Joseph Thomas is very well known among Indian bloggers. His blog gets a lot of visitors and it is not surprising that he also won the Kerala Blogger Awards 2006. His blog posts are thought provoking. Music is his passion and he is a member of blogswara music group. He also blogs at popular colloborative indian blogs such as Desicritics and Mutiny. Thanks Joseph,  for sparing your time for this interview.

Tell us more about you and your primary blog( http://jocalling.blogspot.com/)
I am from Thrissur, now working as a web designer in an IT company at Trivandrum. I did my schooling and college in Thrissur itself. Dropped out of college after the second year of my pre-degree course (plus 2) and then did several jobs - as a telephone booth operator, bakery salesman (during my college days), office boy, fertilizer workshop man and finally as a goldsmith for four years before I got hooked to the computers.

When did you start blogging?
In 2005.

You are a very active blogger! How much time daily you spend on blogging?
To blog, only 20 mins. And I spent time reading others too.

Some of your blog posts have started heated discussions! Any comments?
It is good in a way. I have learnt a lot in the process. Such heated debates helped me reduce my ego level and it helped me to understand the kind of people we have around. There is a lot of hatred and at the same time there are a lot of good people around too. I understood that no matter how much hatred that exist in this world, there is a lot of love in this world that would finally win.

Do you have any other blogs?
Yes, a music blog ( http://songsofjo.blogspot.com) and a photo blog (http://www.dreamden.blogspot.com ). Also I am a contributor to Blog Bharti (www.blogbharti.com), Mutiny ( www.mutiny.in) and Desi Critics ( www.desicritics.org).

Why do you blog? What motivates you?
I blog because it give me an opportunity to learn and interact with people. It is also gives me a platform to express myself and to showcase my talents.
What motivates me? People. Events. Life.

Do you use any blogging tools?
Nope. I just use the Blogger editor.

Which blog post do you consider as your best?
Would be best if a reader of my blog picked that up.

What is your experience from blogging? (good or bad)
So far so good. I could meet a lot of interesting people since I began blogging. I could improve myself a lot. Could go back to music and got a couple of good offers.

What are your favorite blogs that you read daily?
I read many blogs which I have listed in my blogroll and also others who does or does not cater to my viewpoints. It helps me understand how other people think.

Any plans on starting a Malayalam blog?
I do have one. http://kochaappu.blogspot.com is in pure Thrissur Malayalam. But I dont update there frequently.

Is there anything you want to tell Kerala Blogger Community?
Just be yourself. Being pretentious wont help you any way. Don’t bother about what would people think of you from your posts. You write your heart out and those who appreciate that will keep reading you. After all, blogging is primarily a personal thing.

(4 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

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Manoj M. Prabhakaran is probably the most famous guy among Kerala bloggers. His blog aggregator Kerala Blog Roll is very popular and attracts a lot of Malayalis searching for quality blogs.  He is an assistant professor at Illinois University. He also has a personal blog at Melam. Thanks Manoj, for sparing some time from your busy schedule. 

When and why you started Kerala Blog Roll? 
I started with a list of about 25 bloggers sometime in March 2003. I think there were a couple of reasons behind starting it:

Firstly, I was already maintaining a small collection of Kerala-related links (at http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~mp/malayalam/ ) and I figured that the blogroll would fit right into it. As I started coming across more and more Kerala bloggers, I wanted to list blogging as one of the interesting aspects of Kerala in the digital landscape. Other similar things included in that collection are things like some usenets postings: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~mp/malayalam/usenet.html and some pages on photos from Kerala: http://www.cs.princeton.edu/~mp/malayalam/photoshow.html

(Unfortunately, apart from the blogroll, I haven’t been updating anything in this collection for a few years now.)

The other reason to start a blogroll was probably a fascination with the concept of blogging itself — at some philosophical level I found it remarkable, if not appealing, that people would willingly open up (parts of) their private lives to the world. (It was another two years before I started a blog of my own, though.) Also, it seemed like a nice way to showcase the diversity contrasted with the “unity” of the Malayali blogging community. (The diversity might be becoming less apparent now, but I recall the first 25 that I found as an eclectic bunch.)

How do you maintain the blog roll? 
My blogroll is not at all comprehensive. It mostly lists blogs whose authors wrote to me to list them. Occasionally I do add a blog that I stumble up on, or sometimes someone might refer a friend’s blog to me. It took me a fair amount of effort to get the first 25 names way back in March 2003. But today if I were to step out into the blogosphere looking for Malayali bloggers, I’ll be overwhelmed.  

At the last count, there are about 700 blogs listed, with 164 marked as being primarily in Malayalam. I still have about a dozen requests for addition sitting in my mailbox.

Tell us a bit about the history of this wonderful service
In case you’re interested, looking at my records, the trend of blogging in Malayalam started in late 2004 (thanks to the Unicode standard and effective software like “varamozhi”). The first Malayalam blogs that I listed on the blogroll are
“Peringodan” : http://peringodan.blogspot.com/
MK Paul: http://www.chintha.com/jaalakam
Cibu CJ: http://rhymesfornila.blogspot.com/
(all in Ocotber 2004).

Many of the bloggers requested me to start a separate listing for blogs in Malayalam, but due to time constraints I couldn’t. But anyway, since then, many other resources have come up exclusively for Malayalam blogs, like: http://www.thanimalayalam.org/malayalam/work/thani.html http://www.thanimalayalam.org/malayalam/comments/index.shtml These forums, as well as my blogroll, have given rise to a “community,” which you might already have connected with.

(6 votes, average: 4.67 out of 5)

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Binny VA is an expert freelance programmer from Cochin. He currently runs a lot of blogs related to technology and programming details of which you can find at his homepage.  He is also an editor at DMOZ directory (TCL/TK). We thank Binny for sparing time for this interview.

Tell us more about you and your primary blog
I am from Cochin. I studied at Campion School, Eddappally. I enrolled at IGNOU for college - but I got a job as a Web Developer on Perl before I could complete even the first year. So I dropped out of college and pursued my job. So I worked in Reubro International for 2 years as a Web Developer. That’s were I learned the ropes. After 2 years, I quit the job and became a freelancer.

What prompted you to start a blog?
I had an interest in web development since I bought my first computer. Before long I learned enough HTML to create my own site(at Tripod). After some time, I went pro - bought hosting and a few domains. I already was managing a few sites when I started BinnyVA Blog. I started it so that I can concentrate on just Web Development content at Bin-Blog. I moved all by personal stuff to BinnyVA.

Has blogging helped you in your freelance career?
Freelancers must have multiples streams of income. You might have a few projects one day - but none for the next week. That uncertainty is part of the Job. Its good money - but it is not steady money. Because I blog, I get a decent amount from my AdSense ads. The fact that I can depend on that money is one of the main factors in my decision to go freelance.

Also having a(or more) blog makes you visible - it gives you a lot of exposure. I have had a few project offers from people who have seen my blog.

You are also one of the Dmoz editors. Tell us about your experience.
I am the editor for Tcl/Tk category - it is a Scripting language. I have had that position for over an year now. It is a slow category - so I don’t have much to do there.

What are the other blogs you write?
I have too many blogs - I am sure I am heading for a burnout soon :-). My blogs/sites are…
Bin-Blog (http://www.bin-co.com/blog/)
Web Development Information - with a special emphasis on LAMP -
Linux/Apache/MySQL/PHP

OpenJS(http://www.openjs.com/)
Source Code, Articles and Tutorials about JavaScript and related topics like
Ajax(XMLHTTPRequest), Client Side Scripting etc.

Bin-Co(http://www.bin-co.com/)
Bin-Co provides open source scripts, tutorials and articles for many
programming languages(like PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python, Tcl/Tk, etc).

LinDesk(http://lindesk.com)
Linux - on the Desktop. Articles, Reviews and Tutorials about many aspects of
Linux included applications and scripting.

BinnyVA(http://www.binnyva.com)
An aggregater for all my blogs.

I try to create at least one post every day.

Why do you blog? What motivates you?
1) I love to write.
2) Having a blog gives you exposure - essential if you are a freelancer like
me.
3) Last but not the least, there is money in it.

Do you use any blogging tools?
I use WordPress as my platform. I create the posts in HTML using a editor called Quanta Plus and copy-paste it into WordPress. For editing the pictures I post, I use Gimp.

Which blog post do you consider as your best?
In BinnyVA Blog, that would have to be Power Struggle - Electricity, KSEB and Me(http://blog.binnyva.com/2007/03/power-struggle-electricity-kseb-and-me/)

What is your experience from blogging? (good or bad)
Its great!

What are your favorite blogs that you read daily?
In the Kerala Category that will be…
http://www.nirmaltv.com/ - Good and Consistent.
http://poomanam.blogspot.com/
http://www.keralatips.org/

What are your future plans?
I am ‘living the dream’ right now. Good job, decent money and lots of free time. My future plan is make sure that it continues to be like this

Is there anything you want to tell Kerala Blogger Community?
I would like to see more localized blogs. More blogs about Kerala. Or about Cochin - or Trivandrum or something.

The problem is most people write about tech. That includes me too. When I started out my blogs were all about programming. This is not a bad thing - but there are too many blogs covering that topic. So please, try a niche topic - and what is better than you home state/city?

Thanks for the interview, KeralaBlogger.

(7 votes, average: 4.86 out of 5)

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