What is ADP – Amar Durga Puja?

As we all know that Durga Puja is one of the most awaited festival in West Bengal but because of it’s geographical restriction people in the other part of the world can only read about it or view photos only once the event is over – it’s like watching the highlights of the World Cup Finals. We, at FOURDY WLOG, decided to take Durga Puja to the whole world. After a lot of thinking the only way we could do it was through the most powerful medium of today, the internet. This is when we decided to create ADP – www.amardurgapuja.com. ADP would be like a platform for the users to share their thoughts, videos, photo and more about Durga Puja.

The bigger plan was to create a live online streaming video for EACH location in Kolkata. The user who comes to the website would be able to choose the location for which he wants to view the video for and the live video plays. Many may ask: Almost all media channels and radio stations cover the event, how are they different? Well, the primary difference would be that the user gets to choose the location himself and can view each moment of any location rather than watching the puja for only the location where the media is present at that point of time.

Is it happening for Durga Puja 2009?

Unfortunately, No, we will not be rolling out this year due to the lack of sponsors and lack of time.

Then, why are we talking?

Well, because we are ready to make the first move this year. First Move: We will be organizing a photo submission competition this year.

I am excited, tell me more!

What we plan to do is create a website which would be available for the public at www.amardurgapuja.com. On the website, each user can upload photos of puja happening at various places in Kolkata. All the uploaded photos can be view by the general users visitng the website and will have following features:

• Comment on the photo
• Rate the photo
• Search photos (by location)

What happens next?

Next, we plan to give away prizes to:

• Best Rated Photo
• Most Visited Photo

What about publicizing the website, is it too late to start?

No, we believe it’s the best time to start. We would be using 1 Radio Partner, 1 TV Partner, weblink exchanges and Social Network to promote the event.

Are you interested in contributing?

If yes, please feel free to contact us at http://web.thefourdy.com/contact/

From where did the term “FOURDY” evolved from?

FOURDY, as most of you might know, is not a dictionary term. So when and from where and did it come?

The word was drafted by me in 2005 inspired from the term “4th Dimension”. We all are aware of the 3 dimensions (represented by x,y and z axis) but there is also a concept of the 4th dimension – which is representation of the 3 dimensions at a different point of time. For example, if there is a cube we could all define it’s position in terms of x,y and z axis but with the concept of time, where would that cube be (may be a couple of seconds later?) How do you define that? Well, it’s the 4th Dimension.

Impressed by the word 4th Dimension, I decided that I would name my firm as 4D (abbreviation for 4th Dimension.) Not too late, I realized that the term and the concept was too common. But, until then, I had fallen in love with the expression, 4D and this is when the term FOURDY was coined because when you pronounce 4D; it would be spelled as FOURDY

And what’s with “WLOG”?

Some of you have also asked me why is it Wlog and not Blog, did I mis-spelled it? No, I didn’t. For understanding the concept of Wlog you would have to go back to the time when the word Blog was first used. Blog has been derived from 2 prime words “Web Log.” Hence, the actual word is “B log,” where the “B” has been borrowed from the word “web.”

When I came up with the idea of having a common blog, I didn’t had any specific topic in mind to blog on and treated it as a genrenal (or without specific) blog. And this is when I decided that I would name it Wlog (actually, abbreviation of Web log) as it would also support my idea of being general as WLOG also stands for “Without loss of Generality”

So now you know where “FOURDY” and “WLOG” comes from, please do not ask me again

Fourdy Wlog was started recently when Rahul, Khushboo, Chetan and I decided to blog at a common place (Rahul even went to the extent of deleting his existing blog at blogspot). We were surprised at the response we got from friends; many of them wanted an author access to the blog. The quick popularity of the blog made us realize the power of synergy.

The Idea

We are inviting authors to blog at FOURDY WLOG because of 3 reasons:

1. So that FOURDY WLOG becomes one place to look out for information on any topic.
2. To directly market author’s blog on FOURDY WLOG as we allow authors to mention few extracts from the post and like it to their own (it is not mandatory for the authors to link FOURDY WLOG on their blog/website)
3. Link to Author’s website/blog.

Who can join

There is NO restriction on the basis of age, education, location or experience. You do not even need to have your own blog (really).  All we expect from the author is to maintain the code of conduct by keeping the post strickly non obscene and away from controvertial topics. We would like each author to take up few categories of their choice and post in those topics itself. As the association is absolutely informal, there are no set rules but more of mutual understanding.

How can you join

You can join simply by writing an email at wlog [at] thefourdy.com, mentioning the topics/categories you are interested to blog for and we would get back to you with the registration link.

Wishing everyone the very best, happy wlogging!

FOURDY Wlog! - Winning Best Elevator Pitch Award @ Kolkata Blogger's Meet 2009

I have no clue from where to start it off and how to wind it up. But for present, I’m more concerned in explaining the exhilarating experience that me and my companions: Rahul Bharadwaj, Khushboo Nangalia, Shikha Kedia, Anurag Ahuja and Yogesh Goel (better identified by the populace at the meet as ygoel.com) had at the Kolkata Blogger’s Meet 2009 on 8th August, 2009 at Café Coffee Day, Salt Lake (Sector V), Near Adlabs Cinemas, Kolkata.

I couldn’t perceive how 5 hours flew like few minutes, and the programme was over. I only did when the Prize Distribution (which was supposed to be the last on the agenda) commenced and FOURDY Wlog (led by my brother Rahul) won the ‘Best Elevator Pitch Award’.

Returned home happy, relaxed and obviously very proud. All the way back to home late at 11o’clock, we all were in a joyous mood evaluating the event and sharing our thoughts; when I actually sat back in the car recalling every incident that happened to occur before the event. I remembered the message of Yogesh Bhaiya about the KBM’09 which I deleted instantly as I read and didn’t even give it a second thought (just in an assumption that it was a meet for the bloggers as the name suggested). Just after two days what I found that Rahul had already seen through the message, surfed the webreps.in site, have gathered all the knowledge about the organizing group, the meet, their history, the scheduled plan of the programme and has already punched in an idea at their site, posted an article at FOURDY Wlog and the best of all — Registered all of us for the event. He personally took me on a brief ride through his discoveries and in turn ignited within me a yearning to be a part of Kolkata Blogger’s Meet. We kept in touch with Kamanashish Roy (one of the organizers) for details of the event.

Only when a day was left for the event, Rahul and me found each other writing on our Facebook Wall: “Bloggers Meet this Saturday… looking forward to it eagerly” (this was my update). Although we both were very excited for the thing but were not able to pull in time to discuss about it further due to the work pressure and approaching project deadlines. Coincidently, on the morning of 8th August (evening KBM was scheduled) at around 5o’clock we broke in to a conversation (similarly to this fine morning, we usually sit back discussing about different issues coming our way on daily basis at this time when we are relaxing) where after a concurrent suggestions and planning we finally darted on our ‘strategy’ for the meet.

Just as decided I moved out early in the morning at 10 o’clock executing all the tasks set aside for me and back at the base Rahul worked further on the idea, gathered everyone, accomplished some itinerary works and set forth for the meet. All set they moved out at 3 o’clock and picked me on the way from the ‘Poddar Court’. Before we could have tasted the thrill of the evening at the CCD, we had to go through an unpleasant adventure — mind it I choose calling it adventure (on a sarcastic note) while the tyre of our car got ruptured in the midst of Salt Lake (on the road taking you to Nicco Park: just few kilometers away from our destination) and incidentally stephanie (an extra tyre) has experienced the same a day before. Nothing but ‘Justdial’ comes to your mind at such a situation. We were so off the city and had thin chances of having any car servicing garage nearby. Nevertheless, from the list of many contacts forwarded to us by Justdial, like a god-sent Arihant Enterprise has a tons of gratitude to be expressed from our end. We left our car at Nicco Parking area and somehow managed to reach the destination on time with the help of a taxi.

We rushed and reached the venue almost on time. As we entered and had our seats, we had Kamanashish (part of an organizing team and personally my favorite host who had the power to rise the lethargic audience in his persona) officially announcing the beginning of the Kolkata Blogger’s Meet 2009. Soham Pal (the youngest blogger present in the show) inaugurated the show by cutting the cake. Later during the programme when Soham and I had a talk then we happen to know each other. In fact, he had also commented on one of my post at FOURDY Wlog.

Next, we had Elevator Pitch event, where 1 minute was scheduled for a blogger to describe their blog. A lot of bloggers participated amongst which one of them was Rahul Bharadwaj, who just took 45 seconds to place his thoughts on FOURDY Wlog (he was on a hunt of good authors for a blog as he wanted them to blog under one roof — FOURDY Wlog) . The event followed by a chain of superb presentations covering various topics on internet by Abhishek Rungta, CEO of Indus Net Technologies, Arun Agarwal of Ebizindia, Aji Issac Mathew of SEO for Clients and Saptarshi Roy Chaudhury of SEO Kolkata. If you ask me what I enjoyed most in the entire programme, Abhishek Rungta’s presentation on the Blog Monetization would be my answer.

Between the event a survey to test the blogging trends in Kolkata was conducted by Indus Net Technologies. The result of the same has been published on their website. Though none of the pens supplied by them worked, yet the enthusiastic bloggers filled up the form and returned back to the Help Desk. Indus Net also presented a T-shirts & ELearning CD to all the participants. (God! We almost had a CD over all the topics…)

In the Launch a Product event, FusionCharts (represented by Sanket and Saptarshi) presented FusionCharts Google Gadget. Their style was unique — they prepared some really good looking banners apart from the slides. Mitesh Ashar, presented his app – twit discuss, which did not work at that time, but the concept was good. It allows one to monitor conversations on twitter based on the hash tags.

Followed by a dinner arrangement, we had the definite chance of conversing with people there and we did it very well. Tasting the de-facto café coffee day coffee and snacks Rahul, Khushboo, Anurag, Yogesh and I essentially went on explaining our perception of FOURDY Wlog to the populace. What surprised me most were Khushboo and Ekta becoming friends the very night at Facebook just after the meet and consequently the mails for authorship rights in our email addresses just the following day. Had a wonderful response from the interested people, either calling directly or mailing us.

The Prize Distribution event was really fun-filled (may be the reason is that we bagged one). Anirudh Lohia (a webrepper) got the Best Idea Award. Though we didn’t win the award here still I’m satisfied by now with scores of people who have shown interest in our idea and joined their hands to make it realism. The Best Elevator Pitcher Award went to Rahul Bharadwaj of FOURDY Wlog & the Best Marketer Award went to Devanand Agarwala from Bima World.

Kolkata Blogger’s Meet has finished and is over but what I carry forward as a legacy is a huge number of – online and offline friends. Had a brilliant opportunity to make friends with Anirban Saha, Saikat Sengupta, Kamanashish Roy, Bijay Rungta, Rajesh Rana, Shirsendu Sengupta, Pallavi Banerjee, Ekta Khetan and many more.
Kolkata Blogger’s Meet 2009 got over on a blissful note and left an indelible mark on us, especially me. In the end all the bloggers decided to share the stage again to have ‘India Internet Summit in Kolkata’ soon. Just looking forward to the event with an equivalent enthusiasm!

Best wishes forever to the organizers (Webreps) and gold sponsorer (Indus Net Technologies). Wishing to have more turn-ups in the next meet! I’m definitely in…