This-is-Madness! Saudi ban on blogs!

This is absoloutely ridiculous!

''Starting next month, a new law will be enforced by the Saudi Arabian government that will force all online bloggers and e-newspapers to register with the Ministry of Culture and Information.''

I get it...  Saudi is very very very tough on censorship and they pretty much want to know everything that goes on in their country, and make sure that none of the citizens of Saudi says anything with a negative spin.

But what about their Netizens?

Check this out, people who fall under a combanition/any of these catogories have to register for a 3 year LICENCE TO BLOG (or e-newletter =p )

Here are the categories:

• Must be Saudi
• Over 20 years old
• High school degree holder
• Documents testifying to their “good behavior”

Seriously? Thank God I live in the U.A.E

PS: click here for an interesting blogpost about the Saudi Blogosphere

I'm in the #MENA daily

So on Saturday morning I was browsing the net through my Blackberry, only to discover that I was mentioned in someone's tweet. Hopeing to God that it wasn't another one of those twitspams (Twitter spams ha-ha) that say something to the effect of " If your not making money out of Twitter click here" or " I can help you earn money through Twitter!", I clicked onto the button that would stop the incessant red light from blinking on my phone, accessed my Twitter through my BB App and saw the following:

The #MENA Daily is out! http://bit.ly/bPgniu ▸ Top stories today by @squashedruby @womenmena

Obviously I was still skeptical, so I clicked on to the link to find out if this daily thing even existed. AND IT DID! Whoppeeeee. Now I have to make sure I keep tweeting relevant articles and maybe I'll be a regular! (I'm @squashedruby btw incase you didnt't know.... follow me!)

It's interesting to see a newsletter that is purely a coallation of Twitter updates tailored towards media and the MENA area. If you know of any more of these types of newsletters , or the programs they use to collect the data please let me know! Maybe I'll make my own one day!

You can check out The #MENA Daily here --> http://paper.li/tag/MENA

10 Twittiquette rules

Some twittiquette rules

Twittiquette: The unwritten laws of the acceptable and polite use of Twitter.

 Follow and be followed.
The entire point of Twitter is personal contact, so if someone follows you it is a good idea to reciprocate.  

If a follower leaves you don’t tweet about it.
It's not the number of followers that matters here. You’ll also look incredibly annoying and are bound to lose more followers.

Don't tweet about every single blog post you've written.
I’m guilty!!! :o

Don’t promote yourself too much.
That goes back a bit to the previous point, people will get bored of constant self promotion and will not be able to think of you as a person. They may unfollow you!

Thank someone that retweets your messages.
It will make them remember you in a positive light and they may even RT more of your messages!

Show it when you RT it!
When you re-tweet, show it’s a re-tweet (by including "RT" in the text) and credit the original author in reply format (that is, add an @ before their Twitter handle).

Don’t be rude.
Unless it is part of your persona, people won’t appreciate it.

Don’t keep tweeting the same message.
You'll bore your followers (unless its a prize!) 

Keep track of replies and direct messages and respond promptly.
It will be appreiciated and the favour will be returned! I personally am terrible at this.

Don’t publicize everything!
Tweeple don’t need to know about your foot infection, how your goldfish cheated on you or what you had for breakfast this morning.