Month: December 2005

Global Voices 2005 London Summit

So, I’m back to Tunisia after a wonderful week in London, that I’ll be getting into further detail about later. This post is about the Global Voices 2005 London Summit that I was there to attend and how it went.

First of all, it was great meeting all the really interesting bloggers from all over the world who were there for the summit. It was such a pleasure and so much fun getting to know them all and talking about our local blogospheres among a bunch of other issues.

As for the summit itself, it was really exciting and many interesting points were raised that are open to an ongoing conversation that will continue after the summit.

The main points that got me thinking and that I will be posting about individually soon, are:

– Bloggers vs. Mainstream media
– Bloggers complementing mainstream media
– Global Voices, what next?
– Projects around Global Voices
– What makes a successful blogosphere

These are all very big and general issues that we could go on forever talking about and discussing. Anyway it’s good that they were all opened for us all to think about and talk about further through our blogs, on irc and when we get to meet.

I’d personally like to thank everyone involved with the organization of the event, who did a great job; Reuters for being a very generous host; and all the people who took the time out from their busy everyday lives to come to London and make it a success.

For more details about the summit, here are some interesting links:

More From London

Going around London feels like one big game of monopoly.
All the streets, squares and stations that you’ve gone through and bought while playing the board game are there, only this time it’s in the real world and you’re walking through them, discovering them, bonding with them.

There’s so much to see in London, and you get this feeling of not wanting to miss any single bit of it, and we’re doing our very best not to.
I’m sure that in these past 5 days in London, I’ve personally walked more than I have in the past 5 years of my life.

We’ve been all around London, visiting its landmarks and attractions, walking in its breathtaking parks, discovering its streets, taking photos of every corner and doing every single thing possible in this amazing city.
We’ve done so much in so little time that I feel that I’ve been here for ages.
It’s amazingly easy to get around and get by in this city, and so much fun too.

I’ll be writing in more detail about all the places we’ve been too and all the great stuff we’ve seen.
Till then, I’ll leave you and go back to enjoy this beautiful city that I’ve totally fallen in love with.

Enjoying London

A big hello to everyone from London…
Yep, you read that right. Right now, I’m sitting in an internet cafe on Praed Street, not too far away from Paddington station. My feet and legs hurt like hell after a long day of walking all over central London.

I’m here for the Global Voices 2005 London Summit. Can’t wait to meet all the members of the team and get to know them all.

This is my first time to London and I’m loving every second of it. This is a great and fascinating city, and I’m truly have a blast taking it all in.
Eman came along with me, and she’s acting as a guide for me, as she’s already been here 3 or 4 times before; although with her feminine sense of direction kicking in, I end up guiding her some of the times 😛

We barely spend any time at the hotel, wanting to see and do as much as possible.

I’m taking loads of photos, so I expect my flickr account to be overloaded once I’m back. A good time I guess for someone to get generous and give me a pro account 😛

I’m sorry if I won’t be blogging as often as before during this week. You’ll hear a lot more from me once I’m back to Tunisia next Sunday.
I’d also like to say sorry to the people who read my SuperStar reviews here for not being able to cover this week’s episode, as I couldn’t see it myself. Hopefully next week we’ll be back to normal.

Thoughts, Here and There…

Sometimes in my everyday life, as I go through certain daily experiences, I get these ideas on how they could be enhanced to make our lives a lot easier and better. Some are good ones, some not so good, but well, here are some…

– Road Bumps: You know those shitty road bumps they put in the middle of the street to force you to slow your car down? Well now they have these signs that they either put in unviewable places, too close to the bump or just forget to put in the first place. A thought I had is that they could embed some sort of RFID transmittor in them so that coming cars could receive the signal and tell the driver to slow down before he gets to it.

– Shopping: I hate shopping and most men do too, but in the end of the day we sometimes have to go out with our wives when they’re shopping. We end up just hanging around the shop, walking all over the place, bored like hell, while our wives try half the clothes in the store. I think shops should try and make shopping a better experience for us too by providing places to sit, magazines, maybe even drinks. That way it’s not such a boring experience for us and we’d be more open to another shopping spree in the near future.

– On Demand TV: Your TV shows, when you want them. I think eventually we’ll be getting there, but why not speed things up a bit. I guess the main problem for TV networks is how do they make money? where do the ads go? what happens to their peak hours?
I guess the peak hours stay the same, it’s just that people choose what to watch in them. So advertisers can still buy ads in peak hours or they can buy ads with certain shows and the viewer sees them accordingly.

– eBooks: I’m not into ebooks. I’ve downloaded hundreds of ebooks online, and I’ve only read one. Why? The experience sucks, my eyes start burning, I have to carry a hot laptop around wherever I go, …etc.
The only thing ebooks are good for now is to search for something and find it directly, which is easier than in a printed book.
Anyway, the only way ebooks will become practical as an everyday reading medium is when good, high-res, ebook handheld reading devices become available at accessible prices.
So, if they’re able to create a $100 laptop, I think some sort of pda, customized for reading ebooks, could go for quite less. That could be interesting.

Love Molecule

Your heartbeat accelerates, you have butterflies in the stomach, you feel euphoric and a bit silly. It’s all part of falling passionately in love — and scientists now say the feeling won’t last more than a year.

The powerful emotions that bowl over new lovers are triggered by a molecule known as nerve growth factor (NGF), according to Pavia University researchers.

The Italian scientists found far higher levels of NGF in the blood of 58 people who had recently fallen madly in love than in that of a group of singles and people in long-term relationships.
But after a year with the same lover, the quantity of the ‘love molecule’ in their blood had fallen to the same level as that of the other groups.

The Italian researchers, publishing their study in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology, said it was not clear how falling in love triggers higher levels of NGF, but the molecule clearly has an important role in the “social chemistry” between people at the start of a relationship.

I’m sure a lot of romantics out there will disagree, saying how their love will stand the test of time and last forever and ever, growing stronger and stronger…

I personally think this is both true and false at the same time. Love isn’t a constant unique definable thing, it changes, grows and morphs with time and has a different feeling and taste at every stage.
So it might be true that people don’t feel that same feeling they feel at the beginning of a relationship, but that’s only normal as they’re no longer at its beginning, they’re at a later stage and so they feel something quite different, which is equally beautiful.

Of course that is one nice possibility, the other is that they just wake up one day and stop loving each other 😛

[Source: Reuters]