Update (31 August 2013): Things have changed since we mad this announcement back in 2009. Due primarily to lack of activity at our site at ning.com, we are saying good bye to it. Now, the Materialia Indica community has a page on Facebook and Google +.
This blog will continue to exist. Some of the content from the ning.com site may get transplanted here, along with the original content that appeared here first.
[End Update; Original post appears below]
A quick announcement to tell you all that Materialia Indica now has a second home which is bigger, more open, and more feature-rich.
It’s hosted on Ning.com, which offers a fairly complete suite of social networking features: groups, forums, events, and yes, blogs!
Over there, Materialia Indica — perhaps we should call it MI 2.0 — has a chance to become a true community, a network of folks with a common interest: materials engineering research and education in India.
So, come on over there and join us!
Membership in MI 2.0 is open to everyone — students, faculty, researchers, engineers — with an interest in materials engineering research and education in India. And everyone is equal when it comes to contributing to the site; more important than the lack of hierarchy in the forums is the fact that everyone has a blog! All the blog posts get aggregated on the main page.
* * *
When we launched Materialia Indica almost four months ago, we were certain that it should be an open forum, with participation by as many people as possible. However, due to my ignorance and/or inexperience (and against very good advice from Phanikumar), I ended up choosing the blog format which, it is now clear, is totally inappropriate for the purpose of networking and community-building. There’s no way the blog format could have allowed Materialia Indica to become something like iMechanica, which has grown to over 9000 users, each with posting privileges on his/her own blog in that Drupal-based site.
So, what about Materialia Indica, the blog? Now that the networking and India-centric aspects have moved to the second home, this blog can now become a theme-based blog with a focus on materials science and engineering.
And I think that’s a fine goal for this blog. And I hope you’ll all agree …
Materialia Indica 
How do I become a member of Materialia Indica?
Go to this site and look for the sign-up link. As of now, it’s open to everyone (but it may become ‘invitation-only’ sometime in the future …).