Web in the Middle East category
Egypt & India Disconnected
Read the news, Egypt and India has disconnected from the world wide web, I'm one of Abdelrahman's friends posting this from Saudi Arabia, only the messenger is working but no browsing out there in Egypt, Abdelrahman send me this post through the messenger.
Abdelrahman send the whole web greetings from the disconnected part of the world and hoping to see you soon after some body plug the cable.
Update (30/1/2008): Abdelrahman can see some sites, but most of the sites are not working out there.
Update (31/1/2008): Hello it's me, I can access the net now, maybe they did any temporary solution, or maybe it's only because I'm accessing the net from office, yesterday I was trying to access from home, the news here and there about the problem.
There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, and India suffered up to 60% disruption.
January 30, 2008, 10:44 PM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
Google Middle East office in Egypt
Wow this looks like it's an old news but I never knew it before that Google Middle East office has opened in Egypt, I found it through this article with the date June 23rd, 2006 then I googled the topic and found it also here & here.
According to some sources, a few months ago, Google Egypt hired a Country Manager (Sherif Iskander -- mentioned here) who also serves as a regional manager and is now looking around for suitable candidates to fill the posts of Associate Product Marketing Manager and Product Marketing Manager.
Angelo Embuldeniya on Stravinsky's Sizzlin' Shack
Any way here is the opening jobs in Cairo there is no better place any web geek like me could ever dream of, I wish I get hired by them. Hey Google, If you are reading this you probably see it through Google search pages please check in your jobs@google.com mail and you will find my mail, or drop me a line.
March 26, 2007, 12:46 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
International Liaison Group (ILG)
Since the WaSP introduced the forming of International Liaison Group (ILG) I was very interested to join this group of international Standardista's, because together we could help each others to reach the goal we all work for, which is a better web for all of us, we've been working together all this time since about May 13 2006 till now, and now finally it's announced I represent Egypt, and I hope I could deliver to the Egyptian web community the importance of complying the standards, I've been trying this since 2005 but now as we all together, it's even easier.
Thanks all ILG members for your support and sorry for being a lazy member, and special thanks to Molly who started this whole idea and by the way good luck Molly with your new position at Microsoft.
February 3, 2007, 7:52 AM Comments 0 TrackBack 0
$100 laptop for poor
A cheap, robust laptop has been developed by MIT Media Lab for only $100 Its main objective is deliviring better education for poor students.
The new laptop Nicknamed the green machine is extremly functional, it has a very low power consumption that it is powered only with a wind-up crank, instead of hard drive it has a 1GB flash memory.
here is it's specs as mentioned on Wikipedia.
Hardware
Its hardware specifications, as of October 2005, are:
- 500 MHz CPU (Processor) by AMD (Advanced Micro Devices) Inc.
- 1 GB of flash memory (no hard drive)
- SVGA 8" diagonal display (dual LCD Colour/Black & White mode for power conservation and outdoor reading); estimated cost $35
- 128 MB of DRAM
- AC Cord that doubles as carrying strap as the power source and a hand-crank (one minute of cranking gives enough power for 10 minutes of operating).
- The cost of materials and assembly for each laptop is estimated to be approximately $100.
Software
All of the software on the $100 Laptop will be open-source. The projected software as of November 2005 is:
- Red Hat Linux variant as operating system
- A web browser
- A word processor
- An email program
- A programming system
The laptops will only be distributed to schools directly through large government initiatives, Brazil, Thailand, Egypt, United States (Massachusetts), Cambodia, Costa Rica and Tunisia already committed in various ways.
Let me add that this step is a huge step in the history of Education, IT and ofcourse the web, every body will be able to browse the net and use Email, Till now only 14% of the world use the net and 64% in the US after this step things will change.
November 17, 2005, 5:09 PM Comments 1 TrackBack 0
Thanks Jeffrey Zeldman
Thank you Jeffrey for adding Point on your "Get your geek on" list. It is great honor to me to be added to your site, really :)
Point on "Get your geek on" list:
Point Studios may be the first web design studio in the Middle East to specialize in web standards. Founded by Abdelrahman Osama, the agency has worked with major clients including RA Sports and New Cairo Academy.
And thanks Jeffrey for your help in making the web a better place I consider my self one of your students through your book "Designing With Web Standards", your articles on your personal site and A List Apart
Who is Jeffrey Zeldman?
An internationally well-known web designer who believed to be one of the web standards movement leaders he co-founded the Web Standards Project (WASP), a group of professional web designers dedicated to promote web standards in 1998. He is the author of the well-known book "Designing With Web Standards" And he is always on the top of the speakers list in conferences like @media, SXSW, Web Design World and a lot more.
July 28, 2005, 10:00 PM Comments 0
Al Ahram weekly web site is a great approach to web standards.
While I'm reviewing Al Ahram web site to find out what makes it so slow and buggy I noticed a link to Al Ahram Weekly web site it is way better than Al Ahram web site, it is a great approach to web standards Al Ahram weekly use CSS to form the navigation, good looking titles & text styling. But unfortunately it is not technically a standard web site it's HTML and CSS are not valid according to W3C validator, it still uses tables rather than pure CSS layout it doesn't meet any of the Accessibility guidelines.
It is still a good step in the evolution of the internet in the Middle East I hope Al Ahram web site make a jump towards standards too.
read full technical review of Al Ahram weekly web site
May 27, 2005, 9:01 PM Comments 0
Al Ahram Web site one of the best 500 web sites in the world
El Ahram web site has been classified by Alexa as the 487 best web site, Congratulations to El Ahram organization. But from my own point of view this site is not suitable at all for a big organization like El Ahram here is some reasons why it is not suitable:
- Site is updated every day while other news sites update maybe every 30 minutes.
- It is very slow and may crash your browser.
- Looks very buggy and unprofessional.
Actually I'm very disappointed with the web design level in the Middle East. I hope it is improved by the time.
May 9, 2005, 8:56 PM Comments 0