This short paper constitutes the first phase of a long-term project focused on probing American urban culture by examining the hyperlinks and text of personal weblogs. It discusses methods of extracting geographic location information from weblogs and ways of indexing weblogs to city units.

The continuing difficulty of finding a solution to the physical return of the Palestinian Diaspora to the homeland is increasingly being addressed in the digital realm by the rise of virtual communities. PALESTA (Palestinian Scientists and Technologists Aboard) established at the end of 1997 in order to “harness the scientific and technological knowledge of expatriate professionals for the benefit of development efforts in Palestine”, has been one of the most important internet-based networks that have been developed to assist this process.