Month: June 2006
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Sufis, saxophone and the sheikh next door
Here is my definition of good art: Good Art Should Bend Your Mind. I got my mind bent in a good way yesterday. Along with a few hundred Ammanis I was at Darat al Funun for a Hadra. A performance of religious Nasheeds and prayers. As I arrived at the outdoor performance I glanced at…
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Is Emirates the sole global brand from Arabia?
Just wrote a post about this on AdBlogArabia. Watching the world cup games in Germany gives you a good overview of the global brand map. From the top of my mind I can remember Toshiba, Yahoo, Coca Cola, Budweiser, Avaya (what the heck does Avaya do?) and the lone ranger from the lands (or shall…
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Attack of the chinese blog spammers (and why Safari’s Javascript sucks and Camino’s rules)
Over the past few weeks I’ve been getting hundreds of spam comments a day, apparently from Chinese blog spammers. The spam comments are quite long and fill up a really tall web page. I have not upgraded to WordPress 2 yet and haven’t gotten around to installing blog spam protection (coming soon, believe me!). So…
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Umnia sold to Batelco for 415 million dollars
Amazing news this morning. Umnia has been sold to Batelco (Bahrain Telecom) for 415 million dollars. Not bad for a company that is only one year old. Also not bad for Michael Dagher, the Lebanese American entrepreneur, who came to Jordan originally to head up Fastlink and who is a major shareholder in Umnia. This…
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The tallest towers of dubai (and the tallest post on my blog)
Just received this amazing diagram from a friend. I rotated it for fun. Only info about the maker of this diagram is a hotmail address and the word ‘COMMANDA’. One thing I didn’t know was that there is a building simply called ‘Al-Burj’ (The Tower) that is even taller than Burj Dubai. Crazy stuff.
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The World Cup: controlling the flow of images
MEDIA | Watching the World Cup on TV has been made expensive for many people. Ahmad Humeid surveys the signs of a consumer backlash and the appearance alternative forms of media around the event Football is not round. The ball that the 22 men kick around on the field might be spherical, but the global…
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A question for the Israeli blogosphere!!
Another Israeli missile attack on Gaza has, again, wiped out the life of three Palestinian children: a brother and a sister (aged 5 and 6) and another 16 year old teen. Expressing my anger on this blog won’t bring these children back. Lamenting the ‘shame of the Arabs’ will not prevent the killing of yet…
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Media war: As-Sabeel newspaper confiscated from newsstands?
On the way home today I was listening to AmmanNet radio (who are doing an amazing job being a community radio station). On the air was the editor chief of the Islamist As-Sabeel weekly newspaper [Arabic link], who said that all copies of his paper where “confiscated by way of mass-buying” from newsstands in Amman,…
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Will mobile email kill the SMS business?
MOBILE | Phone companies are making millions with SMS. Ahmad Humeid wonders how long they will be able to milk that business. Think about the differences between email and sms. Email is free, SMS is not. Email can be as long as you want, SMS messages are only 160 letters short. But while SMS is…
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360east blackout: conspiracy or just a case of unpaid hosting bills?
The answer: case of unpaid hosting bills. Sorry for the blackout.. Read these related posts on 360east: Technologies competing for your driving time Google buys YouTube for $1.65 Billion: is this Bubble 2.0? Watwet opens door to general public 😉 Dubai’s dark side More interesting Arab design events: Kitabat in Dubai
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Coca Cola changing colors?
It’s mind boggling. Did you see the colors on some of the Coca Cola stadium banners? More questions than answers on AdBlogArabia! Read these related posts on 360east: Ikbis pioneers online video advertising in the Arab market, with Coca Cola Blogging from Turkey Is Emirates the sole global brand from Arabia? A quick walk through…
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toot tabat is looking good!
The toot tabat blog is looking really good! One of the things that has prompted the team to change the look so quickly is the fact that the tabat group on Flickr already has 106 members who posted a whopping 819 photos to date!! The world cup is still in its early day and you…