Archive for
April 10th, 2007
Stories
Brazilians Wrap-up and Rap Upon 10 Years of Blogging
· 22:24
The word is out on the web: blogs are celebrating their 10th anniversary. And although blogging about blogging is something bloggers do all the time, the remembrance offers the opportunity for new raps around the beloved theme. The thread started from an April 1st Dave Winer's post where he praises the decade long course of his ‘Scripting News‘, but the paternity attribution is not undisputed. The Lusophone blogosphere catches the wave by sending out new perspectives on the issue and honoring the date as an important collective achievement.
Madagascar: English as an Official Language, Tribute to Victims of Colonial Conflicts and Cyclones (Again)
· 20:45
Busy couple of weeks in terms of news in Madagascar: 3 items were particularly
discussed among Malagasy bloggers:
1) A referendum on the constitution is currently on the way in
Madagascar. The question that Malagasy will have to answer is as follows:
“Acceptez-vous ce projet de révision de la Constitution pour le développement rapide et durable par région, afin d'améliorer le niveau de vie des Malgaches?”.
One of the proposal of the referendum concerns the implementation of the initiative called MAP. This acronym is a double play-on-word that emphasizes the new direction that president Marc Ravalomanana wants to give for Madagascar. MAP stands for Madagascar Action Plan but also for Malagasy AmPerin'asa. As a matter of fact, one of the amendment to the
constitution that is proposed is the addition of English as an official language. This would be a critical step for Madagascar in its
willingness to open its market to a broader spectrum. It is of course a proposal not free of controversy because language has often been a subject of controversy in Madagascar. 30 years ago, Madagascar underwent a proposal that placed Malagasy as the only official language. It was seen back then as an attempt from Madagascar to distance itself
from French influence. Today, the addition of English and the
reaffirmation of Malagasy as the language of choice will probably be
perceived as slight against France again. Manny and other bloggers are not quite sure how to vote and what to make of this addition of English as an official language. Elodieriana writes:
3 langues officielles….vivement la traduction des documents officiels…traduction de la constitution entres autres avec 3 colonnes?
Many bloggers are also not quite sure what to make of this “MAP-thing”, another
critical point of the referendum: Mikozatra writes that many
may have not read the MAP entirely but the presentation of the
document is surely well-done, as this radio host's confession can attest:
En première page donc Plan d’action Madagascar 2007-2012
Plan Audacieux (avec un grand A) pour le développement rapide.
Et la photo d’un jeune garcon, trés bien, joli sourire, dentition
parfaite. A l’intérieur, ll y a plein de photos également, un véritable
diaporama du président en campagne, à la campagne, et des malgaches, de
paysages, la flore.. tiens pas de lémuriens ?
rapid development. Nice picture of a yougn man, nice smile, perfect
teeth. Inside, lots of photos, a true slideshow of the president on the
campaign trail with Malagasies, landscapes and flora….hum, no lemurs,
he ?
The refenredum early polls have come out and suspicions are already
arising in newspapers regarding the validity of the results.
2) Madagascar paid tribute to the memory of thousand of victims of the
“March,29th insurrection” against French occupation. The bloodshed that
day was such a cataclysm that French newspaper “Le Monde” classified it as one of the most disastrous conflicts during French colonization.
…soulèvement qui fut l’une des premières manifestations nationalistes dans l’empire français. La répression, avec près de 100 000 morts un des grands massacres coloniaux de l’après-guerre, sur lequel la France a étendu un voile de silence , a fauché toute une génération de cadres malgaches
Malagasy bloggers also paid tribute to the victims by collecting
the most heartfelt pieces written about those events, most of them were compiled by Nivo here.
3) Finally, yet another cyclone hit the island this week. Jayla is the name of the most recent one and it is one the 6th of its kind within the last 6 months, each one of them as damaging the next one. Official statements reports 8 deaths and the fact that ½ of the town of Sambava is devastated.
Amatomu: The South African blogosphere, sorted
· 19:45
“Dear friends on the South African blogosphere, it is with great pride and a degree of trepidation that I announce the public alpha test of Amatomu.com,” writes Vincent Maher, officially announcing the launching of Amatomu. Blogger Tyler Reed, unaware that Amatomu was in a closed alpha testing phase, wrote about it before it went public alpha. According to Vincent, it was a code on on a test blog, which led Tyler to discover it:
It was always going to be hard to keep something like this a secret, but those we invited managed to stay quiet for more than a week,” he says. Word got out when South African blogger and Global Voices author Tyler Reed, who was unaware of the initial secrecy, discovered code on a test blog and wrote a review of the site on his own blog, www.tylerreed.co.za.
Amatomu is a new, dynamic South African blog aggregator hosted by The Mail & Guardian Online. Some bloggers have called it “South Africa's Technorati”.
The Mail & Guardian's online strategists and bloggers, Vincent Maher and Mathew Buckland are the key figures behind Amatomu.
“This has been more than a website for Vinnie and I, but a passion,” writes Mathew Buckland:
It was part of what we call our “Lab” projects at M&G (modelled on the Google Labs concept), which we have created via a rapid development process without the usual project plans, workflow diagrams, specs, storyboards etc etc… It’s not for the faint hearted.
Amatomu is something that has been developed on weekends, early mornings and that has had Vince and I monitoring it late into the evenings from our homes and even Vince rushing to the office on a particular late Sunday evening. What has been particularly great, is to see the same amount of passion for it by the local blogging community.
The name Amatomu, which means “reins” in isiZulu, was the subject of considerable debate before it was eventually chosen:
Amatomu, the name we eventually settled on, was hotly debated. The name means “reins” in isiZulu and I was a strong proponent of it because of the original desire to steer more mainstream traffic towards the blogosphere. Matthew was concerned that the name might imply some sort of punitive element but I managed to win that argument, only just, by explaining the difference between a crop, a bit and the reins (not that I know much about equestrian sports LOL).
Amatomu was designed with the primary objective of providing an organized perspective of the South African blogosphere. Sorting it out:
The general idea was that we wanted to provide some sort of destination for our readers that would give them an organized perspective of the South Afrian blogosphere, and offer some useful services to bloggers without treading on the toes of existing services like Muti, which we support completely.
One sentence describes Amatomu: “The South African blogosphere, sorted.” Ethan Zuckerman explains the sorting:
The sorting refers to the site’s ranked lists, which list blogs in terms of their popularity in terms of unique visitors. Amatomu is able to calculate this by asking participating bloggers to put a badge on their sites - by analyzing how many users see this badge, the system can calculate how many readers see the blog.
Features: Graphing the buzz, calculating rankings, tracking traffic
Amatomu ranks, categorizes and sorts out South African blogs using criteria: Tag Cloud, Top 100 Blogs (using unique readers as main indicator), Hot Right Now, Trends, Blog Search, Latest Blog Posts and Blog Charts.
According to Mathew Buckland, they have recently enabled Amatomu to graph the buzz in the South African blogosphere:
We’ve added more graphing on amatomu.com’s search results. It tracks activity of search keywords over a 30-day period and then graphs the buzz. These are new graphs we added together with the others launched on overall blogosphere trends and individual blogger profiles on top posts etc…
Another feature tracks traffic sent to one's blog from Amatomu:
Today we added a little somethign extra to Amatomu that tracks how much raffic we send to your blog. That figure is now listed on your stats page and after a week we will start graphing that too, for your visual pleasure.
At the moment my blog gets about 15% of its traffic from Amatomu and that’s roughly the figure I hear from others too. Keep in mind that once we go public with the site and link it from the Mail & Guardian Online that figure will increase dramatically.
Vincent explains how rankings are calculated:
When you register you’re asked to put a little bit of code in your template. What that does is it tracks the pages and unique visitors to your site. We’re still working on the way that tracking happens but it seems to be working fairly well so far. From this data we calculate the most popular blogs over 24 hours, 7 days and one month, and we also track the most popular posts.
If it ain't there, it does not exist: Look, quickly!
Both South African and non-South African bloggers' reaction to Amatomu has been overwhelmingly positive. FACareers put it this way, “If it ain't there, it does not exist”:
If you need to stay abreast on local happenings, you’ll find it all there. Not just news, but information, networking possibilities, new developments, and so much more are readily available through a singular platform.
I’d go as far as to say, if it ain’t there, it doesn’t exist. (Well, that is the idea behind the product, and I’m sure it won’t be too long before my statement is completely true)
Bizcommunity.com calls Amatomu, a searchable blog directory:
Amatomu.com collects South African blog content and measures traffic to local blogs, displaying the top 10 and top 100 blogs by their popularity. The site also organises blogs into various categories such as media and marketing, business, politics, technology, life, sport and entertainment, effectively turning it into a searchable blog directory.
Nick thinks it is pretty cool that Steve Rubel, a marketing strategist and senior vice-president at Eldeman links to Amatomu:
I subscribe to Steve Rubel’s RSS feed and just noticed that he has linked to Amatomu in his del.icio.us links. That is super cool. Maybe I am missing something and a bit slow on this post, but maybe the dudes at Amatomu haven’t noticed it yet!
I think it’s pretty cool.
Alwyn calls Amatomu graphs “a serious eye candy”:
Amatomu added some seriously good looking graphs to the front page and even more on the stats page for your blog, indicating the page impressions for each of your blog posts, and over 3 different periods, the last 24 hours, last 7 days, and last 30 days.
It gives you a good insight into the popularity of each of your posts that you’d typically only know if every visitor left a comment (which we all know they don’t)
Swimgeek compares watching Top 100 blogs in South Africa to stock trading:
I’ve been looking at the Amatomu Top 100 blogs in SA list a few times over the last week. It’s a bit like day-trading.. watching your blog stock move. I’m in the top 40 today.
Top 100 blogs in South Africa, really nice to see.
Adelaide declares: I am the No. 10, look quickly:
Ok, while it lasts, look quickly: I'm the No. 10 Life Blog on the new South African blogosphere site, Amatomu.
Although Amatomu has been described as the Technorati of South Africa, Eish argues that it is more navigable than its “big brother”:
The internet universe is so immense that blogs originating from South Africa are pretty darn hard to find. Since discovering Amatomu that has all changed for me. It's been referred to by some as the Technorati of South Africa, but I don't know if it's just me, but I find it way more usable than it's ‘big brother.'
It's has easy to navigate tabs which start with a ‘full' top 500 listing (that oddly stops at 200!?). But then you can check through the top blogs by traffic for the past 24 hours, 7 days & month. The same can be done for each of the categories. It has a sidebar which lists new postings from registered blogs as they are posted. There is also a column for newest blogs and a “Zeitgeist” widget which displays most popular topics being blogged on the SA blogosphere.
As a blogger it's simple to register and as the rankings are calculated on actual traffic figures it's a fun way to keep tabs of visitor numbers in relation to fellow SA bloggers.
Charl finds Amatomu a good alternative to Technorati, which is too large for South Africa:
Technorati is simply too large for South Africans to make an impact. Amatomu gives us even playing field and allows us to watch what's happening locally. I would certainly like to see this project grow and improve, as I'm sure it will.
Stii uses Amatomu to find out how healthy the South African blogging community is:
If you go onto Amatomu, you will see that whatever SA blog you visit from there has got some opinion. If not opinion, then at least some form of originality. I’ve never seen such spamming happening yet in the SA blogosphere. (Apart from the lovely daily links that seems to be soooo popular! At least even there opinions about the links are given in the form of a one-liner.) When this does happen (hopefully never, although that might be wishful thinking) we will have bigger problems. Crap like that detracts from a blogging community in more ways than one. There is nothing more appalling than hitting a blog that only offers you a link to another… PUKE!
Through Amatomu, Laurence notices how apolitical the South African blogosphere is:
On the subject of Amatomu: it also left me rather surprised at how apolitical the South African blogosphere is. The US blogosphere is far less weighted towards political blogs than it once was, but even so, three out of the the Technorati Top 10 are political. On the Amatomu Top 10, it's zero. I wonder why?
Khanya looks at race and blogging in South Africa. “Are there black bloggers in South Africa? If there are, why are they not showing up on Amatomu?”, Khanya asks:
Look at South African blog aggregator sites like Amatomu, and the vast majority of the bloggers there are white. And this in spite of the fact that it is run by the Mail & Guardian newspaper, which has several black journalists. So if there are black bloggers out there, why aren’t they showing up on Amatomu?
The last thing Gino would like to see is Amatomu becoming an aggregator for “A-list bloggers”:
As more blogs get added to the system, it will be interesting to see how Amatomu helps users discover new blogs that are just starting out, in turn generating some of the traffic and links to these new blogs as well. This is important to take away any potential stigma of Amatomu being of use to only “A-list bloggers” or “serious bloggers”.
PixelPLEXUS would like to see more innovation around Top 10 and Top 100 features:
What I’d like to see next is some innovation balancing the popularity contest aspects of the top10 and top100 lists with valuable stuff that may or may no lie hidden somewhere in the long tail… I can’t say that any of the tags in the ‘what’s hot’ cloud appeals to me in any way whatsoever :-(, but that is not the point here, far from it.
Issues: What is a blog? What is a South African blog?
There seem to be several issues, which need to be resolved. Laurence, blogging at Commentary.co.za, notices some sites on Amatomu have stretched the definition of a blog:
I spent a lot of time today playing around with Amatomu, and while it's a fascinating and fun tool, I also couldn't help but notice that a lot of the sites on its list stretch the definition of a “blog” to its most tenuous. It's difficult to make this argument without coming across as a pompous elitist, but that doesn't make it any less true.
Swimgeek weighs in on the same issue:
At first glance a few “blogs” did not strike me as blogs, but they have syndication feeds and they have comments. They seem to lack the personal angle. When is a news site with teams of sub-editors no longer a blog? The top 10 contains at least 3 sites which I don't think are blogs.
Swimgeek talks about a filtering mechanism to prevent “law of the jungle”:
Is there some filter process for what is a blog and what is an SA blog.. or is it just “law of the jungle”?
Steve Hayes wonders how long Amatomu will remain a South African blog aggregator:
How long will it remain a South African blog list? Is there anything to stop pyramid marketers from Korea or penis enlargers from Oklahoma from signing up?
The Future: RSS reader and Social Networking
A great future is awaiting Amatomu users. According to Vincent Maher, it is set to becoming more than an aggregator:
8 comments · »»There are some new features coming. The first is the ability to create an extended blogger profile and upload a picture of yourself or something you like. The second is the ability to indicate which bloggers you know and like. The third is to give you a page filtered by your favorites. That pretty much makes us an RSS reader too, if you think about it.
Nicaragua: Justice Crosses Borders With Social Media 
· 19:00
Editor's Note: As you'll notice on the colored maps to your right as you explore around Global Voices, some countries and regions are better represented on the site than others. Most often this is because some countries have more bloggers than others. In Santiago, Chile, for example, it's almost impossible to stay up to date on the daily swarm of cyber-commotion. But in Paraguay, there is only a handful of regular bloggers. Nicaragua's blogging community has wavered between smaller and small for some time. We are fortunate to now have Rodrigo Peñalba and Mario Delgado of Barricada.com.ni as contributors to the site. Their first post takes a look at how blogs and video sharing sites are shaping public opinion about a controversial court case in which American Eric Volz was convicted of the murder of his girlfriend in Nicaragua.
The recent media campaign launched by the Volz family puts in doubt all of the commentaries, news stories, and reports published in the Nicaraguan media.
Taking advantage of YouTube, MySpace, and various blogs, the Volz family has managed to get the attention of North Americans television programs, opinion pages, and senators and representatives who can act at the political level to pressure the Nicaraguan judiciary.
On the other hand, Nicaraguan netizens, still too dispersed to have a strong blogosphere, have expressed themselves on forums and the comment pages of national newspapers.
Both parties put forth their cases, some with personal manifestations of friendship, others with national patriotism, and many more with epithets of all kinds.
In its national news section, El Nuevo Diario has responded to the online challenge to their coverage of the Volz case by insisting that their reports [ES] and facts are true; but they are also trying to change the opinions of relatives and friends of Eric Volz.
This, beyond the verity of facts, or the innocence of the involved parties, is a battle of Nicaragua's traditional media (La Prensa, El Nuevo Diario, and TV news programs), against the social media pressure of the blogosphere, a new medium of journalism and collective information based on social relations made over the internet.
0 comments · »»Turkey is Typing…Keeping up with the Komşuluk
· 08:20
Komşuluk means “the neighborhood” in Turkish, and today we are going to stroll through it's streets. First off on our visits today is Amerikan Turk, who in response to hearing the news that Turkey was going to block websites that offend Turkishness…he tongue-in-cheekly answers:
I can help!
Time to really populate my list of “Insulters of Turkishness”. Such a list is now officially required.
Next on our list is Erkan's Field Diary, who once again is delaying his military service. He also comments on the role of the President in lieu of the upcoming Turkish presidential elections:
What I was taught in high school was that the Presidency was mostly “symbolic”. the President had some power to enact but the real executive power resided in Prime Ministry. Despite this supposed division of labour every presidential election in recent times had its own phase of political crisis. It seems that this last one to come produces a wider range crisis. Among a thousand things to say, I would like to state that Mr. Sezer, our current president, is mostly responsible for that the chair of President has become a site of more executive power and has become more partisanal instead of being a position that is beyond daily politics.
Idil from Ignore Me If You Can brings us a list of items directed to a “special someone”: I don't care if….
….You think your problems are more important than mine. No, they’re not. From my perspective; they’re completely irrelevant.
4) You now have a life that doesn’t involve me; watch me have one that doesn’t involve you.
5) You can’t take two minutes out of your busy schedule to give me the time of the day. If you won’t, someone else will.
6) You think the world revolves around your drama; it doesn’t. It never did, it never will.
7) You make out with every cow in the country, I don’t care anymore….
Me and Others comments on the nature of crowds…and his dislike for them:
it seems like there is nothing left in Istanbul you can do without getting involved to a crowd, a very large crowd. Try to change location, try to do business with a bank, try to eat something, or go shopping or even try just to walk. All you hit is people and people and more people.
Spooky Sense by Garfucius manages to turn a post complaining about the lack of good television into a comment on the current Turkish administration:
but zapping is a good method of sampling what is on show. skip the gibberish and football crap instantly, linger a moment to hear a question asked or a comment, stop there a while if the going is good and you do patchwork a sociological picture of the goings on. however, as far as the turkish stations are concerned, the presidential election, for the american and british channels, the war and the plight of muslims in the west have already lasted longer than the endless and ultimately unviewable young and restless. especially when it comes to tayyib bey's aspired ascent to çankaya; oh lords of fire and ire! have words ever been so completely exhausted out of meaningful ideas and insight! how can so many tongue-hours (*) be spent without a single spark of inspiration slipping through some lips at least?
In a follow-up post, the presidential commentary continues….
however, under the current settings, tayyib bey -though i hate that it is so- has every right in the book to climb to çankaya, the seat of the top state job since atatürk. if a man is good enough to be premier, he is good enough to become president, too. if you are afraid that his somewhat pedestrian religious, political etc. standing is detrimental to the well being of the state and or the nation, you should have the democratic mechanisms, principles, practices and habits in place even before he started climbing the first rungs of the ladder. not having that, you tried to do it on the edge of a bayonet and the jab you gave him made him spring to the top.
We are almost to end of the block on our trip today, Tarkan DeLuxe lists the latest gossip about Turkish popstar collaborations, and Turkey and My Foreign Perspectives gives us a list of our local Istanbul libraries.
As a little girl, I was fascinated by the library and librarians, but here in Turkey, you can't find them in every neighborhood and sometimes not even in an entire area where you live.
As an expat in Istanbul, have you had a hard time finding a library? In Istanbul, many of the universities and other specialty libraries allow you to visit for free or for a low annual fee, instead of having a local library. So today, I share some library resources for all of you working or visiting here in Istanbul.
As for me, I am off to find a good book. Thanks for our walk today, see you next week.
0 comments · »»Nepal: Beauties and the Beasts?
· 02:37
Protests of beauty contests are nothing new. For the hardliner feminists, such contest gives a false sense of outer beauty while for those supporting it; it's an opportunity to showcase the talents. When Miss Nepal 2007 happened, there were protests outside the venue and police even used force to disperse the crowd.
And, the Maoists who just joined the government put some ghee on the fire as Information and Communication Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara saying to a delegation that he would look into the matters to see if the stopping of the live broadcast of the pageant by the state-owned Nepal Television is possible.
Hisila Yami, minister for physical planning, too spoke against it (of course, Food for Thoughts named her beauty queen after she attended the oath taking ceremony of the Maoist ministers in jeans).
Nepal Through My Lens witnessed the protest:
Everybody inside BICC Hall was cheering for the participating Miss Nepal contestants. But the condition outside the hall was not so good. A thousand woman protesters were demanding to stop the event. More than 18 protest were injured when they clashed with the police.
But Miss Nepal 2007 went on with Sitasma Chand winning the crown. And bloggers, who wrote about the protests and contest, were not too happy with the protest. Mero Guff believes:
I don't see why those protesting groups are blindly accusing the organizers for women exploitation and so. For me, the act of protesting is nonsense. There is no glance of profanity or nudity during the whole show event. In fact, occasionally it was enriched with cultural themes and music in background. I've personally watched that show and my judgment suggested me that there is nothing wrong with it.
Who are these Women Activists to protest that way? Are they jealous? Is it not their freedom to take part in? Has any contestant yet come and cry in front of these women activists for the case of abuse by their organizers? When I heard one of the women activists yesterday in one local FM stations being interviewed, I pitied on her miserable blaming which was just pointless.
The winner herself commented beautifully on the issue of protest. She told the media: “I respect the opinion of all the women who are protesting against the pageant. However, all the participants here are above 18. So the protesters should also respect our right to form our own opinion.”
Meanwhile, Deepak's Diary makes a point that to be a hero, one doesn't have to be physically beatuiful. In the post about a successful differently-able government officer, he says:
1 comment · »»But, to me he appeared to be a kind of inspiring figure, an unsung hero who refused to bow to the preconceived notion of society that believes disability is a sin, a crime.
Links
Americas
Le Blog de [Moi] had a fit of anguish [Fr] at the news that a 20 year same-sex relationship recently ended. Says the blogger: “I have a hard time with lesbian breakups … As if we owed ourselves to make it against all odd … And I can't help but think of my own couple… Can't help but look for signs.”
Americas , Sub-Saharan Africa
Guadeloupe Attitude posts [Fr] an article by Maité Mapangou, Executive Secretary of OPDAS-Gabon [Organization of African First Ladies Against HIV/AIDS in Gabon] concluding that “circumcised or not, any man who does not protect himself is a potential agent of the spread of the virus“. The article comes in response to a recent news story alleging that circumcision might have a protective effect vis-a-vis HIV.
Oceania
Laminar_Flow points readers to a inaugural blogger's meet in Fiji.
East Asia
Dili-gence has a post on why the voting patterns in the other regions of the country may not be like the capital city Dili. The elections are on in East Timor to select the next president of the country.
East Asia
Maurina describes the traditional rice harvesting festival of Mangatam in Brunei
East Asia
Juan Pablo Fernandez post pictures and describes the daily life in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.
East Asia
The Daily Brunei Resources writes a post describing how circumcisions are done in Brunei today. The blogger has another post on circumcision in the old days.
East Asia
Old Man's Blog cautions its readers in Brunei to focus beyond short term and plan for retirement.
East Asia
Taiwan Bloggers BoF, the biggest blogger festival in Taiwan is about to take place on April 14, 2007.
BoF was first held in 2005, and named for “Birds of a feather”. In 2006, hundreds of bloggers participated in the 2nd BoF, in which a talk was given by Rebecca MacKinnon, co-founder of GVO, to share her experience in the media, why she left CNN and joined the family of Global Voice Online.
In the upcoming 3rd meeting, Leonard, the acting coordinator of Global Voices Chinese Team, will give a briefing at the session: Citizen Journalism(zh). He will introduce what GV Chinese is and how bloggers in Taiwan can take part in this project. Other organizations such as Peepo (a platform organized by Taiwan Public Television Service) and Wikinews will introduce their status, too. Several international bloggers in Taiwan will also be invited to provide their points of view at this session.
Central Asia & Caucasus
Onnik Krikorian catches both ArmenPress and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty using his photos without permission.
Central Asia & Caucasus
Bonnie Boyd discusses how Soviet irrigation policies led to the depletion of the Aral Sea.
Central Asia & Caucasus
Though some parties have been doing some unofficial campaigning already, Armenia's parliamentary election campaign is now officially underway. Notes From Hareinik analyzes some ambitious campaign promises from the Armenian Revolutionary Federation — Dashnaktsutiun. Meanwhile, Onnik Krikorian has photos of the same party's campaign launch.
Central Asia & Caucasus
Safrang analyzes the ways in which the government of Afghanistan is and is not responsible for the death of Ajmal Naqshbandi.
Middle East & North Africa
Lebanese blogger FaiLaSooF urges women who have had sexual harassment experiences to share them with her in order to begin a campaign against violence on women.
Middle East & North Africa
Into the Wind contemplates how she will manage the traffic of Amman without her car: “Since I’m going to be car-less for over a week, I’m going to seize the opportunity to conduct a little experiment, and give our existing public transportation system a chance. I’ll try to minimize the use of taxis to things that are extremely urgent, and try to resort to the bus system and understand how it works here.”
Middle East & North Africa
Saudi Jeans reacts to the recent public comment from Interior Minister Prince Naif in which it was announced “Segregation of men and women is not correct”.
Middle East & North Africa
Life in Dubai gives us a picture tour of the Dubai beaches.
Middle East & North Africa
Tunisian Subzero Blue reacts to the recent article the Seven Pillars of Middle East Reality: “Arab leaders have no interest in genuine peace with Israel
This can't be more wrong; the Arab leaders wouldn't want anything more than to have the whole Israel-Palestine problem solved, a peace established, the ability to move on and leave the whole thing behind them. In fact, a number of the Arab regimes, if not most of them, already have secret ties with Israel, and are just waiting for the chance to make them public and announce normalization.”
Middle East & North Africa
Carpetblogger recounts some of her learning adventures in her Turkish class: “I have been spending four hours a day, five days a week in a small room with two Korean women, a Argentinian woman, a Turkish/Swiss woman (who speaks German but no Turkish) and two women from “Dogu Turkestan.”"
Middle East & North Africa
Journalist blog Moderate Risk takes us on a video trip to the local Souk (a bazaar) in Suliamaniya, Iraq.
Americas
Paul Henry on the importance of this weekend's national referendum in Ecuador.
Eastern & Central Europe
Further Ramblings of a N.Irish Magyar gets a surprisingly good treatment from a Budapest doctor: “… although the inside of the hospitals still look like something from the Crimean War and the doctor wore Moses sandals, how I was dealt with last night was quicker and more efficient than the times that I’ve had to rely on the British health service.”
Eastern & Central Europe
Further Ramblings of a N.Irish Magyar listens to Puccini’s Turandot at the Budapest Opera House - and looks around.
Eastern & Central Europe
Itching for Eestimaa visits the Museum of Occupations in Tallinn and muses on Estonia's past.
Americas
“‘An island surrounded by land' is how novelist Roa Bastos described his native Paraguay, as much in reference to its political and social insularity, as to its landlocked geography.” So begins Teo Ballvé in his post, “Paraguay’s Peculiar Politics.”
Eastern & Central Europe
Copydude posts pictures of “all three of the former East Prussian sanatoria above Kaliningrad.”
Eastern & Central Europe
TOL's Romantic posts a brief history of Belarus' Roma community.
Americas
You may recall the happy ending to the kidnapping saga of Peruvian Photojournalist Jaime Razuri while he was on assignment in Gaza. “Freed, unharmed, on Jan. 7 … the incident made him a minor international celebrity and a major one in his home country. But it also overshadows a more than 20-year career that has included covering some of the most turbulent conflicts in our times, writes C.J. Schexnayder who sat down with Razuri to ask him about his experience in Gaza and around the world as an intrepid photojournalist.
Americas
La Gringa, sticking to the theme of working conditions, takes a look at “the real cost of bananas” in Honduras.
South Asia
A time to reflect on a place where water is everything. “This woman sits just otuside the main gate of the reserve, just off the dusty main road. She has pots of water filled and ready, and fetches them from near her home which is close to the main gate,, when the pots go empty. People give me whatever they wish… She also adds, often they don’t give anything. I just do it…”
South Asia
To each its own on why women in Pakistan cannot get their hugs. “As per the fatwa, “hugging” was an illegitimate and forbidden act and Muslim women are expected to stay at home and never venture out uncovered. The fatwa demanded that Bakhtiar be fired, given another unspecified punishment and that her family force her to ask for forgiveness so that she does not repeat this un-Islamic act.”
Sub-Saharan Africa
Bankelele on war against corruption in Kenya, “A noble step in the war on corruption is this website by the Public Procurement Oversight Authority which list all contracts awarded over 5 million shillings ($71,430) by organs of the kenya government. A step further would be to require/ publish all companies who are awarded such contracts to also publish/disclose all the company directors.”
South Asia
United We Blog! on the ways of looting a country. “While taking about the corruption of politicians only, the businessmen’s misdeeds were under shadow. In fact, they were the ones who promoted corruption in political circle. The government rarely took action against corrupt businessmen.”
South Asia
ICT for Peacebuilding on the issue of a Bloggers Code of Conduct. “A code of conduct may give a foundation to not publish or isolate their comments, but it doesn’t prevent them from posting vitriolic comments on their own blogs or leaving comments in blogs that don’t follow the same guidelines. The very nature of the web is that if someone wants to say something, they will find a way to say it.”
East Asia
Google got some positive bloggage of its recently-released Chinese-language input software, and then Chinese bloggers discovered some impropriety in the program code, leading to Google's apology.
East Asia
Imagethief blogger Will Moss writes of plans to end his career as the Little Red Blog columnist for tech news website CNET next month: “China geeks with a writing jones who are interested in carrying the torch should get in touch.”
Politics.bm quotes an analysis of census data on Bermuda's education divide: “Education should be a source of opportunity, not a mark of privilege. People who can’t afford to send their children to private schools deserve the same opportunities as those who can. But today, that birthright for Bermudian children in the public school system is in jeopardy.”
East Asia
Pro State In Flames blogger Moogee writes yesterday of a freeway roadblock in Hebei province's Dingzhou village which allegedly lasted forty minutes, led to a 500 vehicle-long traffic jam and disrupted train service. [zh]
Americas
Today, the West Indies plays South Africa in Grenada. Writing for ttgapers.com, Garth Wattley emphasizes how much is hinging on this particular game: “Both teams need no reminding that any more errors could be fatal now.”
East Asia
Did you know Lhasa, capital of Tibet, has its own gay bar? Gay bloggers too. Via Jeremy Goldkorn at Danwei, that and more from Fridae.com correspondent Dinah Gardner.
East Asia
Blogger and Life Weekly editor looks back at another renowned cultural critic—Wang Xiaobo, on the tenth anniversary of Xiaobo's death, how he relates to works from someone a generation older than him, and how Xiaobo ended up on the cover of Life Weekly. [zh]
Americas
Posting from Trinidad, Caribbean Free Photo has a gorgeous Flickr photoset of birds.
East Asia
Kaiser Kuo, strategy director at Ogilvy China blogs on a recent meeting with two stylish Greenpeace campaigners and their plans to “promote green consciousness” at the Midi Music Festival in Beijing next month.
Sub-Saharan Africa
Please vote for the Nata village blog: “PLEASE take five minutes of your time and help us out! The Nata Blog has entered a contest with www.netsquared.org. They are a website that promotes using the internet for social change. The top 20 projects will be invited to their conference in San Jose, California May 29, 30. The important thing is they will assist the projects with funding and technical assistance.”
Sub-Saharan Africa
Ringplay Productions pays tribute to Calvin Lockhart and Viveca Watkins - two icons of Bahamian theatre who passed away recently. And WeblogBahamas.com remembers the music of Jamaican Peter Tosh.Americas
Americas
Alan Patrick has put together an invaluable resource for Buenos Aires-based lovers of sauntering. Complete with 26 stops, photos, and a map.
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