Blogial has a logo
Blogial now has got a new logo and I am really proud of it as it looks great. The symbol at the left shows that the blog network is entirely driven by the community. We all depend on people like you to contribute posts and articles to the blogs and we are sure that you too will gain a lot from the network - better exposure, fame, money, girls, etc. Ok, I am not confident about the things down in the list ;).
The day we decided on the name, I started thinking about a logo for the site and wanted something which was very simple - so simple that you can draw it by hand. And you would be amused to hear that I did draw the first cut of the logo by hand. I drew a very rudimentary piece using KolorPaint and drew a very bad replica of the current logo to show Sudarsan the idea.
Sudarsan who is great at Photoshop and Flash created some basic logos using MS Word in his office hours - using clipart (you wouldn’t want to see those). Then we both decided to stick to the original idea and he did some basic versions. I then decided to free some time and using Illustrator did a pretty good one in under 15 mins. Then corrected some of the mistakes and came up with the final product. Making it work under all browsers was a pain because of the IE6’s PNG transparency bug, but that will be a seperate post (under codelog.blogial?)
I hope the logo is good enough to be seen and I think it would look good on T-Shirts. Anyway, if you think I suck at logo designing feel free to comment here with links to your versions of the logo.
Get updates on twitter
We have created twitter accounts for all the blogs here at Blogial and set it up to automatically tweet any new post. We have used a really nice plugin for wordpress called Twitter Updater. It automatically updates your twitter timeline with things that you do in your post.
Here are the links to the twitter page of each blog
- Blogial - http://twitter.com/blogial
- in.blogial - http://twitter.com/in_blogial
- oz.blogial - http://twitter.com/oz_blogial
- Codelog - http://twitter.com/codelog_blogial
- FSLog - http://twitter.com/fslog
We also have an universal Twitter account for all of Blogial Network - which gets updated by TwitterFeed from the site wide feed.
Advertise in Blogial Network
We have decided to run some small ads on Blogial Network just to make sure that we can keep running this blog network without burning a huge hole in our pockets. Yes, we are running this entirely out of our own money and most of us have a full time job - and we blog because we love it.
But running a blog costs some money and so we have decided to run some small ads (125×125 px) on our blogs. They are provided by PerformancingAds - from the more popular Performancing blog network. You can see some really popular sites in their ad network.
It is very easy to advertise here. Each blog has some ads on its sidebar or single post. In that there will be an advertise here button. I have also linked to the advertising page for each blog here - Blogial, in.blogial, oz.blogial, codelog.blogial, FSLog. Just click on the blog where you want to advertise and get started.
The best part of PerformancingAds is their credit system - meaning every publisher earns some credits for displaying ads and selling ads. These accumulated credits are converted into free traffic from other sites which will be displaying your ads.
If you can support us using some other way (hosting anyone?) we would be very happy to hear you out.
Network wide feeds
It will be very easy if you could keep track of all the blogs in the Blogial Network using a single RSS feed. We have made it easy for you by aggregating all the blogs into a single feed. We have used a very easy to use service by Yahoo called Yahoo Pipes.
Using Yahoo Pipes one can easily create mashups of various webservices like RSS feeds, Flickr data, JSON strings, etc. and export it in various other formats too. Just specify various sources, then process the data stream you get and get it out in whatever format you want.
So now posts in all the blogs can be seen together at http://feeds.blogial.com/BlogialNetwork.
Happy Reading.
Licensed under Creative Commons
When it comes to the content on the blogs here, we decided to use Creative Commons license - because we want to share the content with only some rights reserved for ourselves. Also since many people across the globe would be contributing here, we wanted a license which can protect the interests of everyone.
There are four clauses under the creative commons license as defined by the site:
Attribution
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your copyrighted work — and derivative works based upon it — but only if they give credit the way you request.
Noncommercial
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform your work — and derivative works based upon it — but for noncommercial purposes only
No Derivative Works
You let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of your work, not derivative works based upon it.
Share Alike
You allow others to distribute derivative works only under a license identical to the license that governs your work.
Using all these four, we come up with 16 different combinations and out of which only six are regularly used all of which have the Attribution on. For licensing under Creative Commons, you just have to choose a license using the remaining three clauses - which allows permission for commercial use, modification and share-alike.
After researching about all these, we decided that most of the content blogged here would be licensed as below.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 India License.
I say “most of the content” because there will be some blogs (like the codelog) which has lot of code snippets - and it would be difficult when people are bound by the non-commercial clause. So, all the code snippets will be under public domain instead.
Authors are also requested to make sure that the content (text, images, audio, video, code) that they submit all fall under the correct license.
I think we have covered almost all of the licensing issues. If you think there is some place where we may get into trouble, just comment here.
Blogs under the blogial network
I need to post here about the blogs which are under the blogial network. Right now we have 4 seperate blogs.
FSLog
Free Software Blog was started by me first on a blogspot domain in 2005 and then moved over to a seperate domain. As the name suggests, I blog here about Free and Open Source Software - news, tutorials, tips and tricks, etc. I was the only blogger out there and has gathered a respectable number of subscribers and good traffic. Right now it will be outside this blogial installation as I haven’t found a sane way of bringing that domain here. When we move over to a better host, we will bring all the domains under blogial
Codelog
Codelog was first started out as ProgrammersLog by Sudarsan on a wordpress.com site. It was all about programming and code snippets. Right now since he is working mostly on C# and .NET, all the current posts are about it. But anyone can post about any language that they want to. Contact suda...@gmail.com or just comment in the site.
OZ
OZ is a blog specially for people in Australia. Mainly for students who are doing their study in Australia - about the lifestyle, tech events and things happening around there. It is run by Anish who is doing his Masters in Networks in Monash University.
IN
IN is similar to OZ, but entirely about India. Administered by me, it is going to have things that happen in India. Being in Chennai - the blogging capital of India, I hope to get more people to blog in IN.blogial. We also want people from other cities also to post about their cities.
Right now, these are the blogs that we have on the blogial network. We are open to other blogs too - if you also want to contribute content to the network, just register here and do so.
Welcome to blogial
Welcome to Blogial.com. Blogial is a small blog network started by two friends who had two seperate blogs.
I have a blog about Free and Open Source software but I had always wanted to blog about various other topics like programming, about my city, etc., but couldn’t dedicate my time on a seperate blog for each topic. Also I didn’t want to post these stuff in my personal blog. So, when Sudarsan started a blog about programming on wordpress.com, I suggested that we start a small blog network where we can cross post in each others blogs. I also had another friend from school Anish, who also wanted to start blogging and so we all joined together and decided to blog about various things that interest us.
Yeah, we know blog networks aren’t much of a craze these days, but blogging isn’t dead. People love to blog and express their opinion about things they are passionate about. We love to blog and passionate about it. This blog network isn’t here to make big money or compete with the big names out there. But we are here to build a social community around blogging.
So, what can people do here are blogial? You can register for a user account and do two things. You can ask for blogging permissions to an existing blog or request us for a new blog about your favourite niche. Just mail us your details, links to your blogs and explain about your blog niche and send us some sample posts.
We plan to grow the community using word of mouth - so if you think someone else may find value by blogging here, send them in.
Right now I am busy setting up the site (we use Wordpress-mu) and trying to import my blog into this. We also want some good themes for the site and a logo. If anyone can help us out in that department, we could probably post about you here and link you.
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 India License.