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By Khaled A., on April 25th, 2010
Good timing especially after the unfortunate things that happened here (Arabic post) but not here (English version).
The issue of Arabic content and intellectual property is serious. We Saudis will never understand or come to terms with copy rights or intellectual properties because we were never taught that in school (thanks Essam). It starts with copying a homework.
That original issue should be resolved by simply saying “this is a quote” cause it’s a full quote from my post. Looks like “through SaudiMac” is enough. kbo.
Anyway, Jassim has started a public discussion in Arabic on his blog about intellectual property. Feel free to join the discussion.
By Khaled A., on January 16th, 2010
Make sure to check this list of Arabic web sites, I mean apps, strange, in Arabic it’s مواقع = websites but it’s web apps = تطبيقات الويب. Enough nitpicking. Here’s the list of Arabic Web Apps:
- Mashahd TV OnDemand network. A good example that proves you don’t need to add YOUTUBE/TUBE in your site’s name.
- Qabas min Hikmah (to quote from wisdom). A database of wise quotes.
- WA9.LA (link). iTiny. URL shortening services.
- Gwasah (submarine, gather your friends and sail in the submarine). Allows you and your friends to have private discussions.
- Kanashah. Online notes web app.
- Auto Survey. Arabic survey tool.
- Zahma o La (is it crowded or not). Monitor King Fahad bridge (between Saudi Arabia and Bahrain) activity.
- Mo3jam (dictionary). A dictionary of colloquial Arabic terms.
- Kammelna (Complete us, a Belote term). Online Belote card game. Belote is a popular in Saudi Arabia.
- Arabic Keyboard. Because you can’t find an Arabic keyboard everywhere you go.
- Bedkash. Classified ads.
- iconty (My Icon). Arabic icon search engine. For designers.
- Uzerat (Users). The BugMeNot for Arabic websites. Find logins for sites that demand your registration.
- Hide 2 Me. Share multiple links in a single short link.
- Read Now. A stumbleupon for Arabic reading content.
Voting will begin next Friday.
By Khaled A., on March 18th, 2009
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).
By Khaled A., on March 9th, 2009
The first DemoCamp Saudi Arabia which is a launch event for new products, technologies and companies will be held at King Saud University in Riyadh at 6:00p.m. on Wednesday 11th of March 2009 in hall 26.
The websites that are participating in DemoCamp Saudi Arabia are: 3zeema, Fwateer, Moshtry, Kammelna and Books-Exchange. You can find more information about it on their official website.
By Khaled A., on February 25th, 2009
In case you didn’t know, in CES 2009 Palm announced their latest phone, the Palm Pre. You can watch the Palm Pre announcement video presented by Jon Rubinstein, an Executive Chairman at Palm and former head of hardware engineering at Apple.
The US Palm Pre will be a CDMA phone, in other words it will not work in GSM countries. Palm didn’t announce any official GSM release. All they said is soon. And the only thing we have are pictures of a Vodafone SIM card in a Palm Pre. Keep an eye on this page for any updates.
If you think Apple’s presence in the middle east was bad then you haven’t seen Palm. They don’t have a middle east page, Palm never supported Arabic and their own dealer is a company in the UAE called ITE. Unless Palm sells the Palm Pre GSM unlocked I see no way for it to even arrive in Saudi Arabia.
Update: and now we have a launch date. As usual, CDMA (US) only for now.
Update (6 Dec 2009): According to this post on the Palm Pre forums, Palm’s response showed no interest in adding Arabic to the Palm Pre.
By Khaled A., on December 19th, 2008
I am sure you are already experiencing a slow connection to the Internet. That’s because an Internet cable in the sea was cut, again. Saudi Arabia, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Egypt, Taiwan and Pakistan are effected by it the most and it will probably take until December 31st to be fixed.
Read more about it at Bloomberg, AFP, BBC and The Associated Press.
By Khaled A., on October 6th, 2008
Google is looking for engineers and managers in the Middle East region. The positions are listen on the Google Jobs site.
The available positions are: Engineering Site Director (Arabic Fluent), Product Manager, Tech Lead Manager and Software Engineer.
By Khaled A., on September 9th, 2008
I have been a World of Warcraft subscriber since 2005, probably one of my favorite games and I switched from Final Fantasy XI Online.
I am not sure of how many players in Saudi Arabia or the Middle East do play it though. But I am aware of a huge player base in Dubai, UAE and montada.com, one of the biggest Arabic speaking gaming forums, have an entire forum dedicated to World of Warcraft. People there still openly talk about buying gold and private servers though (which are against the rules of the game).
You can buy the game (and monthly game cards) locally from Jarir bookstore… yeah, not just a bookstore, silly slogan.
My issue with Blizzard is that the extra features available to most subscribers are inaccessible for subscribers in Saudi Arabia. For example, a service for reinventing former world of warcraft subscribers, “Scroll of Resurrection” is inaccessible because of “Your account is not allowed to access to this page because of its country”. Same goes to the Recruit-a-Friend program where you get this error “Not all accounts are eligible to recruit a friend. For a full list of restrictions, please see the FAQ“. Contacting Blizzard support is useless since they reply with no information at all, and it sounded like an automated response anyway.
I do not want Blizzard to open local Middle East servers or have an Arabic localized World of Warcraft client, I just want access to those services which are easy to implement.
By Khaled A., on June 4th, 2008
Interesting research done by the Arab Advisors Group regarding the annual Total Country Connectivity Measure (TCCM).
Household mainlines penetration, cellular penetration and Internet users penetration rates in Saudi Arabia is %207.9. Compared to 2006, Saudi Arabia moved to 3rd place from 4th in 2006.
Intertek announced that the Saudi Arabian Standards Organization (SASO) has accredited its electrical laboratory in Riyadh. The company believes that this accreditation will bring benefits to its clients both in the Kingdom and overseas who wish to have products tested for conformity to the Saudi Standards, Gulf Regional requirements or International requirements.
More at Arab News website.
By Khaled A., on September 30th, 2006
Seagate outlines its plans the channel structure in the region after aquiring Maxtor.
In terms of distributors there will be six in the [Middle East] region selling both the Seagate and Maxtor product lines … ESAP in Saudi Arabia and Almasa will sell Maxtor lines only while both Delta and Jarir will operate as retail distributors.
This is good, I hope to see more competition to the dominant-in-Saudi-market Western Digital. But from the looks of it, Jarir are always overpriced (bought a mouse that I found for 100SR less at Best). As for ESAP, I never heard of them before, the only info I found about them is the number found here).
(Source: ITP)
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