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Net Gains: India's first weekly Internet column |
I was introduced to the Internet a few months before VSNL (then
the sole Indian ISP) started offering Internet connectivity. All
thanks to a leased line the software firm I was working for, had.
Outside work hours, I spent early mornings, late evenings and
sometimes even night-outs exploring the Net - it fascinated me
that much !
However whenever I spoke to people about the Net, I realised
that not many people knew what the Net was, or the numerous things
that it had in store. So I wrote a series of four articles explaining
in layman's terms what the Internet was, and the various features
and applications available on the Net, and approached Bombay
Times, a popular supplement of the Times of India - India's largest selling English daily.
They carried these articles and asked me to do a few more. A
few articles later they asked me to continue writing about the
Net on a weekly basis, and my column was christened Net Gains
on January 17th, 1996, making it India's first regular
Internet column. In September 98, the column was renamed Net News, but continued to be referred to as Net Gains, till the last column in September 1999, when I left India for work in America.
Net Gains was largely a travellogue of cyberspace -
each week the column used to take readers to different unique and interesting
sites on the Net. New developments, software, and issues that
mattered to the reader were also taken up - making it a weekly guide
to some of the interesting things the Internet had to offer.
Instantaneous feedback and suggestions from readers via email helped keep the column on course - always keeping what they wanted in mind. The columns were also posted online on my site and are still archived ...