In the last few days we as bloggers, tweeples (and whatever other word you’d like to associate to it) suffered a great loss.

Salman Mehmood who was more commonly known as ‘skdev’ online passed away at the age of 24. Personally I hadn’t known him very well, but for his actions online and for the blood drive campaigns that he often organized I respect him from the bottom of my heart.

He was already a Thalassemia major, and the blood drive he organized were for the treatment of the patients suffering from the same, but very recently he had been infected by Meningitis, for which he was admitted to Aga Khan University Hospital.

For about a week he suffered, his brain activity had gone zero and he was put on ventilator, which was finally removed on the 19th of October 2009.

During all this his sister Ayesha Mehmood, who he had always encouraged to move forward with the Blood drive kept us all updated via twitter, which was very kind and brave of her considering what she was going through watching her brother in the hospital.

During these days we saw most of the Pakistani blogger community praying for the better of Salman. We saw some deep emotions surface, since we on some level had interacted with Salman, and needless to say he was one awesome person, friendly, helpful and lively.

I offer my condolences to his family, and yes we will miss him, I want us to move forward with the Thalassemia project so his dream of getting rid of such disease in Pakistan can come true. Ameen.

Please take a moment and say a little prayer for Salman and his family. Thanks.

Tags: Aga Khan University Hospital, Ayesha, bloggers, blood, brain activity, community, death, Salman Mehmood, thalassemia, ventilator

Let’s do a little recap here.. shall we.

I went to Pakistan recently, and had a good time, which included the Tweet up, which I didn’t quite write about. It was one of the best things I attended in Pakistan since the Bloggers meet up. I met some more people, some really awesome ones, took really crazy (birdie poop) pictures, and socialized.

I also got to hang out with awesome folks there the same day (Anum Vighio, Imran Hassan, Umair Khan Jadoon, Taimoor, Sana Saleem, Aly B, Haris Nadeem, Enk, Byte Connector, Ayesha, Salman.. did I miss anyone ?)

Anyways, a few days later, infact the day I had to fly I also pulled out enough time to do a mini interview for CIO Pakistan, I felt good I did that

Anyways once back in Singaland, I had to finish up loads of work that piled up sometime last week, I stayed 3 days at office just to finish up work …. shweeeeeepp…. forward to yesterday.

We went out for fireworks wagera since it was National day here, but sadly reached too late.. anyways I ditched Hamaad and Saad, and went for Reverse Bungi which I enjoyed greatly, really really greatly Had food later, and celebrated Fraz’s birthday.

Also I m still up and haven’t slept yet, and it’s about 7 effin AM… gotta hit the sack now.. later.

Tags: 7am, alyb, anum, balach, bloggers, bungi, byte, CIO Pakistan, enk, friends, fun, hamaad, haris, Imran, national day, Rabia, reverse, saad, salaina, sana, singapore, taimor, Tweet up, Tweople, umair, work

With this post going up, I came to a realization that I’ve been putting up alot of energy in lots of things, keeping me fresh and popping with ideas, which obviously is a good thing, I always thought distration is a bad thing, but somehow I think it’s good to be distracted from time to time, to keep one self fresh.

Also aot has been happening lately, I put up the above image titled ‘Redbull – Energizing bloggers in Pakistan’, the reason I did that was because all the recent bloggers meet up have had free distribution of Redbull, thus keeping up active throughout the event, I thought we as bloggers should thank them some how, thus the image.

As that image was uploaded to deviantart and facebook, I thought would receive some comments on why bloggers are being associated with Redbull, turned out all the feedback I got was mostly positive, check out the facebook link and you’ll know.

Also since I m writing, I want to reach out to talented designers with knowledge and experience in XHTML, CSS, (PHP and Flash is a plus point).

Also I put up two new artworks, you might as well check those out.

Tags: awesome, bloggers, meet up, red bull, update, work

Hey folks, remember I had posted earlier that I enjoyed the Bloggers meet up in Karachi. I had appeared in front of a flip cam to record a lil video, that video is out now, check it out. Incase you don’t know me in person, I m the third person who appears in that video.

The video is a courtesy of CIO Pakistan.

Meet the Bloggers.

Tags: appearence, bloggers, cio, me, meeet, Pakistan, yaay

I’ve been bloggin for quite some time now, I used to do it ona friend’s hosting service before I got my own hosting for work reasons, it was much of a freedom after I had my own hosting. Blogging for me helped me to stay calm and all, you see I could say anything I want on my page, and no one could order me to bring down things, which is the best thing about writing online, you’re your own complete staff, so anyhow, it’s obvious that I would have been pretty excited about this event which was being hosted by Google Pakistan and CIO Pakistan. They had called for all the bloggers in Karachi, and people had come from even different cities to attend this event, which in my opinion is very awesome.

Let me jot down how my I experienced it, I was there with Ammar (RONIN), an hour earlier, which is not quite how the regular Pakistani does it, but honestly we didn’t actually know the way to Royal Rodale we had to find it, turned out the route wasn’t difficult at all. As we approached the hall where this event was being held, we saw a couple of advertisement stands of Google, Wateen, CIO outside in the corridor. As we entered we were greeted by Salaina, who was rather amazed that we had come before time, she handed us our “Hanging Passes” and we walked right into the hall, where the stage was being set up with minor changes being made, then we saw Saad and Haris with their laptops, sooner people had started to walk in, and it felt like something really good was building up, we also got hands on a Red bull, for free

Let me now jump to the main event, the meet up started a little late because of the participants arriving a little late, which is a norm though a not so good one, any how, Rabia took the stage and made the announcements and called Dr. Awab Alvi and Sabeen Mahmud on stage, where they discussed various issues took questions and obviously answered them

Then the microphone was handed over to Badar Khushnood, the only Google representative in Pakistan, and boy he made his points clear and pretty nicely, his basic talk was about the introduction of blogging to people who donot know how to blog or dont know about blogging at all.

Then we had Haris and Saad on stage who talked about Sizlopedia and Sizzledcore, from which they earn thousands of dollars a month, which is awesome.. Jaw dropping for many.

It was a panel questions and answers then, which was after Ramla got to talk about her venture and after Ammar talked about Teabreak.

One of the most important things about the panel discussion was when Shazia spoke, Shazia was a blind girl who was blogging, which made a difference for us because we could understand how they blog and read, being a CSS kid I knew a bit about it, but it was worth more for everyone else.

Then we all went for a Teabreak, I mean a real one.

The event was one that was informative and a very good way to socialize with each other too. We got to know lots of bloggers and their opinions on different topics, I got to meet Ali K. Chishti who’s a lawyer by profession but a funky guy otherwise.

I would love to see those bloggers united agian soon, Inshallah, and I hope more of this kind of events happen across the country.

Pictures:

More Reviews:

Blogger Meet up 2008 (Karachi)

#Karachi Bloggers Meet Up! ’08 – My Kind of Partaaayyyyyy

KBM ’08: An Offline Get Together Of Pak Bloggers

کراچی بلاگرز کی نشست

Tags: 08, ammar, awab, bloggers, freedom, haris, information, karachi, meet up, saad, sabeen, sppech, stand, talk, united

Teabreak has been reviewed on SAMAA TV, yes thats one more step to a bigger achievement

Congrats to the Tea Break team, and a big thanks to all our users and audience.

Tags: blog, bloggers, feature, love, media, presentation, review, sama, teabreak, tv