17 November 2008

HM Sultan Qaboos personal website launched


HM's national day gift is a his personal website at http://www.oman-qaboos.net/.


I was surprised about the blue colour.....
It is in 7 languages - Arabic, English, Hindi, Korean, French, Persian and Portugese. For news on this read today's Times of Oman paper.

The content has been derived from, Qaboos Al Ensan Magazine Published on 18 National Day on 1995 by Oman Daily Newspaper.

It has sections: Birth, Education, Interests, Achievements, Speeches (text), Photogallery and National songs (audio).

Please note that "Photo Gallery" - link launched in a new window and it has sections too. A good beginning.

Do visit his website and write yr feedback here pl. Tks

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Saw this one the Times of Oman as well.

The fact that it is human translated into all these languages is impressive, but I'm not big on the website as a whole.

At the end all of the content is taken from a 13 years old publication - hasn't HM done anything since 1995? There is no original content of this website, all the pics are of low quality and are stuff which we have seen before, the songs have nothing to do with HM.

Back in the dark ages of Arabia some poets would make a living by writing poetry praising their Emirs and Sultans for the sole purposes of getting a money reward from the Sultan. This looks like the digital age version of that practice.

Sangeetha Sridhar said...

Blue-Chi

Tks for the comment. So you mean we need more quality content?

Amjad said...

I think such a project should only be handled by the Ministry of Information (MOI). Is Hamoud bin Mohammed bin Salim Alazri from the MOI or has he been assigned by the MOI for this project?

There are tremendous of websites on the Internet that talk about HM's history and include some photos of him that were started by Omanis individuals. If such a neat project is to be presented to His Majesty in the 38th National Day, it better not be one of those websites on the Internet that were done by individuals and better be something official that was supervised by the MOI. Also, I think the URL of the website is somehow inappropriate. A personal website for the country's leader, in order to make it a bit professional and official, should be under the country's trademark (i.e. .om). So, it should be www.qaboos.com.om or something like that.

I still didn't look more into the content, but I think Blue Chi gave a fair feedback on the content itself.

Ali Hassan Al Lawati said...

i loved the idea

i am feeling now why i didnt try to do something like this before :)

i am with blue-chi we need more up to date content

Sangeetha Sridhar said...

Amjad

It's great to one of Muscat's revered blogger respond here. It's motivating....

Are you visiting Oman mid-december by any chance?

Ali

I too felt the same way....But then I would have taken this project more seriously and sought offical support and placed some exclusive, official and comprehensive content.

With the Oman Web Awards being launched, is it not timed right!!! Am I crystal gazing......!

Anonymous said...

This is great to see and a proud product. Whatever things will be done, it will be followed by comments of both kinds. Some will say against and some others says good. But at the same time, we need to understand the hard work done by those people to make some thing like this. Why not others tried for it? If they were trying to get something out of this, why did they went for 7 languages. They would have done only in one language-Arabic. But the 7 languages shows the sincerety and the hardworks done. Please understand that. All the Best Wishes. :)

Sangeetha Sridhar said...

Anonymous

I liked your overarching perspective.I will let the guys involved in this project know of your wishes.

Tks for yr comments. Hope to meet you at the Bloggers Meet Masquerade.

Anonymous said...

didnt read all the comments but
This cannot be an official site ..
you guys should see this sit ...

its official for king of jordan
http://www.kingabdullah.jo/