning making entries in a logbook?

Yes, from 1823. And logbook, the daily record of a ship's speed, progress and so on, is from 1679, "so called because wooden floats were used to measure a ship's speed".

The computing phrase `log in' is from 1963. What a long way it has been from wooden floats as logs to floating thoughts in the form of blogs!

According to www.webmasterworld.com, blog started out as referring to specific content management software (blogger), and transitioned into a description for a wide range of personal pages, journals, and diaries.

Blog is "a Web site (or section of a Web site) where users can post a chronological, up-to-date e-journal entry of their thoughts," defines www.netlingo.com.

"Each post usually contains a Web link. Basically, it is an open forum communication tool that, depending on the Web site, is either very individualistic or performs a crucial function for an organization or company." Blogs are popular because of ease of use of programs used for publishing one's thoughts.

Blog is "a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual," says www.pcwebopaedia.com. "Typically updated daily, blogs often reflect the personality of the author."

A LIBERATING THING

Writing in The Washington Post, in November 2003, Jennifer Howard highlighted `the liberating thing' about blogs in `It's a Little Too Cozy in the Blogosphere'.

She was cited by www.wordspy.com thus: "Bloggers don't have to get their copy past an editor, and they can sound off at any length — no word limits in cyberspace.

They're products of a seismic cultural shift that makes someone's hangover as newsworthy as the arrival of a Harry Potter novel. The sassier the voice, the more successful the blog is likely to be."

Scott Simon (`Inane blogs,' National Public Radio, November 15, 2003) conceded that several blogs seem entertaining and interesting, but added that many blogs reminded him why writing can be a profession.

"Confession may be good for the soul but bad for literature," is a snatch of Simon's insight. Which explains why the word is explained on www.stands4.com as `Based Loosely On Groupware' and `Boring Lump Of Garbage'.

Call it whatever, but blogs are too influential to ignore. Don't be surprised, therefore, if you encounter blogs in mainstream media. Such as `news blog' on http://blogs.guardian.co.uk, and `The Annotated New York Times' on http://annotatedtimes.blogrunner.com where bloggers comment on articles and writers.

Dangerously, there's this posting, `Will Blogs Replace Newspapers?' on http://blogs.msdn.com! It's possible that the newspaper medium will survive "by aggregating good content from blogs," concludes Korby Parnell's Gotdotnet Wunderkammer.

Think global, act local, and communicate blogal?

ComingToTerms@TheHindu.co.in

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