And the winner of the silliest book title is…

Reading is no longer the purely geeky exercise it was. Thanks to the web, the literary world has suitably lightened up to keep fringe readers interested in the proceedings. There’s the hilarious Bad Sex award of the Literary Review magazine, but there  dozens of online, interactive contests.

Bookseller is inviting online entries for its delectable contest for the oddest title of the year. The books in the running are:

# Tattooed Mountain Women and Spoon Boxes of Daghestan

# How Green Were the Nazis?

# D. Di Mascio‘s Delicious Ice Cream: D. Di Mascio of Coventry—An Ice Cream Company of Repute, with an Interesting and Varied Fleet of Ice Cream Vans

# The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification

# Proceedings of the Eighteenth International Seaweed Symposium

# Better Never To Have Been: The Harm of Coming Into Existence

Related article: Vote for the silliest book title

What your penis says about your email

Rediffmail, the email service of rediff.com has reportedly run into trouble with its latest commercial touting unlimited storage space. Sun TV, according to a report in the Hindustan Times, has refused to run the commercial, terming it offensive. And the Advertising Standards Council of India is also said to have received a few complaints.

The commercial has two women in an office suggestively discussing a tiny colleague’s big attributes. “Is it true about Raju?” Even the boss bends across the urinal with his eyes fixed on the lower half of little Raju’s anatomy. And in the final shot, the guy in the cubicle next to Raju’s asks him pointblank, to which tiny Raju says, it is not big, it is unlimited.

***

CHETAN KRISHNASWAMY says he too found the ad crass and tasteless. Did you? On the other hand, if the whole point of advertising is to create awareness and get people talking about a product, has it succeeded? Or is the ad indecent and unbecoming of a portal set up by one of the co-founders of India’s most creative ad agencies?

Cross-posted on churumuri

How nangada Cariappa is making a site sizzle

The print newsroom of the Times of Oman counts 30 staffers. Its online version, which grabbed the gold at the Oman Web Awards last year, counts only three, and receives on average 80,000 page views a day. Cariappa A A, web editor of Times of Oman, explains how such a small team can put up a quality website daily, through efficient time management and adapted content.

Read the full article: How a small team sustains an award-winning site