qatari's blog

After the interest that everyone showed for the "informal" Qatar Census that we ran on the site recently and the recent post by dweller about Google updating their maps of Qatar, I decided that it would be really cool to have a map showing the diversity of our wonderful Qatar Living community.

If you visit this page you'll see a world map and little pins representing where people on the site come from! If you click on the pin you'll see the user name and picture. How cool is that?

To add yourself, just click on the link below the map (you'll have to update your profile to set where you are from). Adding your pin is easy - you can just type it into the address bar below the map or just click on it in the map!

P.S. Once you've added yourself leave a comment here so everyone can check it out!

[gmap |id=Test |center=25.298251182041167, 51.532230377197266 |zoom=13 |width=500px |height=500px |control=Small |type=Satellite]

Guys/Gals,

This is a community site and there are a lot of different people from different cultures and backgrounds . There are some younger members...what I am trying to get at is that we need to respect everyone and try to keep the conversation clean.

Please heed Aisha's call.

I know you want to loosen up a bit but please keep it above board. I really really really don't want to have to filter anything but the last thing that any of us want is for this site to be blocked in Qatar because someone made some stupid posts.

Thanks. Shukran.

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Qatar has a vibrant and growing blogosphere. Join the Qatar Blogs Project to add your blog to this list or to put this list on your site.

Do you have a blog about Qatar or are you writing one from Qatar? If so, please drop a note here (select Qatar Blogs from the drop down) - I want to update the links page and also want to start a small project to link all the bloggers from Qatar together. I think it would be cool if we had a list that we could stick in our sidebars of the "Qatar Blogosphere". I'd also be keen to aggregate blogs from Qatar to help people find interesting stories...

I'm seeing a lot of cool blogging coming out of Qatar so it's about time we started linking to each other so we can promote blogging in Qatar and find interesting voices!

P.S. If you do have a blog, please spread the word and post a link to this page (http://www.qatarliving.com/qatarblogsproject) so we can get as many bloggers on board as possible. Shukran :)

If you have a blog please copy and paste the code below into the sidebar of your blog and use the contact form to let me know your URL so I can add it.

Click to select the code
(javascript required)

Anyone have any suggestions for a poll on the site? Come up with something good and we'll run it!

Ever wanted statistics about Qatar? Check out The Qatar Planning Council's statistics page - via Marjorie in Qatar:

Recently a coworker pointed me at a website that made me ecstatic with the joy that only happy little numbers can bring: The Qatar Planning Council's statistics page.

Now we can all read up about those nagging questions that seemed not to have answers, like Qatar's divorce rate (30%), what percentage of court cases are for traffic violations (95%), how many cases of leprosy are diagnosed a year (15), how many of Qatar's women get married under the age of 15 (about 7 a year) -- I could go on! I'll just try not to snigger too loudly that the graph on education status misspells "illiterate."

Here's the most disturbing one so far: Sentences Passed Against Convicts by Type of Penalty and Type of Crime. 420 people were flogged for sexual crimes in 2003? WTF??

Have fun with all those numbers and be sure to post some of the interesting ones on Qatar Living for us.

This is pretty bizarre. BoingBoing, one of the coolest and most popular blogs in being blocked in Qatar. It seems the company that provides the filtering list has added them as a banned site.

Boing Boing has responded by saying:

So instead we've decided to help put Secure Computing out of business. We're doing this in three ways:

• First, we're publishing a guide to evading the SmartFilter censorware. There are hundreds of ways to defeat these censorware apps, and we're going to catalog as many of them as possible.

Link to "BoingBoing's Guide To Evading Censorware."

• Next, we're compiling a list of SmartFilter's dumb classifications. Send us your misclassified SmartFilter sites so we can add them to the list.
• Finally, we're producing a guide to convincing your employer to ditch SmartFilter. It consists of parts one and two above: a list of bad SmartFilter classifications and a list of ways that SmartFilter can be shredded like wet kleenex. Why spend money on bad technology that doesn't work?

So, what can you do to get BoingBoing unblocked? Call 125 and request them to unblock it!

I spotted this sign over in City Centre outside Carrefour tonight. The poster reads:

To our valued customers, Please be informed that due to recent events in Denmark and Norway, Danish and Norwegian products won't be available on our shelves until further notice

I thought it was pretty funny that a French chain store (Carrefour) was boycotting Danish and Norwegian products. Any idea if this is happening at Carrefour stores across the Middle East or Asia?

I'd be interested to know if this is part of the Carrefour groups policy. According to Carrefour's responsible commerce policy:

Quite apart from its commercial operations, in every country where the Carrefour group operates it is equally active in the social and environmental fields. We firmly believe that our responsible approach is the source of our financial success. Carrefour's sustainable development policy has always been firmly rooted in action: we are committed to proving our dedication to social, economic and environmental concerns by placing them at the heart of our day-to-day practices.

Our commitments have truly taken root in France, the key country behind the rise of the Carrefour group; eager to see progress shared, these same commitments are being put into action in other countries, in a manner that always respects local economic, cultural, social and environmental conditions.

So maybe this boycott is part of their social/cultural commitment in the Middle East...

How many people do you think are proficient in Arabic in the US State Department? Any guesses?

The answer is scary...I won't spoil your fun - click the link to find the answer : Arab Media Matters

I'm sure most of you have not even thought about what Web browser you're using (it's probably Internet Explorer). So I'll let you in on a little big secret - geeks and other cool people have been using a different browser for over a year now. It's called Firefox and I can honestly say it is one peace of software that has made my life better.

Apart from being more secure, it has amazing features like tabbed browsing (which means you can check out all the new comments on Qatar Living in one browser) and being FREE!

Do yourself a favour and give it a try - click on the button below and download it. I promise you'll experience the web in a whole new way...

Drop me a comment and let me know your experience once you've downloaded it.

I'm just looking through the logs for the site and was suprised to see a number of people landed here from Google by searching for:

• profit mohamed cartoon :39 searches
• profit mohammed cartoon :20 searches
• cartoon of profit mohamed :15 searches
• cartoon profit mohamed :14 searches

First I thought "bunch of idiots can't spell..." - then I realised that they were landing here because someone on Qatar Living was the one with the bad spelling!

Anyway, here is the discussion on the Danish cartoon that mocked Prophet Mohammed (or Prophet Muhammad depending on how you want to spell it).

And remember kids, always put the Prophet before profit...!

We've added a few new features to Qatar Living. Leave a comment and let us know if you find them useful (or not!).

1. A Site Directory which you can use to browse the site. You can use it to browse the forums, reviews or blogs.
2. The Qatar Hall of Fame where you can find the most active members of Qatar Living and the most popular articles.
3. An e-mail this page feature for each article. Click on the link and forward interesting and useful stuff to your friends and family

The whole Voice Over IP (VoIP) issues seems to have died down. Can anyone confirm whether the different VoIP options are working?

For those who don't know what VoIP is, you better listen up! VoIP basically allows you to make cheaper (and sometimes free) calls anywhere in the world. Instead of using your regular phone, you call using your PC (or a handset that plugs into your ADSL line).

It seems many people in Qatar are using Vonage, Paltalk or Yahoo Messenger.