Wired Music

Wired magazine is giving away a Wired CD produced under a Creative Commons license with their November issue. The CD is featuring The Bastie Boys, who appear on the cover of the magazine, among others include Gilberto Gil and David Byrne.

I'm only afraid that the CD may not be available with the magazine here in Saudi Arabia. The magazine usually arrives lately and it won't be surprising to see some pages ripped off by the censorship devils of the Ministry of Disinformation.
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Am I a Geek?

I knew there was some Arabic blogs out there, but I wasn't paying much attention because programmers and designers, who did not have much to say to the world, made most of them. They were trying to play with Movable Type and other things. That's all.

This is not changing. It's just that one of them called Pixelog.net, linked to my blog and wrote it is worth reading. For my surprise, the guy titled the link with "The Saudi Greeks Are Coming"! I think he meant "Geeks" but, am I a geek? Please, tell me I'm not!
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Kinja, Reloaded

Regarding my post about feeds readers, I received an email from Nick Denton, Kinja's president, who was surprised to know that Kinja could not read some feeds, asking me to give him some examples.

Therefore, I decided to re-log in to my account at Kinja, and give it another try. I discovered that I made some mistakes when I used it for the first time few months ago. Nevertheless, Kinja was functioning properly this time.

However, I still cannot understand the technology behind Kinja. During my email conversation with Mr. Denton, he told me that Kinja could read all blogs "whether they have RSS or not." "We parse the HTML, looking for patterns in the code," he added. So, according to his email "RSS is nice, but not essential."

Kinja asks you to enter the URL in the "example.com" form. This sounds interesting and easy-to-use. However, this will not work unless you enter a famous blog (i.e. Kottke.org). When you try to do the same with some relatively unknown blogs (i.e. Mahmood's Den), this method will not work. In this case, you should enter the URL of the feed itself, instead of the generic blog URL, and then everything will go smoothly.

I may forgive Kinja for such a thing because they are still in Beta. But I think they should work on it to improve their product. I like Kinja because they have a clean neat beautiful design, and it is really easy to add/delete any feed. Moreover, I like the way Kinja use to show the latest post from any of your feeds on top, just like a blog.

I've been using Bloglines for couple of days now, and it looks faster than Kinja in aggregating the feeds. Something I hate about Kinja is the delay in adding new feeds. However, I prefer it over Bloglines because the latter use frames. I hate frames.

Kinja is good, but it is far from being perfect. There is much to do and work on before release of Kinja 1.0, and I think they can do it.
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Google Unusual

The PhDs at Google labs used to produce us some of the most interesting stuff on the web. Google News and Google Desktop Search are two good examples. However, the wildest ideas for Google come from a secret army of hackers who work on the API to make some smart, weird and sometimes useless apps. Here are my favorites.

Cookin' With Google
Many leftovers in your fridge and you don't know what to do with them? Type 'em all in the search box and Google will bring you all the possible recipes!

Banana Slug
Google is great. But sometimes, just like any other search engine, it could disappoint you and give you no results to your inquiry. Banana Slug adds a random word to your search from one of nine categories to obtain some results hoping to make you less frustrated.

CapeMail
Web pages look ugly in most of mobile phones screens. A faster and easier way to search the web from your phone is sending an email to google[at]capeclear.com with your query in the subject line. Few seconds and you receive the results in your inbox.
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Time and Time Again

When I started reading blogs I had a short list of blogs to check on every once in a while. Few months later, and the list is longer and the time needed is much more than I have. What to do? Turn to feeds reader.

As I'm using different PCs at different places at different times, I thought a web-based feeds reader would be perfect. So, I started using Kinja, from the nanopublishing pioneers Gawker Media. It has a cool design, but it has a major problem. It is not supported by most of the blogs I read. It is a shame that Kinja can't read the more popular forms of feeds.

I gave up Kinja. I started using Feedster. Unlike Kinja, it supports the popular feeds, but it has a poor design, and it may refuse the addition of new feeds with no obvious reasons. I decided to give up all the web-based feed readers and turn to something else.

I read that Firefox 0.9.3+ could run as a newsreader. I already have 0.9.2 and I was not intending to update it until the release of version 1.0. Because Firefox has a weird problem. Whenever you update the browser, you have to reinstall all the extensions and themes, which is something boring and time-consuming.

As I had no more choices, I clicked to Google to look for a free feeds reader. And as usual, Google has the answer. FeedReader is an open-source lightweight feeds reader, and it's free. However, I liked the way of Kinja that shows the latest posts of different blogs at the same page.

I'm now waiting for the release of Firefox 1.0 at November to try out its newsreader. If I did not like it, I think I'll stick to FeedReader.
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Behind the Curtains

It has been more than two weeks since I watched TV for the last time. Before that, I was watching some promotions on MBC for a new series called The Road to Kabul starting in Ramadan. I was not so interested until I read this week that MBC, in addition to four other channels, stopped the show.

MBC said the reason was that the producer of the series, Qatar TV, refused to deliver the rest of the episodes to MBC. Qatar TV told the press that the work at the series was not completely finished. However, Talal Awamleh, the executive producer said the complete series was delivered to Qatar TV.

Nobody knows the exact reasons for such a decision by Qatar TV, and they did not made any statement about it. Talal Awamleh told the press he received some threats from some unknown groups through the internet, but he did not take any of them seriously.

The Road to Kabul is about the Afghani jihad against the Soviets, and the role of Arabs in that war. Who do you think is behind this? Is it Taliban fans in Arab World, or some Arab governments? Or is it somebody else? What do you think?
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Minipop Culture

Can you guess who's who form this 8-bit celebrities collection? Want to know more about it? Read this.
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Bush or Kerry, Saudi Arabia or France

To all Americans,
Next week, you are not voting only to choose between Bush and Kerry, but also to choose between Saudi Arabia and France! What's your choice?!

(via Kuwait Unplugged)
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Tech News

While all rumors were talking about a GBrowser, Google rolled out a preliminary version of its new desktop search tool. Microsoft should be afraid, they should be really afraid.

In other anti-Microsoft news, my very favourite Firefox will be taken to major U.S. newspapers by its fans. Firefox fans will be buying a full page advert in the New York Times for the launch of Firefox 1.0 in November. # »

Fatwas According to Tribal Norms

Saudis would like to do everything their own way. Even when they practice a universal religion such as Islam, they want to do it the Saudi Way. # »

No Italian Jeans!

It seems that jeans have enemies also in Europe. An Italian headmaster tried to ban clothes that reveal "navels, bare bottoms, thongs and underpants".

Mr Bernardini, 61, said he had lost patience with the fashion for baggy, low-hanging jeans for boys, and trousers that revealed girls' midriffs.

I don't care! I still love my good jeans and every other kind of jeans!


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No Man is an Island

So you missed the chance to buy the home of your dreams at The Palm near Dubai coast. Now, you have the chance to by your own island not too far from The Palm.



The same company behind The Palm is offering 300 islands resemble the world map under the name The World. For you who have much, much more money than they need, this is beautiful, isn't it? An island of your own where you can get rid of the disturbance of this whole crazy world, and do whatever you want. It is a real fantasy.

I would be happy to share an island with anyone. You know, I've been saving $100 in a separate account for such times! Ooh, who am I kidding?!
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Women and Foreigners

Prince Naif Bin Abdul-Aziz, the minister of interiors, said women would not be allowed to participate in the coming municipal elections. "This is unthinkable," he added. I expected that, but why didn't he tell us why?

In addition to that, the same ministry made an announcement to warn all non-Muslim expatriates in the country from eating, drinking or smoking in public during the day in the holy month of Ramadhan. The ministry said anyone who does not obey this order would be kicked out of the country.

It's ironic how the ministry is calling the foreigners to respect the feelings of Muslims, while the regime here is not showing any respect to people with other religions or beliefs.
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Ramadan Nostalgia

I can't believe it's Ramadan already! I'm not saying last year was very short; it is just I wasn't expecting the R month to come back this fast. Ramadan used to be fun. We fast from sunrise to sunset; enjoy the best kinds of food and enjoy the best TV shows all around the year. However, since I'm studying for three weeks of Ramadan this year, I'm not gonna enjoy it at all.

I think I knew from the first day I moved to study in Riyadh that Ramadan would never be as good as it used to be. The last time I spent this month at home with the family was two years ago. In the third week of Ramadan that year, I had an open-heart surgery, and I could not fast the last ten days. I spent most of my time in bed, reading, watching TV and eating good food all day, while everybody else was looking at me with envy!

Oh my God! I miss those good days.
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See You Next Time, Ladies

A government official told Arab News that the reason for not allowing women to participate in the next elections is that the government did not have enough time to arrange for it!! The official said the law does not prevent women from participating in the election.

Good to know. How long do you need to arrange for that? A century?
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Content Creation

The web usability guru Jakob Nielsen wrote this good article four years ago. However, I think some of the questions this article sparkled still alive. I liked the comment of Evan Williams who defended the blog format. What about you?

1. Do you think most people are poor writers?
2. Do you think the blog format is the best format for people to create content for the internet?
3. Do you think new services like Flickr would be a Geocities for photography?

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We've Got Blog

I finished reading We've Got Blog. It is basically a collection of essays by some of the blogsphere superstars, plus some relatively unknown geeks and journalists. The likes of Rebecca Blood, Dan Gillmor and Dave Winer try to have a peek at how blogs are changing our culture and the ways we are using to get the news.

This book helped me to have a better understanding on how all this blogging phenomenon started, and how it kept on evolving to become a major part of the internet today.

A good read for both bloggers and non-bloggers, and the variety of voices gives it a special value. My rating: 3.5/5.
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Thanks Ev!

Evan Williams, the co-founder of Pyra, the company behind Blogger, decided to leave his baby in order to see the world and maybe try something new.

Can I say this was expected? I don't know, but it seems that every acquisition (Google acquired Pyra last year) must be followed by the leaving of some key people.

I'm really looking forward to Ev's next project. He created Blogger with his friends just to have fun. Now let's see what he will make next to play with, and maybe share his toy with us!

Thank you Ev for such a great contribution to our lives. Blogger changer my world and I'm sure many people out there are just like me. Thanks.
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STC: Zero out of Five

Earlier this year, STC started a huge promotional campaign to force their customers (almost everybody as STC were the exclusive provider of mobile service) to add an extra "zero" to their mobile phones numbers which start with "05". STC added the "zero" after the "5" to make the numbers start with "050" and the announced goal was to expand the network capacity.

STC, well known for their bad customer service and their greedy nature, did not ask the customers at the first place if they were OK with adding a "zero" or not. If people were asked to add anything, they would definitely go with "5" instead of "0", however, STC did not pay enough attention and added an f**cking "zero" to every f**cking mobile number.

Now, after STC finally discovered people wanted "5" instead of "0", they are shamelessly asking the customers to pay SR 25 (around $7) to change the numbers from "0" to "5", or you can stick to your ugly "zero-ed" number. Yes, we pay money to correct a mistake STC made when they changed our numbers without our will (they could run SMS-based poll before taking such idiot decisions!).

It seems that STC will try to suck every possible riyal from people's wallets before the entry of the new telecommunications provider after six months. The new company, called Etisalat Union (who made up this crappy name?), is owned by UAE's Etisalat and some Saudi investors, and it will be the first competitor to STC in the Saudi fast growing market.
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Waste Land

A Saudi sociologist told Asharq Al-Awsat that Saudis are wasting $192m every year on foreign chauffeurs they bring to drive the cars of their women. "This is a huge loss to our national economy," She added.

It is a huge bill that extremists may consider when they yell everyday that they'll never ever let women drive their own cars.
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Respect the Law?

A French Muslim female student has protested against the stupid French law to prevent the religious symbols in schools by shaving her hair. The student told the press that she respects the law but the law does not respect her.



I called this French law "stupid" because I don't think of hijab as a religious symbol. A crescent is a religious symbol; hijab is just a piece of clothes. Millions of Muslim women out there do not wear hijab; does that make them non-Muslims? I think deciding what someone wants to wear is a personal matter, so why the French government interferes in such a personal choice?
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Saving the Kingdom

I found this article through the Google Ads on my sidebar. F. Gregory Gause III thinks he might be able to help Saudi Arabia to reform "without handing it to extremists." He made some good points; however, I don't think the U.S. would be happy with oil prices around $30 per barrel. They will always look for the good ol' days of the cheap oil.
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One Word

Reem Al-Saleh wrote a great column at today's Asharq Al-Awsat about the effect of freedom in our culture. She says "when I heard about the first conference of the Saudi intelligentsia, I wanted to publish a column composed of only one word: 'Freedom'." "When Yousef Al-Muhaimeed told me about his new novel Al-Qaroura, I involuntarily sent him an email asking him if it would be available in Riyadh, because if it would be available in Riyadh it will not be worth reading it!" She added.

She also cannot believe that we can trust Ghazi Al-Gosaibi to be responsible for our energy (he was the minister of water and electricity) and the future of our kids (the ministry of labour) but when it comes to his creative, we kick all that out of the country!

She is right. Why do we import everything from every part in the world, but in the same time we have to go to Beirut and London to read a book by one of our compatriots?
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Religious Freedom

The U.S. Department of State released its "International Religious Freedom Report" on 15/9/2004. The report considered Saudi Arabia as "country of particular concern" for violations of religious freedom.

Immediately after the report published, many Saudi columnists were ready to deny almost everything, and then tell us that there's no such country that provide complete freedom and "nobody's perfect." People like Tareq Al-Humaid wrote that everything is OK, and if there is anything wrong, Saudis will work it out, and they don't need any American report to do so!

I know it has been more than three weeks since the publishing of the report, but I wanted to read the report myself form the Department of State website before commenting. Here's the part about Saudi Arabia.

Freedom of religion does not exist. Freedom of religion is not recognized or protected under the country's laws, and basic religious freedoms are denied to all but those who adhere to the state-sanctioned version of Sunni Islam (...) Muslims who do not adhere to the officially sanctioned Salafi (commonly called "Wahhabi") tradition can face severe repercussions at the hands of Mutawwa'in (religious police). Members of the Shi'a minority continue to face political and economic discrimination, including limited employment opportunities, little representation in official institutions, and restrictions on the practice of their faith and on the building of mosques and community centers.

This is all completely true, and I don't know how some writers dared to deny anything from it. I am Saudi and I live in Saudi Arabia. I see this everyday and this exactly how it is going on here. Why some people can't just admit it and try to suggest solution the problem instead of this bullshit?
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