FN

In recent months, here's a listing put together by me of electronic mailing lists that are playing a useful role (I think) in India http://wikiwikiweb.de/MailingListsInIndia.

Also, I managed to resuscitate the GoaJourno mailing list via GoogleGroups, while am rebuilding the India-EJ network there, together with Education-India. Wish me luck.

Some comments on a recently-published essay, part of Jerry Pinto's Reflected in Water: Writings on Goa (Penguin Books): "Teotonia R. de Souza's profile of the little-known ‘opium smuggler who tried to liberate Goa' is as captivating as Frederick Noronha's portrait of Abbé Faria, eighteenth-century priest, mesmerist and revolutionary, and one of the region's most famous sons." And, Karishma Attari's review in The Hindustan Times titled Furious and funny in Goa: "Every anthology has its strong leaders and its stragglers. Not every piece in this compilation is a winner. Adil Jussawalla’s delicious diary entry is at odds with the dispassionate, somewhat boring account of Noronha’s hypnotist-priest...." Finally, Peter Nazareth's comment on the NewDiaspora mailing list which says this: "The book looks like a personal exploration of Goa by Jerry Pinto from Bombay (Mumbai), and he has a two-page "intuitive" introduction -- not surprising since he is a poet. So the review was wrong to underrate it: and speaking of the review being wrong, I found Fred Noronha's search for Abbe Faria to be fascinating, not boring--it is one of the best things I have read by Fred." So... take your pick!

Three articles available online: this article is from the 'nineties and about language politics in Goa, Of Forked Tongues and the Mother Tongue -- Language in Goan Politics. This is a 2004 interview with an editor (Tarun Tejpal, prior to the inauguration of his print weekly... still an interesting read) whose work I respect, The Press must represent the public. And here's a reference to a chapter in a slim book Frog Books launches Urban Voices, two other books.

Thanks to the broadband link (finally, after 12 painful years of slow pay-by-minute dial-up from Saligao, sometimes via Bombay, and then unlimited-use dial-up), have been able to upload most of my photos to my page on Flickr.com. Bosco D'Mello was generous enough to gift me a huge quota of space for monthly uploads (2GB, more than I can use... mostly).

I pay back by sharing my photos. To be honest, I couldn't care less (provided these are used for non-commercial purposes and with attribution). Some rights reserved, as the CreativeCommons.org approach would say.

But if you try to wrest control, claim copyright, and try to make me sign some legalise-filled contract that deprives me and the commons of further use of these photos... then, don't even bother to discuss. Everything else (almost) is negotiable.

My URLs have changed in recent months. Thanks to all who made it possible (particularly Chris Wilson and Derek Cordeiro). So my blogs are mostly at http://fredericknoronha.wordpress.com and on http://southasiaict4d.wordpress.com/ which I maintain with Karachi-based colleague Reba Shahid. My dream is to get this http://elearning.goa-india.org/ e-learning network up... possibly with others who are convinced joining hands to create it.

Something written on FOSS.in, the annual Bangalore-based event on Free/Libre and Open Source Software in India. Except that this year seems to suggest that the six-year-old event is growing in significance. And it's being getting appreciated more. Here's the link to the entire story Mobility, web services, and kernel development: open source innovations at the FOSS.in conference ... from LinuxWorld.com

Don't ask me what I'm doing on GAID... but I'm there. Name misspelt too; what's new! Life is unfair... those who deserve don't get it. And... anyway, wish something relevant could come out of this. Is that asking for too much? Travel isn't an end in itself, of course. And too much of it simply means you can't do what you should be.

Of the mailing list involved in, you could say I'm biased in favour of a few. Why? Because they worked well (perhaps beyond my expectations, and in ways one didn't deserve). Take a look at my favourites -- BytesForAll_Readers of course (set up by Partha Sarkar), Docuwallahs2 (inspiired by K Stalin's now uncontrollable Docuwallahs), and ILUG-Goa (started by Arvind Yadav). In fact, I'm beginning to like some of the smaller but promising lists too, like Education-India and even the small but meaningful GoaMusician list.