Caught In A New Web

When city-based Aarti Sathik was looking for a school for her four-year-old son Siddhesh,she couldn’t find a website which gave comprehensive information about all the schools in the city. “As a parent,it was very frustrating. Either I had to visit the website of the schools one by one or had to contact the school over the phone,” said she. That’s when she came up with the idea of http://www.myschoolbuzz.in ,which allows you to look for schools on the basis of curriculum,location and division. “Like,if you want to locate schools in Kalyaninagar,you can search accordingly. Similarly,you can choose between CBSE,ICSE,SSCI and IB while searching,” she adds. Altogether,300 schools are listed on the website and detailed profiles of more than 40 schools are also uploaded. A section called ‘School Watch’ covers various activities of the schools. There is also a link which allows the teachers and students to upload various articles and poems on the website.

Like Sathik,there are other individuals who have come up with different websites. Ajinkya Apte’s http://www.remebuddy.com and Naresh Apte’s ww.thotofthis.com are prime examples. In the case of software engineer Ajinkya Apte,it was his own experience of losing his bike keys and being unable to find a spare one that prompted him to start the website. “Being in the web world,I felt that we needed a buddy who would remember things for us. That is how Remebuddy was born,” he says. The website is not a task management system or a calendar alarm,but a place where one can upload little things that one tends to forget. “It could be something as mundane as running an errand or paying college fees. The REMEs (Remember Me),that are short keywords associated with the text,become visible to the user as soon as he or she logs in,” he explains.

A mobile application for this website is also being developed. “People can even choose to share their REMEs with their friends so that they will help them remember certain things,” Apte says,adding,“This is not a social networking site though and the information can only be available to the user lest he or she chooses to share the same with friends.”

Naresh Apte,who launched his website thotofthis.com at a recent event organised with the employees of Extentia,says his website is the next step of social networking. “It is not possible to reach out to 500-odd friends on each social network which I am a member of. Thotofthis.com is a network which will work in a smaller circle yet reach out to a larger number of people,” he explains. The thoughts uploaded on thotofthis.com can be retrieved even after 10 years of posting them online. The thoughts can be saved to a private collection,shared with other social networking sites or made available to the entire world. “People can share information on any relevant topic,” he says. The website evolved from people’s curiosity,beliefs and opinions. “It is not far behind when the current social networking space will give way to the next phase,” says Apte,who terms this phase as ‘Social Network 2.0- value for network’.