Half full or half empty?

A recent poll on expat sentiments have local newspapers split on the proverbial glass:

Emirates Business 24/7:
More than a third of expats in region will opt to stay put

Arabian Business:
One in three expats poised to return home

So what's your take on it? UAE two-thirds full or one-third empty?

Statistics update

In January of this year this site passed 1 million page views and 600,000 unique visitors (compiled without any data from the first year because there is none)


(A view of traffic since August 2006 until today)

Here is an update of some statistics I last shared in April 2008 (unfortunately google analytics HTML code changed so there was a bit of information missing from those, in any case it should be pretty averaged out)

Blog creation date: 16th August, 2005 (running 1287 days as of the 23st of February 2009)
Blog members: 308 (up from 291)
Total number of published posts: 2838 (up from 2575)
Average number of posts per day: ~2.2 posts per day (down from ~2.6 posts per day)
Number of blogs linked to via blogrolls (according to blogrolling.com): 326

Total Page loads: 1,035,621 (up from 649,470) (source: statcounter)
Total Unique Visitors: 626,086 (up from 371,279) (source: statcounter)
Most visitors on one day: 31st December, 2008 (4,812 views, 3415 unique visitors according to statcounter) up from: (14th January, 2008 3532 views, 2082 unique visitors according to statcounter)

Technorati authority rating: 77 (up from 73); ranked 65,900 out of 133 million blogs (up from 123,627 out of 121 million blogs)
Number of blog reactions (according to technorati): 474 (up from 373)

Most popular page (is still): http://uaecommunity.blogspot.com/2005/10/dubai-then-and-now-1991-vs-2005.html (1.01%, down from 1.10% of page views) (source: google analytics)

Average time spent on this website: 2 minutes and 39 seconds (source: google analytics)

Highest traffic countries:

• United Arab Emirates 60.30% (down from 60.58% of traffic)


• United States 13.37% (down from 13.53% of traffic)


• United Kingdom 5.39% (up from 5.26% of traffic)

Number of countries having accessed this site: 195 out of 195 countries (up from 183 out of 193 countries)

(This section takes only UAE-based visitors into account)

Most popular browsers:

• Internet Explorer 65.01% (down from 65.53% of traffic)


• Firefox 24.90% (down from 25.76% of traffic)


• Safari 6.83% (up from 5.79% of traffic)

Most popular operating systems:

• Windows 89.33% (down from 90.50% of traffic)


• Macintosh 10.21% (up from 9.02% of traffic)


• Linux (stayed at 0.31% of traffic)

Screen resolutions (never published this previously):

• 1024x768 = 44.06% of visitors


• 1280x800 = 21.26% of visitors


• 1280x1024 = 9.43% of visitors

Random tidbits:

• 35,823 or 7.74% of people have accessed this site more than 201 times (down from 8.52% of people)


• 6 people people have accessed this site using a playstation portable (compared to 3 previously)


• 0.05% of visits were from an iphone

Miscellaneous Statistics

For anyone interested:
Blog creation date: 16th August, 2005 (running 979 days as of the 21st of April 2008)
Blog members: 291
Total number of published posts: 2575 (3123 including drafts)
Average number of posts per day: ~2.6 posts per day
Number of blogs linked to via blogrolls (according to blogrolling.com): 326

Total Page loads: 649,470 (source: statcounter)
Total Unique Visitors: 371,279 (source: statcounter)
Most visitors on one day: 14th January, 2008 (3532 views, 2082 unique visitors according to statcounter)

Technorati authority rating: 73; ranked 123,627 out of 121 million blogs
Number of blog reactions (according to technorati): 373
Most used tags on this blog, in alphabetical order (according to technorati)
abu dhabi, animals, bloggers, cars, dubai, horseracing, horses, human rights, information access, labour, news, police, traffic, uae, arts and culture - dubai, censorship, construction, construction accident, construction site accident, du, dubai architecture, eid, internet censorship, proxy, rta, salary, salik, sheikh mohammed, telecommunications regulatory autority, uae driving,

Most popular page: http://uaecommunity.blogspot.com/2005/10/dubai-then-and-now-1991-vs-2005.html (1.10% of page views) (source: google analytics)
Highest traffic countries: United Arab Emirates (60.58% of traffic), United States (13.53% of traffic), United Kingdom (5.26% of traffic)
Number of countries having accessed this site: 183 (out of 193 countries)

(This section takes only UAE-based visitors into account)
Most popular browsers: Internet Explorer (65.53% of traffic), Firefox (25.76% of traffic), Safari (5.79% of traffic)
Most popular operating systems: Windows (90.50% of traffic), Macintosh (9.02% of traffic), Linux (0.31% of traffic)

Random tidbits:
8.52% of people accessing this site have accessed it more than 201 times.
3 people have accessed this site using a playstation portable.