(Please do share this! Let’s get people to be smarter about protecting their accounts online).

Here’s some breaking news thanks to the online community that covered this quite well and quite fast.

Qatar Foundation’s social media accounts have been ‘hacked’. People have been saying that it’s Assad Supporters Syrian Electronic Army. No they’re not a professional organization, it’s just some people trying to make themselves sound bigger than they really are.
You want to know what I think? No this isn’t the result of a ‘hacking’ attempt (because then the headline would be ‘twitter’ hacked, not QF), but more probably (and realistically) the result of poor password protection. (I’ll come onto that in a second, but let’s see what the community said).

First off, shout outs to @nasnas_here , @DJLedz, @dohadelivery, @mufyd_me , @teampistonbroke , @YasserM86, and Khalil, for bringing this to our attention and sending us images too.

At around 10:30AM on the 1st of March tweets started coming in that the Qatar Foundation twitter account was tweeting ‘anti-Qatar’ posts. Of course the online community, being mostly comprised of Read the rest of this entry »

One of the most popular sections of iLoveQatar.net is our events listings and we’ve been growing! In fact, we’ve listed over 1,000 events to date! That means that since the site started, we’ve listed enough events to keep you occupied every single day! You can visit our event section here: http://iloveqatar.net/forum/list.php?27 (btw you can post your own events there) and soon the link will change to www.iloveqatar.net/events

We then decided to launch a twitter channel called @Qatarevents which has been keeping everyone on twitter in the know. We’ve got thousands of visitors too!

Next up was a monthly newsletter. Some of you might know it by now. It’s called ‘The Buzz’. We figured that some people might want a monthly dose of what’s going on, articles, hot topics, and fun stuff rather than daily info. (I recommend signing up to it of course, I think it’s pretty cool.)

Now although people visit our ILQ facebook page for an awesome community, we thought that some people may JUST want an events feed on Facebook too, so we just recently launched Qatar Events on Facebook.

So we took a breather, took a sip of our gahwa (that’s Arabic for coffee btw), looked around the room and then felt like we hadn’t done enough. So we started working on the new events section. We wanted it to look simple, be easy to search, and easy to submit events too. So we came up with this! (See the two screenshots). We like it, and we’re sure you’ll like it too. It’s going to go live VERY soon and what’s better is that you can sign in with Twitter and Facebook if you want to leave a comment or ‘favourite’ your events.

It’s great to know that our hard work was appreciated because we’ve now got a regular spot every Thursday at 6pm with @FinnertyLaura on her show. Tune in and you’ll hear about the upcoming events for the weekend and the next 7 days.  You’ll be able to hear either myself Khalifa (a.k.a Mr. Q), Bassam, or Zhan!

It’s easier than ever to tune into QF Radio. Got an iPhone? Download their app here. On a computer? Visit their site here for a live stream. In your car, then tune into 93.7 FM

Anyway! If you’ve got an event, please do share it with us by emailing events@iloveqatar.net

Sometimes it gets difficult following all these different sites. So to make life simpler for you Twitter users, all you need to do is follow one of these three twitter accounts that have been specially set up!

Looking for straight up ILQ stuff and some of my own tweets? Follow @iloveqatar

Looking for Qatar related news? Follow @qatarnews

Looking for the latest events in Qatar? Follow @qatarevents

So I asked a simple question on twitter yesterday. I asked people to name ONE place that stands out in their minds where they got great customer services in Qatar. Some interesting results. Some I didn’t expect myself. Without further adue I present all the responses! (In no particular order!)

Nissan – Infiniti division – @iknw101

TableArts – @Shanti_eka

Grandhyatt – @haniarif

The Ritz – @bradycreel

Ritz @expatcookie

FFC @vanish_forever

Sushi Minto @jmugford

Vodafone Landmark – @_maricala

Khan Farooq – @theesal

VLCC @cameliacesin

GlowSalonDoha – @jodygryan

WafiGourmet – @halawala

Café Tasse – @abuarja7

W Doha – @MaryH_K

Jumbo – @rainydoha

BMW – @shivasingh

W Doha – @sweetymathewB

Yoko Sizzlers – @Qatarday

Carluccios – @dohaben

Woqod near the Mall – @jibbersindoha

I decided to ask a question on Twitter and Facebook. A simple request. Tell me ONE thing that you love, anything random. (It’s fun to read people’s responses! Go ahead and leave your own response in the comments section below!)

Let’s see what people in Qatar said!

Twitter:

@ExpatCookie I love ‘Family’

@Halawala I love airplane spotting and seeing construction of airports and infrastructure

I thought I’d make a list of tweeters to follow. Now this list is based on people’s tweets that I enjoy reading and I find useful. It’s important to follow people that you enjoy following and dont spam your feed with either garbage or repeat posts. I’m going to go ahead and divide them by category too.

People:

@expatcookie – Fun tweeter

@sknox40 – Fun tweeter

@qatarvisitor – Posts some great articles.

News:

@qatarnews - A news aggregator that collects news from many different sources on everything related to Qatar. Including The Pen, GT, Arabian Business, BBC, etc…

@dohanews – Not only does Dohanews post Qatar related news, but I enjoy reading interesting chit chat and its not all Press releases!

@peninsulaqatar – The Peninsula Newspaper’s twiter

Events:

@qatarevents – Your daily fix on events happening in Qatar

@qatarhappening - Qatar Happening magazine’s twitter feed. They cover a lot of dining events.

Qataris:

@hndqtr – Qatar’s first female Comedian

@nazqatar – Just enjoy reading his tweets from time to time

@osamaalassiry – A fellow Qatari geek

@iloveqatar – that’s me!

@nawafalthani – Always finding out some cool Qatar news from this guy

@roosnamla – A Qatari sports nut. He knows where the best sporting spots are

@ahmedalbaker – A Qatari movie producer that’s working on Qatar’s first 3D movie!

Misc:

@dohafilm – The Doha Film Institute’s twitter channel. DFI is the company responsible for the Tribeca Film Festival too.

@greatdohafind – The idea is that this person tweets ‘gems’ that he finds around Qatar.

Sorry if I’ve left you out. This is off the top of my head right now.

Want to get on the list? Leave a message in the comment section below!

Here’s a quick explanation of the new toolbar that’s been added to ILQ!

With all the updates going on at ILQ, I thought it was about time we tweaked the blog a bit.

On the right hand side, you’ll now notice a few changes. 1) There’s a tag cloud so you can find the most common tagged terms, there’s my twitter feed, and there’s the Qatar Events twitter feed.

For those who don’t know there are a few great ILQ powered Twitter channels.

QatarEvents – http://www.twitter.com/qatarevents

It’s updated with the latest events and happenings in Qatar.

QatarNews – http://www.twitter.com/qatarnews

Grab important news from a variety of sources related to Qatar.

Our friends over at Qatar Visitor made an interesting post about Serena Williams.
Apparantly when she arrived at Doha Airport, she tweeted “Does anyone know where Doha is?”

The question is, ‘Is that a nice thing to say about the country that’s hosting you?”

Read more here http://qatarvisitor.blogspot.com/2009/10/does-anyone-know-where-doha-is.html

So now that it’s a brand new year, I’m woken up yet again to the fact that although I’m moving at light speed, it’s still not fast enough.

ILQ’s going to go through some amazing changes and all of which are aimed at making life in Qatar much better!

With the establishment of a fresh perspective and the inclusion of some dedicated people, I’m confident that we’ll be able to be an entertaining and life changing resource.

For now, here’s a little update for you all. Thanks to Qatar Guest from QatarVisitor (which I can honestly say is one of the good ones), I was invited back onto the twitter scene.

Why not?, I thought. However if anybody knows me, they’ll know that there was to be that extra touch to it.

To make like easy for twitter fans who want the latest news, simply go to http://twitter.com/qatarnews and enjoy getting your latest tidbits from Gulf Times, The Peninsula, Arabian Business, Zawya, GDN, Gulf News, ILQ News, and much more. (On a side note Nigel G has started Doha Daily which compresses The Pen into a nice pdf for the move!) 

While you’re at it, check out ILQ’s facebook and flickr groups.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/ILQ-iloveqatarnet/22992739859#/group.php?gid=2382812401&ref=ts
All things Qatar

http://www.facebook.com/pages/ILQ-iloveqatarnet/22992739859
Events and ILQ related group

http://www.flickr.com/groups/926592@N20/
Qatar Flickr Group