Archive for Internet
First Arab launchpad event for startups and tech companies to be held in Amman
Jordan seems to be once more the new emerging “place to be” in the Arab world in terms of new technologies.
The event organised on next 23rd february in Amman by Arabcrunch and Dart looks really a “must go”.
Arab Crunch Demo is an open stage for promising new tech companies and start ups all across the Arab world to pitch their ideas in front of fellow entrepreneurs, CEOs, venture capitalists, IT professionals, IT students, media, and early tech adopters.
For this first exciting demo the organisers have selected3 startups from Egypt:
- weNear: Mobile location based framework.
- Adhere: the first mobile open source server.
- Al-Khawarizmy: Beyond the words Arabic embedded Search.
2 Startups from Jordan:
- Ishki: The Arab complaints web 2.0 vortal.
- MailPacks: SaaS Auto responder.
and 3 keynote speakers coming from all around the world (have a look at their bios)
- Herve Cuviliez: Managing Director, KuvCapital.
- Khaled Jabasini: Founder and CEO, E-Marketing MENA.
- Sumaya Kazi Executive Director and Editor-in-Chief at The CulturalConnect, Senior Social Media Manager at Sun Microsystems.
Among the sponsors of the event, Ikbis the “You Tube” Arab style, Maktoob one of the most popular online community in the Arab world and Mashable the world famous blog focused on web 2.0.
The organisers of this really cool and brand new event are Dart, the student’s entrepreneurship society of Queen Rania Center for Enterpreneurship in Amman; and Arabcrunch, Gaith Saqer’s brilliant professional blog dedicated to profiling and reviewing Arab originated technology startups and existing Internet and mobile companies, and their products and services. Arabcrunch carries really interesting articles and reviews on Arab startups, together with updates with news and event like the Jordan Twestival or Twitter festival.
Mabrouk to Gaith for this cool iniative! Once more, this proves that new generations in the Arab world are very active and willing to experiment new creative ideas. As for us in the Western media, we should really try to have a better look into this vibrant reality of people doing cool things, instead of always focusing on wars, terror and alleged backwardness coming from the Region.
Syria and Lebanon go open source
A good news for the open source scene. Two great events are running -or going to run- this month in the Arab region. The first one it’s called the iFoss09 and it’s currently going on in Damascus, Syria at the SCS Center, Tishreen Park in Omaween Square. The programme is rich in events and as far as I know this is the first time that such topics are debated for the entire week and in such an institutional place. There is a growing interest in Syria for the open source related topics and a very active community made up of very young people that have a great enthusiasm over those issues. Ziad Maraqa, Creative Commons’ lead in Jordan, talked yesterday about the latest developments of CC in the Arab region, mentioning also the recent launch of the Al Jazeera Creative Commons repository which is generating lots of interesting debates all across the web. Watch out the Computer Science in Syria’s website http://www.csc-sy.net for future developments of this very interesting syrian techy community.
As for neighbouring Lebanon, Beirut is going to host Open Sesame, the first ever Arab barcamp on feb. 28th (the place is still in discussion but most probably will the very cool Rootspace of Dave Munir Nabti). Lots of interesting topics have been proposed like the “arabization of the web”, which is a core issue to be debated in the Arab world. The critical mass of Arabic content on the web is still very underdeveloped if you think about the great potential reach of the Arabic language (spoken by more than 300 millions people) and of a population which is made up mostly by youngsters. This young energy has to be “exploited” by the Arab people and it has to be turned in content creation and innovation over the Internet.
The Arab region has been -and, unfortunately, it is still- covered mostly in terms of conflicts, wars, violence, while there is much more going on. We have to encourage and support such events and all the energy coming out from them if we really want to change the Arab world and its bad -and wrong- image in front of the rest of the world.
Please, do join the organisation of the Open Sesame Barcamp, do propose topics and do come to Beirut on the 28th of feb. It will be a lot of fun and a lot of interesting issues will be debated by a young and vibrant Arab community.
Al Jazeera lancia il primo video archivio disponibile con licenza Creative Commons BY
Al Jazeera oggi ha fatto un altro importante passo in quella che e’ diventata in pochi giorni una delle piu’ sofisticate e capaci operazioni di approccio “new media” al conflitto in corso a
giorni in cui ha tenuto un attivissimo canale via Twitter di micro updates da Gaza e disseminato video su You Tube, la Tv del Qatar fa la mossa successiva. La provocazione delle provocazioni, visto che si tratta di un broadcaster. E cosa c’e’ di piu’ prezioso per un broadcaster, se non il suo archivio, il materiale che produce, i contenuti su cui investe?Il core business di una rete TV e’ la produzione e la vendita di immagini, almeno cosi’ era fino a poco tempo fa. Al Jazeera lancia http://cc.aljazeera.net/ il primo archivio di immagini online di qualita’ broadcast accessibile a tutti gratuitamente, persino a scopi commerciali. Un blogger, un filmaker, un giornalista, un’universita’ e persino una rete televisiva avversaria, potra’ accedere a questo footage,rimanipolarlo, rieditarlo, rivenderlo persino, con l’unico obbligo di citare la fonte. Questo e’ quanto recita la licenza BY, l’attribuzione, la piu’ permissiva licenza disponibile fra quelle ideate da Creative Commons. Un passo molto importante per una concezione diversa del giornalismo, per un suo allargamento in direzione della partecipazione, della rimanipolazione, del cut up.
Al Jazeera sa bene che, in un momento come questo, sulla crisi di Gaza c’e’ anche una crisi informativa, poco accesso ai media, e le poche fonti accessibili sono soprattutto in arabo. Mettendo in circolo le sue immagini, Al Jazeera attivera’ l’esercito di traduttori volontari, quelli che scrivono Wikipedia, che passano ore al computer a discutere articoli e traduzioni. Allertera’ le centinaia di migliaia di blogger che in giro per il mondo postano su quello che sta succendendo. Svegliera’ gli appassionati del filesharing, che per una volta potranno farlo in maniera assolutamente legale.
E forse anche qualche Tv si interessera’ a questo footage e, perche’ no, lo usera’ per programmi, documentari, approfondimenti.
Il circolo virtuoso creato da Al Jazeera potenzialmente e’ infinito.
Rimane una cosa, aldila’ del significato politico, che per ora lasceremo da parte. Con questa mossa, la TV del Qatar dimostra di essere all’avanguardia, persino nel discorso new media. Dimostra di essere in continua tensione con se stessa, di avere voglia di superarsi e di non riposare sugli allori, di andare oltre quella scuola di giornalismo -professionale eppure tradizionale nell’impostazione- che pure e’ stata lei stessa a creare nel mondo arabo.
Tralasciando il discorso politico, e rimanendo su un piano strettamente mediatico, tanto di cappello, quindi, a una rete che si comporta meglio di tutti i servizi pubblici del mondo. All’obiezione che gia’ mi sento fare da parecchi – e cioe’ che tanto Al Jazeera i soldi “ce li ha” percio’ si permette queste “stravaganze” gratuite- rispondo si, ce li ha, ma avrebbe potuto usarli in altro modo. In fondo, se ci pensate bene, quanto costa fare un sito come quello che oggi ha fatto Al Jazeera? Quanti costi aggiuntivi comporta per una rete, che gia’ ha investito nel suo core business -cioe’ produrre quei video, mandare i corrispondenti, pagargli stipendi, assicurazioni, etc- mettere online quegli stessi video? Costi aggiuntivi pari a zero. Non si tratta di soldi, si tratta di osare. Al Jazeera si e’ giocata la carta del brand image, quella del ritorno economico sul lungo periodo. Vedremo se avra’ ragione
ora, comunque, e’ l’unica TV di cui si parla, persino negli Usa, sul piano di copertura new media della guerra a Gaza. Ne ha parlato qualche giorno fa un bell’articolo dell’International Herald Tribune.
Vorrei aggiungere una nota personale: sono sicura che molti penseranno che Al Jazeera tira fuori l’archivio su licenza Creative Commons guarda caso proprio ora che c’e’ la guerra a Gaza. Una mossa politica, piu’ che mediatica. Per sfatare questa supposizione, ci tengo a dire che dal maggio 2008 sto lavorando, per conto di Creative Commons, a vari accordi nella Regione araba per la diffusione delle licenze soprattutto nel settore media. Al Jazeera e’ la prima Tv araba che ha risposto all’appello, e sono molti mesi che stavamo studiando questo sito, frutto di un lavoro e di accordi in corso da molto prima della crisi di Gaza. Il sito, nel futuro, ospitera’ altro footage, oltre a quello ora : urgente per evidenti ragioni, giornalistiche prima che politiche.
Inoltre, il team di New Media che ha lavorato a questo sito, capeggiato dal sudafricano Mohamed Nanabhay, e’ composto di giovani sotto i trent’anni, espertissimi di tutte le tecnologie piu’ moderne. Da tempo studiavano le innumerevoli possibilita’ della Rete. Si tratta di semplice Ricerca e Sviluppo. Al Jazeera aveva investito in un settore, e adesso sta raccogliendo dei frutti.
Spero che in Italia, come nel resto del mondo, queste immagini servano a blogger, videomaker, giornalisti, televisioni e anche semplici cittadini, per capire cosa sta succedendo a Gaza e, anche, piu’ in generale, per avere un’idea di come potrebbe essere l’informazione del futuro. E speriamo che altri esempi di TV seguiranno ad Al Jazeera, magari stavolta europee, inshallah.
Facebook war happening in parallel to Gaza war
As Global Voices reports today, it seems that many “pro-Gaza” Facebook groups have been hacked, apparently by the Jewish Internet Defense Force (JIDF) who states to be “leading the fight against antisemitism and antiterrorism on the web” and “promoting jewish pride, knowledge and unity”. So it now seems that a parallel “war” is now happening on the virtual world of the Internet..
Ammon news, a great grassroots experience in Jordan
I came to know this very interesting webnews project in Jordan called Ammonnews (the ancient name of Jordan’s beautiful capital Amman). One of the two guys who’s behind it is named Sameer Al Hayari, a very cool Jordanian in his forties who had this brilliant idea two years ago with his colleague Bassel Okoor. They both had a journalistic background, but they felt they would have need something more. A media which would have enjoyed less constraints, both in terms of freedom of expression and also in terms of distributing the news. And to publish “live” news, of course. It was 2006, in Jordan there was no such thing as a news webportal grassroots based.
I just met Sameer, he was sitting in Donner Cafe, the place in Amman where they usually meet up to write down stuff for the website. It’s like an office, an open office, where everybody gathers every evening to write down articles, smoke narghila and drink tea together. It’s like an open space, wireless of course, people keep coming and going, some of them sit at the table and write down pieces of news, some others drink tea and discuss about politics. Other people just come to bring fresh news, about what’s happening in town. Or they come to speak with Sameer. His phone is ringing like crazy while the websites is updated live. A modern, cool, networked newsroom!
Contributions come from the web and mobiles, from citizens that want to debate local issues, and from professional journalists that enjoy giving Ammonnews their articles for free. Why? Because the website has become the “place to be”.
“When we started we were just the two of us”, says Sameer while smoking narghila the oriental way. “We wanted to create something new, something fresh, and we just did it, without any funding, just with our pocket money and our passion. Our model was Detnews.com, so we asked the webmaster to design a website on the similar scheme. Then we asked our network of journalists’ friends to send us contributions, and little by little the site started to be well known. After one year of life, the former goverment shut down the website because of its free spirit in talking about politics. This provocked a huge phenomena, never seen before: people were just protesting cause the website has become so popular that the people wanted it to stay. So the government was pushed to re-open it”.
“After this, the website boomed and the number of contributors and readers increased very quickly. So we started to take advertising, mostly coming from local companies, and this has become our business model. Now we have ten people working for us, and we are doing very well. We will open an english service soon, inshallah!”.
Well, if you google them in Arabic, you will see that they has become a source for other news organisation, like Radio Sawa (the American radio station in Arabic) among the others. And all the people in Jordan take it as a reference for being informed about what’s happening in the country, also the government people are calling them to react to articles and debate about what they have published. It’s a virtuous circle between readers and news makers, professionals and amateurs, government and citizens.
I think Ammonnews is a great example of how a grassroot experiment can be born, become well known and find also a sustanaibility and a business model. And, again, it’s another good example of how Jordan is quickly moving forward to innovation and creativity. A place to watch out for future trends in the Arab region.
Ana wa Sameer in Donner Cafe, Amman
Ammonnews “office” in Donner Cafe, Amman
The first Muslim virtual world to be launched soon
Avatars will wear hijab and go to prayer rooms five times a day. And even if there will be a proper currency it won’t surely be used to buy alchool in this new upcoming virtual world designed by the Muxlim.com social network, which already hosts many themed bloggers, forum, polls, an online Tv service plus the Quran in many languages, with the possibility to browse in the surah of the Holy book.
The new virtual world, named Muxlim Pal, is reported to be open to everybody, not only to Muslims. “It’s not a religious platform, but a virtual world which is addressed to religious and not religious people” in the words of Ashar Saeed, the vice-president, who is from Sweden but now based in London, and is a young pioneer in the field of Islamic finance. And Mohamed El Fatatry, the Ceo and founder, seems to be one of the most successfull in the online Islamic space. He says in his webprofile to have been nicknamed the “Linus Torvalds” of the Muslim world. Maybe also because most of the Muxlim team comes from the homeland of Linux’s father. Most of the Finnish people in the Muxlim staff are working in the web development or graphic side of the web platform, except for the co-founder and board member Pietari Paivanen who is a Finnish.
The composition of the Muxlim team is quite multicultural and the final goal of the platform is to serve “as a tool to let people explore the Muslim culture“, a lively and immersive tool rather than a static and non-interactive one.
The official launching of Muxlim Pal is scheduled in few weeks but the platform has already attracted a lot of press and media attention.
Next step is to see how the tool will be received in the Arab world and if, being an “halal” space, it can avoid to be censored as many of the social networks and web 2.0. platforms (Skype, You Tube, Facebook, etc) are censored in different Arab countries for many reasons, but first of all for allowing social networking and free speech.
Mediaoriente al Meet the Media Guru di Milano, 4 nov. 7pm
Per chi si trova a passare per Milano vi segnalo quest’iniziativa alla quale sono stata invitata: Meet the Media Guru, dove domani parleremo di MediaOriente e web 2.0 nel mondo arabo. Porterò un pò di interessanti materiali televisivi “raccattati” dalle tv arabe, sperando di sorprendevi mostrando un mondo arabo che si interroga sui rapporti con l’Occidente, sul terrorismo, sulla democrazia. E che mostra anche un lato sorprendentemente autoironico.
Joi Ito’s lecture on Creative Commons in Talal Abu Ghazaleh Business Forum
Joi Ito’s lecture has just finished couple of hours ago here in Talal Abu Ghazaleh Business Forum, Amman, Jordan. Joi’s speech was as usual full of insights, very much focused on innovation as the primary engine for economy and business to move forward. And Creative Commons was described as “an open source for content”, the tool which could speed up the innovation by allowing people to share ideas legally and safely in order to progress -culturally, scientifically, economically and humanly speaking- thru sharing.
(Joi speaking in Amman, the King of Jordan’s pic behind him)
This is a concept which would be key to develop in the Arab world, too. Some people in this Region do think that since copyright is not such a big constraint as it is in the US or EU Creative Commons may not be needed as a tool. Many people raised their hands to ask this question today in Amman. As Joi explained very clearly and wisely, since the world becomes more globalised and more connected, also the legal framework come to be similar. Btw, this is also happening in the Gulf, where many countries have absorbed the WTO rules on intellectual property. And since all the audiovisual media in the Arab world are originated in the Gulf, this is very much likely to reach the Maghreb and Mashreq very soon.
(Audience in the Talal Abu Ghazaleh Business Forum)
Jordan will be the first Arab country to have a CC license 3.0 ported hopefully in the very next months.
As Ziad Maraqa, one of the CC leads in Jordan, has underlined today, they had to face lots of big issues when translating the licences into Arabic and adapting to Jordanian copyright law. One of the most discussed change today was the translation of the word Creative Commons itself into Arabic, which many bloggers don’t see appropriate (see the discussion in the public forum). But, as Joi Ito underlined, the translation of the name Creative Commons is the most controversial issue in every jurisdiction according to the final users of the license:) Many other key topics as the use of the licenses in audiovisual media or in education have been discussed.
From left to right, Shadi Murtada from Abu Ghazaleh Company, Joi Ito, Ziad Maraqa CC Jordan lead.
The discussion with the audience was very lively and showed a great deal of interest. A good start for CC in the Arab region. Mabrouk!
Creative Commons conference to be held tomorrow in Amman
I am currently in Amman, Jordan to join the Creative Commons conference organised with Abu Ghazaleh company. Joi Ito, the Ceo -a very cool Ceo:)- is going to lecture here, followed by Ziad Maraqa, the CC lead in Jordan together with Rami Olwan. This is a great step for CC in the Arab world and Jordan is the first Arab country to have translated CC licenses which are now under public discussion. Lots of Jordanian bloggers have already blogged on this. I hope to see many people coming from different backgrounds, inshallah. For those of you who are in Jordan pls come to have a look!
Creative Commons calls for videos
The Creative Commons 2008 fundraising campaign has just started. Everybody is invited to join and contribute to help building the commons! And, for those who want to contribute also by creating new cool stuff, there is a new video campaign that invites to release your 90 seconds of audiovisual creativity in a smart video project. To simply tell the others why you support, use and love CC. Yalla!!
