Websites/Internet

Jordanian bloggers document their lives

By Natasha Twal (http://natashatynes.com)

The first to arrive was Isam Byzaidi, one of the players in a revolutionary new movement. Pacing back and forth outside a popular Amman coffee house, he eagerly awaited the arrival of his compatriots. None had met face-to-face; rather their relationships had played out virtually. As his cohorts slowly trickled in, he recognized them immediately via photos sprinkled throughout their online journals, today referred to as blogs.

The meeting was a first for this group of `bloggers' and in planning for nearly a month. After getting acquainted, the discussion moved quickly towards ways of furthering their blogging missions. The group included some of the first in Jordan to surf the growing global blogging wave, a medium currently challenging the work of traditional media.

by Peter Ryan

Surges of war-induced popular interest have forced book publishers to cram the shelves with new titles about Iraq, seemingly green-lighting every new manuscript that they can get their hands on. A case in point, perhaps, is one of the most bizarre books in this recent hailstorm of titles: Salam Pax: the Clandestine Diary of an Ordinary Iraqi. For those of you willing to risk 14 bucks on an entirely new genre of non-fiction, Salam Pax is worth a read (though you can also find him online for free).

The title itself is perhaps misleading. First of all, this book is not really a "diary" in the traditional sense of the word. It is, in fact, the republication of a web blog, which is like a journal except that the entries are meant to be posted online. So, unlike a diary, a blog is meant to be read by an audience of strangers and makes use of the internet to post links to other websites and respond to reader's e-mails.