Category: 2003-2014 Archive
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Open City: Refuge urbanism in Amman, Cairo, Beirut, Istanbul
The Jordan National Gallery of Fine Arts in Jabal Luweibdeh will host the exhibition “Open City: Refuge Urbanism” which is part of the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam 2009-10 (IABR), opening today Sunday 18 July 2010, at 6 pm. Refuge Urbanism (Part of the Diwan Collaborative Research Network, directed by Philipp Misselwitz & Can Altay)…
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Wamda, a hub for the region’s entrepreneurs and change-makers will go into private-beta soon
Nothing like being able to start showing people what I’ve been immersed in the past few months! It’s been a crazy journey for the team at SYNTAX and Spring and it will only get crazier. What was a sketchy idea a few months ago has turned into a full fledged project with a powerful vision:…
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Agave blooms after 18 years in Jordanian village
In 1992, my mother planted a little Agave Americana in my parent’s farm in the Jordanian village Aluk, 25 km north of Amman. Over the years, this agave grew and grew to a degree where my parents started thinking of removing it. Agaves have very sharp spikes that can give you nasty pain and can…
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Nokia X6 Comes with Music: All you can eat, but with a wooden spoon
It sounds like an offer no true music lover in Arabia can refuse: Buy a very capable touch screen smartphone from Nokia and get access to an all-you-can-eat music library of 4 million tracks for free for 12 months. And you get to keep the music you download for ever too. That, in a nutshell,…
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Brands in translation: Are Arab consumers oversensitive wimps?
Can someone please explain this to me: brands and slogans that totally loose their edge when introduced into Arab markets. Here are three examples: I bought this shaving cream the other day. The tagline/product identifier say “Cool Kick” in English. The Arabic translates into “Cool Touch”. Oh how soft and nice! Arab men can’t take…
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Meydan: Starting up startups requires no glamour, food or BS. Just passion, honesty
Coffee, tea, orange juice, Apple juice and water. That was the only liquid fuel needed at yesterday’s Meydan launch at Amman’s Zara Expo yesterday. The energy of the event was provided by an enthusiastic crowd, fired on by non other than Jordan’s Chief Disruption Officer, Maher Kaddoura. The idea behind Meydan is to be a…
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TootCorp launches ZOOFS: what Twitter is watching
TootCorp, makers of Toot, Ikbis and Watwet, have launched their fourth product and the company’s first aimed at the global market. It’s called ZOOFS. Here is what TootCorp cofounder Kareem Arafat had to say about it: Zoofs is a new way to discover YouTube videos that people are talking about on Twitter. Zoofs swallows millions…
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Rebooting Jordan: do we need a bigger kick in the butt than what happened in Salt?
The incidents in Al-Salt are just the tip of the iceberg. Wherever we look in Jordan there are signs: rising family and tribal violence, apathy, lack of quality and a way of life divorced from our real means and natural and human resources. The decay is affecting much of our national life: from the disastrous…
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6 interesting usages of Ikbis.com
Over the past few years, Ikbis.com has grown in size and in depth. Ikbis Channels, in particular, have been multiplying in number and are being used by a wide variety of users and organizations: from people sharing a an interest to global broadcasting organizations reaching out to Arab audiences. Here are 6 examples of what…
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Teacher, artist and, yes, the Sheikh of Amman!
When the self proclaimed “Sheikh of Amman” comes walking through the door at the SYNTAX offices, its not an ordinary day, especially when he comes unannounced. It’s now over 21 years that I’ve met Ali Maher for the first time, on my first day of being an Architecture student at the University in Jordan, sometime…
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Burning the spring: how Amman municipality workers tore out the grass and littered our street
I just want to follow up on my post from a few days ago, when I wrote about how Amman municipality workers tore out the grass near my place of work (for fire prevention reasons). Here is what happened afterwards. All the torn grass was piled on the sidewalk, where it has bee laying for…
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ArabNet, Beirut and ‘Being Arab’
Visiting Beirut is always a bitter sweet experience. My last trip to Beirut to attend ArabNet, the region’s first web business conference was my third trip to the city in 8 years, each of which had the duration of 48 hours. Each time I visit beirut I leave with a book, always from Librarie Antoine,…