Message board omania.net to team up
with ohitariq.net
MUSCAT — Oman’s first and most
popular English and Arabic message board www. omania.net, and Oman’s best and
number one portal, omania.net, will join hands today.
While this tie-up will surely be mutually beneficial, the other side to this
interesting combination is that this will also help increase the already
burgeoning number of Internet users in Oman today.
This is one tie-up that will put the smile on Oman Telecommunications Company
(Omantel) for more users naturally mean better returns for them. Users will
have a fine time browsing through the two sites as the message board features
interesting and intriguing discussions based on Oman and includes general
information, business, education, information technology, buy and sell, and it
even offers an opportunity to share personal problems, exchange poems and
music etc.
The O-O (Omania-Ohitariq Message Board) message board, named thus after they
decided to tie-up, can now be accessed either through www.ohitariq.net or
www.omania.net Saeed Al Rashdy, who works for Majlis Al Shura as a network
administrator, is the owner and the creator of the message board.
His website has been in existence since 1997. The site was initially designed
for tourists, offering information on Oman and organising visas, hotel and
tour bookings.
In December 1999, the site turned into a fully Arabic, namely Sablat Al Arab,
and then subsequently the English message board was born.
"Indeed, it is a pride to join hands with ohitariq.net, Oman’s number one
portal. And personally, I feel good to join hands with Tariq Hilal Al Barwani,
Internet services manager of OHI Telecommunications Co. LLC, who is not just
an old but also a very close friend of mine. We were also for a brief period
college-mates," Saeed told Times Business.
According to Saeed, the site receives over 70,000 hits per day.
A few months back, his site was down because of the heavy load the server
received.
This was due to the heavy traffic caused by the high number of visits from the
Internet, he recalled.
"The hosting provider shut down my site as they were handling other 250 sites,
and they advised me to move the site to a sole and dedicated hosting in order
to maintain and control the traffic," Saeed said.
The message board is being moderated by a group of friends and experts with
fancy names like Kamakazy, Mukundh, Laughingrose, I_Maskery, Zachariah, tim@mi
, Fishfood21, Creative and DVDROM who constantly keep a close watch on the
content of the messages posted. They are in charge of this and edit and delete
whenever and wherever necessary, especially when the content is felt to be
either harmful to any community or attempted to propagate profanity.
The registration is free and simple. "Once you are a member, you can enjoy the
benefits of exchanging your information and ideas with other members," Saeed
noted.
Apart from discussions, the site features free services such as greeting
cards, downloads, emails, etc.
Tariq said: "Joining hands with Sablat Al Arab, www.omania.net, English side
is certainly going to benefit ohitariq.net portal for the high hit rate the
message board has been receiving daily. And it is my need to see people in
Oman increase their interest in computer and technology per se.
This is very important to me and I am constantly trying to encourage people to
get themselves interested in the Net. I always urge them to start posting,
reading other people postings and return by viewing when other people respond
to their postings," Tariq said.
The tie-up of the successful portal and message board is definitely going to
create ripples, he noted.
"I must say that this should be good news for Omantel too as the Internet
users will increase and stay longer in the net, and subsequently generate good
returns."