Category: Blog Info

Just a quick note. If you come here and don’t find any new posts you can always check 248PM. It’s usually easier for me to find content for that section since it’s just interesting stuff I come across online. [Link]

It’s been over 2 years since I last updated the 248AM App and it desperately needed a makeover. I personally felt the App was all over the place trying to be too many things at the same time so with this update I’ve simplified it down to the bare minimum. I’ve removed everything not related to the blog and have left only four main tabs which are the current sections of the blog: 248AM, 248PM, Newsworthy and Events. I’ve also updated it to support Retina displays (finally) and I also managed to shrink the App size down to just 1.8MB.

So if you already have the 248AM App installed on your phone there should be an update waiting for you in the App Store. If you’ve never installed the App before you can do so by searching for 248AM in the App Store or by clicking [Here]

I know it took me long but I finally fixed the annoying bug that would crash the app on some iOS devices. So if the Kuwait Blogs App was crashing with you check the Apple Store ow and you should see a minor update.

The Kuwait Blogs App is an iPhone application that allows you to browse some of my favorites blogs all in one place. It’s free and you can download it from the Apple Store [Here]

When I started blogging back in 2003 I really didn’t want to do it. My friend proposed the idea and I told him I thought blogging was stupid but I’d try it just for fun. Now, a decade later I’ve left my full time job at an ad agency to blog for a living instead.

Some people saw this coming, others are a bit surprised and many don’t really understand how blogging can be a job. Honestly even I’m having difficulties grasping that concept even though it’s a really simple idea.

I used to work from 9 in the morning till 7 in the evening and three times a week I had gym from 8 to 9 so I never had time for anything else. I never had time to go meet with people, pass by art exhibitions or even see my friends. Now that blogging will be my full time job I should have a lot more time to do all the things I wanted to but never had time for.

Things aren’t that simple since without a “real” job I can’t get my residency renewed and banks also don’t seem to like me unless I have a salary coming in every month. But I’m working on it.

Other than that issue I’m looking forward to this since I’ll have so much more free time on my hands to do whatever I want. I might help Nat out with her work, I’m thinking of maybe doing my Masters, taking one hour Muay Thai sessions at Core, signing up again at Sidekick for some Jujitsu and maybe even take Scuba diving lessons or some other activity I previously never had time for. One thing I’ve always wanted to do is ditch work and drive to Entertainment City instead. I can’t ditch work anymore since I no longer have a job but maybe I can wake up in the morning and pretend I’m going to work and then go to Entertainment City? I don’t know I’ll have to see how I can get that idea working right.

But, more importantly, I will now have a lot more time to focus on this blog, I have a couple of projects that have been pending for ages which I want to get a move on, I also have the Kuwait Blogs app I need to fix because right now it keeps crashing and even my 248AM iPhone app needs an update as well. I’ve even handed over my blog’s media to a media company called Dot Backspace so they could take care of the blog’s advertising while I focus all my attention on the content.

I’m excited (and a bit worried) about blogging fulltime but I’m also looking forward to it. I’m currently in Lebanon for the next 10 days on my summer break so I won’t really notice anything different until I get back to Kuwait and realize I don’t have to wake up at 7:30 the next day to go to work. We’ll see how things will pan out.

If you have a Kindle you can now subscribe to 248AM and read it on the go. Any new posts will be downloaded and updated on your Kindle automatically and of course you can then read the blog without having to be connected to the internet. I check out the majority of the blogs on my Mac or iPad but I have a few I prefer to read on the Kindle so I figured I’d make this option available to whoever wants it. Since most of my posts don’t have any videos you really won’t be missing out on anything. This option sadly isn’t free since Amazon has set the subscription price to 99cents a month and I don’t have any say in that.

To subscribe to the blog on your kindle you can either visit the Kindle Store from your Kindle and search for 248AM or you can subscribe from your browser by following this [Link]

I finally got around to fixing and updating the Kuwait Blogs app and it’s available to download right now in the store. Other than the fix to the thumbnails not loading I’ve also updated the blog list and now includes the following blogs:

2:48AM
2:48PM
360 Dewan
Aboflan
Ansam
Buz Fairy
Confashions
Danderma
Dusty Co.
Frankom
Grapevine
His & Hers
iLSul6ana
Ladies Who Do Lunch in Kuwait
Khaleejesque
Kuwait Music
Pink Girl Q8
Tidbit Du Jour
Trying to be Fahad
zDistrict

But all is not well. When I updated the app on my phone awhile ago it was freezing on launch. It was working perfectly fine when I tested before uploading to the store. It seems it’s working on some phones perfectly fine while others are facing issues similar to mine. Bare with me I’m not an expert in this. For now you can download it the way it is until I see if I can find a fix for it over the weekend. [US App Store Link]

If you could you please tell me in the comments if the app is working or not working with you that would be great. If you can include which iPhone you have and what version it is that would be even better. Maybe I could narrow the problem down that way.

Note: The included blogs might not all be the most popular but they are blogs I think are interesting and I’ve also tried to include a bit of variety in style and content.

If you’re interested, I’m tweeting most of my activities while I’m in New York and you could follow my tweets [Here]

Here are some of my favorite posts on 2:48PM from last week:

– Face Subsitution
– The McGurk Effect
– ‘The Office’ Skit from the Emmys
– Chinese Bike Couriers
– Bakery that sells gruesome human body parts

Just a minor note. I’ve gone ahead and separated the events section so that it can function by itself. What this will allow me to do is post more events in that section without over running the main blog with random event posts. I will continue to post events on the main page here but only ones that I think should be highlighted. You can access the events section by clicking on the events tab in the navigation strip on top.

I recently updated and rearranged the categories on top. I used to have the link to 248PM (PM not AM) all the way on the right but I thought it was more appropriate to have it next to the main 248AM link on the left. It makes more sense since 248PM is similar to 248AM except instead of the posts being related to Kuwait they’re more generic. So if you come here and don’t find any updates, you might find something there instead. [248PM]

The 248AM Forum now works with the mobile application Tapatalk. The application allows you to browse and participate in the forum using your phone but it makes it really easy since it uses the Tapatalk interface. What’s also cool about Tapatalk is the fact you can add all your favorite forums to it which makes things very convenient. The application is currently available for the iPhone, Android devices and BlackBerry and you can find out more information [Here]

I’m really not a good writer neither am I great in speeches which is what I believe this verdict deserves. I was extremely nervous today waiting to find out the outcome as you can imagine and it was such an incredible relief to find out I won.

I’m really not sure what to say other than the fact this ruling goes to show how much freedom of speech is highly respected in Kuwait. I love living here and I love having the right to state my personal opinion on this blog. I really want to thank EVERYONE for all the support that you gave me. Seriously what you guys did was just incredible and really gave me the courage to fight this out till the end. I also want to thank my lawyer Khaled Al Shamali from The Group Law Firm for taking this case and doing an amazing job. And most importantly I want to thank the judge and the court for their ruling.

I hope no other blogger will have to go through what I did and I hope the result of this case will serve as an example that you can’t stop people from stating their personal opinions.

Thanks again everyone!

PS: If you have no idea what lawsuit I am talking about click [Here]

I’ve been meaning to update the Kuwait Blogs app for awhile now but due to the fact I do all the work on my iMac I haven’t been able to do so. My iMac had a problem with the screen and I sent it in to get repaired under warranty which took around a month to get done. I just finally picked up my iMac today so will most probably be working on an update for the app this weekend.

I’m aware that the current build of the app is unstable with iOS4.3 and it’s my priority fix. I already know whats wrong I just need to work on it. What I also want to do if I have time is update the blogs in the app. I can’t add any more apps since I’ve hit the limit, but I can swap out blogs that aren’t active anymore or aren’t as active as they used to be. So if you have any recommendation on what blog I should add to the app leave it as a comment below.

If you want to download the current app here is the [Link]

A couple of days back the blog was listed with 9 others on CNN’s “Top ten must read blogs in the Middle East“. Automatically when that happened I went into red alert mode, I made sure the blogs cache plugins were up and running and I double checked my servers bandwidth and memory usage to make sure nothing was out of the ordinary so that once this large wave of visitors arrive, the blog wouldn’t crash and I wouldn’t lose or disappoint any potential new visitors. Imagine opening a restaurant and having enough food to serve 10 people but then 100 show up, I didn’t want that to happen to me. I was of course expecting it to be a temporary rush, my 15 seconds of fame before the majority of the new visitors disappear forever. So how much traffic came from that article?

I’m not really sure what to think about this. This was an article on CNN and so my expectations were high of course and I was predicting around 5,000 visitors to come in and easily 10,000+. But somehow I overshot my estimates by a considerable amount as you can see. I have a few theories on why this must be the case:

– Maybe the majority of their readers only read their main news and not other none news related articles
– Maybe their readers aren’t used to clicking links in their articles and so never thought about clicking any of the blog links mentioned
– Maybe no one was interested in finding out more about my blog
– Maybe majority of the people who read the article already knew my blog and didn’t see a reason to click it
– The article went up at the start of the weekend which is when based on my blogs stats the daily readership dwindles down considerably
– Maybe the article wasn’t publicized enough on CNN and so not many people ended up reading it
– Or maybe their readership base are serious businessmen or older people who don’t think blogs are interesting enough or even newsworthy

Those of course are just my theories and I’m sure CNN themselves have a better idea of who reads what on their site and why this article might not have transitioned into a large quantity of clicks. But this got me thinking… How much traffic did the Benihana lawsuit really send my way? I went digging for the numbers and here are the top referrers:

– Slashdot.org 4,957
– BoingBoing.net 757
– electrony.net 469
– fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com 437
– AmericanBlog.com 303
– FastCompany.com 285
– Zagat.com 184
– eConsultancy.com 166
– techania.com 171
– LAWeekly.com 139
– TheNextWeb.com 127

By the looks of it that’s not a lot but at the peak of interest and because of the fact that it was picked up by a ton of bloggers and news sites (here is the full list) it was enough to bring in around 20,000 visitors in a single day which is slightly less than double what I usually get. On January 31st when the story first started picking up my readership for that day increased to 16,748 visitors followed by an increase to 19,610 on February 1st until going back down to 15,672 on February 2nd and then things went back to normal on February 3rd when it went back to 12,030 which is what the blog usually gets per day.

In comparison, on March 29th the rumor of Jackie Chan being dead started spreading again and a search for Jackie Chan is dead on that day resulted in my blog being one of the first results on Google so I got a sudden influx of over 10,000 visitors coming in to check out my old post on that rumor. That sudden surge actually brought down the blog a few times during that day which resulted in me permanently removing some memory intensive plugin as well as having the Super Cache plugin permanently on so that in the future no matter what happens the site can handle it.

Anyway I’ve never shared detailed numbers like this on the blog before so hopefully you found the above interesting, it’s just a small behind the scenes glimpse.

248PM was an idea I had where anyone could come in and post whatever they wanted but it just didn’t take off the way I wanted it to. So for now 248PM will redirect everyone to this blog until I can think of another idea for it.

Update: Actually I think I will just turn it into a blog where I post stuff that I don’t think is good enough for this blog. That way I can keep the A-Side / B-Side thing going on just without the community aspect.

Update2: Ok 248PM is back now except it’s no longer a community blog, it’s just a normal blog that’s only mine with random posts that are not related to Kuwait. Check it out [Here]