Chowrangi

I just don’t know why so many people wanted to play this game again and again. Perhaps some people call it childish game or a clone of Barn buddy but I must say it is infatuation. I have seen people of different age groups playing this game with the similar interest as a child could have.

Who would have guessed—in an age of quickly advancing technology—that one of the most admired online games would be about good old fashioned farming? May be Social gamers do have some sort of special connection to civilization’s roots.

In a year dominated by world-shaking political events, a deadly disease (Swine Flu), the aftereffects of a financial tsunami and the death of a well-regarded pop icon (Michael Jackson), the word Twitter stands above all other words. According to the Global Language Monitor, a Texas company that tracks word usage on the Internet, “Twitter” has been named the “Top Word of 2009” beating Obama and H1N1.

Global Language Monitor explained that it picks its list of top words by tracking words and phrases used in the global media, blogs, social networking sites and other online venues. Frequency of usage is rated, along with contextual usage and momentum.

Social media is on a high these days after launching “GO Green Rally“ by Pakistanis to show unity and celebrate Independence Day. Pakistanis are turning their online avatars or display images green with flags. It has been reported by Dawn as the “Green Revolution”. The celebrations did turn into mourning after Gojra incident though but on the whole people are responding to the campaign of green with enthusiasm.

Unlike the Green Revolution where people are proudly adding the national flag to their own pictures, following video of various government department reveals the humiliation of National flag which are flaunting over them. The flags are in poor condition and it has been called as A Slap on Green revolution by many.

March madness continues for Pakistan, especially Lahore. After the attack on Sri Lanka Cricket team and the Long March, Lahore came into limelight again when a Police training camp in the suburbs of Lahore was attacked by heavily armed terrorists.

According to news reports, 10-15 armed terrorists, apparently in Police uniforms with assault rifles and backpacks, attacked the training camp located in Manawan in early hours of the day. There are approximately 700-800 recruits inside the camp and majority of them were in the ground performing the assembly. The terrorists threw hand grenades, followed by heavy firing and made their to the premises, injuring scores of police recruits in the process. While I write this, police, rangers, SSG commandos and other law enforcement agencies have sieged the training center and exchange of heavy fire is going on. Army choppers are also brought in. LEAs are proceeding cautiously as large number of recruits are still in the building.

The Long March is officially over now and Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry will be restored on March 21 as Chief Justice of Pakistan. These amateur journalists followed the events with detail, providing comments and analysis that MSM lack.

During the days of Long March, Bloggers, Citizen Journalists and Social Media enthusiasts tirelessly covered the proceedings, mostly live from the ground.

At Chowrangi we had Live Coverage of Long March, aggregating various sources including Twitter, Blogs and Main Stream Media.

Extensive social media coverage of the Long March was provided, amongst others, by:

As soon as the attack on Sri Lanka Cricket team happened in Lahore, Citizen Journalist and Social Media Users sprung into action to collate and disseminate the news, much earlier than Main Stream Media.

Bloggers got active posting observations, analysis and videos related to the attacks (here, here, and here), with a blogger’s account noticed by Guardian.

Social media users frequented at Twitter to update as the events proceeded. A hashtag #Lahore was setup to record tweets related to Lahore attack, as follows:

And, here is how I contributed on the incident: (Follow me here)

Mumbai, India’s financial capital, came under terrorist attack late Wednesday night as seven near-simultaneous firings and explosions rocked areas in the vicinity of luxury hotels in South Mumbai, leaving at least 80 persons dead and many injured.

According to media reports:

I don’t think one should go with a pseudonym on the internet. Nothing is really anonymous on the net. It just gives the false sense of security and one only deceives himself by using aliases. When it comes to hiding your personal life behind pseudonyms or anonymous posts, I can’t really digest it completely. Suddenly out of the blue you could get a shock of your life and find yourself exposed and discovered in broad daylight.

The inhabitants of World Wide Web have found another source of pleasure. With the dawn of so-called Web 2.0, many sites appeared which enabled people to fill in a specific piece of content at their will. Sites such as twitter, flickr, truemors and hosts of others fall in this category.

If you are plain bored, and have nothing to do at your hand, and you just don’t want to flick dumbly on the TV channels, then you could pass away your time, by watching the world doing or expressing things.

Everybody is talking about networking with each other. In the physical world, many people have mastered the art of networking. Its all about impressing others and making them potential acquaintances, who can be exploited or leveraged when the time comes. In the virtual world, networking is the most sought after elixir. Virtual Networking is a proven mean to get famous or notorious on the web. Its efficacy as a traffic-enhancer and business-fetcher is beyond doubt.