Pakistan Weblogs update

I had made ‘this listing’:http://ko.offroadpakistan.com/pakblogs/ primariy for myself, to keep track of the every growing list of Pakistani weblogs out there. Suprisingly, it’s still quite small, and therefore not to hard to add the occasional weblog every other week or so. Originally I had planned just to make a list of the ones which I actually read, but as people sent in their weblogs I ended up just adding them all, and in the process discovered many interesting ones.


There are a few changes coming up in the list – instead of categorizing them by type, I’m just going to categorize them by location. Selecting a category is nigh impossible for most weblogs, as they tend to cover about just anything. There are a few topical ones, but not enough to make categorization worthwhile. It also takes the most time, as I generally copy paste the info emailed to me, then spend 5 minutes wondering what category to put it into. Categorizing them by location also has its disadvantages… so suggestions are welcome.

The other change will most likely be switching it over to ‘WordPress’:http://wordpress.org instead of ‘Movabletype’:http://movabletype.org. Movabletype is a great weblogging tool, but ideally I would want more than just me adding new weblogs to the list, and the ‘Movabletype free license’:http://www.movabletype.org/get_movable_type_personal.shtml only allows one user. When already ’83 percent of software in use in Pakistan is pirated’:http://spiderisat.blogspot.com/2004/07/software-piracy.html, I would rather not add to that already massive total.

*Update:* The pakblogs site has been switched over to WordPress, and all the old entries ported over. The layout needs to be fixed… perhaps back to the old one?

12 thoughts on “Pakistan Weblogs update”

  1. You need to correct your piracy rate in Pakistan, –. Please consult BSA who has some hopeful figures. And not all of those machines loaded with pirated apps are to be condemned anyway.

  2. I have a number of threatening faxes and emails from the BSA.. they seem to think that everybody outside the multinationals is running pirated software. I figure if you look at home pcs, the rate is definitly going to be over 95 percent. Piracy rates are all well and good, but any suggestions for the pakblogs site?

  3. Categorization is indeed difficult. Location seems like a good way to go. I would suggest categorizing by city within Pakistan and by country outside. Another category could be by language. Most blogs are in English, but this would highlight the Urdu ones.

    Among other random suggestions:

    1. An aggregation of the RSS/Atom feeds of all Pakistani blogs.

    2. Sorting the blog list by recently updated.

    3. A weekly blog giving a roundup of interesting recent poosts on Pakistani blogs.

  4. I suggest categorise them by location. Cities IMHO. When people email you, ask them to give you their city. What are the disadvantages here?

    You could also try Text and Multimedia-enhanced. Or Hyper Bloggers [who network with other bloggers] vs. Plain Rants — something creative along those lines.

    You’re quite right about the number of Pakistani blogs being limited. I scour through e.g. Blogger [as I did today] simply looking at those from Pakistan and boy, there are fewer than I anticipated.

    At the same time, so many people are publicly creating profiles on blogger–its remarkable! The idea of having names and details [along with pics–specially in the case of women] would have outraged most parents when they were young. Now, young people are completely happy ranting out. Good, we need that kind of confidence plus presence online from pakistan. Long way to go though.

  5. Categorizing by cities is a pretty good idea. But then again there will always be blogs that are written by a number of different people and there might be no actual city of origin. Case in point: the Spider blog and the Bandbaja blog. Perhaps all writers for Spider blog are from Karachi (I don’t really know) but the BB blog has writers in different countries.

  6. Safwat: Our blog contributors are every where too. But the blog is maintained in Karachi and talks about Pakistan-specific subjects [with occasional bits from Wired or other places we think are too good to miss out on].

    Think a blog’s location–as in where it is maintained–makes a difference? [Are you maintaining the BB blog from the US? Just curious and glad you started one!]

    IMHO, expat blogs are a category on their own. Regardless, when I said cities, I didn’t mean simply those from Pakistan. Cities–anywhere. Can be one way of categorizing the modest blogger network of Pakistani origin. Hmm, I’m good at pushing a point, no? 😉

  7. Cities is a easy way to categorize them… there can be a seperate category for group weblogs.

    bq. A weekly blog giving a roundup of interesting recent poosts on Pakistani blogs.

    That sounds interesting and doable.

  8. I’m revamping the pakblogs site – should be fully functional in a week or so – or when I get some free time – whichever comes first. It will have a weblog submit form, along with required fields.

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