toot: The Arab blog network

New Blogs Added to toot!

Roba — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 09:27:18 +0000

After weeks of sifting through the internet, asking for our existing bloggers’ opinions, and making lists, we finally have a new list of toot blog addition.

Ladies and gentlemen, we’d like to present to you more of the best Arab blogs out there:

Foodie
Well, I have good news, we have a fantastic Arabic food blog that will make you salivate. Check out Syrian Foodie.

Pop-culture
Well, it’s your lucky day. We have TONS of great blogs in this category. There’s Plus 961 and Baba Ghannouj et la Zeitoune from Lebanon. There’s 360dewan, Fourth Ring Road, and Buzzberry from Kuwait.

Life in the Arab world
Of course, we already have several blogs on toot that portray the experience, but our new additions include: American Bedu, Susie’s Big Adventure, and Muscat Confidential.

Architecture and urban planning
re:Kuwait and Interruptions will please your mind.

Art, Design and Fashion
You will LOVE this list. Check out:
Beirut Drive-by Shooting.
Identity Chef
Interface Fix
Beirut NTSC
Marketing 3.0
Shezshe in Beirut and everywhere…
Maya Zankoul

Politics.
Don’t worry, we didn’t forget about that either. Not exactly political, but this lawyer is very interesting: Abdulrahman Allahem. There’s also Qunfuz, Under My Olive Tree, and Maysaloon, among others.

Technology.
I love the geeky blogs :) Check out: Anas Online, Arab Crunch, and Freeware Genius.

Opinion/journal.
From the opinion side: Saudi Woman, Beirutiyat, Dhofari Gucci, House of Curiousity, Palordinia.
From the journal side: This Limerick Called Life, Living in KSA, Maram Meccawy, Quest For the Right One, Chocolate Mints in a Jar.

Okay, I can’t list the entire blogs there, so here’s a complete listing of the new blogs on toot:

Saudi Woman
Living in KSA
Saudi Alchemist
Qusay
My World and More
Maram Meccawy
Abdulrahman Allahem
Susie’s Big Adventure
Hning
American Bedu
Plus 961
Beirut Drive-by Shooting
Beirut NTSC
Identity Chef
Baba Ghannouj et la Zeitoune
Beirutiyat
Shezshe in Beirut and everywhere…
Maya Zankoul
The Inner Circle
Anas Online
Maysaloon
Quest For the Right One
Syrian Foodie
Qunfuz
Under My Olive Tree
Maysaloon
Quest For the Right One
Syrian Foodie
Eatbees
Here
360dewan
Fourth Ring Road
Buzzberry
Dhofari Gucci
Other Oman
Muscat Confidential
House of Curiousity
Interruptions
Arab Crunch
Freeware Genius
Cinnamon Zone
Interface Fix
Godot Basha
Palordinia
Godot Basha
سيناء حيث أنا
Marketing 3.0
Smoke Blows
re:Kuwait
Bu Youesf
Brake Banzeen
Chocolate Mints in a Jar
Oh Seriously
Jaraad

Thanks to everyone who submitted their blogs. You can still submit yours, but I’m afraid we can’t have any more additions for this phase. We will have another phase of additions sometimes later this year, so if your blog rocks, please sumbit it.

toot is growing!

Roba — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 09:34:21 +0000

Since it’s that time of the year again, we wanted to give our readers a heads up that toot is going to be adding more blogs this week to its network of the best, handpicked Arab blogs. If you haven’t already done so, go ahead and submit your blog!

We’re very excited about the new batch of exciting things going on.

Queen Rania Mentions Watwet at LeWeb!

Roba — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 19:58:47 +0000

How exciting is that? :)
Here’s a post written by Ahmad Humeid, who attended LeWeb:

Last week my TootCorp partner Mazen and I had a great time attending Le Web, Europe’s largest internet conference. You can actually watch the entire conference on the video archives of Ustream, who where streaming the sessions live.

The pace of innovation we witnessed around the real time web, social networks is just and mobile apps was just astounding. Rapid cycles of startup activity, VC funding and acquisitions is what makes this innovation happen. Not to forget bloggers like Techcrunch’s Mike Arrington, Robert Scoble, Steve Gillmore and Chris Pirillo and Om Malik (all of which were present at Le Web) who just publicize the hell out of every little web innovation out there. It’s an amazing ecosystem, which we lack in this part of the world.

This being a European conference, there where endless discussions on Europe vs Silicon Valley. Listening to European entrepreneurs complaining about the restrictiveness of Europe and the fragmentation of their markets made, at least for a moment, feel sorry for them :-) But then again, I really wanted to go up on stage and just invite them to the Middle East to show them what our web entrepreneurs have to face!

The Middle East was the focus of a session on the first day of the conference, featuring Creative Commons CEO Joi Ito, Habib Haddad of Yamli and Rabea Ataya, which was a good intro to the market and its particular challenges.

But he highlight for us at TootCorp was on the second day of Le Web. HM Queen Rania delivered a keyonte speech with a sharp emphasis of moving virtual activism to real-world activity. She cited how Watwet, the “arab Twitter” was used to mobilize people to help with sorting and packing donations for Gaza last year (the people at 7iber.com and Aramex played a pivotal role there of course).

The Jordanian web industry, which is starting to build quite a reputation especially after the Maktoob-Yahoo deal, cannot have a better spokesperson than Queen Rania. She is definitely the most web savvy royalty in the world. Her championing of this industry should help attract attention to its potential from global media and investors. Yeah.. and local investors too.

Happy Eid from the toot Team

Roba — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 11:53:46 +0000

It’s Eid holiday, yay. The toot team would like to wish all tooters and toot readers a very pleasant holiday and a wonderful Eid :)
Enjoy!

You can’t see it…

Roba — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 08:00:33 +0000

But the behind-the-scenes toot people have a spanking-new, shiny, and awesome new backend to play with. We love new awesome backends. Thanks Faisal! :)

Okay, so what’s in it for you? Now that our back-end is so 2010, you will soon start to see a newer, cooler toot from the front-end as well.

Meanwhile, happy tooting!