Tamil: Blog aggregators, education, middle east and manslaughter · Global Voices
Bharat

Tamil blogs have risen in a big way since they started showing up some years back. Similar to other blog spheres, collaborative blogs were started, blog aggregators came into existence, tag teasings were done  and podcasts were made( [link 1] [link 2] [link3]. Thamizmanam, an automated blog aggregator tracks approximately 1000 tamil blogs and its statistics say that there are approximately 100 – 150 posts made everyday which attract anywhere between 750 – 1000 comments. Though the number of posts is not very significant compared to the bigger picture, the average readership as reflected by the healthy post – comment ratio is very good. Another automated aggregator is Thenkoodu. Even mainstream aggregators like bloglines and technorati support tamil blogs. Gilli is an aggregator that features posts hand-picked by a group of very efficient bloggers who religiously keep track of tamil blogs from various parts of the world. Kasi, in a guest column for gilli, traces the evolution of tamil blogs till date. Tamilblogs has a directory of tamil blogs sorted alphabetically in tamil. With quite a significant presence of the language in the blog world, it's a wonder that google does not offer a tamil search option with blogsearch.
The recent elections in Tamil Nadu saw the political party DMK rise to power. One of their major political moves was a law that made tamil a mandatory language in schools that fall under the Tamil Nadu State board stream. Badri shares his thoughts on the issue. Things can get tricky when translations for scientific terms/processes are made. New words are born in tamil with brisk neologism, but it is indeed a challenge to first coin tamil equivalents for the existing terms and then to keep pace with the new ones. Penetration and web presence don't help much like the english language to spread new words. Selvaraj has a couple of posts on ““An Introduction to Chemical Engineering”” which primarily distinguishes chemistry from chemical engineering. He also discusses some chemical engineering processes and provides translations to some key words used in the field. It shows that technical studies entirely in tamil are difficult but not impossible.
Football is on and the tamil blog world is no exception. kaalpanthu2006 is a dedicated blog on the Football WorldCup 2006. Liveblogging of the matches, post-match analysis and predictions can be found here. All in tamil.
The Middle East too has a small poulation blogging in tamil.  Narayanan shares his experiences in Dubai while on a business trip, Dubaivasi invites people to a blood donation drive , Azadak sheds some light on skyrocketing real estate prices in Dubai and Raja has a poem depicting his love for his motherland.
The Sri Lankan tamil blog world seems to be sober.
[Warning:Disturbing images]
Jeyaraj talks about the killing of a family in Vankalai by Sri Lankan Army soldiers ending the post with a couplet from Thirukkural. Moorthy Martin, his wife, son and daughter were killed by a group identified as Sri Lankan Army personnel by eye-witnesses. It is alleged that Mary, Martin's wife was raped and all the four were subject to brutal torture. koluvithaluvi mourns the death and Karthik has a poem in tribute. (The story in english and a follow up)