Today more Maldivian developers opt to develop web services targeted to the Maldivian community. We have some amazing Maldivian web services online today. I will highlight some of these services which most of us visit in a regular basis and check for updates or participate in them as they could.

1 - WWW.MVBLOGS.ORG

MV blogs founded in early 2006 is by far one of the most popular Maldivian web services. Syndicating the Maldivian blogs started a new generation of Maldivian online users. MV blogs played a key role in changing the Maldivian web trend from the Forum era to the beginning and the increase in bloggers. Starting with approximately 50 blog now MVBlogs list 1300+ blogs with an approximate average of 60 blog post updated daily (stats based on August First weeks blog updates).  One of the most recent updates is the separation of photoblogs from written blogs and grouping of entries in the home pages which was implemented on 24th March 2007.

2 - WWW.MVHEADLINES.COM

MV Headlines is another syndication service but this time it is the syndication of the Maldivian online news and magazines in Dhivehi language. MV Headlines provides us with most recent news updates from major online media such as Haveeru, Aafathis, Miadhu, Haama, Minivan, Hamaroalhi and Jazeera. News is also categorized in to Most recent, Popular, Maldives, Business and Sports news. The clean and simple interface of MVheadlines is an all Dhivehi version.

3 - WWW.RADHEEF.COM

Radheef is the Dhivehi online dictionary by Technova Developer Jawish Hameed. The Dhivehi words and its definitions originate from the Radheef software released by the National Center for Linguistic and Historical Research Center. Real time search capability with the help of AJAX technology is quite an attractive feature. Radheef is a useful tool if you work with Dhivehi and have questionable command over Dhivehi vocabulary. As I am a regular Dhivehi writer I am inclined to use radheef.com a lot and I’m sure you will find it quite helpful too.

4- WWW.DOMO.MV

Domo is a mobile social network application. It is a useful resource to make friends, micro blogging, upload photos, download wallpaper and ringtones and much more for mobile entertainment. It seems there is going to be a downloadable pc version coming soon which has been much anticipated by the domo community. Currently there are approximately 500 Social Monsters in Domo.mv

5 - WWW.RAAJJE.TV

With a recent interface change raajje.tv is striving and imprinting its mark on the WWW and the Maldivian video blogging community. It is a video sharing system and supports several video formats.  The kewl give away competitions have paid off as total number of video goes above 700 with a user base reaching above 800. More and more users tend to return back

6 - WWW.MOLV.COM

From the creators of Raajje.tv recent startup web service is the mobile to web live video streaming service Molv.com. Only in alpha development stage yet and invites only participation but gaining a major main stream locally and internationally. With the increase in wifi hotspots and Wataniya 3G service local usage is anticipated to hype in a fast pace.  Just carry your ready to shoot broadcasting camera (your mobile phone with molv application) and share the memorable moments live on molv.com

Highlighted above are just some services I have knowledge about. If I had missed any just let me know in comments or by email so that I could feature it some time.  By the way if you want to feature a web/tech event or startup on 92.6 HFM tech talk just send an email to tech[ a t ]hfm.com.mv leave contact details we will get back to you.

Early 2007 I was doing a research and came across this awesome search engine. Ms.Dewey. Don’t be offended to her sultry demeanor, but it surely is pretty hard to deny that interfacing with her is far more visually appealing than staring at an almost blank sheet at Google. Which is the first thing that almost everyone sees when they go to search the internet. That famously clean sheet of paper with the colorful Google logo is the most popular Web page in the entire World Wide Web. For millions and millions of Internet users, that simple white page is THE INTERNET

However I recommend you to spend around 15 minutes interacting or at least experience (if u can spare some time) the little fun searching with Ms.Dewey. It’s fully flash based so you may not get much of a great search experience but as mentioned earlier you could step out of the regular search trend for a little while and experience something different.

“In 1887 Maldives became a British protectorate.After 78 years on July 26, 1965, Maldives gained Independence under an agreement signed with United Kingdom.“

Happy Independence Day to all Maldivians.
May we always see the Maldives flag fly high
Honoring the many sacrifices of our forefathers;
Encouraging us to seek prosperity; and
Reminding us to be united under one God.
May God Bless the Maldives
So that it may be home for you, home for me.

Image Courtesy: Dude Crush (Hani Amir)

Text By : Mohamed Nasheed

Since 18th of June 2008 I have been writing for the technology section of Haveeru. My Articles is been published on its print and online version every Wednesday. Technology has always been a passion and I have an ambition to work in creating an IT aware community. I hope that through the means of Science and Technology section of Haveeru I could be able to reach out the general audience and create awareness amongst my readers. I would be targeting my content on Personal technology, new trends and Gadgets in the Industry, as well as general security awareness and best practices.

Feedback and comments on my writing technique would be a great help in future articles. Also if you feel that I should concentrate on certain topics do let me know and I’ll try and see what I could do.

Maldives claims victory against the mighty Indian National team at the SAFF championship finals this evening. Maldives lifts the regional soccer competitions golden crown and wins the first gold medal in Maldivian football history. Well done team Maldives and Congratulations for your effort. Throughout the Globe all Maldivians are demonstrating their support in RED. The theme was and has been “Mee Aharamenge Faharu” which translates as “this is our time ”

[ Updates ] : MVBlogosphere is flooded with bloggers appreciations to Maldivian National Team. keep showing your support

Image Courtesy : www.maldivesoccer.net

In Less than a month’s time Firefox version 3 is going to be released. Firefox is a community build, community driven web browser which is covering 170 million users around the world and an 18 percent share of the browser market. That is especially impressive given that most of its users have made the active choice to download the software, while Internet Explorer (which is used by about 75 percent of all computer owners) is installed on most PCs at the factory. Main reason for that is the browsing is faster, browser is secure and is very much customizable

The Firefox community is always up to some cool, collaborative way to declare their passion for Firefox. Firefox 3’s team is looking to set a Guinness World Record for Most Software Downloaded in 24 Hours. They have set up a “Download Day 2008” page to organize the effort. The download date for the browser is still not announced but is expected to be sometime in June.

With the backing of the large Firefox community we all know it could be achieved. And it’s a whole lot easier and safer than doing some weird Asian records ;). All you have to do is download Firefox 3 when it goes live on Download Day.

In the meantime check out Download Day Headquarters and pledge to download Firefox 3 and to be informed of the event. And get the word out; tell your friends, your neighbors, your grandma, anyone and everyone to participate in Download Day.

Plans are already been made to host the MvFirefox launch Party to mark the release of the version 3 in the Maldives. A similar event was hosted in the year 2006 to mark the release of the version 2 as well. Mvfirefox party is organized by a group of open source and firefox lovers in the Maldives.

Web site of the Maldives oldest telecommunication service provider “Dhiraaagu” has acquired a new look. Without many distinctly new features the beta version of their website is publically accessible. Dhiraagu has not yet issued any announcements of its beta release or news on when it shall be declared as final version.

A clean white and gray user interface is what most people will consider the major change. Dhiraagu Website offers extensively large number of data, application forms, product details and services. Despite quantity navigation throughout the website is significantly easy. The online Shop has also been improved a lot and could be noted as one of the major enhancement. Dhiraagu like most other huge firms in Maldives has an appetite for great multimedia advertisement; although quite seen I really love the way the designer has incorporated those flash advertisement. Fault reporting, commenting and feedback have noteworthy simplicity too.

On seeing the facelift, like me, others shall be expecting an interface change for the websms page. At the time of writing the websms login was within the new interface, thereon wards it’s the old look again. But im pretty confident that websms page would have major changes in the final version. As most of you I also wish that we could apply for services without printing the PDF files, that is a feature I do want.

With the new look I thought it would be a right time to take a look in to the previous design of Dhiraagu website. In the past Dhiraagu website has not got many major interface changes. I notice there were only three major changes to the website interface. The first version since 2002 had an interface and feature changes in the first quarter of the year 2004. With the changes to Dhiraagu logo, slogan and the color the previously mentioned interface got a paint change from blue to red, the design and application remained same. Since beginning of 2004 the website had just had minor and mandatory changes to the interface until this beta release which demonstrates a significant improvement and proves that Dhiraagu is also blending with today’s web generation.

As this is a beta version Dhiraagu is expecting user feedback for improvement. This could be your chance to include or alter the changes you would like.

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We did hear about shutdown day 2007 and we are now hearing about shutdown day 2008 and thing like that kept me wondering. We are so dependent on web services and applications like Google. Can we go by a day without Google?

I don’t know about you but like most other web user I am very much depended on Google. Its services and Applications are incorporated in to our daily routines. To start off let me tell you all about one typical day of my life with Google.

First of all, all my mails are stored on the 6638MB [at the time of writing] of storage space available on the Gmail. All my email communications go through the Gmail web interface. My @maldives.net.mv and my corporate emails are all auto forwarded to the Gmail inbox. Unlike most others I receive quite a low count of mails into my inbox but these also needs to be taken care of promptly so I have a habit of being logged into Gmail at all times. As I’m not a fan of Google Notifier or the Google Talk client as it is another software piece which needs to be installed on the Computer. I am more interested with Google as a web service than a desktop service

There aren’t many contacts that I instant message on Google Talk. But some random people along with one of my closest buddy use Google talk to IM so sometimes I use Google talk as an instant messenger but still MSN is the most preferable solution.

One main reason that I do not get much mail in to my inbox is because I efficiently use Google Reader as a source of notification. I go with RSS subscription to keep me updated on News, Blogs and other frequent information sources. For example I read recent submission to mvBlogs and Digg technology via my Google Reader. I check the updates on Flickr Photos and YouTube Videos tagged Maldives; via Google reader. So I’m very much involved with Google Reader day in and day out. I have 59 RSS subscription and most of them get an average of 15 updates per day. I read almost 150 – 200 articles from my Google Reader on a daily basis.

Scheduling appointments, Reminders and Birthday notification has been a necessity in my busy life. Google Calendar with the feature of sending SMS notification to Wataniya mobiles shifted my trend of saving above mentioned data’s on my mobile phone to a better alternative which is the Google Calendar.

I write a lot of stuff for my blog, some general articles, reports and documents in my professional career. Before it is been published or goes official I always make it a habit to get the view of my colleagues, and industry friends. What better way is there to share a document for collaboration than the Google Docs? Google Docs has also become a very frequent use in my life.

I use Google Adsense to generate small revenue for my blogs and web services I am part of. I use Google Analytics to monitor the statistics for my website and help me analyze my websites and blog for optimizations. To view a website originating in a foreign language we get the help of Google Translate. Youtube is another application owned by Google which gets major views from me and most others who are reading this blog. Speaking of blog most of the Maldivian blogger’s user Blogspot (Blogger which happens to be owned by google) as a host for blogging. And of course we should not miss the important role the Google Search engine plays in the daily life of us. For searching, Image searching, converting currencies and measurements Google search is yet the most popular option.

With Google so much involved in our lives can we spend a day without Google or its services? I am expecting it would be a very hard time for most of us. But what I believe is we should not be that dependent. What if a natural tragedy or a man made incident in some part of the world makes us unable to communicate with any of the Google Data centers for an extensive period? What if a Blackhat Hacker or a likely community deliberately disrupts the internet traffic with a virus/worm or a similar attack which could result an internet black out or a cyber Tsunami. These things could happen at anytime what alternatives do we have to overcome such a situation. What is your say about this?

Haveeru Management unleashed its FM Channel HFM 92.6 this morning. This 24 hour channel was granted broadcasting license on the 21^st of February 2008. If you are in Male’, tune in to HFM 92.6 or else listen to the live streaming from its website www.hfm.com.mv. A more interactive website is on its way.

As stated in a previous post of mine I have joined the HFM team as an RJ and am scheduled to present “Tech Talk” every Friday evening from 08:00PM to 09:00PM along with my co-host Ahmed Niyaz (Niyazbe). Tech talk is a talk show which will bring science and technology information and news with hot product and service features and geek trends. A lot of surprises are in store for you so stay tuned.

Please spread the word, here are some designs you could use

MSN Display Pictures. [right click image and click save as to save the Display Pictures]

HFM WallPaper [right click on desired size and click save as to save the wallpaper]

iphone, Standard_1024×768, Standard_1280×960, Standard_1400×1050, Standard_1600×1200, wide_1280×800, wide_1440×900, wide_1680×1050, wide_1920×1200

[Image Courtesy : HFM 92.6 ]

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What I believe is everything we do in the course of our life should have a value. It should be targeted for an audience and should be welcomed and appreciated by them to gain some value. I’m not a marketing person never have been and never had tried, so I might not be the best person to judge the previous remark I have made. However I’m pretty much involved with the WWW so I have the basic understanding of site popularity and its attractiveness in basics the value of web products. For a product or a web service to become a popular it needs to be accepted by the targeted audience. It must have a promising feature or the functionalities for them to return back the other day or days to come. Return hits is what counts for the future uphold of a certain product.

There are a lot of web products or services that have earned thousands or millions of hits which gets converted to money value some time throughout the way. Some gain popularity in a short period of going online. Some manage to be popular for a long time others are overthrown by a mighty force in this cases another website or a service which claims or is better than the previous service.

There are a lot of websites owned by Maldivian. Most of which are blogs, Photo Portals, community forums, or corporate website. Even thought the count is low there are quite a remarkable amount of web services out there owned by the creative Maldivians. I’m not going to name any service yet. But I plan to come up with some names in the weeks to come.

But before that I have the grand question for all webmasters out there. Is your website or web service useful or accepted by the general public? Do you feel your website is offering a service which could make a difference? What is the difference in your product than that of the similar Maldivian or international services? Do you think your web service could compete in the international league?

I expect a response to my questions. You may answer them in a blog post or simply in the comment box below. If you publish a blog post ensure to comment on this blog so that I could refer them. This is a very simple request with no promised rewards from me “YET”. But this will definitely give others a broader prospect on your website or web service. And who know you might get a call back from someone willing to invest your web service. After all you wouldn’t sit and update your blog or run a web service if you do not expect an audience.