by Times of Oman

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."