Matt Haughey has been moblogging the birth of his daughter. (via Kottke)

I always read about bloggers who got to meet other interesting people through their blogs, and I was thinking how could that happen, and how does it feel.

Last night, I met Mohammed. He is a Tanzanian, and he has come from Dubai for business. He has been reading my blog for a while, and when he asked me if I could meet him over a cup of coffee in Riyadh, I was more than happy to say yes. We spent two good hours at Starbucks, Olaya St., and talked about almost everything from blogs (duh!), to politics, to religion, to business, and finally football.

Truth be told, I was a bit nervous before going to meet Mohammed, but now, I am glad that my blog had given me the opportunity to meet such a nice guy like him. Mohammed, who said he hates working with Saudis (I don’t blame him, I hate working with Saudis sometimes, too), told me he is thinking of starting his own blog. I told him that would be great. However, I wished we had more time to talk. One thing is for sure, next time Mohammed comes to Riyadh, or I go to Dubai, we are going to meet again.

Earlier this week, Matt Haueghy posted a set of pictures for some design work for the website of Pyra, the mother company of Blogger, that they almost launched. The pictures, for better or worse, remind me with that period of in the life of web. Bright colors, large graphics and small fonts. This seems really different from the trends taking on the web now.

Few weeks ago, Ethan Zuckerman offered me to contribute to a project called Global Voices Online. Here is my first post to the GVO blog. Check it out, and tell me what do you think about it.

Even though I have no problem with girls wearing hijab appear in music videos, I find it inappropriate and disturbing when music channels show a video about the prophet (pbuh) followed by a video of Maria or Ruby.

Rosseta Stone: Two terrorist attacks in Cairo.

The appearance of a girl wearing hijab in a video of an Egyptian singer is making controversy. What do you think? Is it OK for a girl like this to act in such a role, or it just doesn’t make sense to you?