360east

Month: February 2006

  • Aqaba tourism website launched

    The Aqaba Special Economic Zone’s Tourism Department has just announced the launch of Aqaba’s first comprehensive tourism website. The site was developed by Batelco. During the tourism promotion session of the ‘Aqaba: turning vision into reality’ event, the tourism deparment also announced several advertisng campaigns to promote Aqaba’s tourism in the UK, Spain, Scadinavia as…

  • Talal Abu Ghazaleh Group announces Aqaba Smart Village

    Among the numerous presentations at the ‘Aqaba: turning Vision into Reality’ event there was an announcement that stood out from the rest: the Talal Abu Ghazaleh Group announced a project to develop a Smart Village in Aqaba. This village will consist of serviced office facilities as well as a convention center. The village is to…

  • Blogging from Aqaba: ASEZA turns 5

    I arrived in Aqaba tonight to attend the ‘Aqaba, Five Years of Achievement’ conference. The event, which is being held at the new Intercontinental hotel in Aqaba, was shifted for one day in the last minute. HM King Abdullah personally opened the event today. The event was kicked off Thursday with an opening of a…

  • Coffee and WiFi ‘wars’ at Queen Alia International Airport

    So, Starbucks have opened in Queen Alia International, just beside the newly opened World News Cafe. What a change from a decade ago, when all you could get at QAIA was a plastic cup with hot water and a tea bag. The coffe situation at the airport started to improve a few years ago, when…

  • Check out the 50 new bloggers on toot..

    Fifty new blogs are now being featured on toot bringing the total up to 100. These blogs represent an amazingly diverse and colorful selection from the Arab and Arabia related blogosphere. I am looking at our ‘toot stream’ which show the latest posts by all the bloggers features and I am really excited at how…

  • Kalle Lasn, the AdBuster, is keynote speaker at TYPO ‘06

    My favorite design conference, the TYPO Berlin, will, this year, be opened by media activist Kalle Lasn, founder of AdBusters (the self-proclaimed anti-advertisng magazine) and CEO of the BlackSpot Anticorporation (in which I own 1 share as I once bought one of their sneakers ) This year’s TYPO, to be held from 18-20 May, 2006,…

  • Dubai to get a ‘book shaped’ public library

    Dubai is clearly trying to inject some ‘culture’ into its mix of business, shopping and leisure. Good! But of course, this being a Dubai project, it needs to have some ‘gimmick’ aspect to it. The building will be shaped like an open book. Hmmm. [via AMEINFO] Dubai Municipality to construct new premises for Dubai Central…

  • What do Iran’s Ahmadinejad and the Discovery Channel have in common?

    Answer: a logo! Notice the similarity? The first time I saw the pictures of the now famous ‘wipe Israel off the map’ speech by the Iranian president, which he delivered in front of a student conference, I felt that I’ve seen the logo on the podium before. Indeed! Speaking of Iran here is an Associated…

  • Cross Culture: German design interns at SYNTAX

    Over the past two years my company, SYNTAX, has been hosting German design students for the Bauhaus university in Weimar. Currently, in our office in Amman, we’ve been counting Anja Hendel and Michael Schinköthe as part of the SYNTAX family. Last year we had the pleasure of working with Daniel Faller (our first German trainee),…

  • Technologies competing for your driving time

    TRENDS | You can’t escape, even if you’re driving the fastest car, Ahmad Humeid reports After I became an avid listener to podcasts (audio content that you download to your digital music player) I realized that there is conspiracy being woven behind my back. In some dark room, in some non-descript corporate building a number…

  • Another Denmark

    A lot of interaction between Arabs, muslims and Europeans has been happening on 360east, which I guess I really good I received the following comment/statement from Danish reader Carsten Agger, which I publish here in full. * * The publication of the ‘toons in the Danish newspaper was obviously not in defence of freedom of…

  • Between Germany and Dubai: two worlds, two mindsets | Part I

    I frequently travel to Dubai and Germany. Many of my personal and business relationships are located in these two places. And I found myself explaining one place to the other on many occasions. In a certain sense, Germany and Dubai cannot be more different. Trying to make decision in life and business while trying to…