Blogosphere: February 5, 2008
Gulf News web editor Adam Flinter plunges headlong into the blogosphere to find out what bloggers from the Middle East and beyond have on their minds.
Pick of the week: Weather lunacy
The Met Office said gale force winds and sandstorms would start overnight, and they sure got that right.It's awful out there.What amazed me was what people were doing in it — paragliding off Umm Suqeim beach — lunacy in these winds. A jogger on Al Sufouh Road — any benefit from the jog would be more than destroyed by the kilo of dust she'd breathe into her lungs. And whether I'm being sandblasted or not, I'm having my day on the beach!
http://dubaithoughts.blogspot.com/
Internet disruption
For the past few years, we have grown accustomed to the annual month of Internet service disruption. Once it was the tsunami, then the earthquake in Taiwan and then a ship's anchor near Alexandria, Egypt. I don't recall hearing of New York suffering from Internet disruption as a result of a submarine cable being damaged or severed. No, I don't recall the UK or anywhere in Europe facing this problem.
So, what is it? They never have extreme weather conditions? Do they bury their cables deep enough that an anchor won't reach it? Or did they happen to invest in enough cables with redundancy in mind?
No one in the Middle East seems to be taking this seriously enough. You would think the first time it happens, people would realise this and start investing money on it. No, sir! It's just the Internet. Who cares? A country like Egypt has three cables connecting it to the world. Imagine that! Two of them damaged and now they are telling their citizens to ration their Internet usage.
So, aside from the fact that businesses are being extorted by telco's for Internet services (we are paying 10 times what we would have paid anywhere in Europe or the US for hosting services), they are unable to provide reliable connectivity. It is obviously not their fault alone. It is the entire region that doesn't care.
http://uaecommunity.blogspot.com/
Memoirs of a Lunatic
Before we start talking about the "failure" of Arab web 2.0, let us first admit that the Arab world is still stuck in web 0.5 and has not even reached web 1.0. By global standards, web 1.0 encompasses things like e-commerce (think Amazon.com and eBay), full featured newspaper sites (think The New York Times) sites, personalisable portals (think My Yahoo).
I personally have been around the web industry since the birth of the commercial internet in the Arab world, as I was part of the small founding team of the (now defunct) Arabia.com (back in 1995), arguably the first Arab web portal. In our naivety, we where already pitching the portal as a place for "merchants to do business". Amazon.com was born around the same time. Yet, for the past 12 years I've been waiting to see the emergence of a major Arab e-commerce player. I am still waiting. Most people I ask have never bought anything online from an Arab online retailer.
http://www.7iber.com/blog/2008/02/03/has-the-arab-web-20-failed/
Parents!
So your parents decide to show once more in your life even though you gave off subtle hints that you don't want to be part of their lives (not to mention less than subtle hints from their part).
My parents arrived at Dubai Airport carrying luggage worthy of Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Me (checking an entire set of luggage that looked similar to those Russian dolls fitted in one another): What the h*** is this?
Father (making more than a distressed face when mother wasn't watching): It's your mom. I told her many times what's the need for all this?
Me: It's OK if you're migrating to Canada.
http://www.expated-in-dubai.blogspot.com/
The Shaikh Zayed mosque
This weekend all of us went to the newly opened Shaikh Zayed Bin Sultan Al Nahyan Mosque in Abu Dhabi. This is the front facade. The grounds are still under construction.I believe this is the main prayer hall. The carpet is the largest in the world; it was made in Iran and flown to Abu Dhabi in 12 pieces.
http://sandflowers.blogspot.com/
Morrissey in Iran?
Could the Moz himself be planning a show in Iran? That's the report from The Times of London: The singer, whose songs include Bigmouth Strikes Again and Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now, is in talks with the Iranian government and the Foreign Office about staging a performance in Tehran later this year.
Morrissey, 48, who has been outspoken in attacking the allied invasion of Iraq, says he wants to link the visit to other planned concerts on a tour of the Middle East. His management team is in contact with the music office at the Islamic culture and guidance ministry in Tehran…
Basically, it's no longer a rock concert but an event controlled by Tehran's thought-police. Still, Morrissey could get good mileage out of his lyric from the old Smiths' hit Ask: "If it's not love, then it's the bomb that will bring us together..."
http://www.ordoesitexplode.com/me/
The red line
Each of us have our own particular red lines of total disgust, but few things have sickened me recently more than this:
Remote-controlled explosives strapped to two mentally retarded women detonated in a coordinated attack on Baghdad pet bazaars on Friday, Iraqi officials said, killing at least 73 people in the deadliest day since the US sent 30,000 extra troops to the capital last spring.
The chief Iraqi military spokesman in Baghdad, Brig Gen Qassim Al Moussawi, said the female bombers had Down syndrome and that the explosives were detonated by remote control — indicating they may not having been willing attackers in what could be a new method by suspected Sunni insurgents to subvert stepped-up security measures.
I am running late right now, so I don't have time to formulate all of what I want to say about this without launching into an incoherent tirade. Just disgusting.
http://www.kabobfest.com/
