The M-Pod vs MM-Pod (aka Manorama Podcast) issue is really sickening. The folks who work behind Manorama Online website still do not admit their mistake and cling on to their claim still. Meanwhile, WebDunia.com has written about the issue in their news section.

Below is the reply I received from Santhosh George Jacob (Online content co-ordinator of Malayala Manorama) for an email I sent to him. I have pasted my reply to him after that.

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Dear Mr. Jacob

First of all what we did is not a mistake to be corrected at all.

We've spend some time on your site and what we find is that its a voice blog as its comes under blogspot. The structure of the same is also different.

Its obvious that the podcast which we are offering on IFRA norms is totally different from a blogspot powered voice blog.

Kindly try to understand the difference and keep surfing Manorama Online.

Thanks

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Hi Santhosh

First let me correct a small mistake. My name is Joseph, not Jacob.

Now on to the second and biggest mistake - I think that you are still not aware of what a podcast is. Go to the Wikipedia article of Podcast or check out Dictionary.com and find the meaning of Podcast. Let me paste both the links here for your convenience:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Podcast
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/podcast

Both the links clearly state that what differentiates a podcast from a voice blog is the RSS syndication. I have been providing this right from the year 2005. Now going by this common standard, I have to say that your podcast cannot be even called a podcast since it doesn't provide any subscription option. But you call it a podcast and not only that, as the first in Malayalam. This is completely wrong and misleading information. If you check out the podcasts of New York Times etc (those who follow IFRA norms), they provide the subscription option in their frontpage itself. Evidently you are not aware of this.

My podcast was begun in 2005. Initially I hosted it in Podbazaar (whose service I use for my podcast, like you use IFRA help for yours) and you can see my show page there - http://www.podbazaar.com/view/126100789566373916. Then in 2007, I moved to my own domain www.mpod.in where I use the blogger software to host my website.

I would suggest you consult with your technical person and get a clear understanding of these terms before misleading Malayalees with false and wrong information.

And the issue is being noticed by the Malayalee netizens (the same as your targeted audience) and you may want to take a note of that and remove the false information from your website. I repeat, I do not have any problem with you publicizing your podcast as "The first Malayalam podcast that follows IFRA norms", but when you say only "the first Malayalam podcast", I have a serious problem with that. And until you remove this false claim, I will fight it with all the available resources.

Thank you.

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PS: Meanwhile, you guys checkout the Google results for the following keywords: Manorama Podcast, Manorama Online Podcast, Malayala Manorama Podcast. Now Manorama may want to spend money on some serious SEO business. :-)