People love hyped-up controversies, show downs, epic battles, clashes of titans (but not the movie :-p). In today’s world with thousands upon thousands of blogs, it seems that those with the most explosive titles win. So, people often do not hesitate to manufacture show downs where none exist.

Nowadays you can’t open any news reader without being bombarded with iPad vs Kindle comparisons. True, it would seem to be that these two devices are targeting an overlapping market segment. But i do not think there is a show down. The real money maker in the e-books market (where the said show down is located) is in book sales and distribution. Ultimately, that is the real money maker for outlet stores like Amazon and Apple Bookstore (/iTunes/iBooks/whatever it’s called).

But if Amazon can release a Kindle application for the iPad, as it already has for the iPhone, then where is the beef? Those who are loyal to Amazon will still drift to Amazon and those who are not will go to Apple’s distribution center. Now, the real show down is perhaps not in the physical device itself but in the deals with publishing houses. Amazon and iBooks have different business models and might be courting different exclusive publishing deals. That is far more important than what device you use to read those e-Books, because it will ultimately determine where is the content available and for how much.

Just my thoughts on this topic that has been clobbering my Google News reader for months now.

Happy new year!

If I tell you that search is crucial for using the web and indeed the web’s growth and future, you’ll probably shrug and ask what’s new. Indeed, web search is almost becoming like our sixth sense and we rarely give it much thought. Looking for something? just search for it, or, Google it.

Fun fact: Google doesn’t want people to use their company name as a verb meaning search because they’re afraid that that verb will become detached from the company itself and that people will think of googling as the act of search irrespective of how that is done. That is, they are afraid that you’ll start googling on Yahoo or Bing . Case in point, they don’t want “google” to become like “xerox” or “kleenex”. More on genericized trademarks.

Last year, Microsoft introduced their new search engine, Bing, which is the first possible serious contender to Google… ever! This actually turned out to be good for us consumers; both search engines have started rolling out new features quickly. Competition is good. I think I can safely say that the state of web search is much better now in the beginning of 2010 than what it was in the beginning of 2009.

The marketing campaigns of both engines are perhaps a prime indicator of the heated competition. Google rarely advertise their products. Not only that, but Google Search was actually never advertised (afaik)! Imagine that, the most used web service on Earth was never advertised! Bing as the newcomer has been running commercials on the web and TV. Recently, Google started advertising their web search. I think this is quite shocking. I think everyone who has ever used the Internet knows about Google search, yet they are starting to advertise now. I first saw their ads on Hulu, and now I am encountering them in other places.

If you’re interested, here’s Google’s search campaign and here’s Bing’s search campaign.

I was browsing online when I accidentally stumbled upon this site: http://www.israellawcenter.org/Missions-general-information.html (link not added purposefully).

Apparently this organization takes tourists on some sort of live military tour where they penetrate illegally occupied territories and sit in on courts of Palestinian captives.

Screenshot of the “tour highlight” !!

What year is this? Are we back in Roman times where Christians where being fed to lions in front of the cheering crowds? Are the destroyed lives and the misfortunes of the occupied people of Palestine a tourist attraction to this organization? Seriously, this is so barbaric!

For a while now, Google Maps has been displaying the names of towns and cities in the countries’ local languages when you pan over them. So for example, when you go over Japan, you’ll see the name of towns in Japanese with English subtext. This is similar for European and Arabian countries.

Interestingly enough however, Israel-Palestine has been mostly blank with only English written there. That made me curious because Google, like many other tech companies, tries to remain neutral when it comes to international political issues, and i wanted to see how they handle this one. So i kept on checking back often.

Today I noticed that they started to display Hebrew names in pre-1967 areas (which is politically safe). Interestingly however, the Hebrew words only appear when you are not zoomed in to see the individual city names.

Anyway, what is really funny is that they have hugely misspelled the Arabic name of Madaba. Here is a screenshot below:

Btw, I couldn’t find a link to report this mistranslation, otherwise i would have reported it.

This is indeed rediculous. Not only that, but i also hate it when services require you to sign up with a username & password even if you just want to try that service for a brief time. Too many user accounts online, ultimately you run out of memorizable unique passwords, and sharing passwords or using a service-dependent naming scheme is not wise. Check out this website for a neat tool btw.

In these days (and specially if the whole “cloud-as-a-service” model is to become successful, oh and it will) we should have a concept of a single global account, or a managable federation of accounts that form a global account, that would allow people to “turn on” services on the web to try them out (or use them), and then “turn them off”.

I know about openID, but having a single account (be it from Google or Microsoft or Yahoo) to log in to many places is too “big-brothery” for my taste. Plus, not all online services allow users to use openID, even though they really should.

It is bollocks! Bollocks I tells ya! *shaking his fist*

Let’s rethink what a computer is.

Computers are no longer those bulky devices under or on your desk. They are no longer those thin and slick laptops on your desk or lap. These have become merely interfaces to computers and computation power.

Your new computer is somewhere off in the “cloud”; you don’t own it, you can’t touch it, and you don’t even know exactly where it is. Your computer today is really a collection of hundreds of thousands of what you used to think of as computers before, all of which working in unison to provide you all the services you need.

Your new computer is on the Internet. Actually, your computer today is the Internet. The Internet is no longer an auxiliary service to complement the rest of your computation needs. The Internet today is no longer just a service, it is everything. Although our desktops and laptops are capable of doing wonderful things on their own, but if they are disconnected from the web we tend to think of them as useless.

The Internet today can stream you an infinite collection of videos, movies, TV episodes, and live events. The Internet can let you call, email, IM, and handle all your communication needs. The Internet can take care of your office needs of word processing, spreadsheets, presentation, team collaboration, and database. The Internet can store, organize, or even help you edit your photos. The Internet provides you with games you can instantly enjoy.

While this is not new, what is new of the past two or three years, however, is that you can get all these services with minimal configuration on your end, and with all these services running in your browser, and we’ve only just got started. This is the new Internet. This is your new computer!

With this, all the old debates of Windows vs Mac OS vs Linux are kind of irrelevant these days. All of them connect you to the same Internet, and that is where all the new applications run. What is relevant however, is the emergency of the new Internet Operating Systems. Unfortunately there isn’t much debate about this. However, if you think about it, companies like Facebook, Google, and Microsoft Live, are all competing to build your next operating system, or the environment where you work.

The closest of these to a full-blown “operating system” is probably Facebook. This of course is no wonder because they bought the Internet start up Parakey that was interested in building a hosted, virtual, Internet operating system. If you look at Facebook, they even adopt the mantra of existing operating systems. They have a little bar at the bottom where your notifications appear on the right (just like where your system tray icons would appear in Windows). You can install different applications to your profile, you start your applications by clicking on a menu from the left side of your bar. Developers have an API and programming languages to write programs to run on the Facebook environment. So it is in effect a full-blown “operating system”. I only put the quotes here because it technically doesn’t manage your hardware like a “real” operating system does, but it is pretty much everything else for you.

This is very exciting. Your new computer data and services are available to you 24/7 around the globe. It is very exciting because you no longer have to manage and maintain your computer as you inadvertently had to in the past. Previously, you would buy a computer to use it, and you’d end up administering it just to keep it running, which took away from the time you can actually use your computer to derive some benefit out of it. To realize this, think of how much time you had to spend to install applications and fix problems that you encounter (computer doesn’t work, this or that program don’t work ..etc). Now, all that is gone and taken care of by somebody else. You can now derive benefit from your computer without any extra effort.

This is also exciting because it creates new problems for us to think about. For example, we are now no longer owners of our data and computation. It is probably companies like Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Zoho that own your data. So how do you ensure that your data is still safe and confidential ? Your new computer services run on hundreds of thousands of machines in a distributed fashion, how do you make that possible ? Your new hosted services are expected to be up and running (available), and extremely responsive, 24/7 and around the globe, how do you make that possible ? How do you integrate the experiences of millions of people so that we can facilitate collaboration while still protecting security ? and how do use users’ experiences to create better services ?

This is the new Internet. This is the new world of “cloud computing“. This is your new computer. Welcome to your new computer.

This is the last of my Blog About Palestine Day 2009 posts. This harvest post contains a sample list of more than 30 articles (in 4 languages) and a video contributed to this magnificent event on that solemn day by YOU (and people like you). They are presented in no particular order here:

English:

• The Coffeehouse: The day i went home…
• Cinnamon Zone: She is Palestine
• Qwaider: The Lies and Myths Machine
• Naser: Meet Jedditi (Grandma)
• Za3tar: Rewriting the History of the Holy Land
• Rebellious Arab Girl: Where is my homeland?
• Garfan: Arab Isralis vs Palestinians vs Arabs
• Yameen Shmal: Ana Falasteeni
• Historian: Silence
• Laura Sparkle: Blog About Palestine Day 2009
• Choice Words: Social and Reproductive Justice under Occupation
• Jumana: The 61 anniversary of Palestine’s catastrophe
• Silver Lining (realisticbird): Palestine; is the cause alive and well?
• Al-Falasteenyia: Wake up and smell the Nakba(t)
• Nina: Palestina In My Mind
• SaSa: Palestine – peace without justice
• Medad/Nathan: Palestinian Portrait
• Maysaloon: The Nakba – 61 years on
• Sacred Beginnings: May 15th – Blog about Palestine Day
• Ahmad Hamda: Palestine I am Sorry
• Umm Ali: May 15th – Nakba Day – Blog about Palestine
• SimSim: Palestinian voice can only be heard by blood
• Yasmin Hamied: One day later
• LongLivePalestine: My Time in Palestine

Arabic:

• Mona’s Corner: أبوريت صوت من فلسطين
• Mohammad Badi: العام الواحد والستين في عمر قضيتنا، لن ننسى ولن نغفر أبداً
• Mohammad Online: فلسطين
• ASKAdenia: ماذا تبقى من فلسطين بعد 61 سنة؟
• eNAS: 15th May –> BAPD
• عين العقل: الخنازير تحكم العالم
• سجال: إلى فلسطين

Bulgarian:

• Rusland Trad: Иргун,Хагана и други организации в Израел
• MKaragyozov: 61 години история на несправедливостта и унижението ІІ

French:

• Samia Lamine: La Nakba: 61 ans d’errance et le droit de retour

Video:

• HATTLER – Assalamu Alaikum – Live 2008 (HD)

Thank you everybody for your contributions! Many personal stories about first hand experiences of the Nakba were told. Many stories about the Palestinian identity, and living in diaspora were discussed. Many wonderful poems were written. Many first hand present-day accounts were shared. Many visions for the future. It is all because of you, and thanks to you.

I know for a fact that i didn’t/couldn’t list all contributed entries here (simply because it is intractable). If you were not listed and would like to be listed, please let me know.

Tomorrow is Blog About Palestine Day 2009. The community response has been very refreshing so far. So many people have signed up both on the blog announcement and the Facebook Event. The event has been advertised and promoted on Qwaider’s Planet and Toot. This is a true grassroots community effort and I am so proud to be part of this responsible and vibrant community.

If you would like to participate but you’re facing a mental writer’s block, here is a list of possible topic ideas that i hope you find useful. Also, I would really appreciate it if the title of your blog post was preceded by [BAPD] (for example “[BAPD] My Article About Palestinian Cities”).  Finally, I would really appreciate it if you added a graphical button leading back to the event’s page so that future readers can learn more about the subject and read other people’s articles. You can use the following code to add a button to your post:

<a href=”http://www.za3tar.net/?p=742″><img src="http://files.za3tar.net/pal-day-09/buttons/pal-day-en.png" border="0" alt="Blog About Palestine Day" /></a>

Here is a short list of blogs (that i know about) that have signed up for this event. This list is absolutely in no particular order, This list is absolutely not all-inclusive, if your blog has not been listed here, please let me know so that i can add it.

These are some of the seeds, tomorrow will be the blossom, and after that i will try to compile a harvest list of the articles.

• Memories Documented – Qwaider
• Whisper
• Rusland Trad
• Garfan
• Ulysses
• Nekrif
• Mona
• SimSim
• Mohammad Badi
• Cinnamon Zone – Ola
• Yameen Shmal
• MKaragyozov
• Nadeem
• Mohammad Online
• Historian
• Fatema
• Jumana
• Samia Lamine
• Rebellious Arab Girl
• Danny D
• Laura
• Ahmad Hamdan
• Yousef

Thanks again for your participation, and I look forward to reading your wonderful articles.

إلى القرآء المحترمين،

يَسُرني أن أدعوكم للمشاركة في يوم التدوين عن فلسطين 2009. هذه العودة الثانية لهذا الحدث بعد النجاح الباهر الذي حققه في إنطلاقته الأولى العام الماضي. فبمشاركتكم الطيبة تم كتابة أكثر من 70 تدوينة عن فلسطين بأربع لغات! وأنا على ثقة بأن مشاركتكم هذه المرة ستؤدي إلى نجاحٍ أبهر وأكبر من العام الماضي.

كما تعلمون، يوم 5/15 من هذا العام سيصادف الذكرى الواحدة وستين للنكبة الفلسطينية. هذه الذكرة المؤلمة تُحيى ذكراها على الصعيد المحلي والإقليمي وحتى الدولي. ولذا شاركوني يا أعزائي لنرفع الوعي العام بالواقع الفلسطيني والثقافة الفلسطينية.

لا شروط أو قيود على ما يمكن أن تكتبه أو حتى اللغة التي تكتب بها. فأي موضوع له علاقة بفلسطين أو الفلسطينيين سيكون ممتازاً. يمكنك الكتابة عن الماضي أو الحاضر أو المستقبل. يمكنك الكتابة عن الثقافة أو السياسة أو الإقتصاد الفلسطيني. فعلياً، الهدف من هذا اليوم هو زيادة الوعي العام عن فلسطين، فأي تدوينة لها علاقة بفلسطين بأي شكل ستكون ثمينة.

بعض الأسئلة والأجوبة:

هل الحدث مقتصر على الفلسطينيين والعرب ؟

لا، كل شخص في العالم مهما كانت إتجاهاته سيكون مُرَحباً به للمشاركة. الجميع مدعو للمشاركة.

هل على مقالتي أن تعكس وجهة النظر الفلسطينيية (أو حتى أن تكون مقالة إيجابية) ؟

كلا، أنتَ حرٌ ومشجع لتكتب ما تشاء.

أيجب أن تكون التدوينة سياسية أو تقتصر على النكبة ؟

بالطبع لا، فيمكنك الكتابة عن فلسطين من نواح سياسية، أو إجتماعية، أو إقتصادية، أو إنسانية، أو حتى قطعة أدبية تعبر عن رأيك وإحساسك.

كيف يمكنني أن أساعد أو أنشر هذه الحملة ؟

هذا الحدث يعتمد على جهود المدونين أمثالك، فساعدنا رجاءً لنشر هذه الحملة وتحفيز المدونين للمشاركة بها. يمكنك نشر الحملة بعدة طرق:

- أعلن عن “يوم التدوين عن فلسطين / Blog About Palestine Day” في مدونتك أو موقعك.

- أضف شعار وعداد “يوم التدوين عن فلسطين” إلى موقعك (العدادات والشعارات موجودة هنا).

- شارك بالحدث على Facebook وأدعو أصدقائك للمشاركة.

لندون معاًً عن فلسطين ولفلسطين، من داخل فلسطين ومن خارج فلسطين! لنساعد فلسطين بأفكارنا وآرائنا وكلماتنا وتدويناتنا. لنعمل معاً لإنجاح هذا الحدث ورفع الوعي العام عن تلك الديار الحبيبة. نحن جيل المستقبل، فهيا بنا نكتبه لنا بأيدينا.

وفي الختام أشكركم، وأتمنى دعمكم، وأطوق شوقاً لأرى تدويناتكم.

]]> http://www.za3tar.net/2009/05/04/%d9%8a%d9%88%d9%85-%d8%a7%d9%84%d8%aa%d8%af%d9%88%d9%8a%d9%86-%d8%b9%d9%86-%d9%81%d9%84%d8%b3%d8%b7%d9%8a%d9%86-2009/feed/ 5 http://www.za3tar.net/2009/04/21/blog-about-palestine-day-2/ http://www.za3tar.net/2009/04/21/blog-about-palestine-day-2/#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:12:13 +0000 za3tar http://www.za3tar.net/?p=742 ***UPDATE #1:*** A Facebook event for this initiative has been created. Please join the event and pass the message on to your friends (more info here). ***UPDATE #2:*** Topic Suggestions and a preliminary list of participating bloggers has been published …

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***UPDATE #1:*** A Facebook event for this initiative has been created. Please join the event and pass the message on to your friends (more info here).

***UPDATE #2:*** Topic Suggestions and a preliminary list of participating bloggers has been published here.

***UPDATE #3:*** A sample harvest list of blog posts contributed to this event has been published here.

---

Dear all,

It is my pleasure to invite you to this year’s second annual Blog About Palestine Day. Thanks to your efforts, last year’s event was a huge success with more than 70 articles published in at least 4 languages. I am confident that with your continued contribution and the contribution of new bloggers, this year’s event will turn out to be an even bigger success.

May 15th of this year is the 61st anniversary of the Palestinian Nakba –which marked the beginning of the modern age Palestinian plight and suffering. This date is remembered annually on local, regional, and global levels.

I am certain that many in the blogosphere will dedicate some posts to commemorate this tragic event. However, inspired by last year’s success, I would like to start a formal initiative to encourage everybody to dedicate one post on Friday, May 15th, to talk about Palestine or the Palestinian Experience.

There are no restrictions on what you can write, or the language that you can use. Really, anything that talks about Palestine, or the Palestinians; in the past, present, or future; political, social, economical, or any other aspect is welcomed. The goal of this event will be to share thoughts, and raise awareness about the Palestinian situation. Hopefully, with everyone’s support, this will be such a spectacular event that it will catch the eye of the mainstream media (specially that the Palestinian situation is inadequately and incorrectly represented in most of the western media outlets).

FAQ:

• Do I have to be Palestinian / Arab to participate ?
  No, everybody is welcomed to join in on this effort.
• Does it have to represent the Palestinian point of view (or be a positive article) ?
  No, you are free, and encouraged, to write whatever you want.
• Does it have to be about the Nakba precisely ?
  No, you can talk about the history of the Palestinian plight, current internal and external affairs, or outlooks for possible future resolutions to this conflict and how do you think can we achieve and maintain peace.
• Does it have to be a political article ?
  No, you are free to talk about any aspect of the Palestinian life inside and outside Palestine. You are free to talk about whatever you want.

I would appreciate it if you could help me spread the word about this event. For your convenience, i have created some simple counters and web buttons for this event. You can find their code below:

Thank you in advance for your help and support.

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://files.za3tar.net/pal-day-09/display-en-small.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://files.za3tar.net/pal-day-09/display-ar-small.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://files.za3tar.net/pal-day-09/display-en.js"></script>

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://files.za3tar.net/pal-day-09/display-ar.js"></script>

---

**NOTE:** Blogs *hosted* on WordPress.com (and possibly other engines) might face some trouble embedding JavaScript code as is done above. If this is the case for you, you can use the following web buttons below:

<a href="http://www.za3tar.net/?p=742"><img src="http://files.za3tar.net/pal-day-09/buttons/pal-day-en-small.png" border="0" alt="Blog About Palestine Day" /></a>

<a href="http://www.za3tar.net/?p=742"><img src="http://files.za3tar.net/pal-day-09/buttons/pal-day-ar-small.png" border="0" alt="Blog About Palestine Day" /></a>

<a href="http://www.za3tar.net/?p=742"><img src="http://files.za3tar.net/pal-day-09/buttons/pal-day-en.png" border="0" alt="Blog About Palestine Day" /></a>

<a href="http://www.za3tar.net/?p=742"><img src="http://files.za3tar.net/pal-day-09/buttons/pal-day-ar.png" border="0" alt="Blog About Palestine Day" /></a>

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.. 3aj2aa and website clutter make my screen cry

I don’t get it. It is not a revolutionary technology, it is not a revolutionary concept, so why is there so much talk in the media about Twitter lately ? I understand YouTube’s success, it made sharing videos genuinely easier. I understand the blogging boom, it allowed people to publish articles periodically freely and without much effort. The social network bubble makes less sense, but it is still understandable, it connected friends (although people were able to do that before). However, why in the world is there so much hype about Twitter ? It’s not like it would allow anyone to really share ideas or thoughts with other people. I understand it could be useful in some situations to update your friend about your status, but every social networking site does that. So why is there so much fuss about Twitter ?

Honestly, this is very puzzling. And it is not like it happened gradually. No, Twitter was actually sort of considered like most non-revolutionary web startups, occasionally mentioned but not too much. Then all of a sudden you can’t escape it. Everybody on TV is talking about it. It is mentioned in TV shows, talk shows, and even news programs. And it hasn’t been mentioned casually as “hey, there is something called Twiiter” .. no .. it is repeatedly mentioned on TV as if it is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Every news reporter in almost every single news hour mentions twitter (“hey i’ve been twittering ..etc”) … this is just too much.

I don’t think this is natural growth of a technology, specially that Twitter hasn’t been making any money yet. What i honestly think has happened is that the investors in Twitter have probably paid several TV shows and personalities to start talking about Twitter constantly so that it becomes hype du jour and raise its value in preparation to sell it to some company.

Don’t get me wrong, i think there is some benefit to Twitter (and it is starting to be utilized correctly by some networks to interact with their audiences easily). However, i really don’t see the big deal about it. And it really feels sleazy that we are being bombarded about Twitter as if it is the next thing since sliced bread. The reason i am convinced that they must have paid these people to talk about it is because it never happens that politicians, celebrities, and news programs start adopting a relatively technology relatively all at once without some financial incentive.

I just stumbled upon a nice site to track events, incidents, casualties, protests ..etc in the current war in Gaza. It displays events on interactive maps and displays them with a timeline. It also allows you to track reported incidents, where they happened, and their verification status. It even allows people to submit reports via their web page or via SMS. Check it out.

Here is a link to the main site with the maps.

Here is a link to the reports page.

A screenshot of the map and timeline present on the site.

I have wanted to do this for a while, and now that i am on winter break, i finally did.

So here is the deal: I wanted to create a graphical map of the relationship between all the blogs on Qwaider Planet. More specifically, i wanted to represent each blog with a dot on a map, and draw a line between two blogs if one of them reads the other or links to it. So the end result will be like one of those Internet maps, but localized only for QP.

First, and without further adieu, here is a high-level readership map of all the blogs on QP.

Click on the image for a larger version.

The process was almost entirely automatic. On a high level, i retrieved the most recent posts of all the bloggers via their RSS/Atom feeds. Then iterated over all of them and parsed out comments by other bloggers on QP and the links to them.

Unfortunately it was not that easy. There were many complications that i had to get around. However, i will leave that for another post (or via email to those who might be interested).

Anyway, the picture above of QP as a whole makes sense. There are many bloggers who heavily communicate with many other bloggers; these represent the black blob at the center. Also, there are a few fringe blogs that communicate with less people on QP; these represent the few spikes that only have a few lines (edges) to the other blogs (nodes).

I created a large detailed picture with all the blogs, but it was 90 MB in size, and it crashed the program when i tried to compress it. Here is a link to it if you would like to give it a shot.

I also created a cooler individualized set of graphs of which bloggers read a certain blog, and the relationship between them. So for example, here are a couple of graphs for the blogs that have been recently linked to from my blog and the relationship between them. Again, the edges (lines) represent links.

Click on the images for a larger version.

I also expanded that to show all the blogs that i have had any sort of interaction with. So not only those that are linked to from my blog, but also those on which i had posted a comment on, but i have no recent link or comment from them on my blog.

Click on the image for a larger version.

Finally, i created the readership graphs for many of you!   Check them out, i think they are pretty interesting. Here are the maps for Qwaider and Maioush, Hani, KJ, Garfan, Batoul, Nizar, Jad Madi, 360 East, Black Iris, 7aki Fadi, Hreega, Moey, Kinzi, Mimi Cooks, Jessyz. and Mayyasi. I hope you like them. Again, each graph shows which blogs have recently commented on your blog, and what are the relations between them. If you want your own graph, please let me know and i will generate it and send it to you.

As you know, the Arabic version of Wikipedia is struggling in terms of content. Many articles are just small stubs that are infrequently updated and maintained. I understand that most of us use the English Wikipedia because more people globally are maintaining it. However, the Arabic language remains the mother tongue of the vast majority of people living in Arab countries, and not everybody online is comfortable with the English language. Add to that the large number of small school children who can not really benefit from an English Wikipedia as much as they could from an Arabic version. The presence of an Arabic encyclopedia online is imperative, yet Arabic Wikipedia is still struggling.

What do you think should be done to remedy that ? Does the Wiki model or the single-source (Encarta/Britannica) model work best for Arab users ? What are your thoughts on this subject ?

There has been some discussion on Questler (excellent site btw) on this topic. It has been suggested that maybe university professors should encourage their students to submit information to Arabic Wikipedia as part of their “class project”. Another suggestion is to start an online campaign promoted by us Arab bloggers to encourage people to engage more in Arabic Wikipedia. We can also have a “Write to Arabic Wikipedia Day/Week” that is carried out by the community of Arab bloggers (i know that a similar event has been done in the past, but it did not engage bloggers as much and i believe bloggers are more energetic on this regards). This event could also be done in collaboration with Arabic startups like Yamli that will make it easier for people to type Arabic if that is a barrier.

I am interested in discussing this issue with you. What are your thoughts on this ? You can join the discussion either on Questler, or by leaving a comment on this blog.

Have you noticed the new Egyptian-accent Wikipedia ? This is actually true! Some articles are written in “Egyptian”, there is an Egyptian portal, and a full-Egyptian version of Wikipedia. I think this is odd (to say the least).

I have to say, i find the Egyptian search boxes funny

Are they doing this to promote easy use of Wikipedia to Egyptians ? After all there is a “Simple English” version of Wikipedia. I don’t know .. but i still think it is a bit odd.

This news site never fails to surprise me.

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen; the third headline is about a SImpsons episode, and the fourth headline is about a Facebook group against coloured Kuffiyehs !! However, they did not include their usual “sex headline” .. maybe because it is Hajj season.

Come on Al Arabiya, yes not all your news have to be political, but please prioritize and separate things correctly. I can hardly see why would you ever report a Facebook group on your front page!

Honestly, it it seems to me that Al Arabiya always tries to play to a target audience of highly emotional people. So if they want to have them feel happy, they would report a trivial non-news happy issue (like: the last Simpsons episode contained a none terrorist Muslim Arab). If they want to stir up Lebanese/Palestinian flame war, they would report on a regional non-issue (like: A Palestinian Facebook group protesting against coloured Kuffiyehs in Lebanon). If they want to get the audience buzzing for a while, they would report one of their usual sex items (examples are too many to list).

Come on Al Arabiya, you can report what ever you want, but please put everything in its correct place. I bet there is something happening regionally, in the Arab world, or globally that is more interesting than a Facebook group or a Simpsons episode.

Also, by the way Al Arabiya, the “right wing channel” was not airing an episode to “defend Islam”. It was talking about intolerance and prejudging people (American Muslims in this case) of being terrorists. So that episode was tackling issues of stereotyping Americans Arabs and Muslims rather than “defending Islam”. This is just another example of how Al Arabiya plays into an emotional audience.

A long time ago, when search engines were relatively primitive, the “meta keywords” section of your site/blog were used as a first heuristic for search engine optimization. All of us, of course, want search engines to find us; so when we created blogs back then, we would dump anything and everything that could be –even remotely– related to us or the topic of our blog into that meta keywords section (some blogging engines even asked you about that).

Nowadays, hardly any search engine looks at the meta keywords or meta description sections of your blog. So they are more or less useless (as far as i know). However, it is sometimes fun to look at these keywords to see what each blogger thinks of himself or his blog.

Just for reference, this is how the “meta keywords” tag would look like in an HTML file:

<meta name="keywords" content="keyword,another keyword ..." />

For a little entertainment, i checked out the meta keywords of some of the folks on QP. Not everybody had them, and mostly all who did included their names or misspells of their names. Here are some of the interesting keywords:

• AndFarAway: Jordan, Design, Art, Amman, Islam, Arab, Chat, Blog, Pictures … (ok this one kinda works out)
  
• KJ: UAE, Dubai, Moogle, Humor, Funny, Thoughts, Hani Obaid (huh ??), Sheep, Holidays, Adha, Turkey, Thanksgiving, Religion, Ambush, Grand Theft Auto, Lost and Found, Police, Eyelashes, James Bond, Nutcase, OCD, Psychology, Traffic, Women in Coma  (what ???), Photography, Blood, Scary, Video, Violence, Zombies …..(essentially KJ encompasses everything under the sun!! .. and then some! )

Now if KJ’s keywords didn’t catch you, then his meta description might lure you in:

• KJ’s meta description: Jar of Juice is your ultimate source for humor, randomness, and your occasional serious post! … (somebody is confident :-p … actually this one also kinda works out)

• Hani Obaid (who apparently also is a keyword for KJ): Jordan, Amman, Blog, Canada, WordPress, Montreal, Blogger … (what ? no mention of KJ ?!! )
  
• Qwaider: Photography, Philosophy, Movies,  Jordan, Arab, Blog, Islam, Computers, Science and Technology … (ok this one also works out .. but what’s up with that “LutsToLove” email address in the meta text ?)
  
• Cinamon Zone: Animals, Arab World, Art, Blog about Jordan Day, Books and Literature, Children, Courage, Diaries, Fekra, Funny, Health, Science, Miscellaneous, Nakba, Palestine, Phobia, Pictures, Comments, Ramadan, Movies, Sports, Thoughts, Translation, TV, Videos, Women, Work, Zucchini … (also everything under the sun …. but what’s up with Zucchini as a keyword ?!! )

I only posted this for a little smile, no harm intended. I would have also posted my own meta keywords if i had them.

This song by the Palestinian comedian Asa’ad Sabah (أسعد صباح) was a hit during the mid 90s. It was released on a cassette tape along with many other jokes and comical songs. Almost any Palestinian growing up in the 90s would instantly recognize this song and its Hebron accent . For those who are interested, this song is poking fun at family fights, tribal reconciliation, and marjaleh.

Why am i posting this you ask ? Nothing, some random memory recollection that came up during a chat with some anonymous tipster

I was surfing online aimlessly when i stumbled upon this:

Isn’t it awesome ?!!

I have seen towns in the USA called Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Lebanon, Palestine, Damascus, Tyre, and Alexandria .. but these are all old biblical names and/or their corresponding cities in the Middle East are very old (from the greeko-roman times) unlike Ramallah.

And for my Jordanian readers, wala eyhimkom .. here is Amman Road in Edison New Jersey:

]]> http://www.za3tar.net/2008/11/23/ramallah-road-in-jacksonville-florida/feed/ 8 http://www.za3tar.net/2008/10/27/did-you-mean-arab-costume/ http://www.za3tar.net/2008/10/27/did-you-mean-arab-costume/#comments Mon, 27 Oct 2008 21:25:16 +0000 za3tar http://www.za3tar.net/?p=389 I was reading an article on how a Barack Obama face mask was filed under “terrorist costumes” on Amazon.com. I ran the search myself, but i got a John McCain face mask as a result. However, what caught my attention …

Read more »

This all started a couple of months ago. Our little corner of the blogosphere was in its periodic slump, and i thought to spice things up. Being the mischievous kid that i am, i decided to write a little applet to break Qwaider’s famed and/or touted spam protection mechanism. (Un)fortunately, i got extremely busy immediately thereafter, and dropped the idea.

~~ Anti-Spam in Blog Engines ~~

While i no longer plan to test Qwaider’s spam system, I think the idea and discussion is still valid. Before i begin, i must state that i am not an expert in spam fighting, so i simply can’t go into the messy details of this field. However, for systems such as blog comments, one can imagine a set of techniques that are used to detect whether something is spam or not:

• Content: This is simple; if the comment contains certain flag words, or if the comment body contains multiple outbound links, then this is spam with high probability. While most systems such WP or Blogger, allow one link to be part of the comment body, some immediately send any comment with a link for moderation.
• Embedded Tags: WP and Blogger allow you a restricted set of HTML formatting tags in your comment body. But this could also be malicious if you add script tags. Again, some engines also takes the defensive strategy of stripping out all HTML tags.
• IP Address: Many systems build and/or rely on databases of IP addresses that are known to produce spam, so if your comment comes from one of these addresses, then it is marked as spam.
• DNS Checks: Many systems check whether the domain from which the comment is originating is known to be a “safe” domain and whether it matches the other IP info.
• Speed: It is unlikely that a human being will comment on 10s or 100s of blog posts within a few seconds, so if the system sees multiple comments from the same machine being issued in close periods, then that signals spam.
• Reputation: After your system ages a bit, it can assign reputation to the different addresses (clients) that communicate with it. People who frequently comment on a certain blog would gain reputation in the system for being trusted clients. Through their many submissions, the system can assign them a pool of addresses from where they are likely to send their comments. That along with their unique system identifiers (usernames, email addresses, and their internal system GUIDs) would allow the anti-spam engine to trust comments that match their IDs. This can allow the system to relax the strict rules for reputable users, and enforce them for the known bad guys.
• Manual vs. Automatic Submissions: One can quickly make a program to directly invoke the HTTP commands to submit a comment to a blog. However, legitimate users are unlikely to do that. So one can overload the comments HTML form (via the button or JS commands triggered by a keydown in the comment box) so that it flags that this comment has been typed by a human rather than sent automatically by a malicious script.
• Page Rendering Triggers: Humans will need to view the post before they can comment on it. So the server can generate a timed unique ID for a page when it is requested by a client, and require the comment forms to use that ID in sending their comments.

~~ Limitations ~~

These are probably the major techniques that many blog engines (such as Qwaider’s) use for their anti-spam engines in their blogs. Of course, isolated blog engines can not use other techniques that are used by anti-spam email engines, and even anti-spam hardware. Unfortunately in a blogging environment, you do not have a contact list to assist you in flagging emails, you can not (correctly) anticipate who will post a comment on a particular post, you can not use in-hardware checks on the actual IP messages, and you can not compute checksums on the data and such.

~~ Attack Strategy ~~

At this point, the strategy for a successful “attack” applet is simple. It has to mimic the actions of an actual community of human readers. This forces us to re-examine the goals of the applet; do we intend to overload the server and bring down the site ? do we intend to add a bunch of links to undesired sites ? or do we intend to litter the site with a  bunch of meaningless “comments” to annoy the owner and readers ? This turns out to be an important point that i’ll get back to later. However, for now, let us assume that our goal is to just litter the site with a bunch of garbage comments.

Given the goal and strategy above, the implementation is almost straight forward. One could write a small applet and link to it from a site within the community of the target blogger. For example, i could link to that applet from here since most of my readers read Qwaider’s blog as well. Once the applet is loaded on a bunch of machines, it can go in a “round-robin” fashion and each time pick an instance to deliver the spam comment. For example, if the applet was running on my machine, Hani’s, KJ’s, and Tooteh’s, at each epoch, only one of us will deliver that spam (assuming that the epochs are well spaced). Let’s say that it is my turn to deliver the spam; my applet would request a random recent post from Qwaider’s blog, and load it in an internal browser (the same kind that is used to automate web UI testing), it then grabs a random sentence from the post, simulates a user input event in the comment form, and submits a comment with that random quote from the article. These automated browsers exist for testing web UI and AJAX, and by faking the browser identification, the server can not know that it served a request to a fake browser or a real browser.

From the server’s perspective, the distributed nature of these applets insures that each spam comment is legitimately originating from a different address. The content of each message is not suspicious because it uses the same credentials of the users it is mimicking. It also simulates browser behavior so that is indistinguishable from normal activity.

~~ What is Spam ? ~~

This begs the question of whether this really is spam or not. After all, the spammers did not gain anything from their actions except the annoyance of the blog owner and readers. However, what is spam really ? If you as a blog owner are getting a flood of meaningless “comments” that are obstructing the dialog between you and your readers, then that is logically classified as spam. Notice that this does not rely on computational or statistical properties of the “spam” messages, but rather on their purpose and effect. So this means that all those automated anti-spam checks will never be able to catch all spam messages. Do “human-tests” and Captchas work ? No! because by this definition, humans could as easily manually type spam messages into comment boxes.

In the Computer Science literature, there is something known as the “Turing Test” in which a human chats on his machine with another entity. The test is passed if the human chatter can not distinguish if he is talking with a computer or another human. Currently no program can pass the Turing test. Does this mean that we will only be able to solve the spam problem completely when we finally pass the Turing test ? Actually, No! For those of us who live in areas with mail services, how many times do we get a letter in the mail and throw it out because we think it is just junk, only to discover later on that it was actually something “real” and important ? This actually happens quite often. So if even humans can not always distinguish spam correctly and accurately, then it is really impossible to solve the spam problem completely, correctly, and accurately. Then again, is there a single source that can say whether something is spam or not ? What you might consider as a spam message, i might consider as a legitimate and important messages. Take the weekly local sales flyers that you get in the mail for example. To me, that is always unsolicited junk mail. To others, that is valuable info. So truly, spam is in the eye of the beholder.

~~ So is Working on Spam Problems Hopeless ? ~~

Although we can never identify all spam correctly and accurately, there is still alot of work to be done in identifying messages that are obviously spam. That is where the crux of the anti-spam work and research is focused, and we still have a long way to go.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on this subject. I picked Qwaider as an example only because he is relatively well-known in our community, he built a good anti-spam engine, and i think he can take being picked upon

Yesterday Intel showed off a solution that can deliver electrical power wirelessly and safely. They are using magnetic fields to transfer electricity which is supposed to be safer for humans than electric fields, as is reported in this article.

“It turns out the human body is not affected by magnetic fields; it is affected by electric fields. So what we are doing is transmitting energy using the magnetic field not the electric field.”

Although this is very cool, and its applications are endless. Personally, i would not use such a thing unless it went heavy rigorous testing for saftey and was analyzed for its effects on the human body (both in the short term and in the long term). However, it is a cool thing nonetheless. Soon, cords will be looked at as primitive tools of the past

As i am surfing YouTube for some videos, i come across the following entry discussing the behavior of US media when former US president Carter said that Israel has nuclear weapons (Fox News’ reaction made me laugh ). The commentator in this video is a very calm Indian journalist; While discussing the history of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, he mentions that there have been many proposals that were pushed to the UN Security Council to make the Middle East a zone free of nuclear weapons (in ’74 by Iran, ’85 by Egypt, ’89 by Syria, and ’03 by Syria).

This is weird. If the United States and other nations are worried about the volatility of the region, why don’t they approve such proposals ? After all, the US and other nations can come to the rescue if any country breaks that agreement. Well, i am not that naive, i know the reason. But, how can people in the US or UK live with such contradiction ? If their countries are truly committed to stabilizing that region, why don’t they push for such resolutions ?

Anyway, here is an article about an even more recent push for such treaty.

It is perplexing to me that the US and other countries can continuously claim rightousness and moral superiority publicly then do a ton of dirty work under the hood without the majority of the public turning against them.

You get to read a lot of stupid comments on the Internet these days. On forums, YouTube, blogs ..etc, many idiots are getting to voice their “thoughts” and “ideas”. Of course there are also many clever and insightful comments as well, but stupid comments do tend to stand out.

For example, read this comment i just found on Aljazeera English’s Youtube channel:

You heard him ladies and gentlemen; Everybody, let’s get busy … we need to increase our “production” by more than 1,000% a day over the next 10 years!! So, drop whatever you’re doing, go home, and get down to business … from 43,000 to 500,000 A DAY !! LOL.. it is all part of his grand scheme.