Author: Mohamed Marwen Meddah

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

Yahoo! Podcasts

Yahoo today launched Yahoo! Podcasts, a new podcast search service, that will enable people to easily search podcasts through keywords, categories or user-generated topic tags.

The podcast site includes a central directory of shows indexed by Yahoo, community tools for ranking and recommending specific clips, and compatibility with many different types of multimedia software and wireless devices.

Searchers can listen to or subscribe to RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds for individual shows or episodes of programming or entire series.

Yahoo also plans to eventually offer tools that will enable people to create their own podcasts.

This is another big step for podcasting, which is something I’ve been thinking of getting into for a while. A lot of ideas and thoughts have been playing around in my head and I haven’t decided yet on what my podcast will be about.
Hopefully it’ll get off the ground soon though.

Shelflife & Titanic Lamp

Charles Trevelyan Shelflife

Designer Charles Trevelyan introduced some new designs at 100% London and writes; “My main piece was the Shelflife shelving system, a large shelving unit or room divider that features a chair and table that can be pulled out from within the shelves. I also showed a lamp, Titanic, designed to appear to be sinking beneath the surface of the table.”

I personally love both of these designs, especially the shelflife shelving system. That would make a really cool bookcase.
Very creative.

[Via: Boing Boing, MoCo Loco]

Tunisia Qualifies for World Cup 2006

For the third consecutive time, and fourth time in the history of Tunisian football (Soccer for you Americans), Tunisia has qualified for the World Cup finals to be held next year in Germany.

The decisive game was played last night in Tunisia, in the Rades stadium.
Coming into the game Tunisia topped Group E with 20 points, and needed just a draw to book their place, while Morocco – a point behind – needed victory to win the group and qualify.

The game was a very tight one and both sides were doing their best to qualify.
The match ended with a 2-2 draw which meant that Tunisia got it’s ticket to the World Cup.

Congratulations to the Tunisian national team.
Now it’s time to get ready for next year, in order to represent Tunisia well in this world class competition.

Asian Earthquake

An earthquake of 7.6 magnitude on the Richter scale, epicentered in Kashmir, hit northern India and Pakistan, around 8:50 AM local time.

The confirmed death toll stands at 1,337.

Effects of the quake, the most intense in the region in a century, were felt hundreds of miles away.

Remote towns and major cities, such as Pakistan’s capital of Islamabad, India’s capital of New Delhi and the Pakistani city of Lahore, were shaken.

The same community who blogged the tsunami are now blogging the earthquake. Follow their blog at: http://tsunamihelp.blogspot.com/.

Our hearts and minds are with the people of Pakistan, India and Afghanistan who have lost their loved ones in these tragic events.
May God help them and may those lost rest in peace.

Google Reader

Google have gone on and rolled out another cool web application by the name of Google Reader.

Google Reader is a web-based feed reader. It has a really nice interface that reminds a lot of the Gmail interface, but even better and cooler, thanks to all the Ajax work under the hood.
Like Gmail, it also has labels that can be used to group your different feeds.

I uploaded my opml export file and even though it took a long time to import my subscriptions, it did using the same group organization I have, automatically creating labels for each group and linking it to the feeds under it.
Adding new feeds directly is very easy and simple.

Upon opening of the reader, the recently updated items show up first, and you click on them to view them like you would an email. A number of actions are available for each item like Gmailing it, blogging it, starring it or unsubscribing from the whole feed.

They have a cool “Search for new content” button that enables you to search for sources writing about whatever topic you’re interested in.

I think this is a really cool offering from Google and a good step forward for xml feeds and their spread between mainstream internet users.

Ramadan Tunisian Blogger Meetup

It’s been a while since we had a Tunisian blogger meetup, so I think it’s about time we organize one soon.

As it’s Ramadan, I’m thinking we could all meet and have dinner together somewhere nice.

So, what do you guys think?
And when do you think we should have it?
And do you have any suggestions for good restaurants that serve a delicious meal at accessible prices?

Please leave a comment or email me with your suggestions and ideas.

Yahoo Acquires Upcoming.org

Continuing it’s startup shopping spree, Yahoo has gone on and acquired Upcoming.org, the online event planning site that we’ve been using to organize the Tunisian blogger meetups lately.

Los Angeles-based Upcoming acts as a social calendar that depends on its users to post free listings about a wide range of upcoming events, from local rock concerts to picnics in the park.

The site, founded by Andy Baio, provides tools that enable users to share observations about the events and identify common areas of interests.

Yahoo says that it plans to keep Upcoming’s current Web site separate, but eventually will incorporate much of the content into its own site to bolster its local search capabilities.

Yahoo is undergoing a big makeover and trying to make itself a cool company again. I hope it succeeds and doesn’t end up screwing up all these good services it’s been acquiring.

[More: Yahoo News]