Author: Mohamed Marwen Meddah

Mohamed Marwen Meddah is a Tunisian-Canadian, web aficionado, software engineering leader, blogger, and amateur photographer.

MSN Spaces

After rumours going around for some time, Microsoft have finally launched their own blog service called MSN Spaces.

MSN Spaces users will be able to customize the layout of their blogs (although not too much), post digital pictures, create music and book lists, and also control who has access to their blogs.

Using a centralized contacts database that will be shared between Microsoft’s MSN Hotmail free e-mail and MSN Messenger services, users will also be able to track new blog postings.

MSN Spaces will be available in 14 languages.

I setup an account and took it for a little spin, but wasn’t too impressed by it.
I honestly think Blogger is way better.

Now, we’ll have to wait and see what Yahoo! comes up with.
They’ve already launched their blogging service in Korea. The rest of the world will have to wait.

Bridges TV Launched

Bridges TV was finally launched today.

Bridges TV is a cable TV network that plans to focus on English-speaking American Muslim youth and celebrate the American Muslim lifestyle and culture as well as build bridges of friendship between Muslim Americans and mainstream America.

I wrote about Bridges TV last year when it was still being planned.

I think it’s great that they went on with this project, because it provides American Muslims with a TV network that they can feel comfortable watching and letting their children watch but also because it

‘Blog’ is No. 1 word of the year

Merriam-Webster Inc. said on Tuesday that blog, defined as “a Web site that contains an online personal journal with reflections, comments and often hyperlinks,” was one of the most looked-up words on its Internet sites this year.

Springfield, Massachusetts-based Merriam-Webster compiles the list of the 10 words of each year by taking the most researched words on its Web sites and then excluding perennials such as affect/effect and profanity.

Blog will be a new entry in the 2005 version of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition.

The complete list of words of the year is available here.

We bloggers rock!

Wikinews

After revolutionizing the way encyclopedias are built and maintained, the team behind Wikipedia is attempting to apply its collaborative information-gathering model to journalism.

Through a new effort, Wikinews, members of the open-source community who write and edit Wikipedia’s encyclopedia entries are encouraged to test their skills as journalists and report the news on a wide variety of current events.

The news site follows a similar set of rules as the encyclopedia, which allows anyone to edit and post corrections to entries, so long as each change is recorded.

The current rendition of Wikinews is an experimental version that, according to Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales, offers just a taste of what’s to come when the news effort builds momentum.

I think this is great.
I already thought of this idea some time ago and thought of how great it would to be to have a source of news that is compiled by the normal people on the ground and not the media giants who often offer a disconnected view on things and are even biased in some cases.

Bravo to the guys behind Wikipedia and Wikinews for making my idea come true.
You guys rock!

It just pisses me off a bit that another one of my ideas has been implemented by somebody other than me, lol…

[Source: Wired]

Leader Yasser Arafat Street

This morning, on my way to work, I drove through a street I’ve driven through almost everyday of the past 2.5 years, but today I noticed something different in it.

Before, it was called the “Environment Street”, but today I noticed a big sign that says “Boulevard du Leader Yasser Arafat”, or in English “Leader Yasser Arafat Street”.

I heard that a street was named after him here after his death, but I had no idea which one and where.

And true to it’s old name, it’s all green and full of flowers on the sides and in the middle. Pretty worthy of it’s new name.

War Criminal Bush

Vancouver legal experts join movement to rule the U.S. president a violator of Geneva and U.N. conventions.

When George W. Bush visits Canada this week, he’s sure to get an earful from demonstrators who see him more as a “war crimes president” than a “war president.”
Gail Davidson, a Vancouver lawyer, says the prime minister should rescind his invitation to Bush, because the president is a “major war criminal.”

Prominent jurists have echoed Davidson’s claims. Most recently, Louise Arbour, the former war crimes prosecutor and current United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights, has called for an investigation into crimes against the Geneva Conventions during the recent American assault on Fallujah…

[Via: The Tyee, Je Blog]

Medina Mediterranea in Yasmine Hammamet

Medina Mediterranea in Yasmine Hammamet

Yesterday, and at last, we visited the Medina Mediterranea in Yasmine Hammamet and took a full tour inside it.

We actually attended a concert there last year, but most of it was still under construction and not open to the public.

The Medina Mediterranea is a new touristic project that embodies a whole old-style Tunisian city recently built in the touristic station of Yasmine Hammamet to be a living memory of our old Tunisian and mediterranean heritage and life. Some sort of a trip into the past and how cities and life were.

Anyway, I’ve taken a bunch of pics for you guys to see. So check them out here: Medina Mediterranea.

Enjoy, and tell me what you think 🙂

Mosques in Iraq

Before, the US army PR department used to distribute nice pictures showing how culturally sensitive they are. The US administration said, at that time, that they were very careful in dealing with mosques. But now, things are different. The smiley face mask fell off.

New pictures are either showing mosques under attack, or US soldiers using a mosque like a lounge. Entering with their shoes on, and sleeping on the floors, etc… This does outrage Muslims…

[Via: Raed In The Middle, Je Blog, Jalan-Jalan]

NBC to air hidden Princess Diana video

NBC television network will broadcast a never-before-seen video tape of Diana, Princess of Wales, next week in which she says she suspects a member of her staff with whom she fell in love was “bumped off.”

Earlier this year NBC aired audio tapes Diana secretly recorded for a 1992 book that exposed the turmoil of her marriage to Prince Charles, whom she divorced in 1996. The princess was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997.

The two-hour special is to be broadcast in two parts, on November 29 and December 6.

“This unusual tape, recorded in Diana’s living room, hidden for years after her death, and fought over for months in the British courts, offers a view of the princess quite different from the formal public face she usually put forth,” NBC said.

It seems that even years after her death, the press just isn’t willing to let the poor Princess Di rest in peace.

In her life and after her death, it seems all the press can seem of thinking about is how to make more noise and profit off her back.
It’s about time everyone quit and let her soul enjoy some peace at last.

[Via: CNN]