Almost everybody is blogging his own review of 2005, picking some of it’s good and sharing his plans of 2006, so here is mine:


Last January I was hired to do a web design and development as a full time job and I wanted to do something unique and new, specially in my region (The Middle East and Dubai), and after a good search I decided to buy Zeldman’s book “Designing with Web Standards”, at first I didn’t know what is all these standards about and didn’t know the author himself neither, after reading the book I understood that I was missing a very big deal of the Cyberspace nowadays, a lot of trends, knowledge and stuff are waiting out there. Very special thanks to Zeldman to the doors he opened to me through his book and blog, thanks to the Web Standards Community and ALA writers, who shared their knowledge for free, everyday some more knowledge, something new to read, a lot on the schedule to learn.


A year from now I was using IE and its favourites for bookmarking, depending my whole day on some desktop applications, subscribed to a lot of newsletters that I didn’t really read.. but now in 2006 I’ve noticed that I’m completely changed:
I use del.icio.us for my Bookmarks.
I use Bloglines to read my favourite blogs (I’m not subscribed to newsletters anymore).
I use 37signals products (Ta-da, BaseCamp and BackPack) to organize myself and my work better.
I log my music on AudioScrobbler, discovering some new music on Last.FM.
I’m rolling on Ruby on Rails, and enjoying Ajax.
I started some new projects like Amidship (with Mohanad Alyajouri) and FRESH PX (with Abdelrahman Osama).


2005 was really a fruitful year for me where I learned a lot and I think it’s time now in 2006 for some real achievements and some real work.