Stravinsky's Sizzlin' Shack

When words fail.. pictures don't..

2006-11-27T00:14:00.000+03:00

Is it blogger's bloc, or life's love getting in the way? Not quite figured that one out yet, but moods vary just like the weather does. Been raining over here for the past week, usual traffic jams, an orchestra of award-winning horns. and the rush of it all. Getting away can be nice, so i point and shoot what i see. Moods, storms, the moments afterwards...

Loved the natural patter of rain drops teasing the glass gently, constant probes of tickling vibes trickling down the panes.

The incomplete world trade center and it's twin towers standing abreast after the storm has passed and beauty in the sky.

The HSBC sinage messed up the picture of the sunset and the rays peeping out.

But i enjoyed taking in the sights of motivation (land) sailing along with depression (clouds) while meeting up with self-actualization, a point one would always dream about, but is it just a dream?

rejection rocks at times... and sometimes desperation sets in, what W/we do in non-existience is pure emotional bliss. Getting lost in the crowd is all too easy and getting out doesn't make much sense..

Something so beautiful, yet so sad

2006-11-07T21:17:00.000+03:00

Life! Have been spending some time with a couple lately, a husband and wife, very loving, down to earth folks with generous souls.. always wanting to give. The other day i was over at their appartment, just getting ready to get out for dinner and we just got around to talking about opportunities. They come, they go, some are exciting, some aren't.

And then the wifey got irked a bit because her hubby kept trusting everyone way too much than they really deserved that he kept getting taken advantage of, the hubby just shrugged it off for it was his way of life. So this lady would do anything to meet ends, but her love didn't want her to, two extremes as some have it in their book, from Forbes to Google, but here was soemthing very touching, trying to make ends meet by doing whatever it takes from killing one's self to selling your artisitic concepts away to predators while another misunderstood her motives.... so innocent, so heart-warming, yet all they both wanted to do was to keep each other happy in whatever way they could. Moments of bliss that they would spend together, a loving peck on her cheek, a tight squeeze of his hand and the times their eyes would wash away the pain in this world.

Life is so sad, yet so beautiful.

Dependance is easy to grow into, escaping into something like another state or sub space is all too great an emotional mind fuck, now i wonder whether they both are the same in their own disguises...

Our Journey...

2006-10-31T19:14:00.000+03:00

she never intended to make such a journey in the beginning. They met purely by accident, and she became familiar with Her ways, becoming interested as a moth to a flame so she tagged along. To maybe be lucky enough to find friendship and acceptance for being who she were, but the longer she followed Her things began to change, She showed her a world he had never been part of, one of darkness, acceptance and the ability to be human and to feel as individual as she needed to be. she believes in the darkness of human nature where she has found a small flicker of light that she wants to kindle into a fire.

... it has been some time since i blogged here. i've not left here to die out but a break that was really needed while time took it's course. Life is just so beautiful when W/we let go.

Thank You Dina, Nancy & Neha!

Unoffical Kosmix Plugins for New Verticals

2006-06-25T15:11:00.000+03:00

Kosmix which is an up and coming search engine focused on niche markets, is an interesting player to keep watching because they keep releasing nifty search verticals based on some reliable algorithms. They started out with Travel, U.S Politics & Health and quite recently they've silently expanded last month to include Video Games and Finance. The smart kookies behind Kosmix are Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaram who are graduates (PhD gaga!) of Stanford University and they're the same guys who were considering on buying Google when it first appeared in the late 90's. If you're interested in getting to know the juice behind Kosmix and it's freshness, you should definintely listen to Kamla Bhatt's podcast show with Venky done a few months ago and get to know Kosmix straight from the horse's mouth!

According to a blog posting at Silicon Beat, the dazzling folks at Kosmix have raised $7.4 million (USD) in funding thanks to Accel and Lightspeed Venture Partners, increasing the total amount of funding for Kosmix to $25.7 million, nearing the same mark by Google way back then. It's also interesting to note that Accel have pumped $11.5 million into Kayak who's seems a likely Kosmix competitor and the best travel search engine according to Mark Johnson who's a product manager at Kosmix. But despite all the glitz and glamour, Kosmix still haven't launched the new plugins at their labs for the new verticals, Video Games and Finance. So I've taken the opportunity to do a bit of tweaking this morning and have come up with unoffical plugins for the new verticals over here. And as this press release rightly states, Kosmix is now powering Gazerk which is the new game site launched by the Ziff Davis Media Game Group.

Being an early fan of Kosmix, I'm disappointed that they don't put more power into pushing out related plugins and extensions at their labs, and it's high time that they get their official blog kicked off! Anyone listening at Kosmix? (hope so :-) Your fan base is waiting ... All your Kosmix belong to us!

Google Opening a Middle East Regional Office!

2006-06-23T14:49:00.000+03:00

Most of us Google fans in the Middle East and much of the Arab world always thought that Google would be launching their regional office in Dubai, but the leader in the search engine industry worldwide has looked way past the hyped-gorgeous city of buildings and have decided to base their Middle East regional office in Egypt. Google Israel already has a RnD lab for the region in Haifa and it looks like their marketing and sales operations for the rest of the Middle East will be located in Cairo.

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. An unofficial Google page at Wikia.com details why Google should choose Egypt as their Middle Eastern base for regional operations and at the Wiki's talk page, someone also notes the hiring of the regional manager for the Middle East and points to the vaccant positions. BrandRepublic's latest take on Google selling their stake in China's leader in the Search Engine Industry -- Baidu, also confirms that Google is expanding their operations in the Middle East and North Africa while another tagline in the same article states that:

"Google is set to challenge any government approach to censor its search results in the Middle East and Africa"

It seems that although the official Google jobs site lists the vacancy for a product marketing manager for their office in Egypt, the listing fails to mention that posting may require travel between London and Cairo, the same job posted on monster.com states that the job is located in London although it is for Google Egypt. I'm guessing here, but I think that Google is planning on pushing Arabized/localized versions of their enterprise solutions like the OneBox & Google Earth. One of the reasons as to why Google might have chosen Egypt for their Middle Eastern regional office over Dubai, is since Yahoo already has a footing in terms of advertising sales & marketing operations for the region over at Dubai's Internet City.

And it's also fascinating to note that, Egypt were recently the center of a Google Bombing campaign initiated by the Eqyptian blogosphere and supported by many editors and authors at Global Voices Online in a move to free a detained Egyptian Blogger -- Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam, Alaa was released from prison late last night after being held for 46 days by Egyptian Authorities for taking part in a protest.

These are no doubt some interesting times where Google decides to launch themsleves in the Middle East :-)

Citizens Weep While Money Talks

2006-06-21T11:24:00.000+03:00

Eversince I read the harrowing experience of what two citizens have had to endure for the past couple of years due to internal corruption in their residential area at Dina's blog, I couldn't help but wonder whether the law in South Asia does protect fools. Ideally, the law does not protect fools but realistically, in Mumbai, you have the son of India's former Defence & Foreign Secretary, Siddharth Bhandhari, breaking almost every municipality law in the rule book and being protected for doing so by the very people who are supposed to be upholding the law, i.e. the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai or the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

Let me give you some background here: Aparna Chawalla who lives along with and her mother, aged 62 and 92 respectively have been fighting Siddharth Bhandhari to get justice for the past 15 years. So what did Siddharth Bhandhari do to be the center of such distaste and disgust? According to Aparna, while Siddharth rennovated his place which he and his wife owns and resides at Vijay Appartments (owned by the Shipping Corporation of India) on Carmichael Road, he enlarged his bathrooms which are over the Chawalla's bedrooms, constructed a staircase over the senior citizens' kitchen, from the 8th to the 9th floor - cutting through the slab (even though the flats are in different names) and placed in a drainpipe next to Aparna's balcony which brings torrents of water gushing into Chawalla's flat. Despite a High Court ruling which ordered the BMC to carry out necessary actions based on the outcome of an earlier investigation into the illegality of Bhandari's rennovations, the BMC have yet to act upon the court's directions.

When I commented on Dina's blog posting I felt that Siddharth Bhandhari was no different to IIPM's Chicken & Egg Dean, Arindam Chaudhuri, who was torn to pieces online by desi blogosphere and bloggers elsewhere in the world, I strongly believed that Siddharth Bhandhari deserves the same fate as of IIPM's goons. Awareness as to who is Siddharth Bhandhari really, and what kind of cowards the BMC really are, is the key here.

Aparna then wrote me to say that there had been some other developements after Dina's blog posting:

"I had filed a petition under the Right to Information Act on the 19th of May and another on the 24th of May.These have to be replied to within one month but no reply has come from the BMC so far even to the 19th one. Another thing which has happened is that the ceiling of our kitchen over which Bhandari's illegal staircase is located, is giving way. I have written to the building Society and BMC but apart from sending someone supposed to be a stuctural engineer, the managing committee has done nothing, not even submitted a report. As for Umesh C. Grovere, he is being transferred in a couple of months and someone called Mr. Bhalla has taken over as the Secretary and posesses the same attitude towards my siutation - (deaf to my pleas for help)."

While looking around, I stumbled upon a NGO called the Praja Foundation which is a non-partisan, voluntary organisation that was started in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1997 by a group of 8 individuals committed to the re-establishment of accountability and transparency in public governance through people’s participation. Apparently, Praja operates an Online Complaint Management System (OCMS) which is a joint initiative with the BMC and as Praja prases it: "is perhaps a world's first in citizen-government partnership for solving public grievances."

So after filling in all the required info about Bhandhari's illegal rennovations and the like, I emailed Aparna to let her know that I've filed a complaint on her behalf at the BMC-Praja OCMS and she mentioned that she's been to Praja's office previously but they haven't shown the slightest interest and despite a Praja staff member named Sachetan who is aware of the harassment being caused by Siddharth Bhandari they have yet to step in and rectify the issue. After reading the article in the Mumbai Mirror about the problems caused by Bhandari, it seems that he has only money and uses his influential contacts to flout the law.

To all Readers, Commenters, Bloggers, Podcasters, Vloggers, Forum users: If you agree that whatever Siddharth Bhandari has done and is doing to Aparna Chawalla and her mother is outrageous & unfair, please spread the word out about it via your blogs, podcasts, forums, vlogs and whatever other way you could find to raise awareness about the pain being inflicted upon 2 senior citizens due to no action being taken by those responsible at BMC, the Shipping Corporate of India or Praja.

It would also help if you could write to the following people and let them know that Aparna Chawalla and her mother deserves justice, and should anything fatal happen to both senior citizens, the responsibility and blame will definintely fall upon the shoulders of the officials and those concerned at BMC, Shipping Corporate of India and Praja for their role in turning a blind eye to Siddharth Bhandari's illegal renovations at the cost of other's lives:

Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (BMC)
Johnny Joseph (Municipal Commissioner)
irw@mcgm.gov.in & ccrs_ho@vsnl.net

International Relations Wing
mcgm_irw@vsnl.net

Shipping Corporation of India
Sabyasachi Hajara (Chairman and Managing Director)
s.hajara@sci.co.in

G.N. Shetty (Public Relations Officer)
gn.shetti@sci.co.in

Mr. Umesh C. Grover & Mr. Bhalla (Society Secretaries)
uc.grover@sci.co.in, dirtos.sect@sci.co.in & tandos@bom8.vsnl.net.in

Dipankar Haldar (Compliance Officer)
dipankar.haldar@sci.co.in

Praja
Yazad Jal (CEO of Praja Foundation) -- he is also a blogger & KGAF member of Caferati
yazad@praja.org & mail@yazadjal.com

Kanchan Pamnani
info@praja.org

[[ To check out what exactly Praja is doing about Siddharth Bhandari's illegal rennovations and how they're responding to Aparna's complaint, you can track it via the OCMS by going here and in the field where it says "complaint tracking number", enter: AZ-70239549 ]]

Some Favorite Pics from Googlers this Week

2006-06-19T10:39:00.000+03:00

Some of the following pictures were recently clicked by Googlers during the past week in France (Paris office), Ireland (Dublin office) and google's interns at Mountain View. Well they say that pics are a thousand words. A few things I found interesting from the pics were:

In Dublin, Google uses Dell desktops, I believe the GX type and googlers there are allowed to decorate their flatrons/flat screens however they want to and in Mountain View, interns at Google just have a very thick security card consisting of their pic and encryption within a huge green bloc that covers the mid half underneath the person's pic.

While Googler's in Paris which seems to be mostly a sales & marketing office have a nice games room.

The second Google mini-fridge of it's kind seems to have been awarded since March this year to an AdWords client and Google's cafeteria has a nice sign board upon its beverage cooler.

Well we're almost there...

2006-06-18T15:21:00.000+03:00

I've finally got around to tweaking the archives here and uploading them. so now when you click on the archives tab above you'll be taken to the root of all archives from 2004 onwards. Sadly the blog postings before that aren't available any more due to a blogger glitch that occured towards the mid of June 2004, I've tried to retrieve postings since 2002 from blogger via archive.org but it didn't work :(

But all that aside and I've added a google sitemap to this blog as well as a mobile one, so I keep my fingers crossed as I await the wonderful things in the pipeline.

With that said, I need to go get done with some Flickr-ing :) Sorry Web Picasa, time isn't right for you just yet, it might be many moons back in the labs and a dash of brilliance before we're know it's fine ;-)

Links for 16-06-2006

2006-06-16T18:48:00.000+03:00

Organic HTML

Web pages transformed into weird plants. (Check out Global Voice's Managing Editor -- Rachel Rawlin's Blog as OrganicHML then and now / here's what Global Voices Looks like)

(tags: HTML Tags Visualization )

Web 2.0 Validator

Key in a url and determine whether it's WEB 2.0 friendly! (most that claim they are, really aren't)

(tags: Web 2.0 Validation community )

Flickr Leech

By entering in your Flickr username, or a Flickr url of one of your buddies into this nifty lil app, all photos uploaded will be pulled up, also is a useful way to view all your pictures if you're on a free regular Flickr account. (Free flickr accounts are set to display on 200 pics that you upload, there's no space limit however a bandwidth restriction of 20mb/month is enforced)

(tags: flickr free photos creative )

Blog Graphing Global Voices Online

2006-06-15T18:29:00.000+03:00

Today, I took some time off to experiment with a couple of Web 2.0 mashups as I'm putting together the first part of my final research paper on Social Networking Analysis (SNA) for my thesis and some of the stuff I found exciting were Site Graphs , aka Blog Graphs and a Flickr Graphing tool which is flash-based. I point you towards an energetic lady who keep spreading much Skype love -- Dina Mehta where she's already blogged what the Flickr Graphing tool does and believe me it's amazing! I like to call it the Flickr Gene Pool.. but then thats just me :)

Site Graphs defines the structure of websites and blogs as defined in HTML while visualizing the hierarchy of HTML tags in a graph. Salem who's based in Swizterland developed this lovely visualizer as a Java applet and I decided to test-drive it by graphing the Global Voices Online blog along with some of the GV co-founders and editors. On a side note, after having my desktop processor hang on me a couple of times especially while the GV blog was being graphed (took like 20 minutes), I'd suggest that if you're going to be graphing something like Technorati, Bloglines or a search engine like Google, then make sure you have atleast a 512 RAM and run the process on a latop. With that said, let's go straight to blogs I got graphed (click on the images to view a larger version):

GV's blog in all its glory:

the co-founders of GV: Ethan Zuckerman Versus Rebecca Mackinnon

the managing editor of GV: Rachel Rawlins

2 of GV's Regional Editors: Neha Viswanathan for South Asia & Georgia Popplewell for the Carribean

Here's the key to the tag colors:

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

I found that Neha's blog was just second to GV's blog in terms of the penetration of links and we're talking some major link clusters! Rachel's blog was more unique in that she uses more block quotes than anyone else I've compared, Neha's blog and Georgia's use block quotes but not as much as Rachel's, now what sets Georgia's blog apart from all the other blogs is that she's got a higher image tag count. It seems that Rebecca's blog uses a complex tag structure and no tables while Ethan has a fine set of link clusters than anyone else! I'd like to run more graphs on their feeds and those of other GV editors and authors in the days to come, more patterns I have and the better results I achieve. One of the main reasons I like using Site Graphs to analyze blogs although its got a downside (explained below) is that I'm more interested in block quotes, links and images than any other tag. ;-)

The downside of using Site Graphs for graphing blogs is that although it displays the patterns of sites one links to, the nodes are missing some detailed SNA information. I've tagged the GV blog graphs on flickr along with a host of other blogs as "blogsasgraphs" and "websitesasgraphs" and encourage you to do the same and share your blog graphs with the rest of the world :) You can find more site and blog graphs on flickr over at the graph-site-blog cluster. Feel free to drop in your analysis of the above graphs as a comment here.

a troubled past & a new look

2006-06-14T04:11:00.000+03:00

Well as you might see, I've revamped the template here to something more child-friendly while keeping in line with my love for abstract art -- lights! The other template just was long past its time of being chucked away, people weren't able to comment here, the script kept getting choked up during blogger outages, some parents were complaining about the frontal nudity And Tommy Edwards photos, others were bothered by the fact that my shack just promoted erotic art.. and well a change is always good.. :)

I'm still having some teething issues with the new template which i hope to have soon sorted out, the archives and categories are a bit messed but considering I'll be using a delicious tagging tool to help me out.. it should all be good as new :) Mucho gracias to Neha for kindly coughing up a photo she took in London of her reflection in a window facing a busy street, I liked how the lights painted a classic yet retro scene.

At the moment, Feed Burner is down.. so i really can't hook up the world wide help alerts like the global voices one.. but I've been told by a support team at Feedburner that there server should be working fine tomorrow... hope so. I'd appreciate you dropping me a line if you come across any bugs or problems here so I can have it fixed asap. thank you for putting up with me through all the rennovation.

looking forward to some unpublished poetry from my teenage years and the relief conflicts that I experienced in the field and online during post-tsunami, katrina and the other disasters that came out way for the past couple of months. I've turned on anon comments along with comments verification in order to trash the spam, so please respect others when commenting here and YES i dont put up with hate speech or racial/sexist attacks from folks :)

People and feelings

2006-06-13T12:46:00.000+03:00

There are some people in blogosphere that I've still to meet. Very talented folks, so sweet and tender. Understanding them would probably take me a life time, but to me some people are like a fusion of abstract art.

When I think about chocolate, I realize that there are some bloggers who could be coined as "emotional chocolate". Emotions are erratic at times, not something that can be relied on, very soft and tender.

Stubborn faces mingle with my tea sometimes that I suddenly have these visions of SEA-EAT swivel my head around. Collaborative work is sometimes very hard to be seen within main stream corporates and this is one of the reasons as to why I dread working in one. It s all about emotional understanding!

A fusion of people :)

Links for 2006-06-12

2006-06-12T10:29:00.000+03:00

Robert Scoble says goodbye to Microsoft and invests his time and knowledge in a Silicon Valley startup where the main business model is vlogging and podcasting. Robert blogs about his move from Microsoft in order to set the record straight from the rumours and speculation MSM were running of his jump to PodTech.net from the Redmond firm

(tags: tech, podcast, vlog, microsoft)

Finally, someone found an easy way to install RubyOnRails on Windows. Here's a tutorial on how to quickly install Ruby with Ruby on Rails on Windows using InstantRails. It also includes ways how to test your installation and a list of common pitfalls when installing using InstantRails.

(tags: opensource, coding, platform, testing)

And at Bad Corp, we can now stop funding our own opression and add those evil corporations to the shitlist. At present, it's Nike, McDonalds and GAP that are among the top 9 evil companies and I propose that we should add Batelco & Microsoft to that list!

(tags: corporate social responsibility, evil)

An Open E-Mail to BBC's Kevin Anderson

2006-06-10T11:22:00.000+03:00

Hi Kevin,

I was delighted to be on BBC World Have Your Say last Wednesday, however I was very disappointed that I was only given less than 90 seconds to highlight the aid problems in Java. I believe that the focus of your request was that I'd be given reasonable time within a 15-20 minute window to discuss the logistical/political barriers affected aid ops in Java, however, I was made to hand on for over 20 minutes and the presenter just introduced me to the programme/discussion about 5 minutes towards it's end.

Secondly why does World Have Your Say try to fit in many speakers than it can manage? I really don't understand why I was called on, if it was to hear my out observations or relay what aid organizations or victims on the ground were experiencing, then you should have at the least given me 5 minutes, which your team failed to do. In the 60 seconds of time that I was given, or probably less, the audience listening in wouldn't have been able to obtain the real scale of the disaster response.

Thirdly, you told me that a rep from a local aid agency in Indo would be on the session as well, just who exactly was the aid agency that you had on? Let me give you some background here. Within hours of the tsunami hitting Sri Lanka in 2004, I was on the ground as a relief volunteer with the UNDP and the CHA (Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies). The CHA was in effect way before the tsunami, and within about 3 weeks of post-tsunami there was a national order in place which prevented any more aid agencies from springing up. Throughout the entire 9 months while I worked on post-tsunami relief and rehab projects in Sri Lanka, never have I heard of the aid agency that you had on Wednesday's programme.

Considering that the agency's rep mentioned that his agency was formed in Sri Lanka, I've checked up with the folks at CHA and they had no records on the agency. I'd just like to say that it takes me at least 3 months to study how an aid agency operates, up to 6 months to evaluate their transparency of ops before I endorse it, by putting on an aid agency which one has never even heard of let alone not being involved with the disaster scene in Indo raises issues of credibility and the agency's transparency, both of which were visible during the on -air session. Seems like Anu Anand was trying to plug in an aid agency and have others involved with on the ground efforts indirectly endorse the agency.

The aid agency that you had on air hadn't even a clue of what was going on in Indo, he was just on about the tsunami and katrina... Kevin, it wasn't about donor fatigue, I know you guys have got it all wrong, it's about governmental confusion during an aid response. In Indo, I've seen that the international community have all generously given and keep giving, it's the local govt there that have placed in road blocks and thus, the aid doesn't get through. Usually it's the UN who screws up in the field, this time it was a government screw-up, the search and rescue/aid teams I've been talking to and the survivors we've been in touch with reveal a lot more than donor fatigue -- the theme of your Wednesday's show! You could've easily touched base with the OXFAM crew in Java or even Save The Children UK, and have them on the show instead of having an unknown agency who hadn't the slightest idea of the situation in indo.

And this isn't the first time it's happened to me, the BBC have screwed up previously as well during the first week of the Tsunami where they quoted me all wrong on a news channel in Thailand, I've come to expect this of MSM! However, I expected better from your programme Kevin.

I'd like some answers please!

thank you,
angelo.

Relief Blogging & Mid Year Madness

2006-06-03T14:09:00.000+03:00

No! I haven't abandoned this blog, more like everytime a disaster strikes I get busy along with the others at the World Wide Help group in coordinating relief efforts with on the ground teams and overseas relief agencies mainly with resource handling. Early May it was relief assistance with flooding in Suriname and as of a week ago it's been providing aid online via the Java Quake Help wiki for the quake relief efforts ongoing in Indonesia.

Thanks to Dina Mehta for pointing out this nifty lil tool modelled around Flickr, I put together the following words:

It's really sad that whenever a disaster occures you have this media hype with inaccurate information being published without proper pointers for assistance needed by victims more like MSM in intrested with pledges than actual donations. So sad! And the fact that ISAR (International Search And Rescue) teams not getting deployed despite the need because of the unavailability of funds by the affected country is seens as something having to do with red-tape lipped officials at key bereaucratic posts without the least idea of what is really happening on the ground, that is the situation as of 3 hours ago in Bantul. You don't have to look very far, just flip open the GDN (gulf daily news) and look around for something on Indonesia's quake relief efforts or something about the disaster and you'll find out that your favorite local newspaper has gone from major reporting overnight to a small piece past the middle of the paper....

And... these fault lines running about are giving everyone the shivers, where atleast a few hours ago, Southern Iran was hit by a quake with a magnitude of 5.5, so far there is just 1 ISAR team and relief agency monitoring the situation, most likely as it has been done in the past, the emmergency may be dealt with locally and classified as international assistance not requested as seen initially in Suriname and Indonesia, although both countries later appealed for help.

Red tape, bereaucracy and bizzare MSM reporting.... all of which can easily be swept under disaster relief tourists. How pathetic!

An Interesting Week in Bahrain

2006-05-17T21:42:00.000+03:00

Does anyone remember way back in June last year how Kenyan athletes were defecting to Qatar and lotta' people weren't happy about it? Anyways, today, Kenya's former athletics coach, Mike Kosgei, signed a 2 year coaching contract with the Bahrain Athletics Federation. Interesting Eh! Considering that the article also mentions that 10 Kenyan runners have settled down here in Bahrain. I guess this could mean some good traning for Bahrain & better chances at clinching lotta' Gold medals at the Olympics next time.

Bahrain get's mentioned or quoted rather in an immigration debate published at UPenn where the Director of the Center for uman Resources in Wharton says that says he has witnessed the effects of immigrant workers on wages and working conditions in other parts of the world, including the Middle East.

"In Bahrain, for instance, where guest workers from Bangladesh are frequently used on construction sites, a visitor can see them using picks and shovels instead of machinery"

Why do illegal immigrants force down wages? "That's how markets work," responds Cappelli.

And Arcapita just bought over a company that invented the integral geogrid, which is used primarily for soil stabilization and reinforcement in road construction. I didn't recall seeing that in the Business News today although that deal happened today....

And while the whole Batelco saga continues with a relaunch of BoycottBatelco.com, the Bahrian News Agency reports on an exciting meeting today -- The Internet Cafe Committee which held 4th meeting today. I never knew Bahrain had such a committee -- very interesting! Batelco placing thresholds must sound deligthful to the Internet Cafe Committee because according to the following, the underaged youth technically won't be able to download or view "sites"::

Moreover, the meeting advised that under aged youth be prevented from using internet cafe facilities during late hours. The committee affirmed to place important mechanisms to limit navigating websites that do not suit the culture and ethics of the country.

This has been an interesting week in Bahrain :) Tomorrow, I'll start wardriving about the place, checking out on hotspots and 802.11n accessibility. Any tips?

Batelco Takes Us Back to the Stone Age!

2006-05-14T22:53:00.000+03:00

All they ever gave us at today's meeting was a whole bag of "TRA needs some good people and we need some good approvals", "We can help you control what you view", "telecom industry in Bahrain is very complex, you don't understand unless you're in Telecom world". "We spend about over a billion for our infrastructure in Bahrain and about 5 million over the past 3 years for community projects in Bahrain, now we can just put that 5 million into making it all unlimited packages but then we would not be socially responsible!" Over a billion on infrastructure and only 5 million for community projects over the past 3 years -- Cripes! who's doing your CSR initiatives? They got the math all wrong! Anyways, I don't subscribe to your TOS or FUP and I'm out... you claim to not sleep well Peter and you're sad at seeing customers go but when will the truth ever dawn upon you, when will you see the light? You're not thinking out of the box Peter! "Never do business with Batelco without reading their terms and conditions!" ... well in short Batelco may lead you up the gum tree but as many people pointed out tonight seems like there's going to be a legal battle our lovable ISP is gonna' get subjected to.

More than 250 people showed up today, the hall at the convention center was packed! Lot of legal action against Batelco seems to be in the fray by some consumers. Outsourcing their research and inaccurate stats. Oh Batelco, you hit a hard one this time! Do the numbers of the bandwidth usage and go figure! And the solutions you came up with in trying to combat StealthNet where people share their connections was very poor in my opinion, this is a miscalculated remedy you're trying to implement! It's going to backfire and you're going to realize it all so late. Oh well so be it...

Goodbye Batelco, I'm pulling the plug on you in 4 days, countdowns have always been a nightmare for me but this one is pure fun! I'm definitely going to enjoy moving away from your spotty service, the fake picture you present to your customers and hey you really need to come to terms with your residential clients! Till then it's adios amigo!

** tomorrow I'll blog a complete coverage on what happened at the meeting today, nothing special I assure you! Read Mahmood's blog posting and you'll know why ;)

I'm Disconnecting My Internet Connection

2006-05-13T18:21:00.000+03:00

Yes! I'm disconnecting my Batelco Internet connection in 5 days from now.

Why?

Although I've been a Batelco SpeedNet customer for more than 3 years having, signed up for the 256kbps broadband package for BD40/month (approx. $105 USD/mo), on Thursday this week I'll be canceling my net connection due to Batelco's unethical pricing policies on their latest broadband Internet packages.

Previously, Batelco was charging me 40 dinars per month for 256k download and 64k for upload with an unlimited bandwidth usage, ie. no threshold, despite that, the service they were providing was very spotty with frequent speed and connectivity issues, instead of getting the real deal, it was just about 180k download, Batelco definitely wasn't giving me value for my money, and I'm not the only one, there were plenty of other people getting ripped off on Batelco's 256k speednet package, but I stayed on hoping that Batelco will improve as the years go by.

3 days ago, Batelco rolled out their new broadband Internet packages, all of them with gagging thresholds, the package I'm currently on has been reduced in price to 10 dinars/month (approx.$26 USD) which is wonderful but instead of complementing their offer with unlimited usage, Batelco have placed a major restriction -- 2GB threshold! Once I pass that threshold, Batelco will slash my browsing speed to 64k -- as good as dialup plus for every extra MB that I download, I'll need to pay 10fils, so supposedly if I were to download an extra 100MB/day, that would mean a dinar for Batelco, say an extra 100mb/day for a month equates to 30 dinars (for 3GB extra) + 10BD = 40BD, so we're back to square one, even worse than before because Batelco will be exploiting me in 2 ways, ie - making me pay twice or thrice the offered price and all of that with low speed in the middle of the month.

I'm a university student and I can tell that for starters I do consume a lot of bandwidth each month, let alone every week. Apart from surfing online to research for college projects and the like, I also podcast for disaster relief blogs/wiki s overseas, stream interactive tutorials as well as listen to live broadcasts online and am involved in various DVB/VOIP-folksonomy initiatives for non-profit purposes. Being an open source application developer means that I need to download extensions and patches for the Linux platform -- all of which are what Batelco may refer to as "Bandwidth-Hungry" customers. The above may somewhat fall within the WEB2.0 category and it would be wrong to say that Bahrain is not yet exposed to WEB2.0 because I know many students, educational institutions and some companies who are using, developing and currently integrating WEB2.0 into their everyday life, it might be that Batelco haven't done proper or enough research into the use of WEB2.0 here in Bahrain, that has led to them to slap all their internet packages with thresholds.

Furthermore, Batelco have completely decided that they know what's best for me and other customers and without any prior notice have simply switched us to the new Internet packages with their relevant pricing policies and thresholds, in my view this is totally unacceptable and I do not condone what Batelco have done! I'm disgusted, angry and sad at the crooked steps Batelco have adopted and implemented in the past few days with regards to their new ripp-off internet packages and pricing models. Apparently, Batelco switched my internet connection to that of the 1Mbps one in the past 72 hours and it was just today that they sent me the following letter, more like a general announcement: In English & In Arabic

Several bloggers in Bahrain have written about Batelco's latest Broadband Internet Packages in the past few days. I first came to know about it when I read about it on Mahmood's blog here, here as well as here and that led me to checking out BoycottBatelco.com which contains some really good research and updates via email exchanges with Batelco's CEO -- Peter Kaliropolos, whose latest reply to the BoycottBatelco.com team and broadband internet users can be found here. Haitham says he considers himself lucky as he no longer uses Batelco's services eversince he started working at MTC-Vodafone. Moody explains to net surfers from the UK and US as to why internet connections keep lagging in Bahrain while The Daily Qassooms alerts us all that the 25th of May is the last day to disconnect from Batelco's internet connection if we prefer to do so because after that Batelco will charge us as per their new packages.

Emoodz brings us another perspective on the whole Batelco issue by mentioning that he is happy with the latest prices and packages considering that his sources in Batelco have revealed that he has only been using 6GB in the past 3 months alone, and last but not least, Mahmood blogs his reply to the email sent to the team at boycottbatelco.com by Batelco's CEO and requests him to reconsider his current Internet offerings and tells him that bloggers in Bahrain are concerned that they will suffer due to the changes:

...As bloggers we do use the internet heavily, we know too for a fact that our visitors and guests most probably are heavy users too. We are concerned that we are part of those disenfranchised 14% who will suffer due to this change. You must realize that the a sizable portion of these 14% could also be regarded as the bleeding edge occupants of the internet, the very people who have harnessed the power of the internet and use it as service pioneers, using services other users have not woken up to: IP TV, file synchronization between computers and servers, video chat, entertainment, news, radio, streaming applications and the various other high-end applications which we have come to take for granted, it is some of these 14% who your company should befriend and solicit their input for future services and packages which you might consider introducing....

Although I'll be soon disconnecting my Batelco broadband Internet connection, that does not mean I'll stop blogging, podcasting or any of my daily tasks online, but instead I will be switching to another ISP either based in Bahrain or overseas. This may mean that I may have to put up with a 2-way VSAT connection, ie. an internet connection via satellite which am sure will have latency issues, but I'm prepared to go through that rather than subscribe for a limited broadband Internet service and hidden charges from Batelco. Eventually, I will also be switching all my cell phone lines to MTC-Vodafone and soon will discontinue the Batelco land line I've been paying for, for over 25 years to move on to a better and enhanced VOIP telephony service being offered soon by LightSpeed Communications. Moreover, I will encourage my family, relatives and friends to do the same.

I'll be there at the Bahrain Internet Society meeting where Batelco's CEO has been invited to have an open discussion regarding their Internet packages and pricing models and will be taking suggestions on their pricing and net offerings. This is happening on Sunday (tomorrow), May 14, 2006 at the Crowne Plaza hotel at 7PM in the Bahrain Convention Centre. Looking forward to seeing you there as well!

tag: boycottbatelco

Aid Bickering and Relief Politics -- so SAD!

2006-05-06T16:24:00.000+03:00

Another sad state of affairs along with the suffering during the aftermath of disasters is relief politics in the field. Usual suspects are USAID, CARE and of course, we can't forget the UN. The UN, unlike the other lovable INGOs (International Non Governmental Organizations) have begun cleaning up their act from within since the tsunami of 2004, it'll take more time for sure.. but we've seen a start there. USAID -- nice organization to work with... so nice that I remember during post-tsunami all these folks ever did in Sri Lanka and Thailand were sit on their bottoms, blindly approve funding for various relief project proposals and drive around in their air conditioned jeeps, flying high the stinking NGO (Non Governmental Organization) flags and touring the country.

And hey! it gets even better (and uglier) when it comes to CARE who decide to relocate MOST overseas staff to a crisis scene by playing the lame line of "no expertise available locally" and on to top it off use folks' donations to do so. No wonder most people are hesistant when it comes to donating to INGOs if it means 75% of aid gets spent on operations (staff relocation, entertainment, air conditioners, banquets and luxuries of all sort) and just 20% or less actually goes down to the ground where it's really needed. Major issues is transparency for most of these non-profits when it comes to donations, so easy for them to slap out a picture of a crying kid or destitute mother or a starving person for that matter but when it comes to accountability, most INGOs and certain NGOs are zero!

But then what about the crap operational relief workers need to endure from the top -- all the relief political games, who gets which project first... who uses influence over decision makers to scoop the loot from from either the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank - some of who are also confidential crooks. Nice.. so it all comes down to position, power and greed -- none of which are uncommon, i've seen most of these types during the tsunami, katrina, South Asian quake last year and even the ongoing H5N1 lab test approval agencies -- most of which are a farce!

And it's not surprising that one finds the same thing happening here in Bahrain with some non-profit organizations who seem intent on wasting donations on unecessary expenses like: RGBan Satellite Phones for about 25 staff members, when only a team of 7-10 are sent in on urban search and rescue operations overseas, moreover the amount of money being spent on training by foreign donors is amazing -- but so sad to learn that the controlling agencies here simply miss the dates! So while everyone in Bahrain is complaining about how careless the government is in financing, no ones seems to realize that there are thousands if not millions of dollars being squandered each week by some NGO. IS ANYONE QUESTIONING THE NGOs HERE? NO! Is there some sort of Transparency organization in Bahrain apart from the Bahrain Transparency group to monitor the funding sent in by foreign donors? NO? NGO world is hell! There's no one who has the balls to question these folks... some of them are using the UNDP as a cover for other things... very messed up...but then it's not just Bahrain as I found out.. it's all over the Middle East.. atleast this is being looked into in Kuwait at the moment as for Dubai -- Who Knows!

Sadly.. it looks like the majority people are giving generously not based on where their donations will end up or what they will be used for but rather on the pathetic picture the NGO sells via their interactive mass media PR vehicle.

The crap that goes on within INGOs and NGOs is another ball game by itself, makes good for another blog posting, nex time ;-)

Buzz from the 18th Bahrain Bloggers Gathering

2006-05-05T13:14:00.000+03:00

Ok, for starters.... It took me around 20 minutes to get where the cafe was... I figured it would be some where near the Crowne Plaza like Mahmood mentioned... and when I finally found the place... plus parking... it was 9pm. Not bad.. considering there were still people when I got there. I gotta' say it was a nice meetup place, Cinabon Cafe.. hi-speed wifi net and its only about a dinar per hour, atmosphere is nice as well.. very retro!

There might not have been much folks this time.. but it was a very lively discussion with Tariq, Emoodz, Mahmood (of course!), Mishkah & BinShehab (he now sports a nice bumper sticker on his car of binshehab.com -- way to go!!). Lots of perspectives and the laugh of the day is when Tariq told us a story about eating Camel Ghozi in Saudi where there was a hump on a table, and when one poked into it with a fork, macoroni poured out. :-D The conversation then took a U-Turn with how arab hospitality these days can sometimes be deemed as stupidity where both Mahmood and Tariq shared their experiences.

BinShehab, our expert on security, came up with idea of educating people on what blogging is, Miskhah kept the convo going by adding creativity to it all and eMoodz was on about how to get more people to start blogging. I personally think Bahrain's bloggers have the content.. maybe we need to start exploring better ways to channel the content, an interactive channel rather than just text... maybe podcasting and vlogging as Mahmood has shown us in the past.... Podcasting.. well I can't really think of anyone who's doing it in Bahrain at the moment, i've done a few but not bahrain-centric.. more like google focused, but am willing to give it a try. There was also mention about collablogging - remind me of Global Voices and the various World Wide Help projects i've co-blogged at. Definintely worth digging into for Bahrain - collablogging - i'm up for it -- any takers? Check out Mahmood's post on the bloggers' gathering last night... points worth looking at! a free bloggers platform service -- NICE!~

Oh yes.. as usual I got lost in Bahrain.. last night got stuck in traffic on exhibition road.. clearly there are some folks from across the causeway who have no clue on how to drive properly.. anyways i ended up in some place called Janussen some place near Saar I think... people say Bahrain is an island, I think not.. this place is huge... when you actually take time to drive around. Anyways... this blog is set to see some major revamping as Google will be releasing some addons to their free blogspot offering here... since they haven't made it public yet I will be hacking this blog into a wordpress alternative. Looking forward to more blogger-related progression in Bahrain - believe me it's all there.... just waiting to be tapped at the right time and by the right people!

Tsunami warning For Tongo to be downgraded soon

2006-05-03T20:28:00.000+03:00

We're blogging at WorldWideHelp, check there for updates, from the background.. it looks like the tsunami warning which was issued a while agofor NZ ans Fiji will soon be downgraded (i hope), contact at pacific warning center liasing with monitoring center in Bangkok will be issuing a bulleting in an hour or so.

Blogging from CETME 2006 in Bahrain

2006-04-20T17:01:00.000+03:00

Well here I am in one of the conference rooms at the Bahrain Exhibition Center where CETME 2006, a career, education and training conference which is currently taking place, blogging parts f the event live.. well there is so much happening that I really am finiding it hard to provide voerage on everything. This 3-day conference which kicked off on Tuesday this week has loads to offer potential undergrads, job seekers and there are loads of head-hunters around here.

Of course, there's the world's largest mortar board on display at the center of the exhibition floor - just past the Economic Development Board booth. And lots of useful seminars at no cost - poor attendance though / but here's the thing... lots of the exhibitors are staying in Bahrain till sunday over at the Mecure Hotel in Seef... ;-)

Monash South Africa just started their speakers session, so am off to that! But if you haven't checked out CETME 2006 yet, you should come down and have a look, you might see something you like... opportunities galore.

Microsoft's Presentation Glitches & Bahrain's Internet Connection

2006-04-05T21:19:00.000+03:00

Last Saturday, when Microsoft hosted their 2006 Security Management Road show in Bahrain (blogged here), they suffered some serious technical glitches during a Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2 presentation where the Microsoftie from Dubai was trying to remotely boot up machines running Windows 2k and XP at the UAE office. While he was trying to demo the remote connection from the conference at Sheraton Hotel, Windows kept kept freezing over and over again. Everyone present there kept wondering whether the gliches were caused by the R2 server and Windows on the whole or was it really something beyond their control? Well.... I shot the following footage of it happening live and uploaded it to Google Video so you may all see what really happened:

Later on in the day, I talked to the Microsoftie who did do the demo finally and managed to successfully connect to the machines int he UAE office, and I asked him what went wrong: Why did Windows and R2 freeze while remotely connecting? He stressed that the internet connectivity from Bahrain was very weak, in fact the connection speed that was available during the glitched presentation was only 7kbps!! And it was simply impossible to remotely connect at that speed. It was mentioned that MTC Vodafone was the ISP supplying Sheraton Hotel with the wireless broadband connection and it was something to do at their end, another reason which was given to me was that Sheraton Hotel have a very restrictive way of allowing notebook users to connect to the internet in wireless fashion.

Apparently, anyone wanting to use the Wi-Fi net connection at Sheraton need to either pay 9 Dinars for 24 hours of net connectivity or 5 Dinars per hour or 3 Dinars for 30 minutes + once the card is activated, you can only use their internet connection for 60 minutes from the time it's activated by the front desk! To me this pricing policy that Sheraton practises traps the user completely. On top of it all, Sheraton forces the user to connect to the internet via their gateway page called 'Sheraton Wayout' and they just have one Access Point for all the 4 conference rooms on the ground floor. Which meant that at the time, due to all 80 notebook users using the WiFi connection at the same time from Sheraton's ground floor, the speed reduced to 7kbps.... how weak is that? In the end, Microsoft went ahead with their demo using a wired broadband connection, so much for WiFi net connectivity in Bahrain! At the end of the day, the Microsoft folks from Dubai insisted they weren't going through the product demos in Muscat or Kuwait without having either broadband connections of atleast 512 kbps or wired broadband connections.

What does all this tell us about Microsoft, MTC Vodafone & Sheraton Hotel?
Future solutions and applications from Microsoft need Hi-Speed broadband internet to function, MTC Vodafone need to get their connectivity act together with Sheraton Hotel, and Sheraton Hotel on the other hand need to revamp the way they operate their WiFi connections and increase their access points plus revise their internet pricing packages to wireless net users or they'll loose corporate clients in the near future.

10 Minutes With Microsoft's Desmond Nair ...

2006-04-03T20:21:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, when I went over to checkout Microsoft's Middle East Security Management Road Show 2006 at the Sheraton Hotel in Bahrain, I grabbed the opportunity to get one-on-one with Microsoftie - Desmond Nair who's the Server and Tools Business Group Manager for Microsoft Middle Eas t. Desmond who was a Microsoft Product Marketing Manager in South Africa and now is based in Dubai, took some time off the conference sessions to answer some 'interesting' questions and also fired up his take on Vista, Firefox and Open Source. Read on!

Angelo: In your presentation a few minutes ago, you mentioned that Microsoft (MS) just got honored in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) a month back for being the most trustworthy company in an opeinion poll. Could you please tell me what rank you guys got placed at, because according to Forrester Research, of the 4,732 US households surveyed in September and October 2005 to determine users' trust in 48 technology brands, MS ranked 20th out of 22. Any ideas Desmond?

Desmond: Well am being awfully honest whenI say that I’ve no clue about that survey, but when it comes to trusted computing, Microsoft (MS) did get honored by WSJ for being the most trustworthy company in the world and for example in in Japan, the most trustworthy company was Toyota.

Angelo: Why did MS introduce tabbed browsing in Internet Expl orer 7 (IE7)? Had Firefox anything to do with it?

Desmond: We introduced tabbed browsing in IE7 mainly to increase productivity. I mean today, it's all about browsing and searching online and no one likes to keep opening new windows to view content, it's time-consuming and that's why we came up with tabbed browsing for IE7 in order to enhance a user's browsing experience online. Secondly, it's not a question of Microsoft going head-to-head with Firefox, competition will always exist. Now I've heard a lot about Firefox, and been meaning to install it but never got around to doing so. I think Firefox is loosing it’s community these days due to the management and people who designed the browser.

Angelo: You mean Blake Ross who's the creator of FireFox?

Desmond: Well not really but I do know that there’s a lot of complaints going in against them from their very own forum users as I’ve been reading in the past few months.

Angelo: Ok, and here in Bahrain, do you think that MS has been getting the expected response from customers that are using some of your products or do you think that the Middle East & Africa user base has a long way to go in utilizing MS solutions to it's true potential?

Desmond: I'm very impressed with what I'm seeing in Bahrain, the clients here simply amazing and are adapting to MS-powered systems where it's really needed especially in the Oil & Gas industry, and now with the availability of Windows Virtual Server 2003 R2, our clients can take advantage of the benefits of combining R2 with what they currently have in place and we know the possibilities are endless!

Angelo: What about those students who use MS products? How exactly is MS in the Middle East tapping into the potential that students can offer towards building the MS brand? Are there any projects or programmes that can be run for them? Or are any being run as of now?

Desmond: Well at MS, we have taken a keen interest in students because that’s one of our target markets and as you would know, students are better at playing with our stuff and coming up with a better way to do things. That said, MS in the Middle East, strives to build uppon students' skills in using MS solutions and we also develop them on the whole while simultaneously running traning programmes which specialize in various tracks. The guy in charge of this whole project is based in Dubai. And every year, MS Middle East hosts a code competition between students out of which, the best make it to working at MS. This is a project which we've been running for the past 3 years, and it's been very successful since.

Angelo: Can you please tell me about Microsoft's relationship with Linux?

Desmond: We have a stong relationship with Linux that exists at the customer level which means we support all kinds of client environments, may they be Linux, Solaris, etc., there's no differential treatment as such given Linux users and all those stories you've heard about Microsoft throwing over a damp blanket on users who are currently operating within a Linux environment is totally false, what we do is work with people to get the best out of their user environment, and tomorrow you'll know why what I'm telling you right now is true, MS in Redmond are coming out with an exclusive press release on R2's flexbility with other platforms. ;-) [PressPass came out with the MS Exclusive release 5 minutes ago (03/04/06) - Microsoft delivers Linux support and makes Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 available to customers as a free download]

Angelo: Windows Vista is set to release in November this year as stated by MS in various news outlets, could you please tell me if this would be the same release date for Bahrain and the rest of the Middle East? I'm sure you know how this region usually is the last one to recieve some tech products, are we going to see a repeat here by MS?

Desmond: Yes and No really:-), YES! Vista WILL be released worldwide at the same and in all languages as well. So you can count on it being released in Bahrain during November 2006! And NO the region won't get Vista late.

Angelo: Well Desmond, I've also heard that although Vista is set to release in November, MS will be releasing it to just corporate clients and not home users, could you confirm this?

Desmond: Your're right Angelo, MS corporate clients will get Vista in November and somewhere in January 2007, home users will get their hands on Vista.

Angelo: Do you know what the reason might be behind this delay of releasing Vista to non-corporate users? To me it sounds a bit unfair, don't you think so, it's like saying if you got the $$$, then you're getting Vista!

Desmond: Well, this is one of the hardest decisions that MS took, because originally we wanted to release Vista to home users in December, as that month in the US is when sales hit a peak due to major price drops, but due to the fact that computers are manufactured in China and there's a 4 weeks wait on shipping and the like, MS decided that we’ll sit on it and work together with the hardware folks and release Vista in the New Year to home users. Now, you've talked about fairness and big bucks but realistically speaking, corporations aren’t going to sit around until computers are shipped, which is why they get vista before home users do, we’re looking more at quantity of computers being used by a corporate client than by a home user, I think we’re talking about the difference of 2 computers purchased by a home user in comparison to possibly more than a thousand by a corporate client.

Angelo: In early 2005, just after the tsunami aftermath, a source with MS Belgium stated during a relief operation, that MS would be going open source in the last quarter of 2007, Can you please confirm that as actually happening given that it's been more than a year since that statement was mentioned?

Desmond: To my knowledge, MS has no plans to go completely open source, however, we already have certain code released as shared open source under something called the MS Shared Community License. And let’s not forget we just offered developers the full version of MS Visual Studio Dot Net 2005 Express Edition free for a year.

Angelo: Right, but that’s not the same as open source now....

Desmond: Well all I can say is that, there defininitely is a place for open source, but what is really needed is support for products that do go open source and this isn’t something that we’re seeing much of right now. Regarding MS going open source, I guess the right people to to talk to are the guys at MS Dynamics.

Angelo: Desmond, a final question: have you got any advice for the geeks out there? Any more MS road shows hitting the Gulf region in the near future?

Desmond: Well, this information isn’t released yet on the MS website, but yes there’s a major geek conference in Dubai on April 30th called the Gulf Developers Conference 2006 (GDC 2006) which is a completely free event, a whole day sorta’ thing, where it’s going to be patronized by developers, coders, hackers, I'm saying a major coder event and details of it is going to soon be live on the website, not released to the press yet. You will practically be seeing geeky t-shirts flashing around you and if you’re into coding, web services and know or think you’re a geek, then this is one conference you can’t afford to miss out on!

See you at GDC 2006 in Dubai!

(I'm in the center pictured with the Microsoft Security Management Road Show 2006 Crew - from left-to-right: Desmond, Yousif, me, Sharid & Hasif )

Bahrain Press Website Just Got Hacked! Again!

2006-04-02T21:56:00.000+03:00

Well.. I was looking up CETME's agenda a few minutes ago and noticed that Gulf-Press was their media partner, so I decided to checkout their site to see whether any press releases had been made available regarding the upcoming education and career conference, and guess what?

Their website just got defaced again, in less than a month, last time around Gulf-Press were hacked into according to a report in the Gulf Daily News on the 11th of last month. The defaced Gulf-Press website reads "DigitalMind is Back" . DigitalMind is one of the famous hackers around and has a known history of marking vulnerable servers with his identity which also serves as his trademark for a defaced site. Last time it was someone under the pseudonym 'Dreamcast' who hacked into the website in March and defaced it at the time.

Here's a screenshot I took of the Gulf-Press.com website at 9.45pm Bahrain time (18.45GMT):

I've run a ping and site check on Gulf-Press and it appears that the server is running Apache/1.3.29 Unix and FrontPage/5.0.2.2623 on FreeBSD. The server has been rebooted 2 weeks ago and here's the what the Gulf-Press server's uptime looks like, data as of 22nd March, 2006:

Will Gulf-Press do anything to prevent more series of cyber attacks against their site? Will we be seeing another report in the news about the above tomorrow? That remains to be seen I guess! However, the tech guys at Gulf-Press may want to get their act together before CETME 2006 kicks off on April 18th, we don't want any press releases getting messed around with or disappearing now, do we?. Well atleast I don't!

UPDATE#1: I figured out how the gulf-press site might have been defaced, I was talking to someome from Zone-H and it turns out that gulf-press are using phpNuke to power their online news publishing and content management services, I know for a fact that most people stopped using PHPNuke 4 years ago, mainly due to it being full of security holes although it offers various features.... so the hacker possibly found some script vulnerability in the php nuke version at gulf-press and decided to exploit it. -- makes sense?

UPDATE#2: Apparently, this is the website of DigitalMind who is the recent Gulf-Press Hacker/Defacing sites-loving person.

Update# 6: Tourist Ship Sinks in Bahrain

2006-04-01T02:53:00.000+03:00

I've decided to pool efforts at CSF II along with Ashish Gorde who's also in Bahrain and lost a friend in Thursday night's boat tragedy. Update# 7 and all other updates from now onwards will be posted at CSFII, so please go there

Following information on the body count was posted by Murray & Roberts Group Chief Executive Brian Bruce, he's the CEO of the company that is the lead contractor for Bahrain's WTC and whose employees had organized the boat party which has unfortunately been ruined by the tragic aftermath:

David Evans - Project Chairman (United Kingdom)
Will Nolan - Project Director (United Kingdom)
Stephen Grady - Finishes Manager (United Kingdom)
Chris Braysher - Commercial Manager (South Africa and United Kingdom)
Jimmy Allen - Design Coordinator (South Africa)
Lawrence Sulman - Project Engineer (South Africa)
Alan Jeppe - Engineering Surveyor (South Africa)
Cathy Judd - Partner (South Africa)

In a statement on the website Bruce has mentioned that the process of engagement with the families of the one Pakistani and two Indian employees is continuing. Murray & Roberts executives have today engaged with the families of the deceased employees from South Africa and United Kingdom and will work with them through this period of tragic loss. The survivors of the tragedy will also be supported as they come to terms with their own experiences and the loss of friends and colleagues.

Based on information to hand, 57 people are confirmed as dead. In all, more than 50 senior employees from various companies working on the World Trade Centre Project have been lost. Commenting on the tragedy, Brian said that they have initiated a process that will investigate the decision leading to the choice of event to celebrate the project milestone of structural completion.

For further information, you may reach Brian on +27 (0)11 456 6281 / fax +27 (0)86 637 0113 or email clientservice@murrob.com

Update# 5: Tourist Ship Sinks in Bahrain

2006-03-31T22:50:00.000+03:00

More hotline numbers are coming in for those who wish to find out more information on missing relatives and friends of the boat tragedy that happened last night here in Bahrain:

The Indian embassy has set up two telephone lines - 00973-39280216 (Counsellor H.R Mohi) and 00973-39745640 (Second secretary R. Ragunathan)

Those passengers who have been rescued are being taken to the Salamaniya Medical Complex - 00973-17-255555 - and the Bahrain Coast Guard can be reached on 00973-39413413 and 00973-17-718888.

Update# 4: Tourist Ship Sinks in Bahrain

2006-03-31T21:56:00.000+03:00

The following hotline information for tracing relatives and missing persons just came in:

British nationals – contact the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (London) on 020 7008 1500 and ask for the Crisis Unit. All other nationals should contact their respective Embassies in the UK.

Enquirers who cannot contact their Embassy directly due to political or personal reasons, can contact the Red Cross international tracing and message service on 0845 053 2004.

Some more pics from last night's rescue operations:

[[my appologies to all the folks who are pulling my rss and xml feed, the previous post had images of 1.4mb eachwhich explains why the feed or page loads very slow]]

Update# 3: Tourist Ship Sinks in Bahrain

2006-03-31T13:41:00.000+03:00

Here are some pics from today morning's relief and rescue operations conducted by the Bahriani Royal Navy and Airforce as well as the Coastguard and US Naval ER Crews, the pics have been captured off witness/amateur video footage and that's the reason they're not quite clear -- my appologies for that. Thanks to Colin at Dictionary.hm for providing the bandwidth and space to host these images:

The rest of the pics from last night's and today morning's relief efforts can be viewed here - I'll keep uploading more as they become available.

Update #2: Tourist Ship Sinks in Bahrain

2006-03-31T10:28:00.000+03:00

Today morning, the Gulf Daily News (GDN) have filed detailed reports (design of boat in question, National Emergency Health coordination, search for relatives, majority of vicitms are asians) into last night's boat tragedy. Their report puts the death toll as 48 with 27 people injured and 63 alive. Reuters, however, have placed the death toll at 57 and 67 survivors according to an Al Jazeera report quoting an Interior Ministry spokesperson. Initial reports that had come out last night from sources on the scene had it that there were 150 people on board, the the GDN have the right figure as 130 people. SAR operations are ongoing by the Bahraini Royal Navy & Airforce, Coastguard patrols and the US Naval Support crews.

An AP Wire item states that Bahraini surivior - Khalil Mirza was teh passenger who alerted the Coastguard about the boat capsizing in a call to them from his cell phone. "People were scared in the water," he said. "They were fighting with each other and screaming."

(first person to be rescued after the boat cpasiized)

The boat had capsized in between the Mina Salman Port and Muharraq which explains why parts of the Sitra Bridge were cordoned off, yesterday. The boat had a capacity for 100 passengers, but there were around 130 on board. It has een said that, most of those who died drowned. The boating trip had been organised by Nass, Murray and Roberts to celebrate the completion of the concrete structure of the Bahrain World Trade Center (BWTC). Nass, Murray and Roberts are the lead contractors for the BWTC towers.

(Bahrain's Prime Minister at the scene of the accident monitoring a detailed investigation)

Nationality count has been reported by The Telegraph as 25 Britons, 20 Filipinos, 10 South Africans and 10 Egyptians while Bahrain's Health Minister Nada Haffadh in a statement to Al Jazeera has stated that 30 of the rescued were hospitalised including 17 Indians, four Britons, two South Africans, two Filipinos, and one each from Italy, China, Thailand and Bahrain. The British Embassy has confirmed that British nationals are among those missing.

(Injured survivors were taken to hospital, but bodies continued to be brought ashore)

News24 in South Africa has stated that while 7 South Africans have been found, six others are reported to have been among those who died although initial reports indicated that 13 South African were among the 150 passengers on board. This report filed by IOL in South Africa details the scenes of relatives and survivors breaking down the scene last night right after SAR ops had begun.

(At the Salmainya medical centre in the Bahraini capital, Manama, doctors tried to reassure survivors and worried relatives and friends)

Meanwhile the Department of Foreign Affairs in the Philippines have confirmed that of the 20 Filipinos that were aboard the vessel, 3 have been rescued.

This just in: the newsreader on 96.fm - radio bahrain has just announced that those who have been rescued now stands at 70 - 11.01 am.

1) A hot line has been set up by the Interior Ministry for people seeking information about their relatives, friends who were on board, If you're inside Bahrain, please dial 1-777-00000, if you're calling from overseas, please dial
1-777-00000

2) For Singaporean nationals, please call the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who have set up a hotline at their duty office in Singapore and are assisting those affected by the tragedy on 6379 8800 / 6379 8855 if you're calling from Singapore and if you're calling from overseas please dial 0065-6379-8800 / 0065-6379-8855 or email mfa_duty_officer@mfa.gov.sg.

UPDATE#1: Tourist Ship Sinks in Bahrain

2006-03-31T01:09:00.000+03:00

Some reports have the time the incident occured as 8pm while others have it at 9.30pm local time. Both have not been confirmed, also the location has been cited as close to Muhrarraq. Also there is a misleading report going around to news agencies that there have been 1,200 feared dead, this is not at all true, completely false, because there is a confirmed report that there were only 150 tourists aboard the ferry of which 60 have survived. This incident has now made it to Wiki News, you may find more details on it there.

SAR (Search And Rescue) spokersperson on site have confirmed in a statement to CNN Arabia's Correspondent - Caroline Faraj that the capacity on the ferry was 60-70 people at the max and 150 people meant the ferry was overbooked -- this has been cited as one of the reasons behind the disaster.

More details are said to follow in an hour. The vessel is a local daily shuttle. No names have been released yet.

Officials from the Interior Ministry are at the scene and have begun a full investigation into the ship's sinking, the area around Mina Salman is currently cordoned off, so I'd suggest anyone planning to go there not to do so, use alternative roads instead to go to whever you need to.

Majority of the tourists were westerners including locals. Rescue personnel have managed to get most of those who survived to the hospitals, some bodies were seen coming out of the water according to sources at the scene. Majority of the people are still missing, the death toll so far is 44. Focus is currently on search and recue, bare details are being provided to media agencies, not many confirmations of reports that MSM is flinging around.

[yahoo - pic credits]

This just came in that 63 people have been rescued, the Ministry of Health, US Naval Support crews and Bahraini Navy and Coast guard are all coordinating the relief efforts and SAR is ongoing. If you have access to CNN International or BBC World TV Channels, I'd suggest you to tune into them because they both are having live phone calls with reporters on the scene and the officials from the Ministry Of Health/Ministry Of Interior.

Tourist Ship Sinks in Bahrain [Blogging Live]

2006-03-31T00:21:00.000+03:00

At approximately 8pm local time here in Bahrain, a ferry sunk near Sitra. It was a boat carrying around 150 tourists - locals and expats alike. There are about 60 people who have said to have survived thought search and recue operations by the Bahraini coast guard and the US navy is continuing as I blog.

Here's the bbc report

I'm posting pics off the CNN broadcast and will have a link to a short interview with a correspondant from Dubai via a google video soon. I'll continue posting updates till we have something online from teh GDN tomorrow. Thanks to Bala for the heads up on this all the way from New Jersey. Apparenty every other news agency is posting an AP report whcih is making its way around the wires. Google Earth is being used by some of the news agencies to explore the waters of Bahrain and the location of the incident.

cheers!

[NOTE: I'm not a member of main stream media, this is citizen media provided for informational purposes ONLY!]

Interview with DJ Whoo Kid in Bahrain, Some MJ Moments

2006-03-26T22:37:00.000+03:00

If anyone missed the interview by Shaheen Reid with DJ Whoo Kid on MTV.com while he was in Bahrain, you can read more about it here. This interview is just some proof that MJ hasn't been booted from Bahrain and that the report filed by FOX News last month was totally misleading! [FOX NEWS BIAS as usual] I've noted below some interesting points from the interview where Michael Jackson was also brought into the picture:

"I [saw] Michael Jackson sitting by the pool sippin' lemonade," Whoo Kid recalled of the beginning of his day with the royal family and others in Bahrain. "They didn't tell me he was going to be there — I didn't even expect Michael to be in the country. So I'm like 'F---ing Michael Jackson is here, sippin' lemonade!'

"I said 'What's up?' to him and acted like I wasn't groupie-sized. I gave him respect for all the sh-- he did, but in my head I was going crazy. He said, 'I'm just chillin' ' — he actually said 'chillin'!' F---ed my head up, so I walked away from him. Everybody gave him his respectful space."

"Mike was like, 'Whoo Kid, come sit over here,' the DJ said in a high-pitched voice, mimicking Jackson. "I was like poinng! He was supposed to be there for like 45 minutes; he stayed for five hours. We was talking about Eminem. He was like, 'Is Eminem really retired?' I forgot that Eminem totally cremated him in one video ['Lose It'], but [Michael] didn't even bring it up. Then he started talking about 50."

Apparently, Whoo Kid, is trying to hookup 50 Cent and MJ together and is aiming to become Bahrain's Musical Ambassador. I recall that Ali Dawood from 96.5 FM interviewed Whoo Kid live on Radio Bahrain two weeks ago where he confirmed that he's looking forward to bringing G-Unit and 50 Cent to record in Bahrain for a collaboration with MJ. Does this all sound to good to be true? Probably, atleast it might give rap, rnb and hip hop a better reputation on the island, atleast I hope it does.

F1 Weekend is finally here! PICS PICS PICS

2006-03-10T01:06:00.000+03:00

Hi folks! it's been a busy 48 hours for me and loadsa' people. Wednesday evening was the Bahrain-Belgian Blogger Meetup that was totally fun & geeky- which I will blog about in detail later on, but for now you guys will have to just check out the pics from the event, and a big shout out to the F1 Marshalls at Zattevrienden.be and thanks to Mahmood & Dorian who organized the meetup and to everyone who showed up:

(Opening season of F1 20-06 in Bahrain - billboard)

(Dorian The Great!)

(Dinner @ Al Bareh Art Gallery)

(Our Cocktail mixer - orange juice fan!)

(Zattevrienden.BE admins aka The GEEKS! @ the party - posting/blogging live during the party)

And I just came back from the Bahrain International Circuit (BIC) -- yes its just past midnight! But I've taken a couple of exclusive pics with pit crews and teams up close. A couple of backstage photos of preperations for the F1 Parade that happens on Rade Day (Sunday) and more exclusive close ups coming tomorrow, thought right now - hope you have fun browsing through the ones below [no time to blog in detail but I will right after this busy-busy weekend is over with. Yalla Bahrain indeed!:

(goofing around on the track)

(mclaren should clinch the title this time, everyone thinks its ferrari - but the mechanics at ferrari said otherwise...)

(toyota were just concerned with putting together their test car, screw the flashing they said... )

(the renault guys had something against the honda folks in terms of car mods .... )

I'm off to bed, more pics in a few hours :)

Pics from the March '06 - Bahrain Bloggers Meetup

2006-03-03T01:08:00.000+03:00

March 2006 - The Bahrain Bloggers' Meetup @ Cappuccino Cafe

Last night, Bahrain's 16th bloggers' meetup took place at the Cappuccino Cafe in Saar just a few blocks away from the American Mission's Dental Clinic. There were around 12 folks who showed up - bloggers (some of them were Bin Shehab, Fred, The Joker, Tariq Khonji, Tawfiq Al-Rayyash), blog commenters (Johnster ;-)) and non-bloggers - including a guest speaker from the NDI (National Democratic Institute) which is a NGO (Non Governmental Organization) in Bahrain and a visiting Belgian F1 2006 Flag Marshal. You can find more pics from the blogger meetup here.

The meetup lasted about 3 hours but many topics were discussed such as the upcoming F1 and other happenings around Bahrain to geek speak and business in Bahrain. Of course you had the usual suspects who gave their take on politics while the rep from NDI gave a speech on democratic changes and The Joker had brought along a Arabic comic on the cartoons controversy which he tanslated much to the delight of everyone present.

Michael Jackson wasn't left out of the conversation either and thanks to a misleading FOX News report everyone thinks he's left the island while tabloids in the US of A continue to print the pic of him wearing a Abaya at Marina mall. Anyways, MJ is supposedly still in the country.

We had a very interesting bill to pay and a nice note for Mahmood to check out[pic i took got a bit blurred, am guessing that Bin Shehab's pic is more clear]. Anyways, the bill was passed around, everyone doing their bit and it was settled. Most of the folks took off afterwards, while Bin Shehab, Tariq, Johnster & his friend and I continued 'social networking' for another 45 minutes.

Now there was also some GDN-bashing that took place at this pointf which revolved around the lack of coverage on local news such as poverty and hunger-stricken children - a strong point put forward by bin Shehab and Johnster raised some valid questions such as why the GDN had not give much emphasis on the Dafur crisis nor a proper article on the situation in Sudan, to which Tariq held fort very well and insisted that there was also the restriction of limited page count unlike the GDN's sister daily - Akbhar Khaleej. My issue with the GDN is their messed up website - seriously - it's got a bad user interface and I strongly believe that they need to realize the potential of media blogging and either start up a corporate blog or editors' blogs. Les Horton needs a blog - that's for sure! If Les starts blogging, it will keep off the trolls and Wannabe's who go around online impersonating him. But then it's up to the Publishing/Chief editors at the GDn to take the suggestions on :-)

We missed Mahmood and Haitham at the meetup along with other Bahrain bloggers who we hope to see at the upcoming Bahrain-Belgium Bloggers Meetup on the 8th of March at the Dar Al-Bareh Gallery Cafe and the evening kicks off at 8pm with a party to crash at Fred's place - details on this coming soon and we might be skype-casting with Amira in Canada and anyone else who'd like to join in - hopefully the Gallery has wifi access or a net connection. Anyways, it's 4.30 am right now, am feeling sleepy, so I'll blog more on the blogger meetup later today.

Another Google Discovery - Alias Google Domains

2006-02-25T12:51:00.001+03:00

It all started out when Adam Tucker found a stack of mystery IP addresses (72.14.203.104 & 66.249.95.246) owned by Google but then couldn't get much details apart from the missing 'Sign In' link that usually appears at the top of google.com on Google's 72 IP range (72.14.203.104).

I then traced the route for packets of 66.249.95.246 and realized that a 504 'server unreachable ' error kept popping up because there are no websites hosted on that IP. I proceeded to do a trace route of IP 72.14.203.104 and found another IP namely, 64.233.179.104 which hosts a website. The domain name for 64.233.179.104 is dm15.net is almost an exact copy of the google.com homepage but again with a missing link of 'Sign In at the top' and another link at the bottom of the search that has a link 'Go to Google.com'.

Here's the funny thing: dm15.net corresponds to the IP 64.233.179.104 and owned by Google right! Well when you key in www.dm15.net in your browser's address bar, you're shown a copy of google's homepage but when you key in dm15.net without the 'www' your taken to a Chineese website. Something looks weird, so I ran a DNS check on dm15.net and it turns out that although the IP is owned by google, the domain name is registered by a ICANN Registrar head-quartered in HongKong, namely, HiChina Web Solutions Ltd. which serves up the dns for the url dm15.net with their technical and administrative contacts based in Shanghai.

Looks like the 64.233.179.104 which is directly allocated and part of the net range:64.233.160.0 - 64.233.191.255 is reserved by Google for their operations in China as it is also tied out to Google's ns1 & ns2 nameservers.

You may also check out the following domains owned by google (either registered for google's employees or future google products and services):

--- 72.14.203.104 ---
51pay.net registered to someone from Zhejiang in China
21150.com registered to someone from the Shanxi Province in China (i guess this might be Google's SMS service in China like the Google's US - 466453.com)

--- 64.233.187.104 ---
contemporarydesignplastics.com registered to someone in Arlington, Texas
ldvgroup.net registered to someone in Herndon, VA [created Oct. 99]
bluerockfamily.com registered to someone in Cypress, Texas

--- 64.233.161.104 ---
bgpd.net bgpd.info | All registered to someone in Orlando, Florida
bgpd.us /

--- 64.233.161.147 ---
liveswitch.net & liveswitch.com registered to someone in Marlton, New Jersey

--- 64.233.167.104 ---
bajaycee.com registered to someone at Velocity Internet Partners
cadeus.com registered to someone in Ottawa, Canada
colothis.com registered to someone in Wisconsin

--- 64.233.167.99 ---
bluelight.homedns.org was on an Apache/PHP webserver before it's netblock ownership was transfered from Qwest Communications Corporation to Google on Feb 11th, 2006.

--- 64.233.183.147 ---
google.thelink.net - this IP came out in 2002 and domain was registered to a company called The Link LLC in Montgomery, US.

----
oingo.com > relays to appliedsemantics.com that was acquired by Google in 2003
plainsight.org's netblock ownership was transferred from The Planet to Google on Feb 5th 2006
googleimageads.com first surfaced in 2003
lookxx.com is a HongKong horse racing website but without the 'www' redirects to a copy of google's homepage
iw.com.cn is a Chinese domain name that first appreared in 1998 but it's netblock ownership is assigned to Google and resolves to an exact copy of Google's homepage but it's dns is served by bizcn.com and who's server keeps timing out.

Interesting Google Subdomains:
netease.google.com
gsademo1.google.com -- a search page powered by the google search appliance

It's been quite an eventful hour for me :-)

cheers!

A Video Display Link Within Google's Search Results?

2006-02-17T18:13:00.000+03:00

Well most of us know about Google Video & it's Search facility right? But has anyone heard of about Google presenting one with Google Video links from collaborating Google partners during a keyword search on Google.com? Well today I was made aware of this interesting Google feature which seems to be relatively new by Nicolas at Mundarina who had blogged a note from Citigroup where they detailed two new features, namely Google's Click 2 Call service and a Google Video Display Link on google.com in a report dated Feburary 15th, 2006.

Since Nicolas was looking for more information from his readers on these two features, I'd posted a link to a help page on Google's which described their click 2 call service in detail and then proceeded to scour Google's Help center for more info on the Video Display Link. As I was unable to get anything that matched the details of the report linked on Mundarina and since I was interested to get more on the Google Video Display Link that was highlighted in the Citigroup report, I fired off an email to the Mark Mahaney who authored the report and is Citigroup's Internet Research Director, requesting more details and screenshots on his findings on what he'd discovered.

Two hours later, Mark replies to say that his findings are included in the report and sent me an attachment (pdf file) containing the same full-page Citigroup note linked earlier at Mundarino. I've written to Mark and hopefully he'll have more details for us.

Mark's take on the sighting of the new Google Video Display Link feature as detailed in the Citigroup report was: "The simple point for us is that this might well mark Google’s first efforts to generate display advertising on its own Websites. We note that to date Google has generated no material revenue from this segment. So we would view this step as an indication of Google’s willingness/intention to tap into a sizeable new revenue stream."

Upon opening the pdf document again I observed that the Video Display Link as seen in the screenshot was enclosed in a shaded-blue box that you usually find sponsored links featured in. The video display link was titled as Video results for 2006 Torino Games and consisted of a google video screen with the play button and alongside it were links such as 'Event Schedule', 'TV Listings', 'Medal Count' and 'Google Map of Torino, Italy'. At the top-right corner of the shaded-blue area was the grey text "in collaboration with NBC Olympics" and at the bottom of the shaded-blue area in green text was a description for the video: "2006 Winter Olympics - Snowboarding Women's Halfpipe - Hannah Teter (Gold) - 0 min 14 sec - www.nbcolympics.com". The last link, namely, Google Map of Torino, Italy - on the Google Video Display link on google.com's search results, may have been linked to a map location on Google Local (Google Maps).

After taking a closer look at the screenshot, I noticed that the top three links seen at the side of the video (Event Schedule, TV Listings, Medal Count) were pulled in from nbcolympics.com. This was confirmed when I paid nbcolympics.com a visit and found simillar links but under different titles on the menu at the top of the website (see the screenshot of nbcolympics.com below).

Am assuming that the featured video had either been submited to Google Video by nbcolympics.com or was hosted on nbcolympics.com. Now I've tried using the same keyword - 'olympics' in the hope of bringing up the same search results page with the Google Video Display Link and I've even tried typing in the same url as seen in the browser's url bar (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=olympics) but I've had no luck :-( I've tried using different keywords as well all relating to the 2006 olympics and all types of variations but the google video display link doesn't show up. Maybe someone else out there will have better luck with it.

My question however is, how can other organizations show up as 'in collaboration with' on Google's search results? Any ideas?

UPDATE:
A friend at Google, mentioned that he knew they were doing special promos for the olymics but he hadn't seen the video feed on the search page and thought it was cool. He went around exploring further and found out that if one were to search using the keyword "olympic medals" the video display link would show up. I tried doing the same but I didn't see any video feeds as such.

He poked around further and found out it was a US-only thing and that surfers based out of the US wouldn't come across the google video display feeds within the search results even though they tried searching using google.com or whether their language was set to English-US. mainly because Google goes to the nearest datacenter based on one's IP address. I received a hack in an email from him which tries to go around the US-Only restriction but unfortunately it didn't work for me, possibly because I'm using a Win2K machine at the time I blogged this. His hack is as follows:

1) Go to Start> Run and type in: notepad c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts

2) Add '66.102.7.147 www.google.com' to end of file and save
3) Now go to http://www.google.com and try searching for the keywords (olympics or olympic
medals).
4) You probably don't want to leave that in there long term as it locks you to one data center and
one set of machines in that data center. If Google takes it down, google.com won't work for
you.

A Roundup of Google's Recent Moves

2006-02-08T16:05:00.000+03:00

Google's Book Project (formerly known as Google Print) came under the spotlight two days ago, during a speech titled 'Google, the Khmer Rouge and the Public Good' by the University of Michigan's President Mary Coleman who was addressing the Professional/Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers. Coleman began her speech in the hope of gaining support from those present for Google's Book Search Project and she started off by saying "I come to you this afternoon not only as the president of the University of Michigan. I come to you as a publisher. I come to you as a supporter of authors. And, for some here, I come to you as one of your biggest customers."

Why was it so important for her to mention this? Because that puts each member of the audience at ease, more of a personalized or rather a specialized touch with the knowing that they understand that Coleman would be presenting her case from all perspectives (Points of View - an author, a publisher & a customer). I won't bore you all with the details of her speech available here, but one point the president made that I found interesting was when she stated "Believe me, students will not be reading digital copies of “Harry Potter” in their dorm rooms."

In the never ending lineup of lawsuits (most lame and some ridiculous) being filed by SMEs (Small & Middle-Sized Enterprises) against Google, the latest case against the search giant and internet company is being filed by a payday loan provider -- Check 'n Go (CNG Financial) who
claims that the Google ad program allows competitors - such as PrettyGoodLoans.com and WeGiveCash.com - to take advantage of Google's liberties with the Check 'n Go trademark plus the fact that Check 'n Go have also asked that Google be made to pay an unspecified amount of trebled and punitive damages. Looks like Check 'n Go are aiming to make a quick buck with their damages claim. Once again, Google is standing it's ground and in a press statement
announced by Google spokesperson Jon Murchinson, have disputed the loan provider's claim by stating that their policy is lawful, and they're willing to address it in court if necessary. Good on Google, for not allowing the bullies in galore to trod down upon them.

While we're on the subject of lawsuits, most of us know how Google last September hired a former Microsoft employee -- Dr. Kai-fu Lee to lead their operations in China and suddenly found them being sued by Microsoft although now the case has reached an out-of-court settlement. Well yesterday, Google hired the head of Amazon.com's Online Search Engine - A9
for the post of VP of Engineering for Google. This was revealed by Google's spokesperson Lyn Fox in a press release who stated that Udi Manber, who has been chief executive of Amazon.com's A9 subsidiary was joining Google but did not say when or what exactly he would be tasked with, however, a spokesperson for A9, Craig Berman mentioned that Manber's last day at the Seattle-based company will be on Friday. That should give us an indication as to when Manber might start working with Google.

Meanwhile Blogoshpere is buzzing with Google's decision to blacklist BMW and remove the BMW website based in Germany (bmw.de) after the car manufacturer was found to have violated Google's web site promotion guidelines by using a technique that could artificially boost its search engine rating. This came to light after Matt Cutts, a Software Engineer who works for Google blogged about it and mentioned that his company had removed BMW's German site from its Web Index after the site included "doorway pages" that would automatically redirect visitors to a different URL. Now this doesn't mean that Google is going to be completely anti-BMW, obviously not because Google has given BMW Germany a second chance for it's site to be re-included into Google's web index by removing the JavaScript that redirects users around the site in this fashion and then send a re-inclusion request to Google's Webspam team, which Cutts leads including the fact that BMW need to provide information as to who created the doorway pages and assure the search giant such pages do not appear again. The good news is that BMW Germany (BMW.de) has already removed some of the redirect pages and Cutts has blogged that he will be re-including BMW Germany into the Google web index once again.

There is an excellent lesson here which can prove to be of some educational insight to the start-ups and corporates in the Middle East ( It's good to note that some of the corporates here in Bahrain and across the Gulf do go with such illegal tactics to gain higher rankings in Google, but I'll leave that for another blog posting). Another German website that has been hinted as being the next to be taken off Google's web index is Ricoh -- the technology product vendor, for having acted out in a similar fashion as BMW Germany had done.

On to Asia now, and with it's engineering, research and development offices already based in Bangalore and Hyderabad, Google announced yesterday, the expansion their operations in India with the launch of their sales and marketing offices located in Delhi and Mumbai. Visible motives for this expansion by Google according to some enthusiasts in the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and SEA (Search Engine Advertising) industry is the fact that Google is looking forward to increasing their advertising revenue generated from Asian business based upon the localization of their products and services both in India and beyond.
[Sukwinder Singh Cassidy (left), Vice President, Asia-Pacific and Latin America Operations, Google, and Ashish Kashyap, Country Head, India Sales and Operations, at a press conference in New Delhi on Tuesday]

Although some of Google India's current advertisers include Citibank, Monster India, Bharatmatrimony.com, ICICI Bank, Shaadi.com and Ebay India, Google has not disclosed the percentage of revenue generated from its advertising stake in the country. Maybe this would be something that sources from Citibank (Zahed Goma'a, Institutional Investor for Bahrain) and ICICI Bank (Ajay Kumar, Country Head for Bahrain) both of whom have branches in Bahrain, be able to enlighten us.

If one were to pay Google's Email service website - GMail.com a visit they would notice that, Google have given the page a new layout, joint co-branding of GMail with GTalk (also known as Google Talk) and even a new logo! But here is what's new about GMail, GTalk and GMail engineers have come together to integrate the facility for GTalk chat messages to get saved as conversations within GMail. This way one could keep a track of chat sessions with contacts on GTalk and a provision of chat history is readily made available for future reference. By default the chat option in GMail is turned off and you need to enable it through the settings tab in Gmail, after which any chats you have with your buddies on GTalk will get auto-saved to GMail and
can be retrieved for later viewing by clicking on the Chat link on the sidebar.

According to Jon Perlow who's a Software Engineer on the Gmail and Google Talk team, "Gmail is now just another XMPP client that connects to the Google Talk network. So Gmail users will be able to chat with any of the millions of users on the Google Talk and Jabber networks." Is it just that or is there more to this complete rebranding of the GMail homepage and the addition of GTalk chat messages to GMail? This is just a simplistic suspicion to smoke on and I won't be
surprised if someone proves me wrong but does anyone recall a while back that the Google were placed under major pressure by a company in the UK for using the GMail brand that users of Google's GMail service in the UK were then switched to using @googlemail.com? Might this rebranding of GMail along with the additional co-branding of GTalk be some sort of technique being implemented by Google to diplomatically yet using some smart market sense steer away from the GMail trademark and branding problems they've undergone in the UK? Whatever it may have been that prompted Google to go forwards with integrating GTalk with GMail, I applaud their efforts for doing so because now it's made life easier for me online for saving and looking up my chat conversations with contacts online and doing instant follow-ups via email (using GMail of course!).

On another hilarious note, VUNet.com have a report titled 'Google marries Gmail and instant messaging' from Tom Sanders in California who has written about Google's latest offering of Google Talk's integration into Gmail but has hyperlinked the word 'Google' at the start of the article on vunet.com to messenger.yahoo.com -- isn't this a violation of the editor's basic rule of checking hyperlinks in an article before it is published? Imagine the look on a Google Representative's face when he clicks on the Google link in vunet.com's article only to find that the browser brings up the Yahoo messenger website and not Google's homepage [LOL].

And there you have it: a round up of Google's recent moves, and I'm pretty sure there's more of where those came from but all in the pipeline waiting to be released soon.

A Cartoon Strip Dedicated to Dave Redl & FamilyPants

2006-02-06T23:40:00.000+03:00

The following cartoon strip was compiled by me based off a digg thread and is part of the Dave Redl/FamilyPants.com versus an ongoing username trademark infringement scandal. You may get the details here, the wording came off the digg users' comments on this thread: Kudos Digg!

Off to Surgery, Won't be around for sometime...

2006-01-30T20:48:00.000+03:00

Yes, the news I really wanted to hear has come way too soon than I expected. Which means tomorrow I head into the operating theatre for my long-awaited shoulder surgery. So a bit of bone/skin grafting and screwingback my shoulder in. Of course this mean I would be missing out on the blogger's meetup in Bahrain next month :-(

And when I get back on sunday morning (hopefully if there are no complications), I'll blog out my painful [:-D] experience along with some pics and I'll get straight to sharing my views on Bahrain's H5N1 policy planning document as mentioned in the previous blog posting.

Speaking of which, lab tests of H5N1 samples from Iraq that were initially carried out in Jordan and then Egypt have now tsted positive for H5N1, do bear in mind that it was a UN/WHO collaborating center lab which had earlier stated a no-case for bird flu but now confirm the tests as containing the H5N1/N2 strains. Now the only reaon the WHO refuse to confirm what the lab in Egypt tested as being positive was because is certain controversial crap going on between high-level UN officials about it not being an official H5N1 WHO lab although it was a WHO affiliated National Influenza Center, and that's why the very same samples are being sent to the WHO's H5N1 lab in the UK to confirm the results. You can read more about which lab and team sprearheaded the Iraqi bird flu samples testing in Egypt/Jordan here

Anyone Tracking Avian Flu (H5N1) in Bahrain & the Region?

2006-01-24T16:46:00.000+03:00

Firstly, my appologies to the slack seen around here lately in terms of blogging but it was only due to unavoidable circumstances as well as my involvement with a H5N1 (Avian Flu) tracking project where I'm one of the folks for a global disaster response group which tracks bird flu cases and the labs where the tests are carried out, in short tracking labs affiliated or recognized by the WHO (World Health Organization) for authorizing the confirmation and the detection of H5N1 strains, cases and deaths.

Not very comforting to be tracking this virus and its sub strains but apparently our tracking has proven that it takes non-affiliated/recognized labs about 48 hours to confirm a H5N1 case/strain while it takes WHO labs up to a week and beyond to confirm bird flu outbreaks -- this is something pretty sad but these facts are and have been a stubborn reality for WHO, currently expaning their Avian Flu monitoring missions in Turkey. What monitoring mission? you mean the one that keeps sending out mixed messages and signals of confusion regarding the seriousness of H5N1 in the country? yes that one!

And that brings me to the next question: Has anyone cared to take a look at Bahrain's plan to an outbreak of bird flu in? The MOH (Ministry of Health) has been kind enough to dedicate a AI (Avian Influenza) website to informing those interested in what's being done to prevent the virus from speading in Bahrain. So what is really being done according to the planning policy document (PDF file) at the MOH AI site?

I'll leave you all to read the entire document for yourselves, but some interesting points include:

1) increasing social distance as a preventive measure to halt the spread of the avian flu and some conderations under discussion are disallowing mass gatherings and the closures of schools.

2) a joint committee from the MOH and the Ministry of Agriculture has already been established in order to address and tackle avian flu.

3) Once the flu is more or less in the country, travellers entering through the border and airport will be screened [remember what happened during SARS?]

4) Absentesism of essential personnel will be closely mornitored since maintaining essential services is a key priority and so is containing the disease.

5) There is a free information hotline ooen from Saturday to Wednesday that assists callers with resources and details pertaining to H5N1 and the numbers to call are 17279618-17279610 (8:00AM – 01:00PM) [during an active emmergency the number of lines and hours of operation will expand].

I've made many observations and notes about the document, some negative comments and some positive, but overall, my suggestions will be constructive with the aim of providing some useful insights for the prevention of H5N1 spreading in Bahrain. That I'll blog somewhere next week, right after everyone else in Bahrain's blogosphere and beyond takes a look at the plan and possibly share their points of view.

RSF Urges Support from Bloggers on Corporate Responsibility

2006-01-10T16:51:00.000+03:00

Here's the latest from the Internet Freedom Desk at RSF (Reporters sans frontières/Reporters Without Borders) that has issued six concrete proposals aimed at ensuring that Internet-sector companies respect free expression when operating in repressive countries. I must mention that the proposals are targeted at companies in the US but they do in a way affect other countries in some way or the other.

For example, in the reccommendations by RSF:

2) Search engines would not be allowed to incorporate automatic filters that censor “protected” words.

So this is directly related to search engine giants and their operations such as Google and Yahoo in countries like China where at present, there is a certain degree at which censorship is being implemented by the companies through their search products -- something that is required by the host country.

4) Internet censorship technologies:

Reporters Without Borders proposes two options :
- Option a : US companies would no longer be permitted to sell Internet censorship software to repressive states.
- Option b : They would still be able to market this type of software but it will have to incorporate a list of “protected” keywords that are rendered technically impossible to censor.

A prime case of internet software censorship in the Middle East would be that of Flickr that keeps getting banned in the UAE and at times in Saudi for no apparent reasons and last October in Bahrain, Skype was blocked by Batelco (they deemed the skype service as illegal and didn't realize that skype uses public lines and not private ones) -- temporarily for 72 hours and when bloggers, skype users and the TRA in Bahrain intervened the block was lifted. At the time, Jorge Sebastio at e-Security Gulf blogged more about the software that was used to block skype and the company that developed and were selling it turned out to be Verso Technologies that was based in the US.

The subject of ISPs (Internet Service Providers) and them being regulated has been discussed (by bloggers, journalists, people from various accademic disiciplines, etc.) almost every day right after the Global Voices Online (GVO/GV) Summit that was held in London on December 10th, 2005 (See the GV 2005 Live Blog for the transcripts of the conference) and everyone's input on the topic including a couple of MSM (Main Stream Media) folks seems to have led to this promising initiative by RSF and the supporting online petition.

This couldn't have come at a better time than now because it was just today that the GDN (Gulf Daily News) in Bahrain has run an article on an internet boom in the country while listing all the ISPs that have been licensed by the TRA (Telecommunications Regulatory Authority) which is the official telecom regulatory body here. With all due respect to the ISPs that have been mentioned in the news article such as MTC Vodafone and 2Connect, what do you as a blogger, reader or commenter predict the responses from the ISPs in Bahrain to be with regards to RSF's initiative? Any idea as to what the TRA's perspective might be on this corporate responsibility issue?

And Google rolls another one out!

2006-01-07T20:03:00.000+03:00

Happy Belated New Year to everyone! This year began on a slow note unlike 2005 where the tsunami was probably the disaster starter to all the other major disasters we've seen. Hope 2006 continues on this leg, however slow it may seem to some, am sure the aid response and relief folks who worked the Tsunami in South East Asia, floods in Bangladesh and Mumbai, Katrina and Rita in the US along with mudslides in Mexico and not forgetting the South Asia quake in Pakistan, India and Afghanistan are looking forward to a disaster-free year :)

People keep breaking their new year resolutions -- what's the point? so maybe we should just not disclose our new year resolutions until the year's end and then reflect back on them -- that just might help us to get with the flow.

Disaster Remembrance Week which was initiated by the World Wide Help Group and kicked off on 26th December to Jan 1st, worked out well with bloggers across the globe and some main stream journos coming together to remember the disasters of 2005. In fact, a friend and one of the folks behind the TsunamiHelp/SEA-EAT blog and wiki -- Bala Pitchandi blogged his tsunami relief experience and that sorta' gave me the push to start blogging about my encounters with katrina, rita, wilma, the tsunami and other disaster relief projects that came my way, an outreach rather ;-)

last month, or last year rather, some of the top anlysts in the SEA (Search Engine Advertising) industry predicted a Google slow-down.... well it seems like they just might be wrong because at yesterday CES keynote, Google just released their very own Google Pack of software essentials and announced the launch of an Online Google Video Store! Will there be a fade-off for Google product launches and service releases over the next few months? Well that does still remain to be seen and I personally hope not. If it's worth mentioning, I've now got about 125 google products/services listings on my Google Services Guide, when are we going to hit the 201 mark -- I wonder?

Remembrance Week - December 26-January 1

2005-12-25T14:56:00.000+03:00

In continuation to our efforts around the disasters, the WorldWideHelp group has set up a Remembrance Week. Here's how you can participate :

Remembrance Week - 26th December, 2005 - 1st January, 2006

Last year, on the 26th December, an earthquake, and then a tsunami, killed, wounded, or impoverished hundreds of thousands of people in South Asia.

During the course of the year, other disasters took their toll too. Most devastating of them: Hurricanes Katrina and Rita on the South-East coast of the USA; and another enormous earthquake near Pakistan's border with India.

These disasters took their immediate toll, and, each time, the world tried to help. But as calamity piled upon calamity, there has been a certain amount of fatigue. Perhaps people's stock of goodwill has run low. Perhaps seeing too much suffering hardens us.

But, the fact is, the suffering from those disasters has not ceased. Parts of South Asia have still not recovered from December 26th, 2004. In the USA, normalcy hasn't returned to New Orleans. In Pakistan, thousands are still homeless, and may not survive the harsh Himalayan winter.

They need your help.

Last December and this January, the online community came together as never before to help in the aid efforts in South-East Asia. The lessons learned there were put to use, and improved upon, when the other tragic events of the year unfolded.

Can we harness that goodwill, that togetherness, that willingness to help once more?

The WorldWideHelp group would like you to join us in Remembrance Week. Here's what we suggest you do.

Use your blogs, your home pages, your wikis, your newsletters. Link to your favourite charities and NGOs, write a paragraph about them and the work they are doing, and ask your readers to make a donation. (If you'd like to find some more charities and NGOs, please take a look at this page on our TsunamiHelp wiki, this one on our KatrinaHelp wiki, or this one on our QuakeHelp wiki.)

Please link back to this page to help pass the word. You can use the image above.

Please use this Technorati Tag: Disaster Remembrance Week . http://www.technorati.com/tag/disaster%20remembrance%20week

Merry Christmas Everyone!

2005-12-25T12:51:00.000+03:00

And Google's done it again with their doodle! the cat and mouse - in peace and happiness - enjoying xmas together! Don over at HTMLFixIt.com has been following the path of the Google Xmas doodles eversince it started a few days ago, you can find out more about the google xmas doodles ' stories over there!

This just got released at approx. 09.45am GMT today.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas!

Deck The Halls With Google's Balls, Fa la la lala...

2005-12-24T11:05:00.000+03:00

Today is Christmas eve, and as always Google has it X-Mas holiday doodles going on at it's homepage...

(you can catch the rest of Google's Christmas Doodles here)

......while Google's Blogger has sprouted a xmas-winterland logo for the season:

.... And a news flash has popped up on Google Earth or GEarth as some may have it:

..which points to a kml file where one can track Santa Claus over the Sanata Radar on GEarth:

So deck the halls with Google's balls, faa lala la la la la la la....

And a Merry Christmas to all you Googlers & Google Fans out there!

Mini-Blogger Meetup & Xmas Come Early

2005-12-19T18:07:00.000+03:00

Since all the digg 'ing, Steve Rubel 'ing and what not; that has been happening on this blog (due to the google posts) has got toned down a bit, I can one again resume my normal blog postings :) For some reason, due to the heavy traffic, the template got messed up and so I felt it was high time to give this place a new look, and so I've rolled it out as you could see, just enhanced the header a bit. It's a pity Tommy Edwards doesn't have his other works out on display like the one I've used above - a remixed form. Best is to use either FireFox or Netscape to view this blog although it does work on internet explorer as well.

Last Thursday, around 2am, while I was browsing Feedster for a blog posting on Bahrain, I came across a blog with a url that looked familliar. This blog posting described a tourist who had just landed in Bahrain and his thoughts and observations of the island. Reading on, I realized that the Patrix who's the founder of Desipundit.com was holidaying in Bahrain along with Ash -his fiance and Desipundit's co-founder. Didn't want to loose any more time in getting a meetup scheduled with them, so I went ahead and fired him an email expressing my delight at their prescence in Bahrain and invited them over to the Forumla BMW Finals that was being held at the (Bahrain International Circuit) BIC the next day.

The other blog I surfed into before hitting the sack was Mahmood's Den and found out that he was giving away Blogger stickers as x-mas presents and all one had to do was get down to the BIC and take a pic with him during the F-BMW day which was Bahrain's National day! Sweet - I thought! Jumping up at the prospect of getting myself those blogger stickers while getting a chance to introduce the Desipundit Bloggers to Mahmood plus living the racing experience at the circuit - can one ask for more?

At about 9am (Thursday morning), I was awoken by my cell phone ringing away, it was Patrix calling get our meetup going. I was pretty much half asleep, having set myself to slumber mode just 4 hours ago, anyways - I was very excited and along with that and my idiotic sleepy state i completely forgot about a physiotheraphy session that was happening at 9am Friday whichis when Patrix and I agreed to meetup at Ash's place and then drive out to the BIC.

What physiotheraphy session? - well last sunday, I dislocated my shoulder for a 3rd time in 2 years - all i did was adjust my pc monitor and out jumped my shoulder. It took a good 2.5 hours at the BDF to get fixed, coupled with double shots of morphine and intense pain plus daily physio sessions. The first time my shoulder got dislocated was on my birthday in Canada in 2003, I had stepped out in my pair of sneakers, totally forgetting that I needed my snow boots instead and had started 'trodding' down the stairs. Unfortunately it had rained the previous night and the addition of the wind-chill factor had made the steps all slippery. Just my second step on the stairs, and down I went. Anyways, it has been 3 recurrently dislocations and now I've got surgery (am still contemplating on laser versus open-surgery) in 2.5 weeks.

Back to the blogger meet - Friday morning came around, and Patrix informed me that he was flying out to Mumbai to spend some time with his folks, therefore they couldn't meetup at the BIC and instead invited me over to Ash's place. Being the dumbass at directions, I finally found the location at 10.30am and voila! I was greeted by the Desipundit'ers.

It was a mini-blogger meetup that lasted about an hour or so - am glad it did, considering that time was precious for both Ash and Patrix and I was getting nervous about taking time away from her parents and his in-laws. Speaking of which, Ash's parents are currently residing in Bahrain, having got here about a year ago - totally awesome - which means that these Desipundit bloggers have ready tour guides and someone who knows there way around Bahrain (not that you could get lost here unless you're bad with directions like myself). Some of the topics that came up during the meet revolved around the brith of Desipundit, Ash & Patrix's observations on Bahrain, bloggers in India and those in Bahrain, the penetration of blogging and IIPM - Of course! Ponytail should be so glad he and his shady institution are probably going to be a repetitive topic at blogger meetups. ....And is ponytail back to his old way of misleading flashy adverts - especially in the TOI? Any Dubai dons or cons reading this - please feel free to leave a comment and enlighten me.

Having read in Ash's blog about a 'small brat', I had the honor of getting introduced to Ash's sister, however, she wasn't small at all - more like a hip teenager - apparently the mention of the small brat on the blog was in reference to someone else. Gulf Air also popped up during our discussion, not that I feel Gulf Air is worth talking about anymore given certain bitter experiences while flying with them, but it was good to hear from tourists like Ash and Patrix that Gulf Air is definitely better than Air India. I've not flown Air India and if Gulf Air is slated at being 'better' then I just don't want to know how Air India does their thing.

Patrix has now arrived safely in Mumbai and while he suffers from time and time out without internet access, Ash is still in Bahrain for the next few weeks until Jan 5th, and I am hoping, really hoping we can get a Bahrain Bloggers Meetup scheduled before that so that she'll have the opportunity of hooking up with other bloggers here in Bahrain. Jan 4th for a meetup, anyone? If we can't do a meetup with all the bloggers here in Bahrain (or atleast the usual suspects at the meetups), then I would be happy to do a casual blogger meetup with whoever can make it on either Boxing Day (dec 26th) or the day before new year's eve (dec 30) - say starbucks or maybe some shisha bar - I'm open to suggestions.

Also, I've got a blogger sticker thanks to Mahmood & hopefully will be seeing a pic of me posing with the sticker at his flickr space or blog - sometime soon:

On Google Calendar Sightings & Widgets?

2005-12-15T04:09:00.000+03:00

Robert Sayre over at franklinmint.fm was puttering around Firefox's source tree fixing Atom parser bugs when he bumped into some Google employees working diligently to revamp the bookmarks system. Robert noticed that it was backed with SQLLite (mozStorage), has a calendar widget, and it has got the very general-sounding name "Places".

I took a closer look at what Robert had stumbled upon and found out that the Google employees he was referring to and who had done a couple of CVS Checkins were Brett Wilson (cached version) and Annie Sullivan - a software engineer who's been working on the FireFox toolbar.

Here's a screenshot of the calendar widget that was submitted by Brett on the 21st of last month in reply to a request by Dan Mosedale at Mozilla:

My take on all of this would be just three things:

1) a connection with Google's Personalized Search History - considering that Brett in one of the discussions mentioned that the calendar widget will be used to specify which part of history you are interested in viewing and may also be incorporated into some kind of query builder.

2) the calendar widget is probably another feature planned for a later version of Google's firefox toolbar

3) might have something to do with the calendar.google.com domain that's been floating around recently or possible a browser addon-on for FireFox.

Map This - GMail's Mini-Mapping Feature

2005-12-12T21:14:00.000+03:00

These past few days have shown us a couple of nifty features in GMail such as Web Clips. A few minutes ago I received an email which contained a postal address in the sender's signature and I saw that this address was available on the right side panel of GMail's interface along with the link 'Map This':

According to this link from GMail's Help Center, when you open a message that lists an address or package tracking number, Gmail shows you handy links to maps and directions, or your package's delivery status (this email obviously shows mapping directions). So there you go! With GMail you can Map This [address] or Track That [package] :-)

What's really assuring is that in GMail's Help, it is stated that these links (mapping directions/tracking packages) are produced automatically for your convenience and no humans read the content of your email in order to generate these links and none of them are sponsored by advertisers.

Now only if GMail would allow me to track my incoming/outgoing emails and map the geo-locations of their delivery and access - that will be awesome!

GMail & RSS Feeds

2005-12-09T13:18:00.000+03:00

Well on Wednesday, we all saw a GTalk promo advert featured on the side bar of GMail and today there's RSS feeds on the top panel of GMail. In GMail, these RSS feeds are named 'Web Clips' (WTF? why can't they just be called RSS Feeds? - possibly the name might have to do with Beautification :-D) Some of the featured rss feeds include news/tech/financial and sports but I've also spotted a couple of sponsored advertisement links. Another good way for Google to advertise their own google product/service launches/releases within GMail.

The inbox usually consits of news/financial RSS feeds pulled from sources like FT.com, Forbes, CNN, BBC, etc. and you have the option of adding your own feeds and removing pre-defined ones:

And spam folder has got recepie-oriented rss feeds:

....while the trash box contains vital and creative recycling tips:

Just like the GTalk Promo Advert in GMail - that has the option to remove it from the interface by clicking the tiny 'x' in the corner, these RSS Feeds aka 'Web Clips' can be removed from the top panel by going to your settings tab in GMail and unchecking the checkbox titled - Show my web clips above the Inbox:

I wonder if GMail Web Clips supports an OPML feed yet, however, if you're interested you can pull together all your favorite feeds into one huge rss feed (for atom feeds just burn them as an rss feed using FeedBurner) just like what Philipp at Google Blogoscoped has done with all official Google Blogs - and then add the all-in-one rss feed to GMail's Web Clips.

Gtalk Advert in Gmail

2005-12-07T10:50:00.000+03:00

Now that Dan has shed more light on the rumored gcalendar, traffic to this page has eased down and I'm at last able to get on with my blogging without the blogspot posting options freezing on me:)

This might have been there all the time, but anyways, I just noticed a gtalk ad in gmail:

Bonjour!

Later: Seems to be a promo advert of some sort for gtalk in gmail (see url)

Google Calendar Sneaky Preview! Google local too?

2005-12-06T02:15:00.000+03:00

UPDATE: SiliconBeat.com has a post clarifying that GCalendar which was to be unveiled at web2.0 is a hoax & Dan Farber has blogged more about Google's "rumored calendar" at Between The Lines.

-----------------------

Well here's a screenshot i got off the domain - calendar.google.com

and apparenty it's got a folder in there called mapfiles whcih does look somewhat like Google Local. So, everyone's talking about the great Google Rumour - that is google calendar or gCal will be released during today's web2.0 conference at Stanford.... will be be seeing a google official mashup of Google Local and rss feeds as featured in Google Base for Google Calendar?

And another interesting url - so what's google local doing on the google calendar domain?

Well we'll just have to wait and see what Google has in store for us! :-)

Global Voices is censored... Batelco what is going on?

2005-12-03T00:42:00.000+03:00

Here's a screenshot that I took at 12.42am on 03/12/05 when I tried accessing Global Voices Online I was greeted with the following message:

Access Denied (license_expired)

A license has expired on the Proxy, and your request is not permitted: "The SGOS license has expired"
A new license must be obtained.

For assistance, contact your network support team.

Batelco please explain what's going on!!! Hopefully this is a technical glitch and not the censorhip of the Global Voices blog!

UPDATE: As of 2.07 am on 2/12/05 Global Voices Online cane be accessed fine from Bahrain! Guess it was a technical glitch. :)

An Extensive Guide to Google Services (Keeps Growing!)a

2005-11-23T19:20:00.000+03:00

It's almost done - you may now go over to the Google Services Guide and have a look there. From now onwards, I'll be adding more Google service and product listings there, however, I'll try my best to keep the list of Google services on here updated as well.

_________________

This ever-growing list of Google's Services is dedicated to all google fans and google addicts :-)

_________________

2006 Google Anita Borg Scholarships are aimed at encouraging women to excel in computing and technology and become active role models and leaders: google.com/anitaborg

Add to Google lets publishers create a custom “Add to Google” button for their RSS feeds. When a user clicks the button, they can choose to either add the feed to Google Reader, or the Google Homepage service: google.com/intl/zh-cn/webmasters/addfeed.html

Google AdSense automatically delivers text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content—ads so well-matched, in fact, that your readers will actually find them useful: google.com/adsense

Google AdSense for Domains allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory. AdSense for domains delivers targeted, conceptually related keywords and advertisements to parked domain name pages by using Google's semantic technology to "understand" the meaning of each domain name: google.com/domainpark

Google AdSense for Feeds is a program that allows you to monetize your feeds through contextually targeted advertising: google.com/support/adsense/bin/topic.py?topic=957

Google AdSense for Search matches relevant text advertising from Google's more than 150,000 advertisers with your users' search queries: google.com/services/sponsored_links.html

Google Advanced Search offers numerous options for making your searches more precise and getting more useful results: google.com/advanced_search

Google Adwords reaches people when they are actively looking for information about your products and services online, and sends targeted visitors directly to what you are offering: adwords.google.com

Google Alerts enables one to receive news and search results via email: google.com/alerts

Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site (sign-ups are temporarily disabled): google.com/analytics

Google Answers is a way to get that help from Researchers with expertise in online searching: answers.google.com

Google Base is a place where you can easily submit all types of online and offline content that we'll host and make searchable online: base.google.com

Google Blog is the official blog at Google: googleblog.blogspot.com

Google Blog Search is Google search technology focused on blogs: blogsearch.google.com

Blogger is a service that provides Web-based tools used by individuals to publish to the Web: blogger.com & blogspot.com

Blogger Images is a feature that enables users to quickly and easily post photos to their blog:
help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=324

Blogger Mobile is a Google service for Blogger that enables anyone on-the-go to create a new blog and post to it – for free – using their mobile phone. Users with a camera phone can also post photos just as easily to a blog. They can simply snap a photo and send it via email or MMS to go@blogger.com, and they have a new blog on Blogger: go.blogger.com

Blogger for Word is a free add-in for Microsoft Word that lets you save a Word document as a post to your Blogger blog with just a few clicks, and without even opening up a browser:
help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=1180

Google Book Search enables one to search the full text of books: books.google.com & print.google.com

Google Browser Buttons let you search the Internet simply by highlighting a word (or phrase) on any web page and clicking the Google Search button: google.com/options/buttons.html

Google Catalogs makes it easy to find information published in mail-order catalogs that were not previously available online: catalogs.google.com

Google Click to Call is a new service that enables cell phone users in the U.S. to use a remarkably robust version of Google Local directly from a mobile handset. Click to Call is a free and fast way to speak directly to the advertiser you found on aGoogle search results page – over the phone: mobile.google.com/local

Google Code is the site for external developers interested in Google-related development: code.google.com

Google Code Jam is a celebration of the art of computer science, and signals to programmers everywhere the value Google places on excellent coding: google.com/codejam

College Life powered by Google: services.google.com/university

Google Compute is a new feature of the Google Toolbar, the goal of Google. Compute is to make a contribution to science by enabling Google Toolbar users to easily donate their idle computer time to worthwhile causes (discontinued for latest versions of Google Toolbar): toolbar.google.com/dc

Google Content-Targeted Advertising is an automated system for web publishers that matches advertising precisely to the information on content and community pages: google.com/services/ct.html

Google Deskbar lets you search with Google right from your Windows taskbar: toolbar.google.com/deskbar

Google Desktop gives you easy access to information on your computer and from the web: desktop.google.com

Google Desktop for Enterprise allows you to boost your company's productivity by enabling your employees to find email, files, media, web history and chats instantly, view web pages they've seen, even when they're not online and view search results from your intranet, Google.com and their own desktop in one place. Deploying and managing Google Desktop Enterprise across your organization will enable you to centrally control user features and preferences, encrypt all user data and search index files and distribute using the included MSI-based installer: desktop.google.com/enterprise

Dodgeball is a networking service that helps coordinate location-based social interactions between mobile users: dodgeball.com

Google Earth offers maps and satellite images for complex or pinpointed regional searches: earth.google.com

Google Enterprise Professional Program is a partner service and program for developers, consultants, and independent software vendors interested in extending Google's enterprise search capabilities and in delivering complementary technology and services to Google enterprise customers: google.com/enterprise/gep

Google Extensions are small applications that you download and install into your Firefox browser to add new functionality: toolbar.google.com/firefox/extensions/index.html

Google Flight is a search comparison feature on Google that lets people quickly get to airline flight information: google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&c2coff=1&q=sfo+nyc&btnG=Search

Froogle is Google's product search engine and shopping directory: froogle.google.com

Froogle Merchant Center is a single, online location where Google merchants can manage their account: google.com/sellonfroogle

Froogle Mobile enables one to search the web for products with Froogle from your mobile phone: wml.froogle.com

Froogle Shopping List lets you save and share information about the products you find on Froogle. If you find a product you want to keep close at hand, just click on "Add to list" and you'll be able to bring it up again quickly (first you'll need to create a Google Account if you don't already have one): froogle.google.com/shoppinglist

Google Friends Newsletter lets you always know what's happening at your favorite search engine. Messages include important announcements of new Google launches, features and other information: google.com/contact/newsletter.html & google.com/googlefriends/archive.html

Gmail (also known as Google Mail) is a free, search-based webmail service that includes more than 2,500 megabytes (2.5 gigabytes) of storage: gmail.com & mail.google.com

Gmail Notifier is an application that alerts you when you have new Gmail messages (gtalk includes the notifier): toolbar.google.com/gmail-helper/index?promo=gdl-en

Google Grants program supports organizations sharing our philosophy of community service to help the world in areas such as science and technology, education, global public health, the environment, youth advocacy, and the arts: google.com/grants

Google Groups allows one to create, search, and browse groups to discuss and share ideas: groups.google.com

Hello is a new way to look at pictures together with friends and family: hello.com

Google's Hurricane Katrina Resources consists of two search features designed specifically for finding information about Hurricane Katrina and Google Katrina People Search accesses several public databases to help you find info on friends or family members who may have been affected by the storm: google.com/hurricane.html

Google Image Search is the most comprehensive image search on the web:
images.google.com

Google's i-mode search service is the first search engine that enables access to the entire World Wide Web from any i-mode mobile phone: google.com/imode

Google Labs showcases a few of our favorite ideas that aren't quite ready for prime time: labs.google.com

Google Language Tools lets you translate a phrase or entire website, as well as giving you access to web search in different languages, or the ability to search for a particular something in just one language: google.com/language_tools

Google Local provides directions, interactive maps, and satellite/aerial imagery: maps.google.com

Google Local Business Center is a free tool for businesses to easily add or update their business listings that appear in Google Local: google.com/local/add

Google Local for Mobile is a free download that lets you find local hangouts and businesses across town or across the country aided by a combination of directions, maps and satelite imagery — right from your phone: google.com/glm

Google Mini offers cost-effective, high-quality search for your public website or intranet – and you can be up and running in less than an hour: google.com/enterprise/mini

Google Mobile makes it easy to access online information — billions of pages images — on your cell phone or mobile device: mobile.google.com

Google Moon is an extension of Google Maps and Google Earth that, courtesy of NASA imagery enables you to surf the Moon's surface and check out the exact spots that the Apollo astronauts made their landings: moon.google.com

Google Movies helps to find reviews and showtimes for movies playing near you: google.com/movies

Google News is all about aggregated headlines and a search engine of many of the world's news sources: news.google.com

Google News Feeds allows one to get a feed as RSS or Atom formats for any search carried out at Google News: news.google.com/intl/en_us/news_feed_terms.html

Google Onsite Advertiser Sign-Up lets advertisers buy ads on a site directly from the Google Ads on that page: google.com/services/oasu/index.html

Orkut is an online community in affiliation with Google that connects people through a network of trusted friends: orkut.com

Google Personalized Homepage is a service that allows people to consolidate various Google features they use, ranging from web search to email, into a personalized home page: google.com/ig

Google Personalized Search orders your search results based on what you've searched for in the past: google.com/searchhistory & google.com/psearch

Google PDA Search service enables users to search wirelessly for web pages on the Internet where Google automatically breaks up the search results into several smaller pages, which are connected by "more" buttons, to offer the user increased performance and to conserve bandwidth: google.com/palm

Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC: picasa.google.com

Google Pizza Program rewards hard-working engineering students by allowing them to take a study break on Google: google.com/jobs/studentsg.html

Google Publication Ads enables you to place ads in print publications, allowing your advertising to reach an audience that's targeted to the demographics and topics you choose: adwords.google.com/publicationads

Google Public Service Search is a service offered to educational institutions and non-profit organizations worldwide that are allowed to use free SiteSearch which that enables users to search your website, and free WebSearch which enables users to search the Internet: services.google.com/publicservice/login

Google Reader makes it easier to keep up with your ever-expanding reading list of content from across the web: reader.google.com

Google Reviwer Guides are a number of guides for journalists who are interested in reviewing Google products. Each one details the product features, includes screen shots and provides a PR contact: google.com/press/guides.html

Google Ride Finder takes a new approach to helping users find a ride: showing you where the vehicles are: labs.google.com/ridefinder

Google Search Appliance indexes all forms of content on your intranet and websites, offering a robust, scalable and cost-effective solution to your enterprise search needs: google.com/enterprise/gsa

Google Search Replacement Program allows companies to upgrade both their internal and public-facing search solutions all in one quick step by offering any business that replaces its existing search solution with a Google Search Appliance by the end of the year (2005) will receive a free Google Mini: google.com/switch

Google Sets automatically create sets of items from a few examples: labs.google.com/sets

Google Secure Access is a downloadable client application that allows users to establish a more secure connection while using Google WiFi (Download no longer available): wifi.google.com/download.html

Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature: scholar.google.com

Site-flavored Google Search delivers web search results that are customized to individual websites: google.com/services/siteflavored.html

Google Sitemaps is an experiment in web crawling: google.com/webmasters/sitemaps

Google SMS (Short Message Service) allows you to send queries as text messages over your mobile phone or device and easily get precise answers to your questions: sms.google.com

Google Space project at London's Heathrow Airport in Terminal 1 is where Google gives travellers a bit of useful space and time before their flight: google.co.uk/googlespace

Google's Special Searches enable you to narrow your search to a specific topic: google.com/options/specialsearches.html

Google Store is the right place for all things Googley: googlestore.com

Google Suggest guesses what you're typing and offers suggestions in real time as you type into the search box: google.com/webhp?complete=1&hl=en

Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free–anytime, anywhere in the world: talk.google.com

Google Toolbar: toolbar.google.com

Google University Search enables you to narrow your search to a specific school website in order to find information like admissions information, course schedules, or alumni news: google.com/options/universities.html

Google Video offers viewers a way to see material from archived TV programs, educational videos, personal productions and more: video.google.com

Google Video Upload Program lets you submit videos electronically to Google Video: upload.video.google.com

Google Video Randomizer ensures you "feel lucky" by watching a random selection from the vast range of creative work already uploaded into Google Video: video.google.com/videorandom

Google Voice Search enables one to search on Google by voice with a simple telephone call (Demo is currently unavailable): labs1.google.com/gvs.html

Google Web Accelerator is an application that uses the power of Google's global computer network to make web pages load faster: webaccelerator.google.com

Google Web APIs service allows software developers to query billions of web pages directly from their own computer programs: google.com/apis

Google Web Directory integrates Google's sophisticated search technology with Open Directory pages to create the most useful tool for finding information on the web: directory.google.com

Google Wireless Search that enables your users to search not just the "Mobile Web" of pages created specifically for wireless devices, but the entire World Wide Web: google.com/wml

Google Web Search Features: google.com/help/features.html

Google Zeitgeist: showcases the rising and falling stars in the search firmament as names and places flicker from obscurity to center stage and fade back again: google.com/press/zeitgeist.html

____________________________

Keep Checking Back For More Google Services - I'll be adding more to this guide as the hours go by. If you'd like to help with adding g services to the list please leave a comment here or send me an email (stravinskyi[at]gmail[dot]com) with subject title as Google Services List Mania.

Thanks for all the tips everyone! Keep them coming, it's much appreciated.
Currently there are over 91 Google Services listed in the above guide.

With Love From Bahrain!
Angelo Embuldeniya :-)
_____________________________
Update: The above guide has been arranged in alphabetical order.
Kudos to Bala Pitchandi for his help with the categorizing.
New to Guide: Google Adsense for Search

Live Blogging Remotely for CBC 2005

2005-11-05T20:58:00.000+03:00

I didn't expect thsi to happen.. but it did outta' the blues... awesome experience it was! Today Rebecca at Global Voices sent around people the invite for the first Chineese Bloggers Conference 2005 which was being held in Shanghai and was being broadcasted live via a flash cam and translations for non-Manadarin/Cantonese virtual particpants kept rolling in at the irc chat room.

It was 5am in the morning, here in Bahrain.... what was I doing up - well i was doing an implementation for a disaster relief project for the Pakistan quake victims/ngos... and figured i could use a good break....

It started out as me recording the show - but then all the audio breaks and cam freezing here and there put me off cos i knew someone over there must've been recording it live for later viewing... so i ditched that and decided to start blogging.

What followed afterwards was simply awesome!
Thanks to those who translate for us in the IRC chat room and the video broadcast I was able to get a running textual commentary along with pics blogged after each or in the middle of each speaker's session. It felt so real - as if i was in the conference room! It must've sounded like i was there to others ''cos I'd get someone asking me every now and then my location in the room (which was puzzling at first... as i was a virtual particpant) ... was it my question to the speakers or their curiosity - i don't know... but eventually they'd be buzzing with excitement when they find that am blogging the conference live from Bahrain at home :-)

(woohoo - am at the top of the list in the chat room, click on pic for larger view and thanks Tsalon for it)

In the middle of Issac Mao's session - part 1 (as it was kinda' long) i called up a blogspot blog and started there, lil did i know that it was blocked in China (didn't know that till like 2 hrs into the conference) and then spiced it up with some virtual decor after Issac's session... called it the CBC2005-Live blog.

( click on pic for a larger view of the cbc live blog set up on blogspot)

I gotta say thanks to the techs for adjusting the cam and audio every now and then wen the netlink went bizare! though t'was interesting to see the ammount of swearing going on live between the techs on the Manadarin chat room :-D was it frustration or was it the heat or was it for fun - don't have a clue there.

(see the second last line, click on pic for a larger view)

Anyways, tomorrow will be Day 2 of the CBC 2005 conference and 'undersound' got me an invited to wordpress.com and i'll be blogging at cbc2002.wordpress.com so that those located in China can have easy accessibility + blogging at cbc2005-live on blogspot :) (i prolly should stick to the wordpress blog but i don't wanna break the flow i already got on that blogspot blog).

( click on pic for a larger view of the wp blog)

I'm looking forward to the podcasts of the conference... and tomorrow i'll take on live blogging and podcasting of each session as well, i'll limit each podcast to a minimum of 2mins to a max of 10mins. Will send it off to GV and the ppl at CBC to host them. BTW - TOR & nyud was very useful as well!

Tagged: cnbloggercon

Bahrain launches first private radio station

2005-10-31T17:32:00.000+03:00

I was checking to see if rss feeds were working off a sos wifi broadcast station set up last night in the mountains surrounding Bagh when I picked up the following feed about 5 mins ago via the Media Network Weblog:

Bahrain will soon have its first privately-held radio station, a spokesman for the project said today. Sawt al-Ghad, or the Voice of Tomorrow, has already obtained permits from the Ministry of Information and gone on the air on a trial basis in Bahrain and eastern Saudi Arabia, said Mohammed Shrughi of Delmon Media. The station is expected to launch officially in one month and will focus on music, sports, culture and the stock market but avoid news and politics, he said. Delmon is owned by Bahraini, Kuwaiti and Saudi investors.

Can someone (located in Bahrain) please confirm this....? Thanks!

SMS & Save a Quake Victim/Child in Pakistan

2005-10-30T22:05:00.000+03:00

This would currently work for those located in Bahrain (if you're looking to donate via sms to victims of the quake, please have a look at the South Asia Quake Help blog):

Doesn't matter if you're a Batelco or MTC-Vodaofone mobile customer, just send a message to 99292 and it will cost you just BD1, but that small act of generosity could save a life in areas hit by the quake. Each message costs BD1 and the money deducted from the sender's account will go directly to Pakistan President's Relief Fund.

Women and children are those that are most vulnerable at the moment, but that doesn't men aren't either. .... And it's come to our attention in the past week that there are quake victims (kids) being sold as sex slaves, terrible child abuse happening in certain areas, gangs stealing/selling kidneys off corpses. YES there are STILL areas thathaven't seen aid, relief teams would only be able to get into vallyes like neelum, etc. after 4 months... there's a plan to have bulldozers keeping it open but that's not very clear yet.... its less than two months now... mid december and it'll be a major tragedy if aid isn't dropped to where it's most needed... and just an FYI... the military choopers that are in country - delivered at the military wing in Islamabad eill only be in service for a max of 30-45 days... afterwhich it would be lighter choopers... and speaking of lighter choppers.... some of them are being grounded due to the lack of donations coming in to pay for each flight made, we've been doing some extensive coverage on this at the quakehelp blog - read up there for more info. Tents and most relief items are now being handled by the armed forces in Islamabad and they're doing the redistribution - very effective work i must say.. thanks to their input, orgs like Edhi, Sungi and Oxfam are able to get the least done.

All power to the people of Bahrain

2005-10-29T01:00:00.000+03:00

I was just distilling another of those long and never ending aid agencies' Situation Reports when i came across a section where it stated what Bahrain has pledged and donated for relief efforts in Pakistan.

On 16th October, Rs. 2.545 million (16,000+ BD) was donated by the Pakistani Community on the island and at the time over 3 tons of relief goods air had been airlifted to Pakistan, while it was mentioned that DHL was carrying 40 tons of relief goods in phases to Pakistan free of charge. And 2 days later two plane loads of aid items arrived, which included 200 Tents, 7500 blankets, 2200 mattress, and food items - which totalled to 85 tons of relief items overall.

Well that's off a sit rep from 21st october... so I'm guessing/hoping there's more relief on the way. ;-)

Map Overlays for Helicopter Landing Zones in Pakistan

2005-10-28T22:58:00.000+03:00

Just spent alsmot 9 hours getting the HLZ (Helicopter Landing Zone) locations done up on google maps and an overlay of it as well, and we have the HLZ Identifiers Map up + it's corresponding overlay!. A big thank you to Kathryn for working on the inital pointers & doing the checking up on it's accuracy and to Jared at Community Walk for easing the restriction on the number of markers allowed per map.

As it stands there are 50 HLZ locations in Pakistan, there's more as I've heard but none of those coordinates have yet been confirmed, and I'm not mapping anything that's not confirmed. The HLZ locations on Map 590 at Community Walk are mapping data sourced off Situation Reports by UNJLC & UNHAS which have been distilled by the wiki/blog network team at QuakeHelp.

Towards the end of Tuesday, we should be having more maps up there but in kml/kmz formats of the HIC Pakistan's who/what/where directory and John IceKnife - team lead for the CRN (Cyber Relief Network) proposed an excellent idea which is to plot those areas which have sufficient supplies, those that need more, etc..

Please feel free to redistribute and cross post the overlays and map. I'll be adding this to the QuakeHelp wiki soon as i get upated overlays from MapAction.

As always....... Keep it Blogged! :-)

Blog Quake Day is Today!

2005-10-26T15:40:00.000+03:00

Today, bloggers from around the world are engaging in a collective activity that gives an intangible value to the blogger phenomenon. Today, we (those of us who are participating) flex our collective muscle and raise our voices in support of an international tragedy that occurred two weeks ago. Today we dedicate our blogspace to survivors and the fallen of the 7.2 magnitude earthquake that struck Pakistan, and has taken nearly 80,000 lives to date and left countless others injured, stranded, starving, and shivering.

We bloggers encourage you to donate with a sincere love and compassion for humanity, and remember that saving someone's life is only a few clicks away. Skip ordering that pizza tonight, and give $25 (or at the min. BD5) to feed a family. Don't buy that new video game, give $50 to clothe a family. Forget about that night on the town, and give $100 that might buy someone a tent and a heater to fend off the impending Kashmiri winter. We spend untold fortunes on meaningless commodities for ourselves (Daily Lattes, Designer Cell Phones, and the like). Make a small sacrifice and help out your extended human family in need.

Dig deep and donate:

A comprehensive list of organizations and aid efforts that are involved with supporting the ongoing quake relief operations in South Asia can be found at the InsanityWorks site (these folks keep it updated each hour) and another carefully screened & exhaustive list of aid agencies and relief organizations is available on the QuakeHelp Wiki.

(Thanks to Basil for the blog posting above :-)

New Pakistan earthquake overlays for Google Earth!

2005-10-26T10:15:00.000+03:00

From Kathryn Cramer, one of the people who's been working really hard with a combined mapping team of folks from google, scientists, Carnegie Mellon and other Universities (she did give much hope and support for the SMS Quake Blog too! - QuakeHelp Blog's sister!):

I am delighted to pass on the following message from Randy Sargent of the Global Connection Project:

We've put online some new Pakistan earthquake overlays for Google Earth at http://jaga.gc.cs.cmu.edu/rapid/pakistan/

Version 1 features: Includes 10 images from Center for Satellite Based Crisis Information; Images broken into 2K x 2K chunks for high-resolution display in Google Earth

We're hoping to put up additional images from mapaction.org today, followed by a dynamic overlay tomorrow.

Here are a few of screen shots:

Blog Quake Day

2005-10-24T21:24:00.000+03:00

If you are a blogger in Bahrain, the Middle East or elsewhere for that matter, here's an excellent disaster relief initiative that deserves your support: the Blog Quake Day. This is a Desi Pundit brainwave that aims to use the collective power of the blogosphere, which we have seen in action recently, here, here and also here, to help in disaster relief. Awesome plan! (blog posting credit to Amit).

(thanks Varun for hosting the image)

Some of the most recent info regarding disaster relief efforts in Pakistan that you could check out off the QuakeHelp Blog are:

1) Tent Drive for quake victims
2) Pakistan declared as visa-free zone for 3 months - relief/rescue/media workers & personnel
3) Hospitals in affected areas and those actiing as transit points for the injured need your help!

Pakistan declares a Visa-free zone for 3 months - relief ops!

2005-10-24T08:59:00.000+03:00

From the QuakeHelp Blog (please pass the word around about the easing of visas for those relief workers/journos who are travelling to Pakistan):

Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) is granting landing permit at the airports/check-posts for three (03) months on the directions of Ministry of Interior on arrival of those foreigners who are coming to Pakistan without visa in connection with relief and rescue work in the earth quake affected areas under intimation to Ministry of Interior. This facility is also being provided to foreign journalists coming to Pakistan to cover the relief and rescue work in the earth quake affected areas. After expiry of the period of three (03) months further extension, if required, will be granted by the concerned Passport Office in Pakistan for a further period of three (03) months. This decision is being implemented since 15.10.2005.

Tariq Khosa
Additional Director General,Immigration
Federal Investigation Agency
Pakistan

Regular Programming Resumes.....

2005-10-24T08:50:00.000+03:00

If you believe in standing up for your rights; as an active member of society, as a blogger and as a citizen with the right to know Please show your support to the cause of the right to blog by going to the following website ' Right to Blog For Awareness ' and adding your signature . Feel free to reblog/redistribute/forward this note around :-)

Regular programming now resumes on this blog as well. This does not mean I'm done with the IIPM issue, no way dear! Actually I'll continue to monitor it bit I just can't waste space here for IIPM stupidity and nonsense. An FYI, I will not give up on it untill the issue reaches a satisfactory resolution - that would mean many things, both in Delhi and overseas......

IIPM - Planman Consulting Inc. Hiring like Crazy & they want your voice!

2005-10-23T21:58:00.000+03:00

Didn't really want to blog about it when I just saw one ad that stated call center ops/executives needed.. but when I saw atleast about 6-7 hiring notices on different job sites ranging from monster.com to jobsahead.com and the number of vacancies per position... that was interesting....it's as if the staff who used to work at IIPM (tagged) /Planman Consulting/PlanmanLife, etc. have quit.... , anyways the offers expire by next month...and the links:

1) Profile on an outsourcing site for Planman Consulting: well I'll skip the stuff other bloggers have already highlighted, but here its said that:

Among the other core competencies of Planman consulting, in the last couple of years we have successfully ventured in the ITES sector.

We have a state-of-art 3000 seater BPO/Call Center based in Delhi providing all voice and non-voice based services.This set-up is operational on a 24 X 7 schedule, and caters to the global requirements of its clients for

1. Technical Support Services
2. Telemarketing,
3. Content Management and
4. Data Conversion ... for various industry verticals.

2) Freshers/Trainees needed to work in shifts for a customer care call center at Hyderabad, Secunderabad and there are 100 openings.

3) Same as (2) but they only have 33 openings. (samatha reddy who's listed the offer from planman consulting needs to learn how to spell 'opportunity' & 'essential' properly, for crying out loud this is a job ad - you're trying to attract job seekers here... atleast use the spell check feature!

4) HR & Administration positions available for freshers - 10 vacancies there and locations is Delhi.

5) Marketing managers (5) needed for a 'top Insurance Company at Hyderabad' (my guess is that the 'top insurance company' is most probably PlanmanLife)

6) 100 Sales Promoters (DSA's) needed and no mandatory requirements stated (especially for education or experience) while the location is Delhi.

7) 'Looks like they need YOUR VOICE, or 36 voices rather for their call center (mispelt words in this listing as well and this one sounds desperate - probably to handle all those calls about their sister - IIPM's courses & validity :-D)

8) This one is pretty hilarious:

We are recriuting for leading MNC BPO in Hyderabad. We have vacancies for both Customer Care and Technical Support. We are looking for candidates who posses excellent communication skills and willing to work in night shifts.

On top of the above description its walk-in interviews and 25 vacancies. (my guess is that those who respond to that job ad are actually going to be working for the planman BPO call center in Delhi or a simillar set up in Hyd) .

Two things really, is this IIPM's way of saying we're giving you the promised placements as DSA's, call center operators - well their argument would be you're working at the customer care unit of leading companies - (mind you that some of them don't even require education or previous experience - thats not value for your tutition fees!), the other interesting part is - all of the above sound like placements for IIPM-owned agencies....

And your thoughts are?

Don't let IIPM fool you & destroy your future!

2005-10-22T18:33:00.001+03:00

So here I am, blogging from Bahrain..... relief efforts underway and more in the pipeline when a fellow blogger - Neha... blogged about the IIPM fiasco and how it does worry her even though she's not a student there... Well why am I blogging about IIPM (tagged)- very simple... I like everything under the sun about IT ethics and corporate responsibility.. and i sure think IIPM doesn't even know what those terms even mean.

..... anyways i checked out IIPM's homepage and there's this link that states 'IIPM MDP Program by Global Faculty'... and i open it to find a list of guest presenters/speakers who visit IIPM... As a student... i know its just an institution promoting their shady biz off these speakers' names, etc. So i look up the month of October and see Jane Collier from the University of Cambridge in the UK doing a seminar at IIPM on corporate social responsibilty.... NICE!!!!

I'm a prospective student... let me go check her seminar out (which am sure would have been awesome and couldn't have come at a better time than now - the IIPM Bust up!) . So lil me wrote to her a day or 2 ago and below is the email i sent her, and her honest reply (wish the world had more honest people though!):

To view the email correspondance in full view, you need to click onthe above image, alternatively, I've pasted the contents in text format below:

_______________________________________
stravinsky ivano <**************@gmail.com> Thu, Oct 20, 2005 at 5:51 PM
To: *********@jbs.cam.ac.uk

Hi Jane,

I'm a student planning to attend a training programme at IIPM (Indian Institute for Planning and Management) in India at their campuses where it has been said you will be conducting the programme. Please see here:
http://www.iipm.edu/images/mdp-programs_03.gif

Would just like to know whether this programme or seminar you are conducting at IIPM is recognized by Cambridge or otehr universities as in the recent days bloggers in the media have uncovered that IIPM degrees and training programmes aren't valid in India or elsewhere in the world. would just like to make sure that the programme you are conducting at the IIPM campuses in India (Hyderabad, Chennai, Bangalore and New Delhi) are recognized either by the University Of Cambridge or the UK Government.

Thanks,
Stravinsky Ivano.

_______________________________________
Dr. J.F.Collier <@jbs.cam.ac.uk> Fri, Oct 21, 2005 at 4:09 PM
Reply-To: @cam.ac.uk
To: stravinsky ivano <@gmail.com>

I think you are a little confused. I am giving a series of seminars on
corporate social responsibility on four of the campuses - one each. This
lasts a few days and is a one-off. So it doesnt need recognition by anyone,
although the participants may say to a future employer that now they know
something about this topic. There is something more serious. As far as I
can see the actual courses delivered by IIPM are not validated by anyone. I
dont think this matters in the business field since they're doing training
rather than academic studies. But I wouldnt advise anyone to go and do a
degree there, say. Your blogers are right. Does that make sense? Jane
Collier

--
Jane Collier
Judge Business School
Trumpington St
Cambridge CB2 1AG
_______________________________________

1) I just hope none of the institutions or universities in Bahrain are offering programmes by IIPM... someone needs to do some checking up here and inform the Ministry of Education about it if so... and...as usual its students who're the victims in the end..... thats the sorry part.... :-(

2) IIPM.... atleast have the courtesy of mentioning to students in your brouchures that you are all nothing but a training institute! ;-)

3) University is the best parts of anyone's life! Don't mess with it, and don't use other individual's names and qualifications to promote yo biz! If you see IIPM mentioning that thir faculty is from the University of Cambridge next time in a n advertisement - just refer or point people to this blog posting!

Disclaimer: I would like to declare that the communication was made to me in a personal capacity and not representing the corporate position of the companies that the individuals work for. (thanks to thalassamikra for this disclaimer)

Kudos to Bala who motivated me into posting this on my blog here.. otherwise you wouldn't be seeing it up here... cos I was going to email it around... :D The world is a small place.... doesn't matter what your nationality is.. bloggers will always be like family and unite... to aid in relief efforts (katrina/tsunami/rita/mumbai floods, recent Asian quake) and support fellow bloggers against the big bad bullies (IIPM) that exist in the corporate world!

Live updates from the QuakeHelp team

2005-10-14T04:36:00.000+03:00

Well i can't blog much on here... but the least i could do is leave you all the following blog ticker which self updates with the last 5 posts i believe. There are between 10-12 blog postings every hour :)

Aid Organizations in Pakistan Needs Volunteers!

2005-10-10T16:27:00.000+03:00

We're getting loads of emails and sms messages for vounteers needed in afected areas. Islamic Aid in the UK and many other aid organizations elswhere have sent out appeals requesting for volunteers for relief convoys.

I really don't know how Bahrain's handling the channeling of aid, though i do know that PIA has come forward to fly relief items for free wherever they have a country office - i'm positive that includes Bahrain too! I've heard that associations and organizations in Manama and elsewhere are rallying to assist - if you could please point these organiztions or direct them to the QuakeHelp Blog (run by the SEA EAT - TsunamiHelp Wiki & Blog team) where many appeals are being posted - it's most appreciated.

Keep watching QuakeHelp for more info as it becomes available. If anyone has info regarding how folks overseas can donate in Bahrain or the Middle East for victims of the quake, information on hotlines and anything you consider as important for disaster relief coordination and assistance in Pakistan and other quake-affected areas please email quakehelp@gmail.com

UPDATE: We're getting access to quake disaster relief maps with essential pointers on them..... will be up on QuakeHelp soon (give it a few hrs... cos the mapping team just came back from the field, ETA by the early hrs of tomorrw morning. BH Time)

More worldwide diasters - all in 1 go!

2005-10-08T18:12:00.000+03:00

We've never had to refocus our disaster relief efforts in so many locations at the same time - it's very tiring! Another quake in Pakistan - major destruction and chaos, much loss of life too! Afghanistan and India, added to Hurricane Stan causing severe flooding and mudslides in South /Central America, god bless Mexico - who really needs help. Peru and G'mela - help, help and more help!

The TsunamiHelp team has reactivated to assist with the Asian Disaster... while the KatrinaHelp team still are handling with post-katrina/rita aid efforts and now Hurricane Stan relief Ops.

Hope no disasters such as the ones we're seeing around the world moves into Bahrain or the Middle East! We pray for life!

Keep it blogged!

Some development....

2005-10-07T15:05:00.000+03:00

well... i'm learning ruby and rails (ror) with a mysql as the back end.... in times of desperation.. when there are thousands of pet and exotic living beings missing, needing adoption or their loved ones want to locate them and get them back in their lives.... you just gotta' do whatever it takes to get them outta' that desperation.

its between life and death! The big boys in the game get the funds and make a profit outta their foundations set up ... this is so pre-katrina attitude you thought may disappear during a disaster.... but no.. the big names play the ball their way....

So it takes a team of techies to set the record right... and here i am working and learning in a ROR environment to get them folks an open source system with open access to information. Amsterdam and India - where tech hippies and freaks rule and the world gets own3d! ...sharin' is carin' their policy - people powered disaster relief operations!

The pro-bono bloggers on the KH team - Dina, Bala & Neha - noticed the 'a' (our addicitve assignees!)

Another KatrinaHelp Finder project in the works... will uncover the wraps on this one soon.

Some of the hardest parts of Disaster-Relief Ops

2005-09-29T19:43:00.000+03:00

1) Informing a relative or friend or family member that a loved one has turned up on the lists of dead people. They've gone thru hell of filing missing persons reports and then hunting thru surivor lists, the worst is getting that call!

2) Getting patients out of a city that has no power and access routes are cut off by land and air - messed up roads mangled with trees.

3) Trying to get an aid effort off the ground while relief aid bickering continues within teams.

... thats' some of the stuff we face daily during katrinahelp relief efforts and ops. Same post-tsunami stuff, things we thought would be handled better than tsunami ops but they aren't// red tape - I don't have time for it nor do the others in the team deal with it... we doa workaround in moving forward!

people helping other people = the best I've seen so far in achieving goals on the ground!

Hello! Am alive and around :)

2005-09-25T09:55:00.000+03:00

Have not been posting on here for quite a while now because I just don't have time to maintain this blog having gotten involved with the KatrinaHelp relief operation.

On the other hand, i will be moving to a new blog soon with my experiences and assistance with disaster relief responses regarding the Tsunami, Katrina, India's flooding, Rita, Taiwan's recent typhoon, etc.

Thanks to all those fellow bloggers in Bahrain, guest bloggers overseas and my dear readers and commenters who've done their best to keep this blog alive.

Does it mean its the end of this blog, ie. Stravinsky's Sizzlin' Shack? Of course not! Stravinsky's Sizzlin Shack is just taking a much needed holiday from blogging. I'll be back soon.

Cheers!

I'm on Google Talk

2005-08-28T00:27:00.000+03:00

I'm on Google Talk

Make the Switch to GTalk

SpreadGoogleTalk (coming soon!) | GoogleCommunity | GSearchBlog

Secret Dubai Diary BLOCKED by Etisalat in the UAE

2005-07-22T14:54:00.000+03:00

Well last week, on Sunday, Etisalat (Emirates Telecommunications Corporation) blocked a blog in Dubai called Secret Dubai Diary without any apparent reason. Despite having her blog blocked in the country, the blog owner of Secret Dubai Diary (a female expat residing in Dubai), continued to post daily and in an attempt to spread word about her blog closure by the Emirati Telecom, SecretDubai published a post titled "Suffering In Silence" which at the time was available via her blog rss feeds that could be easily read via email in xml format.

SecretDubai's blog readers & commenters started a campaign to question Etisalat's actions against the blog on Monday (July 18th) and within 2 days the local media within the UAE were reporting it. By the last weekend news about the blog closure by Etisalat and numerous complaints & emails to the teleco sparked an official response by Etisalat in GulfNews where it was said "Etisalat is not authorised to block websites itself but does refer complaints to the Ministry of Information".

The CPB (Committee to Protect Bloggers) have highlighted the report about the blog being blocked by Etisalat and have revealed briefly why Etisalat may have blocked the blog by quoting 'Esperanca de Souza', a blogger contributing to Hauteur Pill, who speculated that the blocking followed a complaint about a poem (Chapter and Verse) that received several disapproving online comments.''

Etisalat also told GulfNews that, "Internet access across Dubai is restricted by a proxy server that filters sites that offend the country's traditions or are a security threat".

Blogger - SecretDubai states in her latest blog post "The cyber-ink must dry on the quill for now, as the Great Proxy wields its heavy axe and severs Secret Dubai diary from UAE computers. Will prison vans and manacles await at the airport?"

However, we can all expecet to see more blog posts from Secret Dubai as she says in one of her comments to her readers that, "I will be blogging again, but once I'm safely back in the country. Everyone's support has been overwhelming and I am really, really touched. My plight however is pretty minor compared to the many writers imprisoned and threatened across the world".

The post continues to encourage fellow bloggers and web diarists to continue blogging as SecretDubai says 'in these dark and difficult times'.

You Can Read John's take on Wonderland & Dubai's latest Media Spotlight Blackout here.

Keep It Blogged!

This is Shocking News!

2005-07-21T04:06:00.000+03:00

This Saudi student is someone i personally know (Arab News)
The GDN report is here.

what i can't understand is why he was beaten up and then murdered?

I'm just really, really shocked! that a fellow student and friend was murdered and his body dumped on the side of the road, near the BDF base in Hamala - a road that i always use to drive to & from school. What's more shocking are the reports that are seen in the news - 3 other 'young adults' are involved, have been arrested as 'suspects' within a 24-48 hour period and there's no 'motive' known for his murder.

It's just shocking, really shocking for this to happen. i mean the guy is almost on his way to being a graduate and he had loads of plans and ideas for his future , most of us are still in shock over the whole thing.

How some US Marines view Bahrain, after their assignment

2005-07-15T14:13:00.000+03:00

Terry Lynde, a 40 year old from Britton in the US, has just returned home from Bahrain after a 6 momths assignment in the Kindom at the US Naval Base in Juffair. His job was mainly revolved around logisitics and primarily consisited of moving personnel and equipement to neighbouring gulf states like Kuwait and Iraq as well as coordinating with countries like Pakistand and Afghanistan. The unit that Lynde was working with, helped to move ahbout 3,000 personnel and over 5 million pounds of cargo comprising of heavy duty equipment and ammunition.

When Marshall County Journal sspoke to Lynde, this is what the US Marine had to say about Bahrain:

"I was surprised that Bahrain is very westernized, growing economically, and working to become a tourist attraction in the Middle East. They have a lot of the same fast-food restaurants like MacDonalds, Burger King, and Kentucky Fried Chicken".

[Obviously we do, you and others like you were probably surprised due to all that brainwashing by American propoganda TV]

"But I never let myself get too comfortable, because I wanted to come back home in one piece and see my family. Not that I feared for my life every day, but when you are in a country in the Middle East you just don't want to be caught off guard. You are in an area of the world where unexpected things can happen so quickly."

[You stated that it wasn't as 'dangerous' as serving on the frontlines in Iraq, additionally after your sixth month in Bahrain, I'm sure you would've know that Bahrain is just not 'any' country in the Midde East! Nothing 'dangerous' happens in Bahrain like the way you've talked about it]

"The thing I missed most, other than my family, was the security we have in Britton, and just being able to do the things we're allowed to do".

[You obviously have missed the main knowledge factor of your 6 month assignment in Bahrain. Bahrain is very tolerant in terms of almost everything and very multi-cultural! You ought to come back to Bahrain and learn everything that you've missed while you were 'at work' in the US Naval Base in Juffair. I'd suggest an holiday where you're open-minded!]

Please click here if you or anyone you know is interested in reading Terry Lynde's entire interview with Marshall Country Journal.

What's going on?

2005-07-14T00:36:00.000+03:00

I stumbled upon a link that claimed it was a Live feed from Discover Islam in Bahrain that runs it's own TV channel on the web. Discover Islam TV RM 80k - u need realone to view the feed.

Is this really running from Bahrain or somewhere else? Notice the subtitles, the video appears to have been filmed in South Africa but is this a Bahrain-based Discover Isam Unit or something else? And whats up with the christianity conversion speeches?

No idea....

channel broadcasts in english - looks like they got loads of bandwidth too ;)

UK's 911?

2005-07-07T17:53:00.000+03:00

i'm not a terrorist, just a student, and i'll tell you what you'll all learn about from the news later on and in years to come:

- sky news said an euro version of al qaeda, i say that would be Spain's ETA [basque] group [they're known for train bombings]- why did this happen to London? well i'd say that it was Tony Blair's mistake of joining bush in going to war in iraq.

-So why now? quite simple really, yesterday london won the bid to host the olympic games instead of Paris. People were obviously angry that a nation who's prime minister agreed with going to war in iraq were going to host the olympics of all events in 2012.

- I don't want to sound sadistic or someone without feelings but in i guess this is UK's 911, just like in the US, after 911, everyone was too scared of travelling by air, now in the uk these latest 'terror' attacks have made ppl and are going to make ppl scared to travel by tube or train.

- so 7 [known] bombings so far but i'm guessing that there won't be more [ hopefully ] and it all happened today on July 7th. [77] - but wait there's just 7 - known explosions, and 4 confirmed ones.

- Scotland Yard has just issued [2.49pm GMT] a travel warning to prevent people from coming to London, Uk for that matter. Does that ring a bell for you all? Remeber after 911 inthe US, how UK kept issuing travel warnings for the middle east. Well now they're [scotland yard] & UK DoD, etc. issuing warnings against themselves.

- Sky News says that sources from the police and bomb disposal squads have said that this had something to do with the G8 summit. Sorry but thats complete cr*p, in fact it was tony blair himself who encourage the awareness of environmental spills and urged protesters to make known what really went on.

- So what does all this mean? Well, i'd say again, this is UK's 911, the IOC (Int'l Olympics Committee) for security reasons are probably going to move the games away from London, and to Paris since they totally deserve it and didn't join the US in going to war in Iraq either. People are going to not just be scared or travelling by air but we could now add travel by train and tube to the list as well.

- the 3 basic modes of transport are Air, Land and Sea

- so what's left out, Sea?

everyone in UK, the victims, their relatives & friends are in my prayers. It's not their fault, its blair's fault somewhat, why should innocent people suffer for the wrongdoings of one person?

-----------------------------

Like Mahmood said "I completely and unequivocally condemn this terrorist act and its inhuman perpetrators, regardless of the religion or ethnic background they belong to. "

relatives are bloody backstabbers at times!

2005-07-07T00:52:00.000+03:00

the title says it all.

you could trust yo friends more than your own flesh and blood and then there's this sayin' here in Bahrain "blood is thicker than water" = guess it only works in the mid east and not overseas like places in North America, South Asia or Europe for that matter.

Just how in the world can a god mum forget her responsibilities? and she calls herself a catholic - bla bla bla, just wait and see what's coming to you lady, just wait. Oh you can be happy for quite some time now, but let the fireworks kick in when your own lil one turns 17, am sure you're familliar with the one schizophrenia now, aren't you. You might be suffering from that yourself too, who knows.

And that dear husband of yours - the selfish slug he is thinks he could go on screwing with me and messing around, well that just shows he's born the wrong way, probably wasn't supposed to be born all-male since he sucks up to you. Who wears the pants in the house, not him, for sure! Proabable that's another reason he got booted from Etisalat!

Dear Sis, if you're reading this rite now, may it be early or late, remember who screwed it up for you, those fuckin' catholics with whom, u placed to trust in, those backstabbin' & backbittin' relatives, one which unfortunately happens to be my god mum. Good luck with everything tho...

Update on (Missing) Grace Nodalo's Case

2005-06-24T20:27:00.000+03:00

(Grace Nodalo - still missing)

So Grace Nodalo is the 2nd lady who was a Branch Manager of a popular Exchange firm in the Fianancial/Investments Sector of Bahrain to go missing after Gracie Montibon who's case hasn't been solved yet nor has she been found.

The following have been found outside Grace's appartment:

1) a blood-stained cellular phone
2) a blood-stained pair of sandals

Her mom, Helen Nodalo, says that her daughter has been:

1) kidnapped by an 'unknown group'
2) the target of a confrontation with another unidentified filipina who worked in the same firm
but blamed her (Grace) for getting transferred to the head office in Manila

The following have been taken by Forsenics/Police from Grace's appartment:

1) tooth brushes
2) combs

There are 2 companies involved, both of which have not commented much nor spoken about the details to the press due to the ongoing investigation, and a 3rd probably in Sitra.

I've inserted a pic above of Grace, and if anyone's got info about her, or anything else regarding her disappearance, go ahead and call 17250990 -its the Philippine embassy's hotline.

(Sources: ABC-CBN, GDN)

Mid-Life Crisis: Part 1

2005-06-23T22:42:00.000+03:00

Dear, dear blog, I want to tell my secrets
Cuz you're the only one that I know who'll understand them
Dear, dear blog, I want to tell my secrets
I know you'll understand them, and this is what I've done

I've been silent for so long
I don't know how to change what went wrong
Always forgetting the hurt & forgiving the doer
What did it teach me? That back stabbers keep biting

Dear, dear blog, I want to tell my secrets
Cuz you're the only one that I know who'll understand them
Dear, dear blog, I want to tell my secrets
I know you'll understand them, and this is what I've done

I've been down every road you could go
I buried my feelings so they wouldn't show
Seems I have lied to myself about the truth
But its just like me not to understand

Dear, dear blog, I want to tell my secrets
Cuz you're the only one that I know who'll understand them
Dear, dear blog, I want to tell my secrets
I know you'll understand them, and this is what I've done

I've been lying to myself in the hope of change
but trying to keep up, now seems out of range
The hate doesn't get to me any longer
I've learnt to let go and become stronger.

I've got a hip God up there,
some place, but i dunno' where.
He's been watching over me

Dear, dear blog, I want to tell my secrets
Cuz you're the only one that I know who'll understand them
Dear, dear blog, I want to tell my secrets
I know you'll understand them, and this is what I've done

Dear, dear blog, I want to tell my secrets
Cuz you're the only one that I know who'll understand them
Dear, dear blog, I want to tell my secrets
I know you'll understand them, and this is what I've done

I've been silent for so long.....

===========================================
Well we all face this kinda' blank wall in our lives i guess, i've faced many walls, many at a time, however, i've just realized that instead of staring blankly back at it (the wall) i might as well start groping around and looking for a door (answers) or a window (some sort of solution[s]) and then a handle/knob (an opening) to walk out of such situations knowing that i've dealt with it.

So I've pasted the lyrics of Pink's song - 'Dear Diary' in here, and 'cos i felt it kinda' helped me express myself at the moment, the parts in pink, signify that those are my lines, and the rest is off Pink's 'Dear Diary'. I'm pretty sure there are more 'blank wall expressions' coming up. And if that sounds silly too you, it might be 'coz i'm a silly student so by all means do move on!
===========================================

Bahrain to the rescue of indigenous frog species!

2005-06-21T19:08:00.000+03:00

Al Areen Wildlife Park has succeeded in rescuing a distinctive indigenous frog species of Bahrain from extinction.The mission was conducted by the 'Endangered Birdlife and Lizard' section of the wildlife park. The programme, which was run by department head Isa Faraj, was initiated some months ago when it was discovered during a survey by the Public Commission for Marine Resources, Environment and Wildlife that the frogs were being threatened with extinction due to the rapid loss of their natural habitat around Bahrain.

She also noted that it was unlikely that these frogs will be released once again into their natural surroundings because suitable natural habitat for them exists no more. < style="font-family: georgia;">Speaking to the local media, the Commission PR officer Dr Zakaria Khonji, said that rapid urbanisation had resulted in the drying up of pools and natural springs such as Adhari where the indigenous frogs bred. The Commission caught a few of the last frogs and set up a breeding centre in Al Areen Park where they have been successfully integrated into the bio-chain. She said that all those involved in the programme are happy and proud for being successful in the vitally important breeding programme since it resulted in saving a Bahraini species from the near verge of extinction.

Congrats to the folks over at Public Commission for Marine Resources, Environment and Wildlife & Al Areen Park for saving the frongs 'once again' :D

(Source: Khaleej Times)

Military Chopper Crash Kills 3 in Bahrain

2005-06-20T20:22:00.000+03:00

No this isn't the usual US Naval base 'accidents', it was a Bahraini military helicopter that crashed into the sea last night it seems. RTE News from Ireland reports that the chopper went down during overnight training and the bodies of the pilot, co-pilot and technician have been recovered.

It is still not known where exactly the crash took place, however, it is rumoured that the location is in the North of Bahrain. Sources responsible for the welfare of the crew have commented on the tragedy and have mentioned that its 'unknown' why the chopper plunged into the sea.

Technical failures probably? I don't know, i probably won't, however the story does deserve a mention on my blog, since it did not yet as of June 20th, 2005 appear in any of the local english main steam media ;)

Bahrain's National Soccer Team Gets A New Coach

2005-06-17T23:18:00.000+03:00

Well i knew something like this was bound to happen, where it's usual for everyone to go blaming the coach if a team looses a game. So the German Soccer coach - Wolfgang Sidka has been replaced by Luka Peruzovic - a Belgian who helped Qatari heavyweights - Al Saad to their domestic league title two years ago.

Well I don't think it's right to entirely blame Sidka for Bahrain's losses to Japan and then Iran, I personally feel that this whole blame issue involved many factors, such as some of Bahrain's top players off the bench due to injuries, also they didn't have much gaming strategy - that would be the coach's fault somewhat, and there are rumours about that though Bahrain trained behind closed doors, Japan had been getting their plans off a remote video cam transmitting live footage of training practises to the Japs' team.

Now, i guess it's all a waiting game until Bahrain plays their next match to determine how good the new coach is, the improvements the national soccer team as a whole has made and how long Peruzovic survives :D (-the Croatian Coach back in March & the German one now- 2 gone & 1 in trial - A Belgian)

Good Luck to the Bahrain National Soccer Team and their New Coach.
And better luck plus a prosperous future to Sidka.

I'm not gone yet

2005-06-17T22:48:00.000+03:00

Well, i really haven't used my soap box much in the past few weeks, that's because I've been terribly busy with looking for a place in Bahrain to do my intership at, and since I'm over in tech industry I want to carefully build up my career by getting into a reputable firm that has an already-established tech-friendly working atmosphere.

And, I might be focusing more on corporate blogging, techie blogging and the blogging out my analysis of the industry players in Bahrain's Information Systems scene (there is some of it out there, but not much exposure on it yet)

I've also kinda' shifted my focus to the Google Search Blog (www.gsearchblog.com) where I'm one fo the 3 founders. Why the Google Search Blog and not the Yahoo Search Blog (www.ysearchblog.com) - well i've been a googler ever since the past 5 years, a kinda' informal googler though, and I'm quite into google's services and products and creating my own ported versions to enhance the original google creations. My other project YamsGooHooglen! is kinda' catching up with itself, I've had many people email me indicating their interest to contribute to its development and future, and i've had to modify the logo after getting quite a few 'friendly' cease and decist orders from the folks at Yahoo and Google. A google spokesperson from New York actually encouraged me to continue working on the YamsGooHooGlen! project - saying that it had sparked lot of interest among Google's SEO team.

Apart from all of the above developments, I'm keeping fine, i need more exercise though - jogging/biking - that sorta' stuff, and I'm planning on getting a few Dot Net Developer Evenings happennig with the techies in Bahrain - university students that i can get too really, and SAP meetups would be awesome i think, during Future IT 2005, in Bahrain, the people from SAP [AG] - Arabia, said theyd be doing a few here in the summer and since it's the first time I'll be around in the summer here in Bahrain, i look forward to meeting up with fellow geeks, techies and IS Developers.

So till my next post, Smile! &

Keep it Blogged!

Bahrain versus Japan - CoolStreaming

2005-05-31T00:54:00.000+03:00

Homer over @ Bahraini Blog has just stumbled across an awesome way of watching the Bahrain versus Japan soccer game online via 'coolstreaming'.

It's really good stuff, where it streams lots of (Chinese) channels that show lots of football games live. The difference between coolstreaming and normal streaming is that in normal streaming the more people are watching the stream the worse it becomes. It starts to buffer a lot, and it jams. Coolstreaming has the opposite features. THE MORE PEOPLE WATCH IT THE BETTER THE QUALITY AND THE LESS THE BUFFERING! This is why I'm telling you guys about it. Not out of the genrosity of my heart, but because the more of you that watch it the better quality I get. It apparently works in similar fashion to bit torrent, where people share the files (or buffering in this case) between them, something similar to peer-to-peer programs. I'm not sure of the technical stuff, I'll leave it to the computer whizzes.

Anyhow.... it's really good because it also shows tons of premiership, italian and spanish leage games. All for free!

There is a drawback. First, you need quite a high broadband connection. Secondly, all the channels are chinese, since the inventor of it is chinese, so no Al Jazeera etc and pretty weird commentary. Just shows you how creativity is flourishing over there but it is largely stagnant in our area of the world. When will we get an Arab who does this stuff?

Anyway, here's how to do it:

1. Download the program from this link.

2. Install it.

3. Make sure all firewalls on the program are turned off.

4. Pick a channel and enjoy!

The schedule for the channels and the games showed are found here.

The Bahrain Japan game is shown on ESPN on june 3rd at 17:30 BST (Bicester Shropshire Tranmere) timing.

One last thing. If you really want to watch the game, load up the channel and let it buffer for as long as possible beforehand (the longer the better). This way it'll never chop up or rarely buffer again.

Enjoy, and good luck to the Bahraini national team!

(Source: Bahraini Blog | reBlogged by: Stravinsky's Sizzlin' Shack)
Posted Under: buffer, coolstreaming, Soccer, Bahrain, Japan, Middle East

Qatar’s Child Jockeys

2005-05-29T20:40:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, a Qatari official announced that it will reportedly slap jail sentences of between three to 10 years on anyone using child jockeys in camel races, will also risk fines of between 50,000 and 200,000 riyals (13,800 and 55,000 dollars).

The Qatari government in December banned the use of children in camel races and said it would instead use robots as jockeys.

(Source: Sabbah's Blog | reBlogged by: Stravinsky's Sizzlin' Shack)
Posted Under: Child Abuse, Human Rights, Law, Middle East

Sony PSP goes Mobile via a JunxionBox gateway

2005-05-28T18:54:00.000+03:00

Boing Boing pal Mike Outmesguine says: Trying to force wireless connectivity out of the Sony PSP has resulted in some interesting tweaks and hacks by devoted fans of the new handheld gaming/multimedia platform. In this tradition, I worked at getting the PSP onto the internet using a cellular connection, which was happily provided by a JunxionBox Wi-Fi to cellular gateway appliance. The JBox provides a built-in Wi-Fi hotspot where cellular data service is available. As you know, hotspots are (usually) short range affairs, while cellular covers wide areas. The JunxionBox essentially "converts" 802.11b Wi-Fi device connections over to a 3G cell network either for multiple users with Wi-Fi devices or for devices that only support Wi-Fi, like the Sony PSP.

Read More...

(Source: thewirelessblog via boingboing)

Welcome to 4 New Bloggers on the Bahrain Blogging Scene

2005-05-28T04:28:00.000+03:00

I usually do these monthly tours around the blogging scene inthe Middle East and beyond and usually stumble upon blogs that may or may not have been discovered, this month of May was filled with exams and long break so i kept my blog tours for now, and here are the latest & newest Bahraini blogs:

Ward And Wardah -

Wardah grew up with her best friend “Ward” in a small village in Bahrain. When she was 5 years old she was exiled with her family for political reasons. Wardah and her family went to Europe. Wardah grew up as a Moslem girl in a European society. She didn’t hear anything about Ward. In fact, she didn’t know anything about Bahrain. She only knew she was once a Bahraini citizen. Wardah, went to school, graduated and went to college to study international politics. It was that course which opened her eyes to the political situation in Bahrian. Wardah became a journalist whom mission was to bring the truth of the island that was known to her as Bahrain. In 2004, she came across Ward by an accident in a charity meeting. Wardah with Ward Wardah are trying to document their suffering and struggling on this island which they call BAHRAIN.

An interesting read on their first post, I think its a great start to lively blog that will reveal many hardships and struggles endured by those residing, studying, working or even surviving in Bahrain. They even have a French version of their blog. Good luck to both of them for coming out with the 'truth'.

The Daily Qassooms -

AU-SC Elections... Part 1: The Silence that comes before the Storm!!!

Operation: Sudden Lightning!

H minus 8: Everything seems 2 be going fine. Preparations started days ago when I contacted "Hornet" about it. He was pleased 2 give me all the info I wanted along w/ the details... He also gave me a work plan 2 over-take the free seats. It was thrilling enough for me 2 recruit my own team and start explaining the operation's goals and method. All the team members seem 2 be very understanding and supported and every point I mention. If things stay in the same order as planned, then we will hit the jackpot!!!

-- End of transmission --

Here's the first student blogger from Ahlia University to shed some light on the ins and outs of happenings in the student council and life in as a student in Bahrain. Congrats to Qasim for being elected recently in Ahlia's student council elections as a member to represent the MS & IT Colleges, definitely, Qassooms is a blog to check out for the latest student garb at Ahlia University & life as a student council member.

SilverOoOoOoo - what can i say? well she's a Bahraini student currently reading a degree in NewZealand & is the 'In Yo Face' kinda' person, well the posts in her blog refelct that kind of personality - which is my type of thing! Her blog is quite entertaining and has got a great sense of humor tagged to it when it comes to her blogging about world/Middle Eastern politics.

Since, this posts is actually for the month of May, and though it got delayed, my June tour of bahrain blogs will appear on time - somewhere during the first week of next month and after the Bahrain Bloggers Meetup. See you there!

To All Readers

2005-05-27T16:26:00.000+03:00

First off, I hope I'm making myself quite clear when I say that by viewing this blog or posting any comments to it you have already read and agreed to the disclaimer.

Secondly, my blog is not officially associated and/or affiliated with any organization or university in any way except for the supporting organizations.

Thirdly, I do not present my readers with one-sided views of student/adacemic related issues, I strive towards bringing out both sides of an issue. In doing so, I respect every person's views and integrity and I ask that you respect mine in the same way. If you can not agree to the disclaimer, I kindly request you to please click away from this blog and do not view it in the future.

Additonally, I take threats via the phone and text/email messages very seriously and will hand your contact details over to my legal counsel for further action that may be taken against you.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding regarding the above.

This blog is fasting today for Mojtaba

2005-05-26T03:23:00.000+03:00

An update on the CPB website tells us that Mojtaba (pictured above) has submitted to his mother’s pleas to cancel his fast. But the blog fast will go on as planned because Mojtaba is still being held in prison for merely expressing himself. According to Reporters sans frontières, Mojtaba was first arrested in November 2004 for reporting the arrests of three other bloggers on his own blog. Read More ....

(Via Chanad Bahraini)

[updates on the UCB versus Terbo situation will resume tomorrow]

(post filed under human rights)

They Never Learn, Do they? - [Spain]

2005-05-20T22:41:00.000+03:00

Jorge Cortell, a teacher at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, Spain, was forced to resign after a talk about P2P networks. His side of the story can be read on his blog.) Some pics from Jorge's presentation can be seen here.

An excerpt from his blog: "The day before the conference, the Dean (pressured by the Spanish Recording Industry Association 'Promusicae' as I found out later, and he recognized himself in a quote to the national newspaper El Pais, and even the Motion Picture Association of America, as another newspaper quotes) tried to stop it by denying permission to use the scheduled venue. So I scheduled a second one, and that was denied again. And a third time. Finally I gave the conference on the university cafeteria, for 5 hours, in front of 150 people."

So it's not just happening in Bahrain, a university in Spain is censoring their professors and most inmportantly messing around with intellectual and academic freedom of speech! Are we as students, teachers, educators and parents going to standby and let this happen? I doubt so.

So, this summer semester - 2005, I'm going to do a presentation on 'the legal use and benefits of the P2P networks, even when dealing with copyrighted works' at UCB, NYIT, AMA and any other local university that offers students' majors in the IT career, of course, I will be featuring some work by Jorge and let's see if I will be stopped! If anyone cares to join me, feel free to drop me a line.

Russia wants compulsory registration of Mobile Internet Users

2005-05-01T18:51:00.000+03:00

And when you all thought that Bahrain is the first country to try out the registration of websites (which i personally am against), our friends at Russia's Federal Security Services (FSS) want broader powers to control the country's ISPs, telecoms plus make it complusory for those with internet connectivity on their cell phones to register with the Government.

According to People2People (the digital news media site):

The Federal Security Service is calling for new rules for ISPs, “so that it could prevent the spread of extremist ideas, track down illegal online operations, and get access to databases with mobile telephone subscribers' details, such as e-mail addresses"

While the same line as in Bahrain's case is used by the FSS where it is claimed that the new law will prevent copyright violations. You can read up more on p2p's coverage of the story here.

Anyways, I was checking out p2p as usual for the latest happenings in the Canadian downloading game and am happy that peer2peer downloading has recently been ruled out as legal by the courts over there, yes the RIAA, and the Canadian music industry reps might try something else to overturn the ruling - well good luck to that when it comes along.

I also stumbled across the title - 'Bahrain registration decree' & this story, which carried info about the latest website registration law issued by the Ministry of Press & Publications which gives all website owners, managers and moderators 6 months to comply with the new regulation. It was interesting to learn that the BahrainOnline.org trio have had their passports confiscated and may still be prosecuted for their involvement in the website.

And does anyone know where I may obtain a copy of this new website registration administrative order? If you do feel free to email me or post it in the comments section. Thank you.

--------UPDATE---------
On May 2nd, 2005, p2p.net ran the following story Bahrain web registration storm
--------UPDATE---------

Spacing........

2005-05-01T01:12:00.000+03:00

spaces, all over.
New places, go slower.
Being misunderstood, its nothing new,
should i? but its my point of view!

Senseless decisions, on and off.
Meaningless actions, a sarcastic laugh.
lies and lies, baseless accusations.
weary eyes, professional occupations?

Register or face legal action

2005-04-25T03:40:00.000+03:00

This is what SillyBahrainiGirl warned us about. From the GDN:

Webmasters must register or face legal action

MANAMA: Webmasters face prosecution if they defy new rules announced by Bahraini authorities. All Bahraini websites set up here or abroad must register with the Information Ministry or face legal action, it was declared yesterday.

A six-month campaign is being launched next Monday to register all Bahraini websites, under orders from Information Minister and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Dr Mohammed Abdul Ghaffar.

"The ministry will announce soon the details of how each website owner or supervisor can register," Information Under-Secretary Mahmood Al Mahmood told the GDN.

"If they fail to register then legal action will be taken against them based on the country's printing and publishing laws."

He said websites would face similar laws to newspapers, related to libel, public decency and ethics.

Just as a newspaper editor-in-chief is held responsible for what he publishes, so will the webmasters be, he said.

Ministry printing and publishing director Jamal Dawood said registration procedures would be in line with those for all types of publications, including newspapers, leaflets, audio and visual media.

Please head over to Mahmood's Den to discuss what course of action we as bloggers want to take in response to this.

Some feedback from my sister

2005-04-24T14:37:00.001+03:00

Well i guess this might come as a surprise to some of you, I rarely blog about my sister or family for that matter, but today, after a very long time i found this email from her giving me some feedback about my blog, and i thought it would be nice to share it with u all. My sis is 5 yrs older than me, currently in the US doing her PhD and another one of the interesting species from Oxford University.

Basically i copied and pasted from the email she sent me, it just too good to waste it by leaving it sit in my inbox for months to come, so why not blog it, anyways here it is:

Some feedback about the blog:

Just a note about the “Fine Nude Art Photographed by Tommy Edwards (link at the bottom of your website) - I am perfectly okay with nudity if it can somehow be theorised as a form of art or social critique, but in the photos of Edward's site, I notice that the photos predominantly depict women, which I personally find offensive, as it just propagates the idea that the feminine body is an object to be stared at and objectified. Just thought I'd pass that on to you - if this photographer photographed equal numbers of male nudes as well, this perhaps would not have been as big an issue, even though it still might have been problematic as such depictions of women have a long history of demeaning associations which depictions of men do not. Also, I would have like to see more of a critical commentary on why he consideres these photographs art and not pornography (As I don't buy the line that all porn is art).

Also, I thought the reference to "chicks in hijabs" and "the husband's supposed to be giving out half of what he ears to the chick!..". ( Dec 27, 2004) terrible offensive. Please do not call any woman a chick - its morally degrading and if the course you did on womens studies did not get these issues through to you by introducing you to the ways in which language can be used to exercise power over people, it certainly didn't do a good job.

Also, in response to this:

"I'm being honest here when i say "I AGREE WITH Bahrania". Actually, i'm totally attracted to those who wear hijabs - no, it doesn't mean i'm not to others who do not, however, the hijab or whoever's wearing the head scarf - kinda' gves off a mysterious feeling - something i enjoy very much."

I know you don't realise the damage your attitudes cause - what this is is an example of men turning women (often women who are seen as "exotic/ different/ mysterious" into an object that is to be looked at as an object. There has been work done on this often in terms of white males who want to go out with Chinese and other Asian women because like you, they see them as "mysterious" etc. This emphasises certain aspects of the woman which are really created by the man's fantasy and silences the rest of herself which is non-mysterious/ exotic, etc. So its really an act of violence that is performed on her, as she is turned into an exotic object and is not accepted in her totality.

This is meant to be constructive criticism - I really wish you could be in one of the classes I teach - my own students who are your age are grappling with all these issues at the moment. I've attached an article that I thought you might find interesting - it doesn't deal directly with the problem of fetishisation but it does talk about language and the manipulation of power by phone sex workers. Let me know if you need help understanding any part of it, its really easy to read compared to most things, but you might have to go a bit slow if it gets theoretical in places.

Search Sans Frontières

2005-04-24T03:10:00.000+03:00

My appologies for the slack on here and the layback way of posting. I've just been a wee bit busy with one of my opensource projects, this one called:

YamsGooHoo!glen - Search Sans Frontières

Its a website that allows one to search the net via google, yahoo and msn and displays search results in 3 panes - allowing an insight to keword comparisons between search engines. I keep updating the progress of this new project on the YamsGooHoo!glen blog based on google's blogspot. I've been getting emails from fans of the project asking me to set up yahoo and msn versions of this project blog and have done so, they can be accessed over here:

YamsGooHoo!glen msn blog | YamsGooHoo!glen yahoo blog

Although i've set up both msn and yahoo versions of the project blog set up on google's blogger, please understand that due to college work and coding of the project, updates to yamsgoohooglen would first be available on the google's blog version and then on msn spaces and 360 yahoo.

I released the YamsGooHoo!glen project in the early hours of last Wednesday morning (April 20th, 2005) and by Thrusday morning at 1am, the website had already logged about 17,000 hits, prompting me to take it offline because my bandwidth had totally hit rock bottom. After an hour or so, friends (StFX university students) from Canada pitched in to help me host the site again, and now it is operational on donated webspace. According to me stats panel, yamsgoohoo!glen has been getting about 600-1000 visitors per hour and by Thrusday evening had already made it's way to the top of search results on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

A high school student in Serbia (who wishes to remain anonymous) has emailed me a fan logo, requesting me to use it, if I ever found myself in a lawsuit by all 3 search engine giants or if anyone attempted to sue me for usage of copyrighted logos. To that student (you know who you are) thank you very much, and I'll definintely be putting it up whenever the situation does occur, however, i'm not quite worried about it now since i've already ahown my work to some of the folks over at Google's campus and a rep from MS EMEA (Microsoft Europe, Middle East & Africa) based in Germany & both have encouraged the project's development. However, i'm still keeping my fingers crossed, because you can never be too sure of anything, and anyways i'm just displaying their logos for educational and demo(nstrational) purposes.

Hope you enjoy YamsGooHoo!glen, do send me all your feedback, may it be positive or negative, i welcome constructive criticism and stay tuned for more searching project surprises!