Q8Ba7th Official Blog

While several others have shown online, and we have discussed one of them before, definitely non have raised the bar to the quality of the new YPKuwait.com. The multi-lingual site usage happens either through Flash Based book browsing the whole directory.

The browsing here is cool flashy book like page turning application, however online, why would you wanna do that? The other preferred option ofcourse is, you guessed it, Search. Search either by name, or by the phone number. And what’s cool about this search is that, it does actually work, and gives back lots of relevant results usually. This ofcourse puts my Q8Ba7th Phone Search over the edge, but that’s OK. I’m happy we have the service up and going somewhere at least. If I was Steve Jobs I think people would still find reasons to use it . So anyways, after you click on your desired result from the search, Pizza for geeks:

You will get details about the company profile. The nice feature here is the ability for companies to promote their listing and incorporate road maps. No details about pricing though.

The one sad thing about this site is it’s search engine optimization (I always have to come with some of this crap don’t I?). If you do a search on Google for site:ypkuwait.com, you will see that the Title of pages is not specific. Aside from About Us and Contact Us, you would see things like YellowPagesSearch for search results, and Business Info for Corporate Profile. This could be improved a lot if Search Pages had the title: “YellowPagesSearch – “, and Corporate Profile pages were titled “Pizza Hut Profile – YPKuwait” for instance. This would give the user more hints about the search results, and allow search engines to return much more relevant results from the site, increasing it’s overall value for the advertiser.

All in all, I see it an excellent site to bookmark and refer back to anytime you are in need of finding specific number.

Popularity: 28% [?]

Isn’t it frustrating the amount of usernames and passwords you have to remember? How often do you the Forgot Password thing? Or otherwise, how often do you use the same password over and over, until you fill it in a non-trusted site. A non-trusted site or weak security site is a site that will store your password in clear text, and when you select Forgot Password, they will send you the original password back. Meaning that they can actually read your original password, and then if they want to, they can use the same password to gain access to your other sites. This forces me to use more and more passwords. xnoor posted once about a nice technique on how to generate and easily remember 100 passwords, and during our discussion at Q8igg, he came across the OpenID project, a new initiative that aims at pushing for single-centralized authentication for any user, to access as many sites as he wants. This ofcourse requires the adaptation of other sites to this single sign on authentication model on their site, and the acceptance of the OpenID idea by the end user. As more and more sites join the service, end user will have greater benefit of using this single OpenID user, and with the WEB 2.0 concept expanding, you can only expect this service to grow larger and larger in value. Imagine if you can use one password to login to Gmail, Yahoo Mail, Facebook and other sites. That would give you the convenient, and peace of mind to use one strong password for one time only.

We at Q8igg love such initiatives, and like to adapt to and push further for it. Thus, from this day onward, we are starting to accept OpenID logins for existing users. Please note that in the meantime, we are not providing direct registration through OpenID, but once you register with us, you can associate your OpenID account with Q8igg account and depend on OpenID onwards. What you need to do in order to use this service is:

1. first to Sign up for an OpenID account
2. Login to your Q8igg account using the traditional Q8igg Login. Do not use OpenID right now, it will not work.
3. Go to your Profile page to modify it.
4. You should see an OpenID_url field. Fill it with your appropriate OpenID account name. E.g., you.myopenid.com. You should append the .myopenid.com for now, even though we may not require it for the future.
5. Click Save and Logout.
6. Go to the Login page again.
7. In the OpenID box, enter your OpenID Account URL as follows: you.myopenaccount.com. Replacing “you” with your account name.
8. You will be taken to OpenID login page to authenticate your self. Enter your OpenID access credentials, and when asked for authorization, select Allow Forever to allow Q8igg.com to authenticate you easily and quickly in the future.
9. TADAAA!!!

While Q8igg is not the biggest of sites, we still love to adapt to, and promote new interesting technologies and concepts that will return great value to the whole wide web. This would make us I believe the first Kuwaiti site that supports OpenID, in addition to being the only one I know that has enabled Revenue Sharing through Google AdSense program. I would like also to thank again xnoor, who hasn’t been seen for quite some time!, and all other valuable contributors for their support. This was a clear example of what a healthy discussion can bring up, and we hope you all help grow it further.

I would advise all to go and register for the OpenID account, not only because it will allow you to access Q8igg.com, but because of the huge list of sites that will accept the same account to login. Such big names like AOL and technorati are already on board, and you can see a comprehensive list of sites here. We have just enrolled so by the time you read the list, I hope we will be added in . Please also encourage the people you know to join our Q8igg community, and also give the OpenID a try.

If you face any problems, or have any questions, please do send them in through Q8igg Contact Form.

Popularity: 14% [?]

I was just listening today to Deera Chat podcast about information accessibility, and how we lack such kind of information, and what we lose from missing those information. So I thought it’s the right time to write about what I saw at the Kuwait Firefighters site. Something that is really special about this site, and I thank them for it, is the updated online stats of fires in Kuwait since 2003. Every month, up till September so far, they post monthly reports on the fires in Kuwait. Detailed ones with such kind of information:

• Fires categorized per area
• Fires handled by which Fire Station
• Type of fire (residential, non-residential)
• Cause of fire. Mostly Electricity good to know.
• Percentage of false calls, reportedly increasing
• Death and injuries stats.

I promise you can also find and make a lot more from those information. And yes guys, we need more and more of those information accessible online. I always recall a bit old but very informative book from Bill Gates: Business @ The Speed of Thought, if you are interested. It talks about how you should digitize all your information, make it accessible to all online easily, and tie all the different information together. It speaks about what he calls the Digital Nervous System, and I’m still grateful to my friend who suggested it.

Click Image For Sample Report:

Popularity: 27% [?]