Accommodation: Qatarliving will give you few options to choose from. Also ads in daily newspaper such as gulftimes(under classifieds). If your budget is higher and stay is longer (say minimum 6 months to 1 yr), try few real estate websites like ezdan, dtz, etc. For short term you will have many options within the CBD such as serviced apartments or studio flats. There are few independent agents/ brokers who cater to certain group of people - such as only for Asians or Europeans or British or Filipinos and so on.
Few friends: haha! not sure! I hope to get some info through this forum!
Good luck:)