Laith Zraikat

I was having problems with my previous RSS reader which only recognized the titles from Blogger feeds, and not always recognized Jordan Planet feeds. It also did not support auto synchronization. After trying several applications, I came across RSS Sync (http://www.viksoe.dk/code/rsssync.htm)

I found it to be extremely efficient, easy to use, and supports all kinds of feeds. Best of all, it integrates with ActiveSync letting me manage my feeds from the pc rather than the tiny PPC screen. It also automatically synchronizes feeds one the PPC is docked. Oh, and it's FREE!

Now, if you have a Gravatar registered with your email address, it will appear automatically when you post a comment using that e-mail address on any of the thousands of blogs that we host.

For those who don’t know what a Gravatar is; It stands for "Globally Recognized Avatar". It’s a personal Icon that will appear next to your name if you post topics of comments to any Gravatar enabled blog or discussion board. It will be tied to the email address you registered it with, so you'll have to use the same e-mail address on those sites.

To get your Gravatar go to: www.gravatar.com

Last night was Jordan Planet's December meetup which attracted more than 20 people. I got a chance to meet new people, and get to know better those I had met in my first meetup. The meeting was in-formal, everybody just talked about whatever they wanted, but the spirit of blogging was evedident in the air.

I went to the meeting with Khalidah, and we decided to go a bit early in case we got lost on the way. Fortunately the directions to Canvas –the meeting place- were very easy to follow, and we were the first to arrive. This gave me a chance to look around the place, as I don’t usually get to do that when I got to places for the first time. The interesting thing about it is that It did not feel like I was in a restaurant, but rather in my home dining room. The place felt very cozy, especially with the rain pouring outside the windows. Ten minutes after we arrived came Roba, Lina and Rami. Three very interesting people. We got a chance to get to know each other until more people arrived.

Rami is a Jordanian journalist living and studying in Sweden, and currently on what you would consider a business trip to Jordan. He is doing some research for his university about blogging in Jordan and the impact it will have on law makers and the press association in the country. He also wrote a very nice piece titled "the Internet as a Communication Medium for Development" in which he argues that developing nations are quickly gaining pace as producers of information and knowledge, the same way that the traditional Information producer-consumer relationship is shifting because of the Internet.

Lina is working on her graduation project at the University of Jordan (my uni!) and wishes she could have 30-hour days so she can go to uni, work on her project and blog! Roba… Well, Roba is very interesting because it seemed like every single person in the meeting recognized her right away. That’s in addition to the fact that she is the first "Roba" I met who spells her name with an "O".

Next to arrive -I think- was Mariam. Mariam has her own NGO in London. And among the things she does is organize youth exchange programs for people aged 18-26 (I'm 27, does that mean I'm not a youth anymore??!)

After that everyone else started arriving, Issam and Abeer, Nader and Mira, Laith Majali, Ahmad Humeid, Jad Madi, Naseem Tamimi, Ammar Ibrahim, Tamer Al-Nasser….. forgive me if I can't remember the rest.

The meeting took off with everyone introducing themselves. The interesting part was when each had to say why they got into blogging. We had all kinds of reasons, some to express themselves, some just to experiment, but for Ammar, it was plain jealousy of Ahmad Humeid's blog. The meeting was also given a special taste because it brought together representatives from Arab blogging services.

Why did I tell this long story? To let you get into the atmosphere of a Jordan Planet meetup, and to help you understand how I think of Jordan Planet.

What is Jordan Planet?... I see it as a phenomenon the like of which was only witnessed back in the early days of NETS Online, where meetings starting online were carried into the real world in similar meetups. There were more than 20 people last night, and It's very hard to think that without Jordan Planet, a lot of them would have never met.

There is more than enough talk these days about blogging, but not nearly enough about communities like Jordan Planet, what it has done for many many people, and the impact it will have on the lives of more to come. In my opinion, this last meetup was a testimony to the successful mission that the founders of Jordan Planet have carried out. You should be proud guys.

I took some pictures in the meeting, but I'd like to keep it simple and post the best one:

We love what Google has done with it's Blog Search. We love Technorati because it doesn’t just randomly index our blogs, but rather enables blogs and their content to be tagged by people and ranked based on how popular it was (traffic). We simply love the way all the search engines are optimized for searching blogs –one way or another. But amidst all of this, and with the growing popularity of blogging, there is a need that has gone un-answered; The need to find good quality bloggers.

I really can't remember the last time I used Google Blog search or Technorati to find a good Blog. The way I usually find the high quality blogs is through word of mouth, other good blogs, or through blogging communities like Jordan Planet.

Take this scenario; I read a good blogger who reads several other bloggers, so I end up catching one or two of them, who turn out to be really good as well. This is how I was introduced to a large percentage of the blogs I read.

So in addition to all the lightning fast search engines and the neatly tagged directories that are popping up here and there, we need an engine to rank bloggers based on human recommendation.

The base for such an engine would be the OPML (or Blog roll) feed which is currently used for sharing RSS feeds between bloggers. This is because OPML is already being used in a sense for recommending other blogs to readers, and because there is not one good reason why not to use it.

The engine would start with a group of hand-picked blogs which will act as the seeds, or supreme court which will kick-start the recommendation process, resulting in more blogs being added to this (seed group). Seed blogs can recommend other blogs by adding them in their Blog roll, which is picked up by the engine and recorded. Based on these recommendations, any Blog will have the chance to become a seed Blog and play a part in recommending other blogs.

Assuming that the first seed of bloggers are top notch, covering a wide variety of topics, then this engine would hold the largest variety of hand-picked content which is worth reading, anywhere on the web.

I think this would make a nice idea for an open-source project.

I recently was faced with a problem where a form was sending text encoded in UTF-8, and the ASP.Net page processing the data used "windows-1256". This really messed up the text.

The dilemma I was that I had to keep the page encoding containing the form as utf-8, and I had to keep the processing page as windows-1256.

I was able to solve it by converting the incoming text from utf-8 to windows-1256 by using the following two methods:

///<summary> /// Converts any UTF-8 string into the selected character set ///</summary> ///<param name="StringToConvert"></param> ///<param name="TargetCharSet"></param> ///<returns></returns> public byte[] ConvertUTF8StringEncoding(string StringToConvert, string TargetCharSet) { byte[] ByteConvertedString; byte[] ByteStringToConvert; Encoding TargetEncoding; // Convert the string to a Byte array ByteStringToConvert = Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(StringToConvert); // Get the target encoding type TargetEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding(TargetCharSet); // Convert the byte array using the target encoding ByteConvertedString = Encoding.Convert(System.Text.Encoding.UTF8, TargetEncoding, ByteStringToConvert); return ByteConvertedString; } ///<summary> /// This converts the Binary array back to string. ///</summary> ///<param name="Binary"></param> ///<returns></returns> string BinaryUTF8ToString(byte[] Binary) { return System.Text.UnicodeEncoding.UTF8.GetString(Binary); }

The first method will return a byte array of the string encoded in windows-1256. The second method will convert the binary array back to its string value.

So to convert any UTF-8 form input string, we write the following

stringConvertedString = BinaryUTF8ToString(ConvertStringEncoding( Request.Form["FormInput"], "windows-1256"));

1 guy + 1 digital cam + working late = new wierd desktop

(click image to enlarge)

A while ago, I heard Jordan was planning to create something like the speaker's corner in Hyde Park, London, where people can feel free to express their opinions without fear of persecution. I thought it was a just a funny rumor until I read Naseem's post on the subject, however, I still thought it was funny. Here's why:

Let's do a little math: If the square can accomodate 10 speakers at a time, each talking for 30 mins, by deducting the hours that people have to sleep (5h minimum), we will get 380 people expressing their opinion each day... Thats a lot less headache than allowing 5 million people to speak their minds, don't you think? I wonder if they'll have a reservation system... I wonder if I will ever get a turn to speak before I leave this world...

If there were true democracy and freedom of speech in our country, why would we need a freedom square? Or is it so that people can "only" express their opinions there, and keep their mouths shut once they walk out of it?

In response to Zeid Nasser's topic "Spam: A thing of the past!", I thought I'd share some thoughts on the topic:

Indeed SPAM is a huge burden for individuals and corporations, especially those providing e-mail services.

Everything people have been talking about to fight spam seems promising, but I'm sure that just as companies like Microsoft are developing anti-spam technologies, there are others focused on breaking through any new anti spam technology. Even the human challenge idea -which I like very much- can eventually be broken.

However, I have been reading more and more about an approach which I think could mark the end of spam once and for all. This approach suggests replacing SMTP with an RSS-like protocol.

There are three main problems which make spamming so easy;

1. Technology has enabled spammers to provide a fake e-mail address and mask their trails.
2. Email is virtually free.
3. With SMTP, the entire e-mail is transferred to your inbox, and by the time all spam email has been sent, the spammer has taken off and can't be tracked because there's no need to remain in the same location.

Let's take the RSS approach; RSS is completely opt-in, which means that you can choose what email to receive just like you choose what news gets into your feed reader. And while SMTP transports the entire email to your inbox after which it gets deleted from the originating server, RSS still requires you to go and fetch the rest of the content -being it news or whatever- from the server of origin.

This to me is the key ingredient in this anti-spam antidote. The fact that the content of the email is required to remain on the sender's server and be fetched by the recipient will mean three things:

1. Spammers can't give a fake email address to mask their location when sending emails. They have to provide the proper location when the content of their emails resides
2. Spammers have to maintain a permanent location from which people can download their content, which means they can't just run away.
3. Spammers will get charged for the emails when they are downloaded. Just like any other web site is charged for its bandwidth.

So here we have it, the perfect solution for spam. It won't be easy to implement because it means that all e-mail servers will have to ditch the SMTP and adopt the new RSS protocol. I won’t be surprised if this is one of the solutions Microsoft is working on.

I think there should be a way whereby I can select which of my posts appear on Jordan Planet and which don't. The reason is that I post some topics which I know may not be of interest for 90% of people reading the planet -like Dot Net code examples- that I dont want to bore everyone with :)

Any ideas?

This is what you get when you work at Jeeran, a fridge full of all-you-can-eat goodies ;-D ... I think we need a bigger fridge...

If you've ever been to London, then you've probably used a payphone at least once, which means you’ve seen some of those escort service ads which litter almost every single phone booth. Even then, I'm sure you'd be wondering "where the hell are the authorities?" And even though you know prostitution is legal there, that question still crosses your mind.

What then should we do when we start seeing these sorts of ads distributed in the streets of Amman in broad daylight under the disguise of "Massage Parlors"?

This ad was being distributed in gardens street to families in their cars:



and on the back:

First of all when I do want to get a massage, I look at brochures to know what credentials a place has, who the doctors supervising it are, IF there are any doctors supervising it, and what methodologies they use. I don’t need to look at a picture of the half naked girl whom is supposed to give me the massage when I arrive there.

Notice that if you look close enough at the girl, you'll start seeing things you don’t expect to see. And notice that they only use mobile phone numbers so they can pack up and leave any time they feel too exposed (I can't imagine what could be more exposing than this).

The back of the card is the most interesting; not only do you get the girl, but they can also provide you with a furnished apartment if you need one, at prices which fit everyone's wallet –does this mean that a 15 year old can find something within his budget range?

So this is a new trend in Jordan; Prostitution Combo's (Get the girl and you get a discount off the apartment) This can indicate two things; that their market is getting so competitive that we're starting to see bundle deals, and that the consumer base for such services is actually growing that more places are opening up and competing with each other.

What should we do? Should we ignore the fact that everyone knows what those places really are? Should we bow our heads like sheep and feel like we can't do much about it? Or should we ask the big question: "What the ***k is the Amman municipality doing? And what the ***k is the Ministry of internal affairs doing?" Should we wait till those places start using their fixed line numbers in their ads?

Although we expect the bulk of responsibility to fall on the people in charge of those ministries, we as citizens have a duty as well. Our duty is to inform authorities of such places, as well as bring up the issue whenever we get the opportunity to speak to a group of people. Taxi drivers can play a very important role in fighting this disease, because as know, it is mostly tourists and expats who seek those places. If taxi drivers refuse to drive anyone whom they suspect to be going to such a place, then we would have a very good first line of defense.

Finally, when I want to get a massage, I would never go to a place called "Super Gardens" and definitely not "سوبر جاردنز". I wouldn't even buy bulk CD-R's if their brand was "Super (anything)".

Note: Although prostitution is legal in the UK, it is still illegal to solicit or advertise or run a brothel (a place where more than one girl works)

I know you're all saying to yoursleves "Why didnt I think of that!?" The iDJ Mixing Console for iPod is only $240!!, and can be used with any iPod model.
I think I'll buy one next time I'm in the States.

I want to thank the Jordan Planet staff for adding me as a planet citizen. Jordan Planet has become the gateway of choice for anyone seeking to get a real insight about Jordan as a whole and about the Jordanian web community. The staff of Jordan Planet has done an amazing job, not just technically, but also culturally in helping spread the culture of self expression through blogging. Although it is a great achievement already, they still have a lot of ideas for the web site and to help the Jordanian web community catch up with the blogging revolution.

I will do my best to put my expertise at the disposal of this great effort, in addition to posting content which is both useful and fun to read.

Thank you.

Today instead of going to google.com, I accidentally typed "googgle.com". I wasn't surprised to see one of those generic web directories that run on thousands of domain names that nobody wants, still, it made me think: "what's their business model? how would their business plan read?"

I imagine their business plan would be filled with lots of medical research and statistical analysis on the human brain and its psycho-motor error margin, and how this results in the typing of the wrong domain name, and failing to click the stop button fast enough before the browser takes the user to one of those sites, and hoping he will be air-headed enough to say to himself : "oh, let me see,... this search directory may be better than Google, let me try it". And then hoping he would click on one of their Overture ads which are displayed instead of search results.

So in short, their company mission would read "To change the way people perceive stupidity, and turn it into a positive and constructive experience.", and their vision "To give all the stupid, air-headed, half-asleep internet users a place where they can feel at home". Those sites are called "typosquatters", and they make alot of money, but that doesn't mean I will respect them.

To know more about typosquatters, read this article.

Sabri Hakim -a young and rising Jordanian photographer- has featured Jeeran.com on his blog. Sabri recently visited our offices and was so impressed that he took pictures (view his post)

As Sabri said, we try to reflect the spirit of Jeeran in everything we do, even the smallest things.

Thank you Sabri. As they say: "People of quality appreciate quality" :)

AIDS today is not just a sexually transmitted disease.  Infants are being born with AIDS, some people are accidentally infected, especially health workers  working closely with AIDS patients.

All those people deserve a chance to a normal life - as much as possible.