Indianhomemaker honoured
By Techgirl

She blogs at indianhomemaker.wordpress.com and describes herself as “blogging about the everyday life of an urban Indian homemaker and her reactions to what’s happening in the world around her”. Over time, this well written Indianhomemaker blog has developed a substantial following. It is a place where many women and men meet to share ideas, experiences and positive energies. Her blog post ‘Joru Ka Gulaam’ was brilliant.

In the first week of November, Indian Homemaker used Gandhi Giri methods to confront a US-based plagiarist. But much time was energies were wasted in getting the blog thief in USA to stop stealing from Indian Homemaker.

Indian Homemaker blogs at blogging group WordPress.com which plays host to 255,799 bloggers.  Wordpress hosts many high profile bloggers including two of American’s most popular tech blogs – All Things Digital and Gigaom (run by Om Malik).  Wordpress is also used by CNN, Time and BBC. WordPress won international admiration for refusing to bow down to Chinese censorship laws.

Yesterday (Nov 13) the Wordpress blogging community generated 218,108 new posts, 319,468 comments and 51,753,751 words.  And it also put Indian blog Indian Homemaker on its main page.  This honour is reserved for the best articles among the quarter of a million blogs on WordPress.

Indian Homemaker told Techgoss: “An email from WordPress.com saying my blog-post had been promoted to their Homepage came as a surprise. I feel honored that the blog was even considered for being on WordPress homepage."

Congratulations to Indian Homemaker for such well deserved recognition.

(Techgoss had published the following story on November 6, 2009)

Gandhigiri shames US site
By Techgirl

She blogs at indianhomemaker.wordpress.com and describes herself as “blogging about the everyday life of an urban Indian homemaker and her reactions to what’s happening in the world around her”. Over time, this well written Indianhomemaker blog has developed a substantial following. It is a place where many women and men meet to share ideas, experiences and positive energies. Her blog post ‘Joru Ka Gulaam’ was brilliant.

Then on Nov 3, Indianhomemaker was told that a US-based website Shetalshah.com was stealing her content left, right and centre.  After consulting friends, Indianhomemaker chose to confront the plagiarist using Gandhi Giri methods.  The Indianhomemaker had sent virtual flowers to the plagiarist with a request to “Please remove the plagiarized material immediately.”

Her fellow bloggers were less forgiving and let Shetalshah.com know that the next step could be legal action.

The good news is that the US website Shetalshah has removed all the content stolen from this Indian blog.  It seems that Gandhi Giri can be used to shame plagiarists in another continent. In this case, alls well that ends well.

(Techgoss had published the following story on November 3, 2009)

Theft at Indianhomemaker
By Techgirl

She blogs at indianhomemaker.wordpress.com and describes herself as “blogging about the everyday life of an urban Indian homemaker and her reactions to what’s happening in the world around her. So I blog against violence and intolerance, and against our use of tradition, culture and religion to justify anything that common sense might refuse to accept; I write against gender bias, (a lot of this), and our biases against girl children even in educated families; against all stifling stereotypes, about my kids, pets and family, my domestic helpers, my neighbors and friends, and animal rights and politics etc..”

Over time, this well written Indianhomemaker blog has developed a substantial following. It is a place where many women and men meet to share ideas, experiences and positive energies. Her blog post ‘Joru Ka Gulaam’ was brilliant.

Last year, Techgoss had reported on how Uttar Pradesh-based technology super blog ‘Digital Inspiration’ woke to find most of their articles stolen and published at ‘Digital Boom’.  After a complaint, Google shutdown the copy cat blog.  As Digital Inspiration is hugely successful, the idea was to clone a copy cat website and earn revenue from the traffic.

Now, someone has done the same to the Indianhomemaker blog.  Her friend ‘Dreamer’ tweeted to inform her that her blog was being duplicated at Shetalshah.com in America. She has chosen to confront the plagiarist using Gandhi Giri methods.  The Indianhomemaker has sent virtual flowers to the plagiarist with a request to “Please remove the plagiarized material immediately.”

Internet scammers stealing from an innocent Indian homemaker! Is anything sacred on the internet?

Techgoss note:  Techgirl is a senior Tech journalist who reports on the IT, KPO and KPO Sectors for a leading media house.  In her spare time, she dabbles in satire in her blog
http://techgirltalk.blogspot.com

(Techgoss had published the following on Oct 10, 2008)

Blog theft stopped
By Bala Shah

Indian tech blog ‘Digital Inspiration’ is mandatory daily reading for tens of thousands of people.  Digital Inspiration creator Amit Agarwal gave up a lucrative career in IT in 2004 to pursue full-time blogging and has gone from strength to strength.

Yesterday, Amit Agarwal, blogged about his first hand experience of shutting down a splog ‘Digital Boom’ which was stealing his articles and publishing them as its own.  Manish Jain who copied Digital Inspiration articles to his Digital Boom splog on Google’s Blogger, then had the audacity to ‘digg’ the stolen articles from his website. (A splog is a blog that steals articles from legitimate blogs).

Amit gives the timeline on how he lodged the complaint with Google’s Blogger on Sept 30th via Fax (as they do not accept emails).  But it took Google’s blogging service 7 days to remove the blog stealing his articles.

Google provides an excellent blogging service.  Surely,  it can do more to shut down blogs which blatantly steal from others,  starting with an email account where victims can lodge their complaints.