Qatar Internet Freedom - How Far Can We Go?

What can you say on the Qatar Net, and what will get you into trouble?

That's what Shabina attempts to find out in her latest article: Maintaining Boundaries on the Internet - How Far is Too Far?

The article follows on from the recent furor over the Qatar Living post criticising the behaviour of young Qataris on National Day, and Shabina manages to talk to many of the key players involved in the issue.

Despite the contradictory laws on the issue, Shabina also does her best to provide some guidelines for internet users, and the article is a must read for anyone contributing content to the Qatar web.

Click here to read the full article.

censorship freedom

QatarLiving.com needs to be careful

According to an article in the Peninsula a Qatari is demanding an apology from QatarLiving.com after critical comments were posted on the website.

The comments had in fact been removed by moderators, but it shows the difficulty in running a huge forum with thousands of posters.

I remember discussing this with QatarSocial.com, who told me that I was lucky to run an information website where I did not need to constantly monitor new content being added.

The article and the attack were not really fair on QatarLiving.com, especially as they had both promoted the event themselves and removed the offending comments - I personally can't see what else they be expected to do!

Interestingly, the post on Qatar Living that chronicled the article copied the Peninsula article word for word without linking to the original article.

This is another area Qatar Living really has to be careful with. Not only are Qatar Living users opening the website up to lawsuits should internet copyright ever be enforced (and those whose copyright is most often stolen, the Gulf Times and The Peninsula, would certainly have the resources to do so,) they could also end up having their website removed from Google's indexes and their adsense accounts being removed under the Digital Millenium act.

This would be a disaster. Qatar Living has been a huge success, not just for the website owner but also for Qatar. The website demonstrates that, online at least, Qatar has a measure of freedom of speech. (A measure, because, as the removal of comments show, Qatar Living, like all of us, practises self-censorship (which is really, censorship as Nigel pointed out in the comments).) What's more, it's Qatar's number one English language social networking site, and social networking, according to Google, is a prerequisite for e-commerce.

With Qatar and ICT pouring money and effort into developing IT and the internet in Qatar, Qatar Living is unlikely to be closed down any time soon. But the website does need to be careful!

Update: WeirdWeb has just pointed out that some Qatari students have set up an anti-Qatar Living page on facebook. There is some rather scary stuff on that page!

Qatar Living

Qatar Blogging Conference

Kudos to ICQ Qatar for holding the first ever Qatar blogging conference at the Sharq Village and Spa!

My favourite speakers were Jeremiah Owyang, Web Strategist blogger, Ahmad Hamzawi, Head of Google Engineering for the MENA* area, as well as Qatar Visitor writer Shabina.

Of particular interest to business bloggers were several opportunities that Jermiah and Ahmad identified for Qatar.

One was in web services and analytics - after Ahmad pointed out that Technorati did not cover Arabic speaking sites Jeremiah argued that this was an area of opportunity, although not everyone in the audience agreed. Another area that was not mentioned, but seems a pretty obvious one, is keyword analytics - wordtracker is a popular paid service in the UK and the US, but does not cover the Middle East.

You can check out Jeremiah's presentation and comments from the bloggers involved here: Meet the Arabic Blogosphere.

Areas for Improvement

One small criticism was the lack of access to the internet. Neither I nor my partner in crime were able to access the wireless - perhaps in the future ICT could provide a password for the Sharq Village and Spa network?

Also, an area I felt needed to be covered is just what Qatar bloggers can talk about, and where are the no go areas. Giving us some guidelines in what we can write about would both give us more confidence in our posting and prevent us from getting into trouble!

Web Strategy Presentation

Here is the presentation, hosted on one of the tools Jeremiah mentioned in the workshop.

Blogging Strategy Extending Your Voice To The World

View more presentations from Jeremiah Owyang.

Food

As always the food at the Sharq was excellent - especially the rare lamb. And while unfortunately my pictures of the event itself didn't come out well, I did snap an okay one of the delicious lamb, hamour and prawns:




*Middle East and North Africa

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arabic blogosphere qatar

The Best Blogs in Qatar

It's time for another update on our favourite Qatar blogs. We've done this before, but sadly many of our favourite blogs have disappeared or been abandoned. In the meantime new ones have risen up to take their place. And, of course, there are some which have just passed us by before...

Mimiz Qatar: Diary of a Qatari Girl

This is a new blog for us which has just been pointed out by Dohanews. However, from a first reading it looks awesome. Recent posts talk about life in Qatar, a visit to Mecca spoiled by the religious police, and her thoughts and feelings in London. Check out Are You Really that Racist? for a heart wrenching story of what life is really like in Qatar

A Day in Qatar

Follow the life of writer Mohana as she struggles with learning Arabic - and having a year with no new clothes. (She'll get no sympathy from me, as a year without clothes shopping sounds like heaven...) Read for long thoughtful posts on life in Qatar and in general.

Hack the Bone

Meredith (is this Meredith from Twitter?) and DKM blog about various topics - idiotic Americans making fools themselves on Twitter, the Tribeca film festival, getting tipsy at a party, puppies - basically, anything they feel like. Read for fun, lighthearted posts.


Moz Boondoggle

A little bit of nepotism, as Shabina does a monthly article for us. She's (obviously) a superb writer, and probably keeps up with Qatar affairs more than anyone else in Doha via her twitter feed. (You can keep up with her twitter feed via the rss feed on her blog or follow here.) On her blog she links to or posts her latest articles, including those on Qatar Visitor (okay, we said this was a bit nepotistic!) and Global Voices online.

Amal Al-Malki

This is a very different blog from most of those listed here. Beautifully designed, the blog is intended as a forum for creative writing, both in English and in Arabic. Read it for thoughtful writing, or get involved and do some writing yourself.

Mr Q

Mr Q, who runs I Love Qatar, gives us the Qatari perspective on events in Qatar. Despite the name of his website, he's not always positive. Read for the (male) Qatari viewpoint.

Ummon

A Qatar based magazine editor blogs about her children, Qatar, Arabs (and how their achievements compare to India) and many other things. Read for a feel of a Qatari lady's life.

Aisha's blog

Aisha is another Qatari (I think) who blogs away on Qatar Living. Her blog is more of a traditional weblog than one focussed on Qatar Happenings. Read to follow the life and musings of a Qatari lady.

Marjorie in Qatar

Marjorie in Qatar continues to blog strongly, and from the many comments on her blog it seems that she has many loyal followers. Read for good and sometimes amusing posts on life/ society in Qatar.

Mohammed N

Mohammed N keeps us updated with his work for Al Jazeera. Read for the latest news on Qatar's homegrown international news network.

Sybils and Krit's Qatari Adventures

The adventures of an American expat adjusting to life in Qatar. Has lots of pictures of Qatar, with some great ones of the recent tennis. Read for a personal view of Qatar. (Whatever you do, don't insult the Hello Kitty pics.)

Off the Press

From the struggles of the staff to survive in Qatar to the details of what's behind Qatar's events, Off the Press is a blog by the Doha What's On guide Qatar Happening. Read for recipies, recommends and the stories connected to the happenings.

Qatar Skeptic

This is an interesting blog by a sceptic in Qatar. Keen to meet Qataris - he even goes on holiday with his Qatari buddy - he blogs about what he finds strange in Qatar as well as personal matters (wisdom teeth!).

Please let us know in the comments if there are any blogs that we have missed...

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Who to follow on Twitter, Qatar?

I follow about 70 or so people on Twitter, but I have been cutting quite a few people out recently as not much of what they have to say applies to Qatar. Either that, or they are only there to try and sell something. Or they are boring.

(I know Twitter says "What are you doing?" but truth is, unless you are doing something really, really exciting, I just don't want to know.)

Basically, I have worked out there is one person I have to follow to find everything of any possible interest in Qatar, and that is DohaNews.

I don't know how she does it, but every interesting news item, blog post and forum discussion is covered on her feed, while all the boring stuff is cut out.

And it's all done with a sense of humour.

One recent exchange went:

dohanews Education City's upcoming million-volume library project will 're-empower books,' cover 2 football field lengths (awesome) http://u.nu/83qn3

IvanGiesbrecht @dohanews Great news about the library. But who will read all these books? 6 days ago from TweetDeck

dohanews @IvanGiesbrecht Not to read, silly. To sit there and look pretty :) 6 days ago from web

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Twitter

Qatar Social - The next big thing?

We are a bit nosy here at Qatar Visitor, and when a new site popped up on our radar we just had to contact the owner and find out what it was all about. Jimcale at Qatar Social gives us his answers.



I have seen a number of different strands to Qatar Social - classifieds, adding images, news stories. What's the central theme/idea behind the site?

The central theme and my basic idea for Qatar Social was to make a place to easily organize activities, talk about issues without bashing and name calling and to give the community the power of moderation.

Classifieds and other sections came as a result of request from our loyal users. Our classifieds section is easy to use and do not require users to become a member to post.

What gave you the idea for the website?

Seeing just how many people were complaining about lack of activities in Qatar!

You have a section called power shop. Could you explain the idea behind this?



The Power Shop is a place to buy power to use on the site, you can buy what we call cards, that can be used to moderate threads or comments, anyone can buy a card using credits and use them against threads. Example of cards include delete card, move card, edit card, etc.

Can you explain how the credits and tasks section of the website works?

Credits are somewhat similar to user points found on some websites yet more powerful, credits on Qatar Social gives you lots of extra power, medals and rank on the site. Tasks are actions required from the user to perform to earn credits, example of tasks include, uploading your avatar, introducing yourself, etc.

Are you aiming to compete directly with QatarLiving.com, or do you think you provide something that complements QL?

We are a direct competitor to Qatar living, in fact I am aiming to provide an alternative to common issues associated with QL such as religious bashing, a moderator power centered to single person and a friendly forum where one can get answers without being told to Google it or get Lost.

I didn't seen any adverts on your site. Is something you are doing for fun, or do you intend to make money from it in the future?

I am actively trying to get adverts these days.

Our thoughts:

The site looks nice and has some good ideas. However, taking on Qatar Living with its established and often very loyal user base will not be an easy task!

Doha Daily

Nigel, former owner of Qatar Journal, is now working via the Doha Daily to deliver a condensed pdf version of the Peninsula newspaper to subscribers.

The idea is based on the premise that many of us are too busy to work our way through an entire newspaper: hence a small pdf version with the most important stories of the day.

To sign up for the news summary just visit Doha Daily and enter your name in the box - you will have the option to unsubscribe should you wish.

Twitter Qatar

The Peninsula recently ran a story on Twitter: Small Talk is the Next Big Thing. (Unfortunately, this was on Oasis, which is not published online).

The article predicted that twittering, or micro blogging, will be the next online networking craze.

Admittedly, the article was from the Guardian rather than a home grown piece. And in fact, Nigel, writing directly for the Peninsula, predicted a surge in community websites like Qatar Living rather than in new fads like Twitter.

And in Qatar, Twitter, though already being used, has yet to take off.

One huge advantage

However, in this modern day Twitter may have hit on the key to attracting today's time-starved audience:

It's quick.

In fact you are forced to be quick. Each message has to be written in 140 characters or less.

Which takes seconds.

In today's world of information overload and of people trained by television to have a miniscule concentration span, that's a work of genius.

How to Use It

How you use it depends on your purpose.

It would be ideal for keeping up with friends. However, currently a majority of users seem to be webmasters and online marketers.

(Which is another reason it will be successful. Connect with the key players on the internet and the rest will follow!)

They are using twitter to disseminate ideas, follow industry specific news and to network with the movers and shakers of the internet.

Whether you are keeping up with friends or networking, it is usually best to ignore the question looming over the box: What are you doing?
Most users are not likely to be interested in your current activities unless, as happened to one twitter user, you happen to be in a plane crash (or other interesting event).

Instead, users point to interesting pages on the web (not always their own), keep up with news and have quick fire conversation.

Followers

To get in the conversation you have to follow and be followed.

Follow a few people and soon people will start to follow you back. But if you are boring, over post, under post or spam you will soon find your followers shrinking.

A host of services are already following twitter to make it easy for you to search and connect with people.

One is Mr Twitter, which looks at you, your followers and who you follow and identifies people you may wish to connect with.

There is also TwitterHolic, which handily lists twitter users in Qatar.

Qatar Twitterers

Twitter may not have many users in Qatar, but those that do use it are major players on the internet.

Al Jazeera and Qatar Airways both make heavy use of twitter, as do a number of bloggers: Mohammed N , Julie Lindsay, the e-learning blogger, Abdurahman Warsame, who runs No Longer at Ease and former Qatar Journal owner Nigel can all be found twittering.

Qatar Living and I love Qatar are examples of those who joined earlier and then, after a brief dalliance, have stopped using it.

I have a feeling, though, that they will be back.

Qatar Visitor on Twitter

Update: 7/01/08 I notice Qatar Living is active again on Twitter!

Qatar Visitor Friends


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Qatar Visitor in 2009

These are our new year's resolutions for the Qatar Visitor website.

• Have our website redesigned.

I've long been unhappy with the look of our website. Now it is time to get the site redesigned, and looking more professional. (Which means paying somone to do it instead of doing it ourselves!)

• Speed the website up

The original Qatar Visitor website was a clone of another, older website. As a result it used antiquated code (tables e.t.c.). In 2009 we want to rebuild and optimize the website - and hopefully speed download time by up to 50%.

• Invest

We want to continue putting our revenue into making Qatar Visitor a better website, with more articles and more features.

• Forum

We will move the Qatar Visitor forum to a new address, www.QatarChatter.com, after a code failure brought the whole website down in December. We will also be adding new features to the site.

QatarChatter used to be a website, but the domain dropped and it was bought up by regsite.com We loved the name, and thought it perfect for a forum, so we bought it from them in turn.

We'll also reluctantly be adding Google ads to it. Unfortunately, our bandwidth costs are increasing every month, and ads have now become a necessity.

• Newsletter

We plan to maintain our new newsletter, apart from the summer months. We'll be putting in news which would affect travelers and residents (visas, regulations e.t.c.), putting in links to what we think is the best of what's new on the website and holding a monthly competition for subscribers.

Qatar Visitor Friends

Qatar Jobs

Doha Hotels



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resolutions

Future internet bubble in Qatar?

A while ago I did a post on the future of Qatar which aroused quite a bit of debate on Qatar Living here.

Ngourlay disagreed quite strongly with my prediction that one day there would be an internet bubble in Qatar. I have been meaning to reply ever since and have finally found time to get round to it.

Now Ngourlay is a brilliant programmer, and has direct experience of working during an internet boom and for dotcoms. He has far more experience of these matters than me, but I am still going to stick my neck out and disagree with him!

Let's take some of his points:

There aren't the programming skills in place, nor is there a wish on the part of the local population to become coders. Both the USA and UK had a microcomputer craze 10-15 years before the dot-com boom. There was a pool of people who understood the basics of programming who could take on development and project-management roles.

Sixty years ago, it could have been argued that there were no engineering skills to build oil rigs. There's certainly no will in the local population to become builders. A majority of Qataris want a nice cushy government position (sorry, Amnesia, I know that doesn't include you or your crowd!) Yet Qatar can and does import the skills it needs. The same can happen with the net.

The OECD said last year that the local school-leavers could barely read or write.

I think what I have noticed is a definite variation in the education of Qataris. I have met those graduating from the local schools who have obviously not had a good education.

However, it would be a mistake to think all Qataris are educated in these schools. There are a class of Qataris, who are educated either in top international schools or abroad, who have an excellent education. I have met some who could speak better English than me. I have also met (a few) who have programming skills.

But in any case, you don't have to be Qatari to start a business here. Qatcom.com, the Yellow Business Pages, was set up by a British person. Araboh.com, a site selling Arabic Books for Children, was set up by an Iraqi girl studying in Qatar. TheSmokersAngel was set up by a Brit in Qatar using the BigCommerce software.

Google certainly believes the area is going to take off. They are predicting a huge growth in the MENA (Middle East and North Africa) region, have established offices in Dubai and are developing Arabic translation tools.

They see the current developments in social networks like QatarLiving.com, as well as other Arabic sites, as a necessary prerequisite to the development of ecommerce in the region.

While current internet advertising in Mena is still a fraction of what it is in the West, (despite strong growth over the past six months), it is predictions of an increase of over a thousand percent over the next two years that has got their mouths salivating.

I think it might be a while longer before it takes off, especially with the drying up of credit, which will probably affect Qatar more than it likes to admit.

But when the locals finally catch on to the potential of the internet there will be a bubble, and like other bubbles here it will go to extremes.

It just probably won't happen in 2009!

Qatar Visitor Friends

Qatar Jobs

Doha Hotels



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Qatar Group on Facebook

Qatar Visitor has started a group on Facebook named Qatar. (Okay so we weren't feeling very original.)


It's just a place to post things you are interested in, have a discussion and meet new people.

We have been lucky enough to already have a few people join - including two of our "officers" who promise to keep everything in order!

See you on facebook!

Qatar Visitor Friends


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Qatar Internet:What's happening on the Qatar web...

I stumbled across TwitterHolic.com's Qatar page, which lists twitter users in Qatar, and ranks them by the number of 'followers' they have. Julie Lindsey wins on that score with 1,179 followers! 

On Qatar Living Brit Expat mentioned something that initially confused me when I first arrived - what is the difference between Premium and Super petrol? Both names suggest a superior level of quality. (In fact, Super is the higher octane fuel, and charges a slightly higher price.) People have also been complaining about the slow internet connection, with Red Pope providing the BBC article on the story. 

On our own forum Ronald 25 wanted to know how cheap Qatar duty free was. My colleagues tell me it is cheaper than the shops in Doha, and that cigarettes are particularly cheap (although they are already very cheap in Qatar.) I don't know how it compares to Dubai/Bahrain airport, though. 

Outside Qatar, Green Car Congress blogs about the Q Max ship, a joint project between QP and Exxon Mobil which will use 40% energy per unit. 

Meanwhile, frustrated internet users will be happy to learn from Gulf Base that Qtel will be increasing its internet capactity by 30% over the next few months. 

We have criticised Qtel in the past, but to be fair the Qatar internet seems to have regained speed remarkably quickly Perhaps Qtel has learned lessons from the previous snapped cable episode, for Gulf Base reports that the company has managed to divert internet traffic through alternative routes. 

That's all for now - things seem quiet with many people still away on holiday.  Let us know if we have missed anything interesting!

Qatar Internet: Connecting to the Internet in Qatar

Qatar Visitor Friends


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Internet Cables Go Again

Internet speeds slowed to a crawl yesterday, with a number of users complaining about speed. (At Qatar Visitor we were tearing our hair out!)

The fault, it seems, was due to three internet cables being severed.

Qtel proudly boasted that Qatar wasn't really affected.

“There is no major impact for Qatar’s communication services as we have many cable operators,” said Adel Al Mutawa, executive director of Group Communication, QTel.

They then went on to say that the loss of capacity in Qatar was kept below 47 percent due to Qatar’s robust Internet strategy. (Source: Peninsula.)

Hang on - a 47% decrease in capacity is a major disruption in my book!

Or perhaps we notice it more because the quality of the Internet connection in the richest country in the world is so poor anyway.

The standard internet connection in Qatar is a pathetic 500 kbs - compared to an average of 57 mbs in Japan.

Hopefully we won't see a repeat of what happened in February of this year, when the Qatar internet slowed down to a crawl for a week or more as internet cable after internet cable was snapped - see our post on Qatar Internet then!

Qatar Jobs

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Qatar's Yellow Pages

A Yellow Pages Directory for Qatar

Qatar Yellow Pages

Information at Last

Two years or so ago, when I first started writing this blog, I complained about the lack of information in Qatar.



Even as I wrote the post, one website was busy putting all the information they could find about business in Qatar onto its yellow pages site and over the past few years Qatar's new online Yellow Business Pages Directory has increasingly become an invaluable information resource for millions of people all over the world.

Business Directory

Qatcom is a directory of all the businesses in Qatar. Essentially a yellow pages, they include information such as telephone numbers and PO Boxes for 96% of the businesses in Qatar. In total, their site covers over 25,000 Qatar businesses.

When companies upgrade, something users can encourage them to do via the website, tonnes more information is added to the page - including, with the top level advert, their location on a map.

Qatcom Competition

In addition to providing, finally, a reliable source of business information, Qatcom is also running a major competition. The company is giving away a million riyals in prize money to people who sign up as a Yellow Business Pages user.

Just remember, when you win your million riyals, don't forget that you heard about the competition from the poverty stricken writers at Qatar Visitor ...

Update: You can now visit Qatcom's page on Qatar Visitor: Qatar Business Directory, or find more information about Qatar businesses on their companies page.

Qatar Jobs


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yellow pages Business Directory

Arabic Search Engine

Yamli has just launched its Arabic search engine, allowing Arabic users to search the net with either Arabic script or Arabic transliteration.



The search comes with a number of impressive tricks:

• it will take a search term and expand it to include all possible transliterations
• users with a non-Arabic keyboard can use its interface to type in Arabic
• its optimized for slow connections - which will be a bonus for those of us with slow Qtel connections!

Watch the video below for more explanation!


Yamli Smart Search from Mohamed Marwen Meddah on Vimeo.

Qatar Visitor Friends

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yamli

What's happening on the Qatar Web

We've often thought it strange that the Qatar Web, though small, does not really interconnect very well. As a result we decided to try and start a series of posts keeping up with what is happening - so here goes...

Qatar Living is still holding its third anniversary competition. They have one Ipod nano left to give away, so if you would like the chance to win one you can find the details here. (If you like competitions you might also want to enter the Qatar Visitor competition for a chance to win a free signed copy of Qatar.)



I Love Qatar, meanwhile, is spreading the news of a spetacular New Years Eve party to be held at the Sheraton Hotel, while Mr Q Blogs about a typical Eid for a Qatar family.

Other blogs are pretty quiet at the moment. Life on the Spot, normally very vocal (especially when they get arrested in supermarket!) has contented itself with some images of Al Wakra beach (and I thought it had all been dug up!). Marjorie in Qatar wishes us a Happy Eid and then heads off to Sri Lanka for a week. Mohana has made a decision to visit India despite fears about airports and terrorism - partly because she and her husband don't want terrorists to dictate their life.

Out of the Qatar blogospere the hot news is the Qatar- Bahrain bridge, which, according to the Dubai chronicle, will be completed by 2013 (don't hold your breaths!) The Islamic Museum is still generating news and comments - although the Tuque Souq is less than complimentary, calling it a "giant blocky monstrosity of modern architecture".

Business news from Startup Arabia reports that internet advertising in the Mena Area (that's the Middle East and North Africa) is set to double over the next year. That may seem like good news for websites in a time of recession, but is a far cry from Google's claim not so long ago that internet advertising in the region was set to increase by well over a thousand percent.

Hopefully more businesses will wake up and realise how much better value internet advertising is over print advertising - a factor which may actually drive internet advertising in a time of recession. However, last time we had a look at Google Adwords, the costs per click for Qatar had actually been reduced!

Finally, a website we hadn't noticed before but which has been featured in the new edition of Marhaba is Qatar Paintballing. You can get all the details of the sport from the website, or just head along to their location in Hyatt Plaza to take part in it.

That's all we could see on our search - do let us know if we have missed anything!

Qatar Visitor Friends

The Top Ten Websites in Qatar

We are going to exclude our own website from this list - obviously we believe we are in the top ten:) but it would still be rather presumptuous to include ourselves.

We are going purely on personal taste here, and we are deliberately ignoring factors such as ranking in the Search Engine Results, Alexa or traffic. Although Google is quite simply the best search engine there is, we often disagree with Google on which sites are the best - for example, although we love the BBC, we don't think its sparse 900 words on Qatar deserve to rank in the top ten. Similarly, in our opinion, Qatar Airways, while of use to someone who wants to book a flight with them (assuming they have no desire to compare prices with any other airline), does not deserve to rank number one.

The Web: Visualisation by the OPTE Project

1. Qatar Living: This is our all-time favourite, and despite what we said about not ranking traffic probably does have the highest traffic of any website in Qatar. We like it because it is a place you can (almost) always get a response in seconds, and because of the wealth of local knowledge it offers. We also respect the fact that on the rare occasions users have ripped off our articles, the owners of the site have dealt with the matter in minutes of being contacted. As a good proportion of the people I know use the website on a regular basis this has to get the top spot. Last not least, the website's users have been very active in charity, actively raising money to help other Qatar residents in trouble.

2. I Love Qatar: Amnesia, the half-Qatari half-British owner of this website attempts to share a Qatari perspective with his readers - although obviously he also has a British sense of humour! While critical of Qatar bashing, he is not averse to criticising Qatar himself on occasion. Like Qatar Living, Amesia's site and community has also been very much involved in charity.

3. Doha Map: This is a great little site which is taking advantage of Google Map's open API to create an interactive Doha map. You can search for locations, display different types of landmarks or even add your business.

4 & 5. The Gulf Times and The Peninsula: I read both of these on a regular basis, and I can't really decide which is better - they are both great newspapers!

6. Qatar Embassy: I have often found useful information on this site, and have frankly find it better than any of the government sites in Qatar!

7. Alhannah: This is a Wiki site run by Carnegie Mellon University, and has tonnes of useful information on it, all added by its users - you can add to it too. For the same reason we also rate the Wikipedia page on Qatar, although some of the other "stub" pages on Qatar don't deserve the ranking they get, and sometimes get things wrong: see Al Jaber and Wikipedia.

8. Heritage of Qatar: This superb website lists all the heritage sites in Qatar, complete with information about each site and directions on how to get there. They also have a good history section.

9. Araboh.com - E-commerce has come to Qatar with this little website, which provides Arabic language books for children. I always admire anyone who has the guts to start their own business, and the young and female Iraqi/British founder, who is just 21 years old, set this one straight after leaving university. According to Google, the MENA area (Middle East and North Africa) is not quite ready for e-commerce yet, but with a larger market than Qatar this little site should do well.

10. Al Jazeera: This comes towards the end of the list, not because it is not a great site, but because it is not really about Qatar, just based in Qatar. Still, Al Jazeera is something Qatar can be proud of opinion - any news programme which is despised by all sides (it has come in from criticism from the West, who may have considered bombing it, from other Arabic countries and by Al Qaeda - in fact one of the few countries in the Gulf which has not expelled the site is Israel) has to be good.



Near misses:

I really like Amiri Diwan - the official website of the Amir is both attractive and contains interesting information about Qatar and its ruler. It doesn't work on Firefox, though, or on Safari, meaning I can't access it on my Apple. Doh!

Experience Qatar - I seem to remember this was once a good website, but as it has been blocked I can't tell. I believe this was taken over by hackers at one point - assuming control was never regained, one has to wonder why on earth it ranks so highly for the search term Qatar.

Blogs:

We have not included blogs here: see Best Qatar Blogs and Qatar Blog Update (both now out of date, I'm afraid) for that.

Suggestions:

I still think the web in Qatar is underdeveloped here, but maybe I am missing something. If you have any suggestions, please leave a comment here - I am quite happy for this list to become the Top Twenty Websites in Qatar, or even the Top One Hundred Websites in Qatar!

Qatar Internet Directory: Where all sites are checked for quality before being listed!


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Qatar Websites

Qatar Natural History Group Launches Website

There is a new website on the Qatar net - Qatar Natural History Group has launched its own dedicated website with a sign up form for new members. There is more information about the website from the QNHG below:

QNHG Website

The main purpose of the site is to serve as a source of information and communication within the group. In the first pass it will mainly be information from the Committee to the members about future events, but also serve as a data base with archived newsletters, information on field trips and other events, our library and other types of relevant information. An additional use of the web site is for Membership sign up and registration of member email addresses on the website email system. Membership will also automatically expire at the end of September and will have to be renewed each year.

Membership Registration Instructions:

* Log on to the website and click on the "Membership Sign-up" tab.
* This will bring you to a page with instructions on the sign-up process.
* Read these instructions and click on the yellow "online application form".
* This will bring you to a page where you create your own personal account with your name and email address.
* Complete the registration form and click "create new account" to create your account.
* Upon creation you will be sent a confirmation email by the website.

Paying your Membership Dues

* You must meet up at a QNHG meeting to pay your yearly dues before your membership will be activated.
* This year we have Single Membership at 30 QAR and Dual/Family Membership at 60 QAR (please bring the right amount).

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Doha Yoga and Fitness

One of the newer websites on the Qatar net is Doha Yoga and Fitness. Run by Tammie, a a yoga coach and licensed nurse, Doha Yoga and Fitness teaches the Vinyasa style of Hatha Yoga, a system of Yoga which was introduced by Yogi Swatarama in fifteenth century India. Swatarama saw Hatha Yoga as a stage of physical preparation which would prepare the body for higher meditation.

For more information about Hatha Yoga or about the courses visit Doha Yoga and Fitness.

For more activities to do in Doha see our list of Qatar Clubs.



Picture by: MyYogaOnline


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Qatar knol

As the Gulf Times pointed out today, Google has launched its new knol service, which allows anyone to create their own page on anything they want. The service has prompted much debate - is this a feeble attempt to combat the popularity of Wikipedia, an innovative new service of its own or a sinister move to dominate the content of the internet by a company that already dominates internet search? Like Wikipedia, Google allows users to create their own pages, although unlike Wikipedia users can choose to retain control of their pages, allow approved editing or, like Wikipedia, throw it open to all and sundry. It remains to be seen whether the site will be a success or not, but in the meantime you may want to check out our knol page on Qatar!

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