Abdullah Al Fozan
Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper published an Interview today with Mr. Abdullah Abdullatif Al Fozan, Chairman – Al Fozan Holding Co. The interview is a rare opportunity to comprehend the vision and insights of one of the most successful businessmen in Saudi Arabia.
The Interview, which was published today in both the Saudi and international editions of the paper, covers critical economic issues in the region, challenges facing family businesses, and a history of Al Fozan Group of Companies.
You can read the full interview online at Asharq Al-Awsat or at Argaam website.
Twitter
After trying many plug-ins for WordPress to publish my site’s posts on both Twitter & Facebook, I came to a simple conclusion: 3rd party plug-ins are useless! The best way to go is using plug-ins that truly integrate with WordPress. The ones I used were: Wordbook (integrates with Facebook) and WordTwit (integrates with twitter). The result is satysfying and practical: both plugins submit new posts directly to Twitter & Facebook.
Now, the only problem I encountered was with Wordbook: It requires PHP5. By default, my host (1and1) uses PHP4, you have to choose PHP5 when you create a new MySql database. To overcome this problem, I used a very simple solution that I found on 1and1 FAQ site (Link to original page):
By default Apache uses PHP 4 for .php extension. If you don’t want to rename all your
scripts to .php5 you can do the following:
Create a .htaccess file and place the following line AddType x-mapp-php5 .php in it.
Now I enjoy true integration with my 2 favorite social sites 
Gravatar
Managing multiple profile on tones of websites, forums, blogs, social services, etc. is becoming more and more difficult as your digital self grows on the web!
One service that might help you cope is Gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar). This service helps you publish your avatar (symbol, image, or icon that represents you) on almost any forum, blog comment or post, etc.
By signing up with Gravatar you’ll be able to upload your avatar (or multiple avatars) to it and associate one or multiple emails to it. Thus, whenever you post a comment on a blog or interact with any website, your avatar (or Gravatar in this case) will appear automatically without you having to create a profile! Magic isn’t it!!
The service explains:
Your Gravatar is an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things like comment or post on a blog. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?
if you looked into the comments left on some posts in here you’ll appreciate the power of Gravatar:
Gravatar Example
Finally, here are some links to understand the service more:
Web 2.0
Trying to connect all my online activities and social connections into one place, my personal website, proved to be a challenge. Yet WordPress in addition to various plug-ins made it happen: at last I can rest assured my scattered info all over the inter webs are happily residing in one place!
This little experiment allowed me to connect: Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, digg, etc.
Whenever I post something in here it gets published in twitter (as a tweet) and Facebook (as a ststus). When I update my profile on Facebook or update my status on Twitter, my website gets the info! Flickr images are integrated into my site!! And on top of it all, RSS feeds are generated for me!!!
One last thing, I have to applaud WordPress.org for their excellent iPhone app! Now I can update my site comfortably and in a meaningful way from my iPhone. Web 2.0 is a dream come true…
