Editor: Myself

Surprise: Georgia university brings blogs to Toronto

The best thing about the conference for me was that I finally met Jeff Jarvis, who, like an older brother, has always supported me, despite our political differences. It was also very great to meet Rebecca MacKinnon, Jay Rosen and Jim Elve in person. (I had met Dan Gilmore in Vienna last summer)

So, aside from these personal aspects, I am glad that some of the high-profile Canadian bloggers finally got a chance to meet and share their thoughts -- and get some local press.

As I said last night and David Akin confirmed it, blogs are not as known -- never mind popular -- in Canada as they are in the States and part of it could be because the majority of mainstream Canadian journalists have not been able to understand this new medium and how they can use it for their own journalistic purposes. Therefore they see it as an unreliable, teenage-oriented hobby, same as chat rooms, instant messenger, etc.

We Canadian bloggers should think of creative ways to talk more about blogs and its socio-political implications, so the public could gradually understand why blogs are important and how they can use them for their own purposes.

One of the greatest ways to start, I think, is to quote from Canadian blogs -- and also introduce them this way -- in hip weekly magazines such as Now and Eye. Now, for example, has a technology page every week which could be great starting point for such thing.

P.S: I forgot to say that the five minute time for each of the Global Aspects panelists in the latest possible panel, while everyone was having dinner, was probably not a good idea. However, in such conference, that was even a big success: Who else in Georgia would even care about the outside world, let alone international blogs. So, special thanks to Leonard Witt, for his brilliant idea to bring blogs to traditional journalists, and then both of them to Toronto, which one might guess, due to its diverse society, would embrace blogs more than others.

Blogging conference in Toronto

Today, at 6:30 PM, I'll be speaking about blogs in Iran at a conference about Public and Participatory Journalism in Toronto. The one-day conference starts from 12 PM and its program is available on their website.

Dan Gillmor, Jay Rosen, Jeff Jarvis, David Akin, Rebecca MacKinnon and Warren Kinsella wil be speaking too.

By the way, Globe and Mail has published an article about blogging in its Saturday's issue. (When they started this stupid free registration?)

Totally unaware

No one in Iran seems to be really understanding how critical is the situation of the country these days. The complete media control by the hard-line conservatives have left average Iranians totally unaware of the threat that Iranian leaders' arrogance is causing to Iran's national security -- as a sovereign nation.

We, in absence of any free media, should inform Iranians about these threats and try to explain for them why their silence is really dangerous to their own fate in Iran. Especially if it's perceived by the Western world as Iranian's 'Ok' to the nuclear programs, threats twoards Israel and its consequences.

As a patriotic Iranian and despite my resentment with the establishment in Iran and its nuclear ambitions, I can't simply accept that a foreign state attacks Iran for any reason. At the same time I accept the right of another state to stop a real threat posed by another state who owns nukes.

What would you do, if you were us?

Too sensetive

This Yahoo mail page is filtered by the Iranian government because it has the word 'sex'in its URL.

Entrance Exam on 18 Tir

Seems as if one of the reasons that Iran was quite calm yesterday in the anniversary of student protests (18 Tir) is that the second biggest nation-wide entrance exam for Azad (open) university was scheduled on the same day. (About a million participants take part in it every year)

So not only many potential protestors had to take the exam, but all the educational space is also dedicated to the exams and all schools were effectively closed from a few days eralier to facilitate the exams.

As ruthless and agressive as the hard-line conservatives are, sometimes they come up with creative and non-violent ways to achieve their golas

Filtering Photoblogs

It's confirmed now that the bastards at TCI (Telecom Iran) have filtered my photoblog. I first got suspicious when I saw a major decline in its visitors. This is really amazing! How far they are going to go?

Iranians Third in Orkut

To my surprise, Iranians are now the thrid biggest community in Orkut, after Brazil and the United States. Given the low ratio of Internet users in Iran (some 3m out of 70m of population) and the poor quality of their access (56Kbps is still the fastest), this is really interesting.

How can you explain it? Couldn't it be weblogs?

Rogers PVR's Issues

After getting the Rogers PVR yesterday and playing with it, now I see why everybody is so fascinated by TiVo in the States.

But I've come across two issues so far:

1. The re-runs are also scheduled to be recorded when choosing ALL EPISODE option. So you may want to record the Daily Show on 11:00 PM but it also records the re-run at 3:00 AM. However if you want to record a re-run, it ignores its time and automatically schedule it for the first run. Guess it's because of the Rogers TV Guide.
2. I can't see the program listing of many channels, especially the digital ones such as BBC World, for the weekend if I check it today, on Tuesday. Isn't it supposed to have the full seven day schedule available?

Forget TiVO, Rogers Now Offers PVR in Canada Too

For a long time, many Canadians have wondered why TiVO has not operating in Canada. But now Rogers offers PVR (Persoanl Video Recorder) service, integrated with the regular digital box, for either a monthly rent of $19.95 per month, or a one-time purchase of it for $588.

According to the Rogers website, its PVR has these rare features:

• Record two shows at once
• Record one show while watching a different channel
• Pause, rewind, and instant-replay "LIVE TV"
• Record up to 50 hours of programming
• Automatically record "ALL EPISODES" of your favourite shows
• All-in-one Digital Terminal & Digital Recorder
• Get Picture-In-Picture on any TV

HUB magazine has more detail about Rogers PVRs and their advantages over some similar services like from Bell ExpressVU.

There is also a report by a user experience studio, called Teehan+Lax, in which Bell and Roger's PVRs have been compared(PDF) in terms of user experience.

As for the recorder machine itself, which seems to be Scientific Atlanta Explorer 8000, PVR Blog reports a wierd bug related to the leap year. It has also pointed to an interesting blog in which, Joe Clark, a technician, keeps track of his own Explorer 8000.

Some features of the Explorer 80000 include:

• 80GB Hard Drive
• Pauses Live TV For Up To One Hour
• Supports Alternative Languages
• Built-In Dolby Digital Technology
• Channel Favourites List
• Supports Closed Captioning
• On-Screen Channel And Program Banner
• On-Screen Pay-Per-View Purchase Summary
• S-Video Output Jack
• One Set Of RCA Type A/V And Output Jacks
• Coaxial Digital Audio (Dolby Digital) Output
• Software Upgrades

After I get my PVR tomorrow morning, the question for me would be whether to rent it or purchase it. I guess I'm going to rent it until an stable model comes out with minimum bugs.

Additional links:
- FutureShop sells three types of PVRs
- Explorer 8000 on Scientific Atlanta's official website

Iranian Nukes

The most frustrating thing about Iranian nukes issue is that the voice of the Iranian public, either inside or outside Iran, is absolutely missing.

I've discussed this in my latest article for Free Thoughts on Iran, titled This is my fate they are talking about

Photoblogging a disaster

An Iranian blogger who has just returened from the scene of devastating crash in south of Iran, which has led to at least 90 deaths, has posted some first-hand photos.

BBC competes Al-Jazeera

I'm quite happy to see that BBC plans to re-launch a satelite Arabic channel competing with widely popular Al-Jazeera. The British know the mid-east region better than anyone in the world and at the same time know how to affect the Arab educated audience.

But I doubt the new channel could attract less-educated Arabs of the world who actually make up the majority of them. They still going to watch Al-Jazeera which instead of spreading wisdom and giving insightful analyisi, fills Arabs hearts and minds with subtle anti-Western ideas and sentiments.

An effort to start an Arabic TV channel by the BBC had failed a few years ago.

Effect of filtering

Heavy new filtering has decreased my Persian weblog's readership from over 7,000 page views per day to about 5,000. Nothing is more painful than this.

Iranian Tv's Big Mistake

The stupid hardline Iranians in TV can not understand how similar their pictures of capyired British sailors look to the picutres of Wahabist terrorsts before killing their hostages. They have also made many people remember the American hostage crisis in the early 80s in Tehran.

It has certainly damaged the positive image Iran has made for itself after the 9/11 by not getting invloved in any Al-Qaida activities.

Latest Version of The Blacklist

One of my readers who says is an administrator of an ISP in Tehran, has sent the latest version of the blacklist Iranian Telecom has sent out to all ISPs.

Apparently this list only includes websites and weblogs in Persian language. There are CDs regularely sent out to ISPs that contain thousands of erotic websites in English that are not politically of much significance.

The new list includes many news websites not neccessarily related to radical and violent opposition groups, as well as many entertainment websites, weblogs, and some erotic blogs and websites.

I'd try to mark the major news websites among them.

BlogAds, not exactly easy to use

I've been using BlogAds for a while but I should say that even though it's a great idea, it has a poor implementation.

I can't write a review on it right now, but what frustrates me most is the fact that I can't edit the ads people have submitted to me. For example, I can't accept some of the banners people submit either because they are bigger or smaller than my standard size, or they are simply ugly.

So if i want to change the banner with a new one, designed by me, I have no choice but to send the banner back to the owner and ask him or her to replace it with the older one. The same thing would happen if I want to change their wording a little bit.

Moreover, eventhough it works fine with Unicode, but since the default page encoding (maybe on the web server) is set to something other than Unicode, every time you want to change or see something in Persian, for example, you have to change the page encoding to Unicode -- it's such a pain.

Yahoo RSS Reader Still Fails Unicode

Four months on, Yahoo hasn't fixed its RSS reader's problem with Unicode text. I had previousely written about the problem and it still exits.

Iran Filtered Blogspot

Apparently Iranian Telecom and some other ISPs have filtered all Blogspot subdomains. Many users have confirmed it.

Update: Mehdi, a blogger from Qum, has confirmed it in his blog, among others.

Blogs Define the Internet in Iran

In Weblog Festival's closing ceremony, deputy of IT ministery and head research institute raised some important things about blogs in Iran.

The former, Nassrollah Jahangard, wished that every Iranian could have a blog one day and expressed the government's support for persian blogs which, in his mind, are defining the presence of Iran on the Net and make an identity for the Iranian community on the Internet. He also added that blogs are sort of cultureal heritage for Iran and they will make the future of it.

The latter, Sohrab Razeghi, said that blogs and the values they carry with themseves are the begining of a modern society in Iran. He said that the openness, subversiveness, and a sense of individualism which are visible among Iranian weblogs are completely new things in the society. he then rejected the idea of government support and said that they should leave the persian blogoshpere alone and let it go in whatever direction it wants.

I'm actually surprised by mr. Razaghi's comments and believe that he is one the few officials who has really understood the nature of blogging and how it's been evolving in the Iranian online commuinity.

Many bloggers have commented abuot the three-day festival, but all of are in Persian, so there is no point to link to them. But there are many wonderful pictures of the festival: Set one, set two, set three, and set four.

There's also been a signifact amount of coverage in a dozen of news agencies and papers.

Regean and Khomeini

Both popular at home and extremly unpopular abroad, Ronald Regean and Ruhollah Khomeini had at least one hing in common. (--edited)