Mind Soup

When Google pulled the plug on its RSS aggregator Google Reader last year, we lost the most powerful tool that we used to monitor what’s going on in the blogosphere. For the Lebanese, however, there is a resource that can provide us with the latest posts from the Lebanese blogosphere. This resource is Lebanese Blogs by Mustapha Hamaoui (also famous for his political blog Beirut Spring). It is by far the most interactive and dynamic blog aggregator dedicated to the Lebanese online community especially after its new release, as others prove to be very stiff and outdated. When asked for the reason for creating this site, Mustapha said “blog readers shouldn't waste their time searching for cool new Lebanese blogs and digging around for new posts. At the same time, bloggers shouldn't feel pressured to post everyday so that readers visit their blogs. This website hopes to solve both these problems and create a space for blog readers to visit every day to find cool posts.”...

Bassam Jalgha: Lebanon is still a fresh market for innovation and Entrepreneurship take a lot of time to pay off. Inspirational People from the Lebanese Online Community In an attempt to promote inspiring stories about people from the Lebanese Online Community, we, at Cloud961, have decided to dedicate a monthly column to interview an inspiring figure that has left a mark in the Lebanese online sphere. For your suggestions for this column, feel free to email me on mhijazi@cloud961.com . Bassam Jalgha was born and raised in Beirut. Got his BE in Mechanical Engineering from the American University of Beirut and continued his Masters in the same field with a concentration in Mechatronics. His graduate research topic was in robotics, specifically in fall avoidance of embedded humanoid robots. Previously he worked as an instructor at AUB teaching Mechatronics and Control systems labs. Bassam also has a personal devotion to music. He studied Oud instrumental music at the Lebanes...

As cliché as it may sound, it is very true. You will have to learn it the hard way to believe it. No matter if you are nice to everyone or employ democratic techniques to try to balance all the sides, you can never please everyone at the same time. It is something that you have to live with and get accustomed to. The only way you can avoid this is do nothing with your life (and even then, you will be getting comments about how lazy you are). This is more evident online. Individuals and brands get criticized and bashed all the time. It is easier to criticize because most people don’t realize that at the other side of the screen, there is a living breathing human being that will be affected by their words. If it were an offline conversation, most people will tend to consider the consequences of their words more and try to be diplomatic in order not to hurt the individual they are criticizing. Possibly the most negative aspect of social media is that it eliminates the human aspec...