Global Voices Online

The 12th Tunisian blogger meetup took place on Saturday, April 15th, marking a whole year of meetups. The record was broken for the number of bloggers present with around 35 bloggers showing up, and the number of new faces exceeding old ones. MMM, Marsawi (FR) and Bouzguelif (FR) write about it.

Tunizika, the Tunisian musical podcast, have released their 14th episode with a mixture of Jazz, Blues, Rock and Soul through music from Mamdouh Bahri, Issam Mahfoudhi, le Ptypont and Mawel.
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The 11th Tunisian blogger meetup was held last sunday in the Latina café/restaurant. Turnout was pretty good for this meetup with 18 people showing up. The next meetup should be held in the mountains of Zaghouan. Many of the present bloggers wrote about this meetup (Tom (FR), Marouen (FR), Karim (EN), MMM (EN), Staka (FR), Mochekes (FR), Foufa (FR)).

Tunisian music podcast Tunizika release a new Moroccan music style episode with music from artists: Ahmed Soultan, Darga, Casa Crew and Hoba Hoba.

There's been a lot of talk about Tunisiana's new mobile internet offering, starting from Marouen (EN) who announced it before the service was publicly launched, to Keitaro (FR) who's using it, to Mochekes (FR) who has been giving tips and advice about it.

Both Yamen and MMM picked up the news of the new political party that was born in Tunisia on Friday, March 3rd. The new formation, named “the Green Party for Progress,” (the PVP) is Tunisia’s ninth legal party.
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Karim and Marwen write about their wishes for the Tunisian blogosphere in the year 2006, after a big and healthy year 2005 for blogs in Tunisia.
Adib gives his thoughts on the Tunisian blogosphere in the past year 2005.

Hannibal publishes some pictures he took at an art exhibition at the Brooklyn Museum, NY : Tree of Paradise: Jewish Mosaics from the Roman Empire, which displays a number of mosaics from Tunisia.

Tunizika have released episode 8 of their Tunisian musical podcast featuring music from Sofyann Ben youssef, Ghalia Ben Ali & Temnaa, Kerkenah and Amel Mathlouthi.

Marwen thinks that biodiesel could be a very good alternative fuel option in Tunisia, as the prices for petroleum based fuel continue to rise.

Tunisian Globetrotter reports that a new TV channel called “Sport 7″, that will broadcast all the soccer matches from the Tunisian championship, could see the light of day soon. Talks are still going on between Tunisian officials and ART about the details (in French).

Zizou writes about the relations between Tunisia and Italy, and how a bond was created between the two countries when the Italian RAI1 channel became available to all Tunisians back in 1967. He sees the countries moving away from each other over the past few years, and he thinks that the opposite should be the case, especially with Italy being in need of foreign labor and Tunisians being in a good position to fill those gaps. (in French)

OthRez writes an interesting piece about relocation / offshoring in general and also takes Tunisia's example where many textile and ITC businesses from Europe are setting up production centers, discussing the pros and cons of it all (in French).

Ex-Blonde writes about her experience with Tunisian cinemas; the small and old selection of movies, the badly reputated cinemas, the empty theatres, the low quality picture and sound, …etc. She finds watching pirated DivX movies at home in front of her PC a much better experience (in French).

The 9th Tunisian Blogger Meetup will be taking place on Sunday, December 25th at Café 112 in downtown Tunis, at the end of Palestine Avenue. The results of the Tunisian Blog Awards will be announced in the meetup.

Building upon Mochekes‘ post about the situation of Tunisian IT engineers and programmers (in French), Slaim suggests the building of a website which will be kind of an IT company stock market where all Tunisian engineers can assess the companies they're working or worked for, and exchange invaluable information for better personal development and career management in Tunisia. He thinks it could become the perfect dashboard where companies and bosses are evaluated each day each hour constraining them and pushing them to do/behave better and give more.

Zizou covers the assassination of Gebran Toueni from Beirut, posting about the assassination, the feelings and reaction to it in the Lebanese street and the huge funeral (in French).

Tom writes about the work environment and how it is a micro system of its own in which a number of different people, who were put together without their choosing, co-exist and interact, building different types of relationships here and there, and all working for their own goals and in their own directions. (in French)

Nothing just illusion writes about how famous Lebanese singer Marcel Khalifa is now banned in Tunisia because of a dedication he made in a concert he held in Tunisia to all the Arab prisoners in Israeli prisons and in Arab prisons (in French).

Sup'Comian boy thinks that ADSL prices in Tunisia are too high. He compares the prices in Tunisia, where a miserable 128K connection goes for 50 Tunisian dinars to the prices in Europe, where the average personal income is double that in Tunisia. Tunisie Telecom makes huge benefits every year, he thinks they could reduce internet communication costs and make it more accessible (in French).

Sami criticizes the Tunisian blog aggregator for not including blogs of Tunisian cyber-dissidents, which is not entirely true nor entirely false, and thinks that the Tunisian bloggers in the aggregator now discuss every issue in the world but the important issues for Tunisia, and that all they do is reflect this perfected touristic vision of Tunisia (in French).

Mochekes writes about how Tunisiana, the first private mobile phone operator in Tunisia, will be launching a 300 kb/s internet service in February, building on the EDGE platform which is 2.75G technology. (in French).

Tarek tries to answer the longstanding controversy: what exact discipline does Astrology fall under? With it definitely not being a Science, nor a branch of Humanities, he uses the definition of Business in an online etymology dictionary to conclude that Astrology can rightly fall under the business category.

Zied wishes Tunisia was more like Singapore. He wishes we could build a technology and worldwide services based economy, that one of Tunisia’s University could make the Top 20 of the world’s best universities and that Tunisian bloggers could become a dominant force in the global blogosphere.

Chouchitou talks about all the pamphlets and offers we receive in our mailboxes and how they never offer anything new or of value, just the same stuff everywhere. The special offers aren’t special at all and the marketing stops halfway (in French).