Archive for the 'Technology' Category

A few of my delicious pickings from the past few days. Pay particular attention to the more new-media-meets-real-world articles on Facebook and Flickr. I really found those interesting. Makes the world feel a bit smaller than it is.
Staring Contest: An Italian man was given a suspended jail sentence for staring too intensely at a […]



Besides varying artwork and font selections as well as hardcover or soft cover choices, I would argue little has changed in the publishing world during the past century when it comes to books (at least presentation-wise). But now, Penguin, one of the biggest publishers in the world, has started, what we might call, a web […]



Let me put aside the obvious shocking factor of being utterly disgusted by the event (is there a way to be shocked and yet not surprised), but there is something that interests me here and that’s the international media’s reaction. Did anyone notice that this crime took place in August of 2007 and is only […]



It seems like a long time ago that I once wondered if HM Queen Rania was a blogger. It seems lately, she’s gone a step forward and become a Vlogger on YouTube.
Now this is pretty interesting…

I think it’s a pretty good initiative (me wishing I had thought of it first), and it’s one of […]



Ammon has been reporting about a book written by an Iraqi author, called “The Rain of God”, which seems to “insult God” and has slipped Jordanian censors and made its way onto the market. It’s kind of ironic because I’ve never seen Ammon so much in favor of censorship! What makes this more interesting, is […]



Last night, Amman joined the list of cities all around the world and turned its lights off in honor of Earth Hour, a WWF initiative to raise awareness about global warming. Here’s a picture of the Capital that I took last night as it was plunged into darkness.

Ok, ok, so that picture was totally photoshopped. […]



The above is a map of the New York Times’ coverage of certain hot spots. The point of the heat map is to indicate the regions that some of the major papers, and even the blogosphere, gives more attention to (red). Guess which media is most balanced in its coverage?
These maps allow you to […]



While everyone waits with bated breath the results of today’s deadly primaries in the US, here are a few del.icio.us pickings I’ve been reading these past couple of days:
- A Rose By Any Other Name: An Iranian court has ordered a man to give his wife the 124,000 roses that he promised in her dowry, […]



A colleague of mine caught my curiosity when she told me of an article she read about a material that has been created which is blacker than black. So I went digging for it. Now before you judge this as just some tech-geek sciencey stuff you’d rather pass on reading, give me a moment to […]



Foreign Policy’s Editor-in-chief, Moisés Naím, wrote an interesting article in The Times the other day about Fidel Castro’s blog. While the article delves into the political and economic future of Cuba, which interested me as a writer and student, there is perhaps a different angle to the story that interested me as a blogger. It […]



Here is a selection of my delicious picks: a few interesting articles/links from across the Net.
- Robert Fisk recalls his first meeting with assassinated Hizballah commander, Imad Mougnieh, in 1991.
- Arab information ministers have met in Cairo to endorse an Arab League charter, which allows host countries to annul or suspend the licence of any […]



The snow is on its way out so I thought I’d shift gears here on the Black Iris. Transitioning back to reality isn’t easy when snow is still the talk of the town, so here’s a selection of my delicious picks these past few days you might find interesting. Only the first two are about […]



The digital age is really, really fascinating.
Greeks fed up with their pesky neighbours, old flames, the government, or society in general can find release in a new Internet site that posts e-curses for free.
“Have you been dumped, harassed or angered? Why not unload with a curse?” offers www.e-katares.com (e-curse.com), which currently has more than […]



Facebook Envy

11Dec07

Facebook Envy n.
The feeling you get when you come across an old friend on Facebook and realize that their life turned out way better than yours.
[via jundi]

addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.black-iris.com%2F2007%2F12%2F11%2Ffacebook-envy%2F’;
addthis_title = ‘Facebook+Envy’;
addthis_pub = ”;



Here’s a collection of some of my delicious links I’ve been looking at these past few days:
- “Ahmadinejad” a film by Oliver Stone: Finally, a movie that will bring together America and Iran’s far right hatred of Oliver Stone.
- Young chimp beats college students: And these were Japanese college students!
- The 50 Richest Arabs: […]



I, along with everyone else, have a completely different definition of what friendship is and what it embodies. So many of the people I know personally are mentally categorized as mere acquaintances. But lately I’ve been wondering more and more about friendships formed online and the protocols that come along with them. We seem to […]