Even Hilter is angry at the Saudi Telecom Company (STC) and their crappy DSL service! He could only get 512kbps DSL to his house. Watch the video (Arabic subtitles):
Youtube video removed, it was posted here.
I understand his frustration with STC!
If anyone wants an English transcript I am willing to translate. Just ask. Special thanks to @yassoma from twitter for posting the link to the video.
I have translated it, here you go:
Update: Sabq has removed the photograph without adding any statements regarding the issue. They also censored all comments about the stolen photograph. From now on I will call Sabq (سبق) “Sarq” (سرق) as in “theft”.
In a news post ironically about theft, Sabq has included an image taken from Yousef Raffah without his permission.
Yousef Raffah is a photographer living in Jeddah and this is not the first time his photos were stolen. This is the original photograph:
Sabq is an electronic newspaper in Arabic. They should respect intellectual properties and credit the photographer instead of stealing it like that.
Why do we (generally Arabs, mainly Saudis) always go out of our way to not give credit? Look at this funny cartoon:
As you can see between the two cars, this image is made and copyrighted by “Daniel Bozet”.
However in this example the author took the time to crop out the credits from the image. Notice the crop lines between the cars:
This image was used on SaudiMac by Yara and she did not remove the credit. Riyan-C uploaded the image on flickr and he credited it as well.
This is a serious issue in our Arab community and we need to understand the basics of intellectual property.
Update: The link was removed by the request of the author of that post, he commented that he found the image like that.
This is a video done by Japanese students in Syria. It’s called “Alhamdulillah” (in Arabic ????? ???). It’s very funny and interesting to hear Arabic spoken by non-native speakers. I hope you will find it funny and amusing as well.
Titled “Arabic by Japanese ????? ??? ????? (Short Story)”.
Finally Apple added Arabic language support the their latest iPhone OS 3.0. This update is currently available as a beta for iPhone developers. The iPhone is now available in 4 Arabic speaking countries: Saudi Arabia, UAE, Jordan and Egypt. And it will be available in Qatar soon. (via SaudiMac).
The iPhone 3G is finally in Saudi Arabia and is provided by Mobily. Here’s what you need to know:
Mobily first announced these 4 bundles and two of those “prepaid” plans did not make any sense! A few days later they provided 6 more “postpaid” bundles. However they omitted one small requirement for these bundles is that you need to be a Mobily VIP customer!
The Mobily employees were clueless on the first day and clueless now! One of them even said, in response to the VIP bundles: “نØÙ† لا نريد أن ÙŠØصل كل من هب Ùˆ دب على آيÙون†which means “we do not want just anyone to have an iPhone!â€. There are even weirder Mobily stories on the first few days where some of the employees claim that the iPhone 3G in Saudi Arabia is LOCKED to the Mobily SIM card.
The Saudi Arabia iPhone 3G was tested with different SIM cards and it is unlocked! It is confirmed by Apple so when a Mobily employee claims that the iPhone 3G is locked then they are lying and you should ask for his manager.
Mobily claims an Arabic update from Apple is coming “soon”. They claim 3 months which is TOO LONG! You can jailbreak and buy iPhoneislam’s Arabtaller.
Five months ago I blogged about Arabic localization attempts for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Unfortunately just like “iPhone4arab“, iFone4arab also stopped updating his site, and that was before Macworld and the iPhone SDK event. For me, screenshots and videos are not enough, and so I still consider this Vaporware. Vaporware is according to Wikipedia: Vaporware is a software or hardware product which is announced by a developer well in advance of release, but which then fails to emerge, either with or without a protracted development cycle.
I don’t have to comment about iPhone4arab which promised Arab localization for the iPhone which was as far as I’m concerned is Vaporware. And claimed that he invented a method to unlock the iPhone while all he did was implement the iPhone Dev Team’s work.
The only people who are working hard on the Arabic localization for the iPhone as far as I’m concerned are the good people at iPhoneIslam. iTarek have been releasing Arabic character viewer for the iPhone for a few months now. And now they – with the help of a programmed named Waleed – released the application Arabtaller that includes full Arabic keyboard for the iPhone. I consider this the first and only Arabic keyboard for the iPhone. You can install it through the Installer.app and you can find the steps on iPhoneIslam’s site.
Thanks to Waiel at SaudiMac for the info.
I managed to get this posted on iPhone Central. Hopefully it gets more coverage and noticed by Apple:
Reader Khaled brought to our attention two separate groups, both working at bringing elements of Arabic language functionality to the iPhone. The first, at iPhone Islam, is aiming to bring Arabic character support to the iPhone via a downloadable application (you’ll apparently need Installer.app to do so). Unfortunately, my Arabic’s a little rusty from a couple years of disuse, so you’ll have to visit the site yourself if you want to figure out exactly what procedure you need to follow. The second, more ambitious project, at iFone4Arab.com has as its goal producing a native Arabic interface for the entire iPhone. While they don’t yet have a working version available, you can check out screenshots at their website, or a YouTube video of the interface in action. Pretty cool. We’re sure there will be official Apple Arabic at some point (presumably by the time the phone hits the Middle East), but in the interim, it might be worth checking out one or both of these if you’re in need of Arabic support on your iphone.
Its about time they pay some attention to this market. Now if they only sell Apple products at reasonable prices! (1600SR=426$ for a 299$ iPod 5G 30GB is too much!).
Apple plans Arabic iPod, OS X: “Arabic iPod users are looking forward to the day when Apple finally manages to release an Arabic iPod.“
(Via Macworld UK.)
I bought an iBook recently and I believe I need to talk about it. Apple Middle East needs to get its act together.
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