As a contributer to Global Voices, I’m subscribed to several mailing lists that keep me updated with the latest news of the GV community, but what’s really good about these mailing lists is that there is many intelligent people on them who make conversations interesting and valuable. One of the recent good discussions started with the title “Technorati sucks,” which is true, imho.

However, Boris Anthony had a good PoV here: “There is no reason (none) why there cannot and should not be a thousand Technorati-like services around the world, all tweaked and tuned for specific niche interests and purposes.”

Now, truth be told, I never thought that building Arabic alternatives to some available services is a good idea. I mean just take a look at this website, which is supposed to be the Arabic alternative to del.icio.us. This was a dumb idea because if the developers have tried to do some research before working on it, they could have found something called de.lirio.us, a social bookmarking service exactly like del.icio.us but with open source that they could modify to work in Arabic.

Nevertheless, I think that Arabic Technorati-like website is a good idea. Some may argue that Toot is there and it’s doing great, but I think Toot is more of a human-edited blogging portal. What I’m talking about here is a service to index Arabic blogs, make them searchable, and provide a pinging server. A website like that would be a very good and useful tool to feel the real pulse of the Arab blogosphere.

Arab female bloggers have dominated the Toot Top Ten list again, and Ahmed Humeid, jokingly and in a squealing male preaching voice, said there is a conspiracy. It is a conspiracy, I say, but not necessarily an illegal one. I guess what going on here is that girls only vote for girls! Yes, it’s sexism the other way around!

From my experience in the Saudi blogosphere, I can tell you that girls tend to comment mostly on other girls’ blogs, while the comments section of male bloggers are always inhabited by dust and silence. In a way, this has something to do with the distribution of gender; the majority of Saudi bloggers are females.

Now I’m not sure if this also applies to the Arab blogosphere, but I guess if female Arab bloggers don’t outnumber their male counterparts, then they are equal in count. Meanwhile, in the West the blogosphere is mainly dominated by males, white males to be more specific. But wait, how about other parts of the world? How about China, or Japan?

Back to Toot: although I like the website very much, and it’s one of the few websites that I visit daily, I think it can improve on some stuff. The current design of Toot is so cool and Web 2.0-ish, but I think the header should be smaller to invest screen real estate into some more important content. For example, the three daily featured posts should include an excerpt from the post, not just the title. This can be put underneath the title of the post, or by using some Ajaxian hack like the one used currently to show other recent posts by the blogger.

The voting system should be reviewed too, because the current one is not exactly user-friendly. I’ve been thinking about something like the method used by Google for AdSense. I mean that when someone clicks on the link to a post, that’s one vote. I know there is no system immune to manipulation, so this method can be manipulated too, but I think it’s easy to discover manipulation by analyzing any unusual trends in the hits, and can be easily solved using IP. Or, maybe they can use the two methods combined together in some way. (To the Toot team: I’m no geek, so if this does not make any sense then just ignore it because I don’t really know what I’m talking about!)

Toot are now in the process of adding more blogs to their rich and delicious choice of blogs, and they are also preparing for a design competition. I’m also looking forward for their ad program, which they announced a while ago. Good luck guys, you are doing a great job! Keep up the good work, and keep on bringing us the finest of the Arab blogosphere.

When I moved to Riyadh at the end of 2002 to study at KSU, I hated the city. Homesickness, everybody was telling me. It was my first time to live away from home, and I was telling myself: it’s just because you miss your family and friends. The first few months passed weirdly. I did not pay much attention to school as we were taking an English course that I did not really need.

I was admitted to the hospital two times during that period: first for a cardiac catheterization that failed, and a month later for an open-heart surgery. The surgeon told me it’s a standard operation, but did not tell me that I would need a long time to recover. He had given me a two-month sick leave and described me some powerful pain-killers with a special physical therapy program.

During these two months I was not allowed to drive car, carry heavy things, and had to avoid anything that could affect my chest. I had the operation at KFSHRC in Riyadh, then spent a month in Hassa. I did not want to take that stupid English course again, so I went back to Riyadh to do my finals. I passed.

Through the two years that followed, I came to the conclusion that life in Riyadh is not the one I’m looking for. Living in the Easter Province is much less strict and much more relaxed than living in Riyadh. But at the end of the third year, I got to know someone from Riyadh. This new person in my life was really great, and was not happy about my feeling for the city. However, our relationship did not last long. We broke up after few months (but we are still friends, kinda).

For some time, I thought I started to love the city. Probably because it used to bring us together, but I guess I was just fooling myself; I never loved it, I never will. At the that time, and until recently, when anyone asked me how’s living in Riyadh, I used to say: I got used to it, and maybe I’ll stay here for another couple of years after I finish studying. Well, I was lying.

This week, I realized that I don’t belong to this city. It is a Mecca of extremism, and it is killing all the beautiful things inside me. Riyadh is a living hell for guys like me. There is nothing to do, and nowhere to go: no cinema, no theater, no clubs, no parks, no nothing. The segregation of sexes is way too extreme, and most people here think this is Islamic. I’m afraid it is not. In fact, it is pathogenic psychologically and socially.

The ban on entering shopping malls for young men makes it a challenge for those boys. So, sneaking in and hooking up with some girl has become an achievement the to the boys show off and be proud of. The result of such situation is that all males are viewed as hysteric sex monsters, or as Farah once put it, “werewolves.” In the same time, any girl is viewed as an “absolute seductress,” Farah said.

I’m pretty sure some of Riyadh people will jump on me now to defend their beloved city. However, I’m not bitching, I’m not complaining; it’s just the way it is, and that’s how I see it. Riyadh is a dead city from inside, and it really needs to ‘get a life.’ Now, I just want to finish my studies at KSUL, King Saudi University of Lunacy (credits to Jo), and get get the hell out of here. It’s only a couple of years more, and I’ll be leaving this city for good.

A recent study by Amr Hamzawy, an Egyptian political scientist and currently a senior associate at one of America’s leading think tanks, has concluded that while the changes witnessed so far are significant, they do not mark the beginning of a Saudi democratisation process. Meanwhile, a US Congress-mandated commission called on the government to take “aggressive action” against Saudi Arabia for alleged religious freedom violations.

What would you expect from a story on the BBC website about Saudi Arabia? Abayas, reform, religious police? OK, it’s all there. What makes this story different then? Here it comes: a Saudi deputy minister was telling the correspondent about his studies in the states, and he said, “I shared a house with two lesbians…Best years of my life.” Now, I would like to know the name of this guy. No, I won’t tell the government who he is. I just want to ask him about some details, you know, to spice things up a little on this blog ;-)

King Abdullah has issued a royal decree on reducing petrol prices for consumers in the Kingdom by about 30%. Meanwhile, gasoline prices are at historic highs in the United States and some other Western countries, so you can expect some angry blog posts this week (not by me of course, because I would be busy filling my car’s tank :-)

Mark posted the all important World Cup rules that should be adhered to by the wives, partners and significant others of all football fans. My favorite:

Please, please, please!! If you see me upset because one of my teams is losing, DO NOT say “get over it, its only a game”, or “don’t worry, they’ll win next time”. If you say these things, you will only make me angrier and I will love you less. Remember, you will never ever know more about football than me and your so called “words of encouragement” will only lead to a break up or divorce.