I got a letter last night from a member. It seems that I had deleted someone cause they were not posting. The person asked me about it, after exchanging a few mails, I got him to re-register and I promised him I will not delete his membership.
He further told me and I quote from his mails.

"I was registered before, but suddenly I (or you) lost my registration. I know this because I couldn't search anything, and when I tried to log in, it wouldn't let me, and when I tried to reregister using the same name and password, it let me. BUT, it takes a while to get accepted (remember now, I had already been accepted before), and I'm wondering if you can confirm that I had been registered before and go ahead and accept me.

I haven't posted (yet), but find the Bollywood forum invaluable for getting the English lyrics for many good songs."

he continues in another mail to me

"Hello Amral Khan,

Thanks for explaining it to me. I had no idea I could be penalized for not posting. I suppose it's in the rules that I never read. Not being from Guyana, I haven't much interest in most of the forums, but I have a great interest in classic Indian film, and have learned quite a bit from asj, his bios of film stars, the songs and films he likes, and the translations he's collected from his translators. Not being of Indian ancestry, I feel it a bit presumptous of me to be posting in a forum full of Desis. But maybe I can find something to say.

Thanks again, and I'll look forward to being reinstated."

Welcome again manono

Welcome Manono, and thanks for the feedback, I am sure that our other colleagues who are contributing immensely to this section will be happy for your kind response.

As it is a team work, our colleagues behind the scene gets about 75 percent of the credit, me a mere 5 percent for putting it together.

We look foward for your contributions and once again welcome from within the GNI Family.

Thanks Amral, for extending the courtesy.

.

asj is doing an outstanding job with this forum .... and perhaps its the most prolific forum currently.

Thanks Ara, but I still maintain that it is a team effort, and so many persons has been visiting because of our top position with google in which we are holding the top spots for months now......means we are doing some thing good.

With Bollywood everyone gets credit, maybe I will use some of your sexy girls for ghazals

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-...:en&q=ghazals+topics

.

quote:

As it is a team work, our colleagues behind the scene gets about 75 percent of the credit, me a mere 5 percent for putting it together.

Hehe, and who gets the other unaccounted for 20%?

Now I'm all embarrassed because of amral quoting me. Thanks for the welcome, asj. And I think you're being a bit modest as you're doing a lot more than just putting it all together. There's a lot of subjectivity involved, and a knowledge acquired from years of watching and enjoying and writing about Indian films. Why have you chosen which stars to spotlight with your biographies? Why have you chosen the particular songs for the Top 200 Lata Mangeshkar songs thread? These decisions aren't arbitrary, I don't think, but come from years of acquired and discriminating judgement

There is maybe something I can do for you and your forum here. As an active video encoder I've been uploading some of my favorite Indian videos to Stage6. Because they don't have any bitrate, resolution, or file size restrictions, you can upload some fairly decent quality videos, a quality limited mostly by the quality of the original Indian DVDs (which, as you know, can be pretty awful sometimes). In general, the quality will be immeasurably better than anything you'll ever see on YouTube. When selecting song videos to upload, I've recently begun checking to see if there are any songs you've spotlighted. Eventually, when I set up my own channel there, I plan on devoting one section to your songs.

If you've never been to Stage6 you'll have to install their DivX Web Player. They play AVIs, and not the FLVs of YouTube. Here, in no particular order, are some of my favorites:

Lag Je Gale Woh Kaun Thi, 1964
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1717092/Lag-Ja-Gale
Acha Ji Mein Haari Chalo Kala Pani, 1958
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1900885/Acha-Ji-Mein-Haari-Chalo
Piya Tose Naina Laage Guide, 1965
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1611004/Piya-Tose-Naina-Laage
Mera Naam Chin Chin Choo Howrah Bridge, 1958
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1567801/Mera-Naam-Chin-Chin-Choo
Aayega Aayega Aanewala Mahal, 1949
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1715880/Aayega-Aayega-Aanewala
Ajeeb Dastan Hai Yeh Dil Apna Aur Preet Parayee, 1960
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1776685/Ajeeb-Dastan-Hai-Yeh
Na To Carvan Ki Talesh Barsaat Ki Raat, 1960
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1704659/Na-To-Carvan-Ki-Talesh
Aaiye Meherbaan Baithiye Jane Jaan Howrah Bridge, 1958
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1637917/Aaiye...n-Baithiye-Jane-Jaan
Jaan Pehchaan Ho Gumnaam, 1965
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1618867/Jaan-Pehchaan-Ho
O Haseena Zulfan Waali Teesri Manzil, 1966
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1602756/O-Haseena-Zulfan-Waali

That's 10; that's enough. I think a few of those have the translations because you collected them and posted them here. I could list the ones for which you and your translators are responsible if you like. But you can find them by searching the 225 videos I (as tommydan) have uploaded there so far.

If sometimes you wonder if your work goes unappreciated except by a very few that post in this forum, remember that there are probably quite a few like me that read your posts, listen to your music, and take your recommendations to heart, but don't join this forum and post. Again, thanks to you and amral for the welcome.

quote:

Originally posted by manono:
If sometimes you wonder if your work goes unappreciated except by a very few that post in this forum, remember that there are probably quite a few like me that read your posts, listen to your music, and take your recommendations to heart, but don't join this forum and post. Again, thanks to you and amral for the welcome.

Amen, well put.

My Brother Manono, so much thanks for all the nice things you have said about me, which I do not deserve, as a lover of Indian Music and the Arts, the pleasure is tremendous in doing what I do, it is an added joy to know that others are clicking our links and enjoying our humble efforts. As I said before that there are/were many who assisted and are/were part and parcels of this undertaking, names like Amral, Lynn, Saeedbhai, Ranjana (what a wonderful woman) and of recent Venkat, and many of our colleagues on GNI, without their encouragements and input this would have been just a dream.

I was looking at "STAGE 6" since this morning, and I am hooked, it is better than youtube by far, the clarity is breathtaking, the sound is sharp, it is like looking at a Plasma Flat Screen TV with high definition dvd.

I am honored to be in such company, and I marveled at your genius, and your humility in bringing all of this to the GNI folks, we are grateful.

Please feel free to use any of our materials, it is always a grateful feelings to know that many more will get access to part of our humble effort, all I ask is that we recognized our translators effort...........I owed these guys this.

Hahaha I have to brush up on my maths, and personally, permit me to ask: Is there shares on the market for "STAGE 6" as I foresee that in the future it will be a replacement for Youtube and a highly desirable stock to hold.

Manono thanks the feelings are great.
.

ASJ just so you know i have introduced this forum to some friends from India who were very impressed with what you have complied here not to mention the least.
Here is one of my favorite
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1611190/Gaata-Rahe-Mera-Dil

welcome to Manono

makes me remember a friend i have from africa...
he loves indian movies and music...he is my source of indian movies and the person who recommends which movie is nice or not....

he has been asking about a movie he recalls from his young days..."girl from India"

Manono, You have great taste for classic indian Music but how about El Dorado 15 years???

Welcome and do contribute when you have time.

quote:

Originally posted by chameli:
welcome to Manono

makes me remember a friend i have from africa...
he loves indian movies and music...he is my source of indian movies and the person who recommends which movie is nice or not....

he has been asking about a movie he recalls from his young days..."girl from India"

Cham
Yur friend is right. I saw that movie. It was film in Trinidad. stars Kabir Bedi. Met him at the cinema in TO.

quote:

Originally posted by asj:
Hahaha I have to brush up on my maths, and personally, permit me to ask: Is there shares on the market for "STAGE 6" as I foresee that in the future it will be a replacement for Youtube and a highly desirable stock to hold.

That's funny. Stage6 is owned by DivX.inc:

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=divx

You may have heard of them as they're a popular video codec and together with XviD (DivX backwards), an open source codec, they are the 2 main codecs (compressor/decompressor) used for making AVIs. If you or any of the other forum members have ever downloaded any videos from P2P or other places, the chances are good they were made using one or the other codec.

So, DivX is indeed publicly traded, and with the huge amount of money YouTube sold for when acquired by Google ($1.65 billion), you may be right in thinking Stage6 might be worth some money sometime in the future. In addition, they try and add in some of the social networking features of a MySpace or a FaceBook. I should say that I have no interest in Stage6 other than as a place to upload my videos. And if you or anyone else objects to me linking to them, then please let me know and I'll stop immediately. But I've also seen a few YouTube videos and those things can give you a headache and make you blind. Yes, 9 out of 10 doctors advise against watching too many YouTube videos.

I don't know much about all that stock stuff, though. Because I have some skill at encoding videos, I was looking for a place to upload my favorites, and absolutely refused to use YouTube because everything they touch turns to garbage. This is especially true of Indian videos, because when the Indians start dancing, the bitrate requirement for decent quality skyrockets. Stage6 didn't have any limitations which is one reason they appealed to me. Heck, there's even a lot of Hi-Def stuff there, movie trailers and the like. This has presented some problems for some people, because unless you have some sort of broadband connection, you may find the videos pausing all the time. So people on dial-up might just have to download a video to be able to watch it uninterrupted. But Stage6 makes it easy to download. One person messaged me and asked if I could make the videos smaller, and I had to politely explain why I couldn't. But some of the videos are pretty large.

And I've also been getting requests for more recent videos. They are undeniably more popular, but my true love is those from India's Golden Age Of Films. So I upload a few newer ones from time to time to try and keep everyone happy.

One of the interesting things I've found is that my tastes don't always coincide with those of people of Indian ancestry. For example, bird in this thread mentioned that Gaata Rahe Mera Dil from the movie Guide is one of his (her?) favorites. And indeed, it's one of the most popular songs of the ones I've uploaded. But if I were choosing songs from Guide, I'd go with first, Piya Tose Naina Laage (to which I linked the other day), followed closely by Aaj Phir Jeene Ki. So, I'd have to say that I'm learning a lot about what those of Indian ancestry like, and have begun to add more songs based on what others like, rather than on just what I like. I'm getting a ton of requests for videos of Zeenat Aman and Hema Malini, so if you check my recent uploads, you'll find some their songs and dances. If anyone's interested, here are the ten most viewed songs:

Choli Ke Peeche Kya Hai Khal Nayak, 1993
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1630683/Choli-Ke-Peeche-Kya-Hai
Pyar Kiya To Darna Mughal-E-Azam, 1960
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1619002/Pyar-Kiya-To-Darna
Mehbooba Mehbooba Sholay, 1975
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1560533/Mehbooba-Mehbooba
Aaj Phir Jeene Ki Guide, 1965
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1611250/Aaj-Phir-Jeene-Ki
Gaata Rahe Mera Dil Guide, 1965
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1611190/Gaata-Rahe-Mera-Dil
Ude Jab Jab Zulfen Teri-Colorized Naya Daur, 1957
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1784008/Ude-J...ulfen-Teri-Colorized
Hoton Pe Aisi Baat Mein Jewel Thief, 1967
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1625795/Hoton-Pe-Aisi-Baat-Mein
Khaike Paan Banaraswala Don, 1978
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1747564/Khaike-Paan-Banaraswala
Yeh Dosti Sholay, 1975
http://www.stage6.com/user/tommydan/video/1733018/Yeh-Dosti

Choli Ke Peeche has been viewed nearly 3 times as much as the number 2 video. Speaking of Maduri Dixit:

quote:

As I said before that there are/were many who assisted and are/were part and parcels of this undertaking, names like Amral, Lynn, Saeedbhai, Ranjana (what a wonderful woman) and of recent Venkat, and many of our colleagues on GNI, without their encouragements and input this would have been just a dream.

Am I the only one that thought your Madhuri Dixit translator was the real deal? It was only recently that you explained, asj, that it was the online nickname of someone else. I always thought it was so cool that the great Madhuri would take the time to do translating for you. Silly me, eh?

Of course, the ones most viewed are also the ones that have been uploaded longer than others. And had I chosen others to upload, some of them might be in the top 10. But I'm still mining my collection for songs.

quote:

Manono, You have great taste for classic indian Music but how about El Dorado 15 years???

I'm sorry, Nehru, but I don't understand.

Anyway, it's been nice talking with you folks.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: manono,

Manono, Well now I am convinced that you are not Guyanese. My friend El Dorado 15 years is the BEST RUM in the world, you should try some.

quote:

Originally posted by Nehru:
Manono, Well now I am convinced that you are not Guyanese. My friend El Dorado 15 years is the BEST RUM in the world, you should try some.

Hehe, oh, a little test. Which I failed miserably.

The next time I'm in a store I'll check. I don't know if it's ever made it here to Hawaii, though.