Most Popular Websites in Jordan

Using Alexa.com, I found the 10 most popular websites in Jordan, here goes the list:

#1 Yahoo.com
#2 MSN
#3 Google.jo
#4 Google.com
#5 Windows live
#6 Maktoob.com
#7 Hi5.com
#8 kooora.com
#9 aljazeera.net
#10 alrai.com

This list is interesting on many levels, just compare it with the list for the UK

#1 Google.co.uk
#2 Yahoo
#3 EBay
#4 Google.com
#5 MSN
#6 BBC
#7 Myspace
#8 Amazon
#9 YouTube
#10 Windows live


The most striking difference between the two lists is that it would seem that people in Jordan have missed out a bit on the Myspace phenomena and are using instead the half as popular Hi5. In a way, it is nice to know that online "dating" is very popular in Jordan, but I think it is better to follow the rest of the world and use Myspace.

The other thing that was also missing in Jordan's top list is YouTube, it is not very popular in jordan to make it to the top 10 list.

Online shopping and selling is not very popular in Jordan for various reasons, it was very logical to see Amazon and Ebay not making the Jordanian top 10 list. Maybe in a couple of years they would. Assuming I stay in Jordan, I would be looking forward for the day when Amazon has a huge warehouse with books and other goodies somewhere in the middle east.

Stumble Upon

I did mention this in an earlier post, it is called Stumble Upon. I had a couple of weeks to use it now, so I have a lot more to say about it now than I did before.


Stumble Upon is a website/service/toolbar that recommends websites for you based on what you like. How does it do that? Two ways, the first one is during the initial registration where you indicate your areas of interest. The second way is while you surf the internet, if you like a site you go to your Firefox/Explorer toolbar and press "I like it."

Now the stumbling part. You open up a blank browser window and you go to your toolbar and you press "Stumble." It randomly opens up a website that is related to stuff that you already like, no matter what it is.

While my description does sound a bit geeky, it is really very simple. Stumble upon took me to websites that I never expected to exist and some of them were really cool. It is a totally different way of experiencing the internet, very different from experiencing the web through Google by actively searching for websites and very much like the shuffle feature on Apple's iPod, you never know what website will show up next.

Bush Speech Writer

Thanks to a website called stumbleupon.com, I stumbled upon a site called George W Bush Speechwriter

http://www.actofme.co.uk/bush_speech/bushspeechwriter.html

Thanks to this software/website, you need not wait for the president to utter his Bushisms, but now you can create any Bushism you like and with Bush's own voice no less.

Needless to say, it is really fun.

As for Stumble upon, it recommends websites for you based on websites that you currently like.

We Are Smarter Than Me

Yes we are. Hehe.

I love helping the rest of humanity through things like wikipedia, wiktionary, grid computing projects like fightAIDs@home and Einstein@home, so the moment I read about the "we are smarter than me" effort to write a business book, I immediately jumped on the bandwagon and signed up.

www.wearesmarter.org


With so many contributors for such a project, I imagine the editor(s) will have such a hard time trying to make the text more coherent and presentable. I hope the outcome of such a project would be something that the collective authors, who will probably remain unknown, can be proud of.

Six months ago, I had a similar idea to this, but not with so many authors. The idea was to commission something like 10-20 authors to write a book (not a handbook), each author would be well accomplished in his field and each one would write 1-2 chapters. The job of the person, who got the idea for this book, is to provide a general outline for the other authors to work with. Also he would write the intro section and the epilogue and eventually put everything together. If need be the whole effort would be managed as a project using project management tools and what not.


Speaking of wiktionary, I decided to make a minor change for the benefit of the rest of humanity (hehe,) so I replaced bloggette which is the female form of blogger with bloggerette; the main reason for this is to avoid confusion with bloggette which also means a small blog. I hope that Webster dictionary catches up and fixes their dictionary so this word can be canonized as English language(hehe.)