Isam Bayazidi’s Blog

I know I haven’t written for a while, but I found a certain piece of news about a new blog for Ahmedi Nejad the Iranian president. It seems that the blog was announced in official news agencies. Now I must admit that the Iranian blog movement had always fascinated me. What amazes me is how it was “embraced” by the government in Iran in a way that no other country did. I even read earlier last year that the ministry of culture organized a “Blog Awards”.. imagine this, it is amazing..

The way I see it, it is the smartest middle-eastern country when it comes to dealing with blogs.. instead of “blocking” it, and making it a taboo, they made it “pro-government”.. so the “anti-government” voices in the blogosphere will just fade in the waves blogs that are pro-gov. Now that’s smart.. The number of blogs in Iran today are in the 100s of thousands last I heard from my friend Hoder when he was in Amman. Now, I am not sure if the Iranian experience on blogs could be implemented in other countries, and infact I am not sure I want it to.. So far we are enjoying the government ignorance, blindness, or dismissal of blogs, it gave us a space that we might not have if they paid attention…

So let them stay away o ghanilo..

Blogging, News & Politics

It seems that as Nader got cured from his Draft-but-not-publish syndrome, I caught it up. I discovered that my latest post was more than a month ago, and what’s worse, it was about IE7 :) Now, since then I wrote many drafts for posts, about several topics: Google Arabic translation, how excited I am about my new laptop, about my observations for the interview with slashdot a couple of months ago, the latest meeting for JP, and so on.. but they never got published because I was either too lazy, or found them not good enough.

Which brings me to another related “Syndrome” that I caught from some bloggers. The “I-can’t-write-because-I-am-so-exposed” Syndrome. For those who didn’t notice, some JP members contact us everynow and then asking for their removal from the planet. It seems that the exposure that Jordan Planet gives to them, makes them think more than once before hitting the publish key. While there are always the brave of us who are always willing to hit “Publish” regardless, other think twice, and then save as draft or delete. While this was a known issue even before the exposure that JP might give, it seems that JP only made it worse. I am not sure if I do have such issue, but I am sure that many do, so why not me :)

Last, but not least, I have the can’t-follow-up-with-everything syndrome. Probably this comes from bad personal organization and management. I know that many of my readers are waiting or expecting something from me: Ohoud on the Bookclub, Laith on another matter, Ammar, Lina, Salam and the list go on and on.. not counting those who submitted their blogs to JP, and wait for the slightest indication that their blog submission was read by someone :)

Now, I will be working on having my long draft list published, and the queue of people waiting for something from me shortened. And hopefully this post will make me overcome such fear-to-publish issue if it exists.

About Me, Apple, Blogging, Jordan Planet

A couple of weeks ago, we got a very interesting email from the “Contact Us” in Jordan Planet site:

Topic : RSS Feed issue with IE7
Message : I’m a Program Manager for RSS on the Internet Explorer team.  I’m contacting you because we have received a report that your website’s RSS feed is not compatible with Internet Explorer 7, and we’d like your cooperation in resolving this issue.
The feed in question is: http://www.jordanplanet.net/rss20.xml

On investigating, we discovered that your feed contains a reference to a DTD (Document Type Definition) used to help XML parsers with validation of the document.  However, DTD validation is a potential source of a security issues for XML parsers, and they are not required for RSS feeds, so Internet Explorer’s parser rejects all feeds that contain references to DTDs.

The DTD reference is not necessary for your feed to work in either Internet Explorer or any other aggregator. To enable users to subscribe to your feed in Internet Explorer 7, simply remove the reference to the DTD.
Please feel free to contact me about this.

Now, I was surprised that anyone from Microsoft would bother to check or send me a report about the feed of Jordan Planet.. So, in appreciation of thier time, I spent some time researching about it. I didn’t find any mention of that “security issue”. It seems that all Drupal-based sites (including the popular news site The Onion which uses Drupal as well) have this DOCTYPE/DTD declaration in their feeds.. So, basically, IE7 (according to the Program Manager for RSS in IE7) won’t work with Drupal feeds :)

As non-sense as this seems to me, I removed the DOCTYPE/DTD declaration from JP feeds.. I might return it soon though, as thinking more about it, the feed is XML/RSS valid, and it doesn’t make sense that IE7 completely ignore the feed just because it have a DOCTYPE/DTD declaration.  They can just ignore checking the DTD they are very worried about security.

On another note: 59.9% of Jordan Planet visitors use IE, 22.1% Firefox 1.5, 7% Firefox 1.0,  3% Mozilla 5.0..

Blogging, Internet & Technology, Jordan Planet, OSS & Linux

First, Visit this. Now this had been around for some time, some of you may had seen it. Problem is that a number of JP bloggers use software or service that does not support categorization (Yes, I am talking about Blogger). Some of the tags you see in that page are only used by one blogger, while others are shared. If you are unfamiliar with Tag Clouds, and Flickr, the larger the fontsize, the more posts are under it. Enjoy…

Blogging, Jordan Planet

Blogging

Since my last review of the Arabic blog services 2 months ago, a number of changes happened in those services, as well, Maktoob introduced their MaktoobBlog service. I wanted to revisit the the blog services, and take a look at maktoob’s offering. I will start with Jeeran and Maktoobblogs, as for Albawaba Blogs, I know that a lot of changes, updates and surprises are being cooked, so I will review it once it is released.

When I did my last review, Jeeran Blogs service was still very fresh, at that time they had some 9 available themes, now they provide 18 nice themes, as well it is now possible to change from the Hijri to the Gregorian calender with ease. A major feature that I noticed is the ability to add HTML code to the header, sidebar, or footer of your blog. Things that one could add include advertisements, image links to other sites, and so on.

Another feature, that I learned about, is that it is possible to have your own domain name for your own Jeeran blog. As Jeeran is a hosting service afterall, it is possible to have your blog under your own domain name (www.yourname.com). Since my last review, Jeeran introduced post categorization, even going further with providing feed per category. One downside is that a post must me in only one category, no more. So if you want to post about “Jordan” and “Technology” you have to select one of them, or create a new category “Jordan Technology”. Another thing that one could hope to see is the ability to make the theme or template unique, through changing colors, fonts, or maybe theme images. It is worth mentioning that Jeeran have proper and complete documentation, as well add to that,dedicated blogs in Arabic and English about blogging, and reporting latest updates of their service.

Now to the new visitor on the block, MaktoobBlog. Now Maktoob is no stranger for Arab internet users. They provided the first Webmail service with proper Arabic support back when using Arabic in emails was only a dream. As well, they are behind a number of innovative services such as CashU and Souq.com, today it is considered the largest Arab community site. Nevertheless, their entrance to the blogging field was a disappointing one for me. Maybe I had a much higher hope from a company like Maktoob.

I first learned about their service by a post from a post by Ahmad Humeid about Yaser AbuHilaleh‘s blog in maktoob new service. Visiting AbuHilaleh’s blog, I noticed that it doesn’t look like a blog. To start with, the main page shows only one post, while it should show me the last N posts, or posts from the last N days. Looking on the sidebar, I saw checkboxes for categories, with a button under it for multiple selection. This is considered very much unlike blogs to say the least, one would expect either normal links, or at least a javascript that loads the page when one select a category. As well, testing it at that time, XML feed of the site seemed broken. I tried to move beyond the initial disappointment, and created an account, and looked deeply into the service.

Maktoobblogs provide a Blog Directory, which is a great way to navigate and discover new blogs to read. As well, a very interesting service, is notification. One could “subscribe” to any number of categories, and even type in keywords, and as soon as there is a blog or a post that matches the criteria, a user will be notified by email. This is a very interesting feature for the on-regular readers of the blogs, and want to be notified only when there is something that may be interesting to them. As well, looking now, XML feeds seems to work fine (Except that the Category Tag is very misplaced, their should be category tag per item, not a list of category tags for the feed as it is now.)

Looking from the Admin side of Maktoob blogs, I was disappointed to see that the post editor (WYSIWYG) doesn’t work with Firefox, this was a disappointment, specially that I know Maktoob was one of the first Arab companies to use Linux and Open Source. They provided some 15 nice themes for the blogs, as well, it is possible (from that I saw) to have blogs with multiple authors. Making it a great choice for groups who want to have blogs (classes, friends, family, etc..).

It is worth mentioning that MaktoobBlog successfuly attracted some known writers and journalist in the Arab world, which added a great value, and will gain exposure to blogging in the Arab world. It was a pleasure to see names like Umaimah Ahmad from BBC in Algeria, Ziad Abu Ghanemeh from Jordan, Yaser AbuHilaleh from Al-Jazeera Jordan, Ibrahim Gharaibeh and more in Maktoob Blogs, and I think that they will continue to attract more journalists, my hope is that they will fixup the service so that they won’t be driven away.
As well, that both services are having constant updates, so it is very likely that those problems and shortcomings mentioned here to be fixed very soon, then I guess I will raise the bars, and talk about other once considered advanced features that are getting to be more basic.

Blogging

Since Ahmad first emailed me along with other bloggers announcing what could be called an early test launch of toot, and requesting opinions and feedback, I wanted to write about it, and review it, but soon after, it was taken offline, for further improvements and a couple of days ago, it was up again, but still in “not even alpha” according to the site.I am sure that the site still have a long way to go in terms of features and content, nevertheless, I will have my take on it anyway.

What struck me first, and many of those who I talked to about it, is the very nice interface and design, one could not expect less than that from Syntax which have some of the best graphic and UI designers in town. The other thing, is that the name “toot” is creative, meaningful, and colorful.

Now toot (according to thier About page) is a hand-picked aggregator, where best of posts, from the best of blogs from Arabia is selected. Now “what is best” is very subjective and arguable, but looking at the list of blogs they have, it seems that they did some initial research in the blogosphere hunting for blogs, and they came out with a very interesting initial blog list.

So far, although they have some Arabic blogs, the interface is still in english for some reason, there isn’t much information about the site in Arabic, as well, in the “tootreads” section of the main page, Arabic posts are shown left to right, rather than right to left (there should be some auto-detection code to make sections/posts that have arabic body “rtl” rather than “ltr” even in the english interface).

I wasn’t really able to understand the difference between “What’s tooting” and “tootreads”, is tootreads posts that were tooting before ? I wonder . Another thing, I would really like to see a feed (rss, atom) link for the “what’s tooting” or “tootreads” to be able to follow the blogs they feature from a feed reader/aggregator. As well, I wanted to submit another blog (not mine) and suggest it to toot, but it seems that the submit interface is oriented toward the blogger being the one submitting it, I would like to see a “suggest a blog” form to allow readers, and bloggers to suggest other blogs than theirs.
I am sure that there are still a lot planed for toot, one would expect a tag-oriented interface, as with the growth of the blogosphere, categorization and segmentation of featured blog posts will be a must. If toot continues to be a maintained, updated, and introduce proper arabic interface soon, I think that it will gain more and more exposure and success. With the growth of blogging in the Arab world last year, one could only expect it to grow even further this year. toot could play a role in making quality blogs and posts more exposed and featured.

Blogging, Internet & Technology

First I thought I was the only one obsessed with Jordan Planet, and check the site from his mobile while away from a PC. Then I learned that Jameed tries to check it from his mobile during his long hours in the lab, and last week, Laith told me that he checks RSS feeds from his mobile. So, it was the time for Jordan Planet to be mobile friendly.

For the last hour or more, Iyas and I had been working on http://wap.jordanplanet.net (Well I did most of the work, he did the testing and feedback). We are now proud to present “JP2Go | Jordanian wisdom on the go“. The mobile version is designed to have titles only in the main page, with author names, as well, you will be able to read those posts in Jordan Planet without even the need to have their blogs support mobiles.

Now, As Iyas would like to put it “It is part of 2006 JP Surprises” .. I hope that more people than just me, Iyas, and Laith will get to use it :)

Blogging, Internet & Technology, Jordan Planet, Mobile & Handhelds

I started a thread in Jordan Planet forum (click to follow) about the predictions of 2006 for Jordan Planet, please share your thoughts if you have any.

Blogging, Internet & Technology, Jordan Planet

Jordan will be hosting the second edition of the World Culture Forum next week, from 4th-7th of December. The event’s program and speakers list is extraordinary, which attracted me to the event since I knew about it, and so I registered to attend it. The speaker list is so full of key and known speakers, some of which are bloggers by the way.

Speaking of blogging, Lina initiated contact sometime few weeks ago with Shannon Riley from MECCAD and talked about the presence of Jordanian Bloggers in the event. Last night, Shannon talked to me about it, and it was proposed to have an Event Blog, where speakers, participants and organizers could blog about their views and recordings of the international event. It was offered to have Jordan Planet hosting and managing such blog, and so it happened.

Few hours later, World Culture Forum Blog was created, with the blessing and support of the MECCAD, and sponsorship, maintenance, and support of Jordan Planet. We hope that the event attendants will register and post on this blog during the forum, and that those who didn’t blog before, will find it as a chance to get into blogging.

This event blog, could be considered the first of a kind for events in Jordan. It serves double goals of promoting the event, and reflecting the opinions of it’s attendants. As well, it is to furtherly promote blogging in Jordan, and introduce the Jordanian bloggers community to the world.

Your feedback and input on the blog are very welcomed (you can use Contact Us form for that as well)

Blogging, Internet & Technology, Jordan

I wasn’t able to blog or access the internet much while I was in Tunis, so I will start in the next days blogging about the event, and the last days.

As soon as I was in the ICT4ALL Exhibition, I started to look for the societies and people I know. I met Ethan who introduced me to Hivos people in the event. As well I met Hossein Darakshan, and Isaac Mao whom I met in the Wikimania last August.

There I knew about a session that will take place on the 17th-18th Nov, titled “Expression under Repression”. It was a joint effort between Hivos and Global Voices. The seminar had some very interesting panel speakers, and discussions about freedom of expression and censorship on the internet.

Cases from Zimbabwe, China, Iran and Malaysia were introduced, giving a picture of the status of freedom and censorship in those countries as an example. There was supposed to be a blogger from one of the Arab countries present as well, but certain “censorship” efforts made it impossible. Read more in Ethan’s blog.

As well, Internet filtering and censorship was introduced, explaining the methods, technologies, and giving examples of sites censored in different arab and non-arab countries. After the session I tried to get more information about Internet censorship in Jordan, and basically they are aware of only one site that is censored from Jordan, which is a US-based e-newspaper that is almost censored in all arab countries, as it’s editor is known to be attacking all rulers and governments of the Arab world.

For me, attending this session was worth going to Tunis, I am glad that light is being shed on Freedom of expression in the internet, specially for bloggers.

Pictures:

Next: Wikimedia in WSIS

Blogging, Internet & Technology, Jordan, WSIS