Rotary Blog Featured on rotary.org
Today Rotary International ran a story on their frontpage about the blog Colombo Regency setup. I am really proud of that blog because they are helping people and documenting it really well.
When the Rotary Club of Colombo Regency, Sri Lanka, invited a man to speak about weblogs at a lunch-time meeting in November, members had no idea that only a month later they would use their new knowledge to create such a Web site and raise tens of thousands of dollars to aid Sri Lankan survivors of the world’s deadliest tsunamis in recorded history.
Just one day after massive waves slammed into coastlines along the Indian Ocean, the club created www.reliefforsrilanka.blogspot.com, a weblog that allows people to immediately donate money, food, and medicine — and read about what the club is doing with the goods and funds. (Tiffany Woods, Rotary International)
That ‘man’ is me. I blogged about the presentation here. It’s great that Colombo Regency is getting the press. The outpouring of support from Rotarians around the world has been amazing. For the record Harsha de Silva is the main blogger on the site who got the photos and stuff going. He’s the guy who invited me.
What the Rotary Club did is really amazing, and simple, meaning that anyone can do it. I gave them this presentation here: (rotary-blog Powerpoint – 4 MB). It’s the least interesting part of the venture but look if you want. I gave the presentation and answered some questions and then I left. I see Harsha all the time but I never thought anything would come of it. Then the Tsunami hit and Tharanga emailed me to say they already setup a blog. I went in and admin’d it a little and put their logo and stuff there but that was about it. What’s interesting about blogs is not their form as much as content. The design is about as sophisticated as a bunch of emails in a stack. What’s cool is what the Rotary Club was doing – buying food, putting it in vans and going out and helping people. Now the operation is actually very serious with warehouses and stuff.
I also emailed Harsha another Powerpoint showing him how to sync with www.flickr.com for photo uploading. In a few steps you can setup and email address with Flickr that’ll let you blog photos by email, which is pretty hot. Anyways, you should check out the site. They update more often that I do and they are awesome
reliefforsrilanka.blogspot.com
The Mahavamsa (a history of Sri Lanka) is full of conflicts between generals and kings. Usually, the more bloodthirsty and unscrupulous would win. Our current (elected) ruler Mahinda Rajapaksa has had his own general conflicts, namely with one Sarath Fonseka. In the old days Fonseka would have staged a coup, as in literally try to cut of Mahinda’s head, and Mahinda would – if that failed – tie him to four elephants and split his parts asunder. Can’t do that shit anymore. Instead Fonseka ran for office and lost and Mahinda tossed him in jail.
Today on the 
Janith has updated 
This is highly dubious. Miss Travel is a travel/social networking site that connects ‘Generous’ and ‘Attractive’ travelers. To, like, travel together, I guess. It all seems a bit like arranged prostitution and trafficking. This is part of a broader online trend to connect rich men to younger, attractive women. Sites like 
indi, your presentation and more importantly what came out if it has helped so so many people. in fact we have even created rotary history… thank you for all your help.