Arab dot Net

You sure have heard about the event taking place in Lebanon nowadays. Yes, I am speaking about ArabNet 2010, whose hashtag - #ArabNet - has made it to twitter's worldwide trending topics today. As far as I understand, Arab entrepreneurs demonstrate their startups there, and some sessions were given to them about fund raising, social marketing, etc.

I really like the idea of having such kind of events here in the region. To me it sounds more like DemoCamp, which took place earlier in UAE, Egypt, and may be other Arab countries as well. In fact, such events are as good as the quality of the startups in there, and the number of VC's and Angel Investors attending them. And I guess, given such huge buzz around ArabNet, a good number of investors should be attending it, on contrary to DemoCamp! Anyway, I am looking forward to seeing a list of the participating startups and a brief introduction on each of them.

Finally, as usual, some people here and there on twitter started to attack the event. And I am sure anyone of you will be able to expect what those attackers say even without listening to them. Exactly! They accuse the sessions to be boring, and criticizing the use of English language in the event while it's an *Arab* dot net. Deal with it guys, English is the de facto language for businesses nowadays, and if you really want to attract the likes of "Y Combinator", "Reid Hoffman", and "Benchmark Capital" you have to market your startup in English. And back to the coolness of the sessions thing, I haven't been there to tell, and so are most of the attackers.

Gimme some news to report

I've noticed lately that I almost blog once every month, while I used to blog daily or a bit less frequently years ago. And you know why is that? I then used to consider my blog as a loyal friend whom I like to talk to every now and then. Most of the time we used to chat like any pair of good friends. Later on, I started to take my blog more seriously. It's not my friend any more. Now it's my personal serious mini journal. I report some news, and comment on some other news. And guess what? I hate news, I am not interested in what happens in China, USA, or Palestine. Why should I report stuff that have already been reported in major news outlets!?

Ok, sometimes it is nice to write down my own point of view in what happens here and there, but at the end of the day, I am doing this because you are my friend, and not my serious journal or frowning magazine.

Can't stop time!

• I removed the batteries from all the clocks at home, but I forget to remove that of my mobile.
• I went to the track and started to jog in the opposite direction, but they didn't allow me to continue.
• .ti daer ot uoy rof drah eb lliw ti tub ,sdrowkcab enil siht gnitirw ma I
• I asked them to throw away all the calendars on my desk at work, but my laptop and blackberry kept on tilling me the date.
• I asked God to make my birthday wait for a while, but I was born in a leap year, and I will just be 30 years old in two days, even without having a birthday!

I hate to admit that, but I am going to be 30 in two days, and I still can't find a way to stop time :(

How can your blog post make it to Global Voices roundups

You sure have heard about Global Voices Online before. It's a service that tries to collect and translate blogs from all over the globe.

"Global Voices is a community of more than 200 bloggers around the world who work together to bring you translations and reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media", Global Voices About Section.

And many bloggers have been wondering about the secret sauce for a blog post to be noticed and included in a Global Voices roundup. And the answer is, there isn't any secret sauce out there, but let me try to invent my own secret formula based on my experience as an GV Author.

• Write about current events and breaking news soon: When an accident or an event takes place, we as authors find ourselves obligated to write about them as soon as possible, so most of the time the quickest bloggers to blog about an event are the most mentioned bloggers. You can take Zeinobia as an example here, I sometimes wonder if she writes about events the moment they happen, or do events just happen the moment she writes about them, and that's why it's really hard for us to ignore her blog posts, especially those posts about current events.
• Don't copy and paste from news websites: We tend to focus there on blogs and citizen media everywhere, so if you are going to just copy news articles from the the CNN or Almasry Alyoum's website, then we too can copy and paste articles. But the point is, we are not just a news website, we tend to report people's opinion about what's going on, instead of just reporting what's going on.
• Blog in English, in Arabic, or any other language: Sometimes I am too lazy to translate a post from Arabic to English, some other times I find that I'll not be adding any value if I am going to limit myself to only those posts written in English. So in brief we do not have any language preference there, but we, or at least me, prefer those articles written in clear and simple language that can easily be quoted or translated.

Finally, I have to say that we do not focus on breaking news only in Global Voices, but we just select whatever seems to be interesting, either they are blog posts, tweets, or whatever falls under the citizen media umbrella.

Disclaimer: What have been written here are just my own thoughts, and they do not reflect Global Voices official opinions or anything.

Old Retweets won't Die

Why do we retweet our friend's tweets? Do we really retweet them because they are valuable, and we want to share them with others? Ok, this is one possibility, but in fact, the real motive behind retweeting a post is that we find it valuable, so we attach our names to it, and wait for others to retweet our retweet with our names attached to it. It's the ego-factor that drives us her, and not just the love of sharing good stuff with others.

Such scenario worked really fine with the old manual retweeting system, but now with the new retweeting button, our names are removed from the heart of the tweets, and are replaced with a tiny picture at the bottom of the tweet, that no one cares to look at or click on it.

And that's why I believe that the old retweets will continue to be used, and the new retweets will only be used by lazy people like me, who are too lazy to press ctrl+v and ctrl+c.

23 Books I've Read This Year

I consider myself one of those people who prefer watching novels on the silver screen than reading them as a book. But I think I've read many books this year, they may be even more than those books that I've read during my entire life. I'll try to list them in a non chronicle order, along with my comments on them.

1. Virtigo, this one is an Egyptian novel written by Ahmed Mourad, and it has nothing to do with Hitchcock's movie that carries the same name. I consider it one of the best novels I've read this year.
2. The Kite Runner by the Afghani writer Khaled Hosseini. This is the second best novel I've read this year. In fact, it's hard to tell which one is better. And you know what, I am afraid to see the movie as it may ruins it.
3. Chicago and Neeran Sadeeka, i.e. Friendly Fire, by the Egyptian write Alaa El Aswany. Those two novels are good. Neeran Sadeeka is a combination of short stories while Chicago is a novel by itsown. As I said they are good, but not that much.
4. Wahet El Ghoroub, i.e. The Sunset Oasis, by Bahaa Taher. The writer was about to convince me to add it to my top-two list, but he ended the story in a way that ruined it.
   
5. Don't Make me Think, by Steve Krug. Ok this one is not a novel, but who said that I am going to list novels only here. This book is about Web Design and I read it after Ramez Mohamed of eSpace recommended it to me. It is really good and in face it made me think, a lot.
6. Azazeel, by Youssef Zeidan. This one was so controversial and this is what made me continue reading it, otherwise I'd have got bored of it after four or five chapters.
7. Maza Hadas Lel Masreyeen, Whatever Happened to the Egyptians by Galal Ameen. This one isn't a novel too, it's more like a sociological book that studies the changes that took place in the Egyptian community during the las few decades. It's a very nice book, and I think I may read it once more later on.
8. Tashreeh El Shakhseyya El Masreyya, by Ahmed Okasha. This one is a piece of crap, I didn't like it at all.
9. Turkey, the US, and Iraq, by William Hale. This is a political book about Turkey and it's relation with the United States during the last century. I really don't know why I decided to by such book, but after I started reading it, I liked it so much. It's really interesting and I learned good historical informations - yeah I know that information in uncountable, but I like to write it that way - from it.
   
10. Utopia, by Ahmed Khaled Tawfik. This is one of those books that I decided to finish them because I didn't want to look like quitters. But the truth is, I do not recommend it.
    
11. Who moved my Cheese. Anothe piece of crap, and a good proof that books surrounded by marketing buzz are a piece of shit.
12. Freud: A Very Short Introduction by Anthony Storr. As the title sais, it's a very short introduction but it was enough to introduce me to the Freudian influence on many aspects on our lives. It's a good read.
13. Super Cruncers. This is one of those books where the author starts to repeat himself after few pages. I got bored of it, and wasn't able to continue reading it.
14. Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe. Although it's somehow big compared to the knowledge in there, but it's not bad.
15. Relevance by Tim Manners, A New Brand World by Scott Bedbury, and The Cult of the Amateur by Andrew Keen. I really can't remember if I was able to finish any of them.
16. Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky. I think I read this one more than a year ago, but it worth being mentioned here as it's one of the best.
17. Blink and
    The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Those two books are interesting. I think they both worth being read.
18. The Essential Chomsky by Noam Chomsky, and Mobilities by John Urry. You may call me a dumb, but I failed to understand a single word of those two books.
    
19. How to Make Big Money in Your Own Small Business by Jeffrey J. Fox. Thumbs up, read it.
20. Human Instinct by Robert Winston. Read few chapters of it, liked what I've read but got bored of it. Seems to be good one, but it's not you, it's me.
21. Building Facebook Applications For Dummies by Richard Wagner. It's not bad for kindergarten students, but for me it was so trivial. I finished reading it by th way.
22. Penetration Testing and Network Defense by Andrew Whitaker. Same as the above, for me it was so trivial, but it's really good for Security gurus wannabes. I also finished reading this book.
23. Taxi by the Egyptian writer Khaled El Khamisy. I was about to forget mentioning this one, it's a combination of many short stories, or let's say short essays. It's really nice, and I liked reading it.
    

Two Thousand Twenty Four

Monday, February 5th 2024.

It's still raining since last night, but Winston Smith doesn't give a rat's arse about the rain. He has to hurry up as he has to be at the office before 8:00 AM. Winston saluted the doorman and climbed the stairs towards his office. There were cameras everywhere since it's Big Corporation's policy to keep an eye on each employee during his stay there. Big Corp or BC decided to replace the attendance system there with the Thought Monitoring System. It's a small gadget on each employee's desk and is connected to his brain via thin wires, it tracks what every employee is thinking of and send a daily report to the Thought Controller. Employees actual working hours are just those where their minds were engaged in business related thoughts. The mobile phone of each employee is monitored as BC's CEO believes that loose lips can sink corporations, so he has to monitor his employees conversations 24x7. He also has the ability to alter any part of those conversations, and edit it the way he wants before reaching the other party's ear. The internet is blocked in BC, and is replaced with BC's Intranet. Even Google is replaced with BC-Search where your search queries are monitored and only permitted results are displayed. Winston is a member of The BC-Search department. When an employee writes a search query in his browser, an new ticket is created on the system with the query details and is then sent to Winston's PC. Winston has to decide if the query is allowed or not, based on the employee's role in the organization, and the submitted keywords. He has a list of the allowed keywords for each employee. If the query is allowed he submits it to Google, and after receiving the results he has to inspect them one by one, and non-business results have to be removed, and business-related ones also has to be inspected in order to make sure that they do not contain any time wasting objects such as images, or multimedia files. Coffee and lunch breaks are something from the past. Employees are encouraged to take from one to two pills of DN17 everyday, which is enough to supply them with their daily nutritional requirements. Bathrooms are replaced with an advanced sanitation system connected to employees desk, so their bladders shouldn't distract them or let them waste any minute of their working hours.

O'Brien is another employee in BC, he is responsible for printing and distributing BC's Magna Carta. It's a daily document that includes BC's rules and policies, such as dress code, where to spend your weekends, and where not to spend it, who to befriend with and who to marry, etc. Winston was eager to talk with O'Brien. He wanted to know more about those daily rules, and how they are cooked and who inspired the CEO to put each specific rule. But due to the corporation's policies, employees aren't allowed to speak with each other. They are only allowed to communicated via emails and the emails has to contain business-related issues only.


P.S. This post is inspired by George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. And I've replaced Oceania and Big Brother with Big Corp. or BC as most of the businesses are on their way to become the next totalitarian régimes, and they are haunting their employees with policies and rules and it's possible that someday life in Oceania will be like heaven compared to their employees miserable lives in the future.

Swiss Identity

Can you imagine a cube of Swiss Cheese, without its eyes - the holes in it? Or a Swiss Knife without the compass or the screwdriver? This is exactly what the Swiss people want to do with mosques. A mosque will remain a mosques without its Minarets, and it will still function the way it is supposed to function without them. But it will then loose its architectural identity and beauty.

Oh, wait a moment, may be the Swiss people have problems with identities. Switzerland itself doesn't have enemies nor allies, it's just neutral. Switzerland doesn't even has its own language, people there speak three or four different languages. Yet, the people there are not French, German, Italian, Romanian, nor Swiss. In fact, this diversity makes the question of a national culture a recurring issue. It's just like water, colorless, odorless, and tasteless.

So, may be that's why they want everything to be just neutral and with no identity. Everything including the buildings there.

Suicidal Mood

Sometimes I get into a certain mood, and I like to call it suicidal mood. In fact, it has nothing to do with committing suicide, but it is a mood where I have enough courage - and sometimes carelessness - to do stuff I normally don't do in my other moods.

It's the suicidal mood that lets me get rid of stuff I used to store at home, although I never use them. It's also the mood that let's me say something to some girl that I'd never say in my other moods. It also lets me make crazy decisions and take uncalculated risks.

The suicidal mood is like courage pills, it makes me ready to fight dragons with my bare hands. And the good news here is that I never regret what I've done during that mood, on the contrary, I like the insane actions I do then, may be because I myself am insane.

Just remember that you have to fight fire with fire, and life itself is crazy, so you have to fight it every now and then with craziness.

It's not a Football match for God's Sake

During the early days of the internet, the Egyptians were surprised to know that people living in Europe and the US believe that we live in tents and travel by camels. I am sure that the internet has helped western people now to be more reasonable and they only need few strokes on their keyboards to know that we started using cars more then one hundred years ago, and that we have multi-thousands years old buildings.

Now, I believe that the BBC reporters are internet illiterates. Let's face it, those guys may not have enough money to travel to Egypt. They also may not be that fluent in Arabic. Yet, they would have better used their keyboards to know more about the ongoing tension between Egypt and Algeria. Then they would have known that people here are not mad because we lost the match, as they said on their website. People here are mad because the Algerian fans attacked them with stones, knives, and bottles after the match, and many Egyptians were wounded then. They are also mad because the Algerians have attacked many Egyptian companies based in Algeria.

Now it's time for "The Internet 101, BBC Special Edition".
There is a website called Google.com. Yes, there are some other search engines like Bing but let's postpone this to our advanced lessons.
Now you can use Google to search for some keywords like "Egypt", "Algeria", and "Football". You'll then be able to find many Egyptian blogs and other sites which will help you understand what I am talking about.
Now remember, you have to keep practicing how to use Google till our next lesson.