The Daily Beast/Newsweek is offering an award for South Asian writers/commentators. Seems cool. I can think of some obvious nominees (hint hint), but it’s a good oppo for anyone. India is actually not a proportionally vibrant blogging community, but their papers are booming. I think SL’s paper scene is whack but our blogs and social can be great. The Dives I know a bunch of bloggers that are great. It’s actually an interesting scene. Good to get some blood (money) into it.

This is pretty cool. You can now get SMS alerts from, er, me. If you want. Just send ‘ reg indica ‘ to 77000. And that’s pretty much it. It costs like Rs. 2.50 per SMS, of which I earn 70%. I’ll try to keep the SMS’s interesting and infrequent. Damn cool though. Getting an SMS service used to require hook-ups and meetings and cash, but now you can just go to ideamart.dialog.lk and register. Alternately, wunderkind Arunoda has built kodeincloud.com a far more sophisticated and easy to use solution for Etisalat.

Three years after, Sri Lanka is still defined by the war. To a lesser extend, so is this blog. As much as I try to write about penguins and India and swimsuit calendars, it’s still war that gets people engaged.

These are Tweets that can get you arrested in Saudi Arabia, and possibly killed: “On your birthday, I will say that I have loved the rebel in you, that you’ve always been a source of inspiration to me, and that I do not like the halos of divinity around you. I shall not pray for you. On your birthday, I find you wherever I turn. I will say that I have loved aspects of you, hated others, and could not understand many more. On your birthday, I shall not bow to you. I shall not kiss your hand. Rather, I shall shake it as equals do, and smile as you smile at me. I shall speak to you as a friend, no more.”

Roku is the latest project by Janith, with some ideological input from me. If he’s Prabhakaran, I’m Balasingham. Here is his introduction, which I excerpt below. Roku (working title) is a new type of commenting debate/system. Instead of just commenting in one big thread below, you can take sides (for, against, or neutral). You can upvote each comment, which creates a final score, a ‘winner’ for that particular debate.

It’s amazing the power we have under our clothes. Simply by taking of our clothes, we can immediately shock and/or attract everybody. Aliaa Magda Elmahdy posted nude photographs of herself on her blog as a rebellion against Egypt’s conservative culture and “sexual complexes”. That conservative culture bit back in droves, with even liberals distancing themselves from her.

The BBC is reporting other people reporting that a lot of websites are blocked, including unp.lk (opposition party) and other media sites (lankanewsweb, Sri Lanka Guardian, etc). Those media sites do seem to be blocked, but I can still access the UNP’s site*. In other news, the government has also asked any news websites to register including, presumably, this one.

Was browsing thru Typo In Colombo and this is the funniest HitAd I’ve ever seen (via David Blacker). “Good to attracting the badu. Loud beet silancer. for sale or exchange, owner also available. contact Eastside Chimpunk.” Just, amazing.

There’s a great new Tumblr called Typo In Colombo. Tumblrs are great for visual gags that profit by repetition (Women Looking Dissatisfied In Bed, Teenage Mutant Ninja Noses), and the hilarious English in Sri Lanka is one example. Typo In Colombo has started doing this for some of the unintentional humor of the Colombo streets.

Kottu’s been going through a lot of ch-ch-ch-ch-changes. Janith has rebuilt everything from scratch and I’ve been scratching at the surface. Every post now has chilis next to it, like a menu, so you can tell how spicy it is. By spicy we mean popular (clicks, tweets, likes). Anyways, where was I, oh yeah. Kottu needs a logo.