This is a less hectic week, come on, collectively breath a sigh or relief. Normal life has (almost) returned to Bahrain!

A week where: Ali7 agrees with Jakob Nielsen in that blogs, just like normal websites, need to follow some reasonable usability guides. He stresses the point however that trusting your writing efforts to free blogging engines is probably not the right way of going about things as the author would lose control of what he wrote. (Arabic)

Ali Al-Saeed is now not only a writer, but a co-producer of a documentary that is in the process of being shot by an American film company in Bahrain dealing with women leaders in the Gulf. He's also been tasked to write the documentary's accompanying book.

Zainab Al-Khawajah tells us a bit about her Christmas holidays which she has spent in London; protesting in front of the Bahraini Embassy, speaking at Hyde Park's Speakers’ Corner and visiting five human rights organisations handing them reports about Bahrain.

Haitham Sabbah, on the other hand, wishes that he was a parrot!

Discrimination against the Shi'a is the theme discussed this week by Jaffar Al-Omran.

Last but not least, we now have a fellow blogger elected to the Steering Committee of Bahrain's largest political party: Al-Wefaq National Islamic Society. Tawfiq Al-Rayyash was one of 60 candidates for the 30-member body that will decide on all future directions of the party, including whether they will participate in the forthcoming parliamentary elections. A very important post and we wish him luck in his new position and wish also that he continues blogging so that we know what's going on in that party and so that he may also benefit from other opinions.