When I started blogging less than a year ago, a couple of hours of daily reading were enough to keep up with the regional blogosphere, or at least what interested me in it. One run in the early morning (I'm an early bird) and one before I go to sleep, and almost nothing would slip through the cracks of a busy day or a busy mind or a congested cyberspace, at least from the list on my sidebar. While Jordan Planet was (and still is) my reference for Jordanian blogs, and while there was a number of good Arab blogs that I was following, I knew there were still many others that I was missing out on.
With a busier schedule this past semester and an exponential growth of blogs in Arabia, what I would've loved to have is a bit of help in finding those. I certainly wouldn't have minded someone keeping an eye on good stuff and bringing them to me neatly arranged on a platter.
Now thanks to a wonderful team of creative people with a passion for everything bloggy, my daily blog reading experience is becoming richer, and less tedious.
While there have been many discussions and arguments that 'quality' is relative and that people have different tastes, I find myself coming to a conclusion that quality is not all that relative. 'Interesting' is relative, 'funny' is relative, 'cute' is relative, but certainly not quality. It's one of those things I don't know how to pin down with words, but can recognize when it's there.
Why is it that 'subjective' has negative connotations, as opposed to 'objective' which seems to be the value that everyone feels a need to convey?? We need to celebrate our subjectivity, and we need to embrace the human element rather than regard it the weak link in a system.
It must be one hell of an effort to maintain something like toot, so big cheers to the group behind it. I wonder what it will be like when it includes 100 blogs, 200 blogs… as I wonder what Jordan Planet will look like when it has, say, 250 blogs, which is not very far with the current rate of growth. I agree with Haitham that, while the number of new blogs in 2006 will remain a big issue, what will matter more is the number of 'blog readers' in this part of the world.
Recently I've been having a lot of brain-picking discussions about blogging and where it's all going here in Jordan and in the Arab World. I will resist going into that again here, but let me just say that I'm very excited about 2006!
In the meanwhile, and back to where this post started… Keep on tooting :)
With a busier schedule this past semester and an exponential growth of blogs in Arabia, what I would've loved to have is a bit of help in finding those. I certainly wouldn't have minded someone keeping an eye on good stuff and bringing them to me neatly arranged on a platter.
Now thanks to a wonderful team of creative people with a passion for everything bloggy, my daily blog reading experience is becoming richer, and less tedious.
While there have been many discussions and arguments that 'quality' is relative and that people have different tastes, I find myself coming to a conclusion that quality is not all that relative. 'Interesting' is relative, 'funny' is relative, 'cute' is relative, but certainly not quality. It's one of those things I don't know how to pin down with words, but can recognize when it's there.
Why is it that 'subjective' has negative connotations, as opposed to 'objective' which seems to be the value that everyone feels a need to convey?? We need to celebrate our subjectivity, and we need to embrace the human element rather than regard it the weak link in a system.
It must be one hell of an effort to maintain something like toot, so big cheers to the group behind it. I wonder what it will be like when it includes 100 blogs, 200 blogs… as I wonder what Jordan Planet will look like when it has, say, 250 blogs, which is not very far with the current rate of growth. I agree with Haitham that, while the number of new blogs in 2006 will remain a big issue, what will matter more is the number of 'blog readers' in this part of the world.
Recently I've been having a lot of brain-picking discussions about blogging and where it's all going here in Jordan and in the Arab World. I will resist going into that again here, but let me just say that I'm very excited about 2006!
In the meanwhile, and back to where this post started… Keep on tooting :)
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