Michael Jackson falls, and the Internet follows

If you live on planet earth, then you know that the biggest news story this week, doing the rounds on TV stations and in newspapers, has been the passing away of Michael Jackson, the king of pop, who became famous long before the Internet existed, but is probably the biggest global celebrity to be deceased in the Internet age.

And the impact on the worldwide network was profound, as some reports even go as far as saying that “Michael Jackson broke the Internet!”

On June 25, 2009, Jackson's death caused Twitter outages, and pressure on Google servers, whereby “users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson," according to a Google spokesman. And these searches also brought the Google News server down, and caused havoc to Google Adsense servers worldwide.

At the peak of his death hysteria, Google Trends rated the Jackson story as "volcanic”. But Google was not the only one feeling massive pressure, other sites were ‘faliing’ too and impatient users where moving onto other sites immediately.
TechCrunch.com reported that TMZ, which first broke the news, had several outages, then users switched to Perez Hilton's blog, which also struggled to deal with the requests.

CNN reported that traffic and visitors increased five-fold in just over an hour, receiving 20 million page views in the hour the story broke. Wikipedia saw close to 500 edits made to Jackson's entry in less than 24 hours and the site was "temporarily overloaded." The Los Angeles Times, the first news organization to confirm Jackson's death, suffered outages. The site also reported that AOL's instant messenger service was down for approximately 40 minutes.

Mobile marketers believe people were checking news headlines from work or on the move as the news broke, probably making it a historic and record-breaking day for mobile too.

So not only was the Michael Jackson story drowning out the Iran elections crisis on traditional media, it was also preventing Iranians from using the Internet and mobile to get their word out regarding developments.

Commentators are calling it “a seminal moment in Internet history.” I believe that this incident proves again that the Internet is the ‘barometer’ of public interest, and regardless of varying opinions regarding Michael Jackson, the overwhelming majority of users worldwide have spoken, and the Internet struggled to cope. That’s big news in its own right.

zanasser@gmail.com

Within a week, Bing gets more searches than Yahoo

Microsoft’s new Bing search engine (www.bing.com), launched last week, has already overtaken Yahoo! in the number of ‘global searches’.

Bing.com is positioned as a ‘decision engine’, which aims to serve up results that help users to make better decisions in four key areas: making a purchase decision, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

Visitors able to explore images, videos, shopping, news, maps and travel content from the site. Already, a beta Arabic version is available for Middle Eastern countries; try it.



The launch of Bing followed Microsoft’s failure to acquire Yahoo last year at $40bn. With Bing, Microsoft seems to be realizing it’s search engine ambitions now, even exceeding Yahoo, at a cost that is probably much less.

According to StatCounter, Bing has gained 5.62% of the global search engine market which is a considerable market share that it has grabbed from Google.
In the first week of June, Google’s market share declined to 90.45%, while Yahoo had 5.13% and Bing had the rest.

Of course, any market analyst will tell you this is due to the “novelty effect” and it remains to be seen if Bing will retain and grow its first-time users. For now, the feedback Bing is getting is good. Reviewers say it works fairly well as a general-purpose search engine, outperforming competitors in some areas and improving the usability of mobile Web searching. Search results include a ‘clever bonus’, which is a preview of each page's text that appears when you float the cursor to the right of each result. The advanced search options on Bing are more accessible than Google's, because selecting them doesn't take you away from your current search results.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer made a statement that summarizes Microsoft’s new approach to the search engine space. He said that “Today, search engines do a decent job of helping people navigate the Web and find information, but they don’t do a very good job of enabling people to use the information they find,” said
Backed by a $100 million marketing campaign, it seems that the only company who could realistically take on Google, even in a recession, is Microsoft.

In the past, Google was the upstart and ‘lovable brand’ while Microsoft became the evil money-grabbing empire. Google’s total dominance has seen it lose some of that popularity. So, it’s ‘game on’ now between two giants, as consumers take sides in the next battle of search engine supremacy.

zanasser@gmail.com

Google doodle for Jordan's Independance Day!

In honor of Jordan's Independence Day, Google designed a special "Doodle" that can be seen on May 25th at www.google.jo.

If you're not familiar with these doodles- are you an Internet user?- they are Google's way of celebrating events and occasions, whereby the plain Google logo that shows up on the home page is replaced by a themed Google logo.

This Independence Day doodle is a nice touch by Google, demonstrating its appreciation towards users of its services in Jordan.

I'd like to think that a couple of high ranking Jordanians I know at Google might have had something to do with this, but it's probably part of a wider initiative to celebrate national or independence occasions in all countries in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Queen Rania is now Twitter-ing too

Her Majesty Queen Rania has been utilizing ‘new media tools’ to communicate her messages regarding topics she adopts such as economic and social development, equality for women, educational opportunities and others.

Apart from the well publicized YouTube Channel, which won Her Majesty plaudits across the world and now boasts nearly 3,000 subscribers and millions of views on some videos, Her Majesty has also had a Facebook profile for some time now with over 30,000 fans and is now also quite active on Twitter too!

The World Economic Forum, held at the Dead Sea last week, attracted global attention to Jordan and to Her Majesty’s Twitter-ing. In fact, Her Majesty conducted an interview on Twitter, with questions and answers being within the 140 character limit that Twitter allows. You can see this interview at Her Majesty’s Twitter profile (twitter.com/QueenRania).

Her Majesty answers questions from the “general public” via her Twitter account (@QueenRania), and seeing as she can’t answer all the questions received, around 40 of them were put to a public vote, of which Her Majesty replied to the top five questions.

The rather frank questions selected touched on somewhat sensitive topics such as Jordanian-Palestinian relations, but mostly covered social equality, education and technology, and promoting greater understanding between East and West.

Her Majesty’s efforts to communicate through social media must be commended. Social media is probably the most efficient means of communication in the 21st century, to promote greater understanding of Arabs and Muslims, in a time when predjudice exists online and offline. What better or more powerful tool is there to convey positive messages, and fight against negative propoaganda. I believe we all have a responsibiluty to utilize such tools. Let’s get started, and follow Her Majesty’s lead!

zanasser@gmail.com

Global losses from priacy exceed $50 billion

For the first time, a rise in losses of 11 percent means that piracy levels have now reached $53bn. These are the latest findings by International Data Corp. (IDC), who perform an annual study on software piracy.

Experts say this is due to unprecedented growth in the IT industry in parts of the world where there were no committed efforts to control piracy.

Overall illegally-copied programmes represented 41 percent of all software sales, three percentage points more than in 2007. Global piracy had increased as a direct result of unprecedented growth in the IT industry in parts of the world where there were no committed efforts to control piracy. The spread of the internet and access to high-speed broadband had contributed to the problem pirated software has moved from the streets to the internet, he said.

The information publicly released by the IDC highlights the status in specific areas of the world, including the Middle East.

A press release issued by the IDC reveals that the biggest disappointment in our region is that losses from software piracy in the GCC has leapt by 48 percent. Gulf states lost $590m to software piracy; yet, the only bright spot in our region was revealed to be the UAE, ranked as a low-piracy country. It was in the 20th spot in the 2007 report, and is at the 21st spot for 2008.

Otherwise, the situation in Arab countries seems disturbing, especially the region’s largest IT market, Saudi Arabia, in which piracy is up a whopping 60 percent in 2008. Details on every country are available to those who obtain this report from IDC.

People take the discussion of piracy lightly. But the reality is that piracy has a significant impact on the economy, in every country.

A previous IDC study estimates that a ten point reduction in PC software piracy in Jordan would deliver nearly 500 new jobs, $14 million in tax revenues, and $47 million in economic growth.

Government who implement strict policies against trading in pirated software and conducted a number of raids can possibly gain some of these benefits.

Additionally, countries who take a serious stance on piracy, experience an increase in direct investment from international software firms, and can develop as regional IT centers. This is something that Jordan seeks to achieve.

But, history has shown, that the education of users regarding piracy, and the establishment of incentives to ‘go legal’ have been the best measures. Delivering value to users, and understanding the economic reality of specific regions is one way to promote legal software use. Amidst this global economic recession, this approach may be the only viable one for the software industry!

zanasser@gmail.com

The IT Graduate Internship Program (GIP) takes off

One of the long-running complaints voiced by IT companies in Jordan has been that graduates of IT universities and colleges are not adequately prepared for careers in the software industry. Universities always countered this arguement saying they wanted to build relationships with the sector and required more on-the-job ‘internship’, for the students.

There seemed to be a bit a deadlock in these positions, mainly because companies didn’t want to spend the time or incur the costs of training students who may or may not return, and who cannot work the hours required to produce; while academics in universities, despite their good intentions, simply could not significantly change curricula and coursework to focus on more practical skills or industry-level training.

Finally, it seems we have a program in place to solve this issue.

The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (MoICT), in cooperation with int@j, has launched the “Graduates Internship Programme”, whereby the government subsidizes 50 percent of the salary of newly employed graduates in the first 12 months, and 25 percent in the following 6 months, leading up to a total of 18 months of subsidized employment, in addition to providing those graduates with ‘soft skills’ training.

This has opened the way for companies to step in to benefit from this opportunity.
Already, one of the country’s largest software developers, Estarta Solutions has joined the Graduate Internship Program, whereby Estarta will provide a number of interns with on job training in their respective fields of specialization

An agreement signed between ESKADENIA Software, another large software development company, and Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) even takes matters several steps further.

ESKADENIA will establish working offices within the PSUT campus for the development, management and operation of software products and services, in close cooperation with the students and the academia. The facility accommodates around 30 full-time students and employees. There will also be a number of students and graduates working at the ESKADENIA head office on on-going projects.

MoICT and int@j must be applauded for this program, which will help achieve a national ICT strategy objective of increasing direct employment in the sector reaching 35,000 jobs by 2011.

It’s good to see positive movement in the sector, and such a cooeprative and action-oriented approach can solve other pending issues facing IT deveopment in Jordan. The future look brighter when we all parties work together. Long may it continue! n

zanasser@gmail.com

PC sales drop in MEA region, for the first time

It is now clear that the PC market is not recession proof. Sales figures coming out of our region, the Middle East & Africa (MEA), suggest that the days of soaring growth are over.

International Data Corp (IDC) has revealed that sales growth was flat from quarter four 2008 to quarter one 2009, and have even showed a decline year-on-year during the first quarter. This means that the double-digit growth of the past few years may be over.

The IDC numbers show that a total of 3.5 million units were sold into “the channel” between January and March, this is but 6 percent lower than a year ago. It could have been worse, if there wasn’t such a high demand for portable PCs.

It is important to note that the Middle East and Africa numbers include sales in the huge markets of Turkey and South Africa, which may ‘tip the scales’.

Which brings us to the country level. In the Gulf, shipments of desktops and notebooks in Saudi Arabia increased 10 percent year-on-year during the first quarter, but the UAE contracted 6 percent over the same period. This is understandable, considering how connected the UAE market is to the global economy, whereas Saudi Arabia seems somewhat recession-proof up to this point.

The notes made by Stefania Lorenz, research director CEMA systems at IDC, don’t provide much comfort. She says that the MEA region was negatively affected by a 13 percent decline in desktops, but notebooks saw a 2 percent growth year-on-year, driven by the stronger uptake on mini-notebooks. So, it would seem the Netbook phenomena may rescue overall sales.

She goes on to explain that that IDC had been used seeing much stronger growth in the region, up until the fourth quarter of 2008 when the financial crisis hit.
That’s why IDC’s prediction for 2009 is that we shall have a “flat or slightly negative” market situation.

Although this sounds bleak, it’s better than the worst case scenarios for the Middle East, when there were fears that the PC market was in free fall.

A quick look at the ‘bigger picture’ shows another neighboring region doing even worse. When IDC includes Europe, and looks at the EMEA region, there’s a slump of 10 percent year-on-year to 21.5 million, as units sales in Central and Eastern Europe have crashed 41 percent. So, it seems we’re doing relatively alright.

Regarding the top vendors, IDC reveals that HP continues to maintain its lead in the MEA region, with 21 percent of the market, Acer is second claiming 11 percent, overtaking Dell who now holds third position. Toshiba occupies the fourth position, followed by LG and Fujitsu Siemens. Apparently, brands still matter to consumers, as the top five players performed better than the market average.

zanasser@gmail.com

Nationals may soon replace Jordanian IT staff in Gulf

We all know that a considerable number of Jordanians, Egyptians, Lebanese, Syrians and other Arab nationalities are working in the IT sector in Gulf States. Without their involvement, IT would not have grown as it has in the oil-rich Gulf which has always been lacking in human resources.

The relative technical-savvy of Jordanians, coupled with the large-scale IT projects in countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, have provided a ‘marriage of convenience last’ for all parties involved, and the Jordanian economy has also benefited from these professionals’ income flowing back home.

The question has always been, how long will that last!

Surely, as Gulf nationals grow in numbers, and acquire technical degrees and skills, other Arab nationals will be in less demand. Or, at some point, a major shift in policy may occur due to a major event - such as the current global financial crisis. Already, international organizations are advocating this change, and predicting a shift sooner than later, mainly due to the recession.

The executive director of the research arm of the international business school, INSEAD, spoke recently about this saying that “countries such as the United Arab Emirates and Qatar need to improve local skills to reap the full benefit of ICT investments in the region.”

This is part of the finding of the INSEAD and World Economic Forum annual report on Global Information Technology. The highest ranked Arab country in this report covering 134 countries happens to be the UAE at a respectable number 27- no surprises there.

It tops other MENA countries such as Qatar at 29- quite close behind- and Bahrain at 37, Tunisia at 38 and Saudi Arabia at 40 and Jordan, unfortunately, is at number 44.

Anyway, the point is that the Middle East is one the fastest regions across all regions in the world to move up in the “e-readiness rankings”, but Gulf countries have a relatively small population and rely on external expertise to drive ICT unlike other countries.

Therefore, experts see the key to the future of ICT growth in Gulf States is the ability to develop local skills; which means a need to see more engineers, programmers, architects and managers who are Emarati, Qatari, Saudi and so on. At the moment, it appears Gulf nationals do not lean significantly towards these scientific and technical professions. That, of course, could change. As leadership in the Gulf begins to ‘absorb’ these recommendations, things may change.

As lay-offs begin, the last last staff to be laid off will be nationals. So, in some ways, the recession may speed up this whole process. Perhaps it is time for authorities in Jordan to start planning for this change. If you’re an IT professional in the Gulf, beware!

zanasser@gmail.com

97 percent of email is classified as ‘unwanted’

It’s been reported before, but the numbers are just not decreasing! Spam and ‘unwanted’ email continue to constitute an amazing 97 percent of all email circulating around the world. Imagine how much more efficient email services would be without this load!

These findings come from a new security intelligence report by Microsoft, which looked at online activity during the second half of 2008, and suggests that these unwanted messages are either spam, have malicious attachments or are used as phishing baits by cyber-criminals to steal valuable information such as credit cards, user IDs and passwords.

While most modern email and instant messaging programs are configured to block the transmission of potentially dangerous files by extension, attackers are now using common and less threatening file formats such as Microsoft Office or Adobe Portable Document Format (.pdf). These formats are used legitimately by people every day and can’t be blocked, making them an attractive target for malware creators.

More than 91 percent of attacks exploiting vulnerabilities in Microsoft Office were using security holes that had been plugged by updates that had been available for more than two years. Attacks using PDF files rose sharply in the second half of 2008, the report noted.

Part of the Microsoft Security Intelligence Report also examines security breach incidents around the world and finds that stolen equipment, such as laptops, is the most common reason for data loss, coming in at 50 percent of data loss occurrences. That is even higher than security breaches caused by hacking or malware, which are only responsible for 20 percent of all data loss.

The report also pinpoints the countries that are suffering from the most infections of malicious software, or malware. Russia and Brazil top the global chart of infections, followed by Turkey and Serbia and Montenegro.

Apparently, the type of malware varies from country to country. In China, several malicious web browser modifiers are common, while in Brazil, malware that targets users of online banks is more widespread. In Korea, viruses such as Win32/Virut and Win32/Parite are common.

It’s a cat and mouse chase, as criminals keep coming up with ways around anti-virus and network security software. You need to protect your PC, but watchhout!
Apparently, criminals are also putting out ‘scareware’, which are fake security programs that falsely tell to install software to protect your PC from an attack; but scareware actually steals personal details!

Where will all this end? Rest assured that it won’t, so educate yourself and be suspicious of all emails you get. Better safe than sorry.

zanasser@gmail.com

Leaving PCs on costs millions in electricity bills

If you keep your PC on, when you’re not in the office, thinking no harm will be done, you are wrong, especially if left switched on overnight. A computer uses energy even when it appears to be idle.

A study of British businesses showed that it costs more than £300m a year in extra electricity bills!

1E, a power management firm funded the research, and found that leaving a PC turned on overnight for a year costs £17, multiply that by hundreds of thousands of systems and you get an idea what damage it does to the economy and environment.

In the US, it’s even worse, as half of corporate computers are left on overnight which is costing US firms some $2.8bn a year.

Apparently, it is a ‘standard policy’ in many large corporates that machines are left on to allow software patches and virus updates to be remotely installed while the machines are not in use.

However, amidst this recession, it becomes more important to shut down PCs when not in use. It helps businesses significantly reduce costs. Also, from an environmental perspective, it reduces the dissipation of PC heat, and helps reduce the levels of CO2 and other pollutants from electricity power plants.

Gartner estimates the IT and telecom industry generates 2 per cent of world carbon emissions. PCs and monitors account for 39 per cent of that total.

It’s interesting to note that these figures were actually higher a couple of years ago, which may signal growth in the awareness of employees and corporations regarding this wasteful practice.

Harris Interactive, which polled 2,000 staff members of companies in the UK, carried out similar research two years ago and found that half of British computers were left on overnight. The numbers today are less, so it’s possible there’s more awareness.

Conducting such studies in the Middle East could yield interesting results, especially in the Gulf were a culture of business excess may result in appalling numbers! But, to be honest, I sense a study in Jordan would provide shocking results too, especially in large companies which now employ tens of thousands of Jordanians with PCs at their desks.

Even before you install and turn on a PC, the materials and energy-intense production process to manufacture your unit will have contributed to environmental pollution and climate change. And there’s the growing problem of discarded older machines being dumped and causing ‘high-tech’ pollutants, but that’s another story all together.

For now, let’s each do our bit for the environment, and reduce the electricity bill. Turn off your PCs, I know I will!

zanasser@gmail.com

Facebook introduces its Arabic interface

It has been expected for some time now, but the introduction of Facebook’s Arabic interface was big news when the service started a couple of weeks ago.

Facebook had been serving millions of Arabs, albeit in English or other languages. The numbers of users in the region was impressive, and now with Arabic available, Facebook is set to grow exponentially. Already, several of my relatives and friends, who are not fluent English speakers, have sent me friendship invitations and I expect that there’s a ‘viral explosion’ happening now among Arabs hungry for Facebook.

Previously, these users were cut out of the the real action, as they were using other Arabized networks. Netlog.com, for example, is possibly better than Facebook as far as features are concerned, but it’s not as widespread, and does not include as many English-speaking Arabs.

I’ve been contacted by a couple of regional newspapers to comment on what this means to existing Arab social networks, like Jeeran.com or Maktoob.com.

The way I see it is that Facebook was already big, and shall now get bigger, while regional social networks were smaller, but served more specialized requirements. For example, Jeeran has a large community of Arab bloggers, video and photo sharing users and so on. Simply, offering them a social networking function just complements the existing services within that community. Maktoob’s social network, As7ab Maktoob, is similar in that respect. Neither sites were etched into the minds of Arabs as ‘pure social networking’ services, like Facebook is widely known to be.

In any case, Internet traffic in the Arab World has so much room to grow, that everyone will benefit. For advertisers, it just means there are now more options.

On another note, a Hebrew service was also launched with Arabic. This may seem ironic or even political, but the reality is that Facebook is rolling out right-to-left languages and it so happens Arabic and Hebrew share that characteristic. This technicality has been “exceptionally challenging,” according to a spokesperson from Facebook mainly because some of the characters, mainly punctuation marks and numbers, are the same as those used in left-to-right languages, making it difficult for Web applications to determine the direction in which to display the language.

Facebook’s announcement of Arabic and Hebrew is to be followed by 60 other languages. Facebook is also calling on its community of more than 175 million users to help make the service available in every language across the world through its “Translations application”.

Check it out. Many things will come out of all this mutli-lingual social networking activity. Hopefully, greater understanding and tolerance will be the main gain.

Data theft by departing or laid-off employees

This recession keeps on producing interesting stories related to technology.
Reports suggest that laid-off employees may want to exact a certain measure of revenge on the companies they worked for, by stealing data on their way out!

A story in the Washington Post suggests that is occurs ‘often’ and is particularly dangerous when proprietary data is stolen .
Apparently, nearly 60 percent of employees who quit a job or are asked to leave are stealing company information, according to report by the Ponemon Institute,a research group. The survey was based on interviews with 945 people who were laid off, fired or changed jobs in the last year. And the majority who do it do not know it’s illegal!

What are they stealing? Well, 65 percent have taken their e-mail lists, which is somewhat expected, as contacts are one of the main learnings of any job.

The next most frequently stolen data include non-financial business information (45 percent), customer contact lists (39 percent), employee records (35 percent) and financial information (16 percent).

And the two factors that most contribute to this theft are a lack of employee loyalty and “telecommuting.”

Hiring freelancers and part-timers always has its risks, but the idea of them taking their clients with them should frighten employers enough to ensure such staff have limited access to company data.

With PC and phone connectivity, and access rights to information, the question arising is who really controls the data? Can it be controlled at all?
Employees are storing their acquired information and relationships online, on sites like LinkedIn, which is somewhat acceptable. But utilizing other online applications and even ‘online data stores’ should be studied.

Clearly, what the employee does with the data determines the extent of legal action taken by the employer. For example, selling the data or turning it over to a competitor will somehow be discovered and such actions will strengthen the legal standing of the employer. Needless to say, in the US and Europe, laws governs such practices and the are grave consequences.

In Arab countries, and in the Middle East in general, the issue of employees stealing data is not being discussed, and it is doubtful that laws can handle such incidents. Apart from a accepting ‘emails and electronic communications’ as legal tender in courts, laws to govern electronic transactions are yet to be enacted, and all sorts of issues. Sooner or later, cases will arise and we’ll be discussing this.

Maybe the lay-offs in the Middle East will accelerate this, but the generally held false notion of ‘control’ over employees needs to be thoroughly revised in the information age.

zanasser@gmail.com

Everyone is hunting ‘Conficker’ to get Microsoft $250,000 bounty

This story is straight out of a futuristic movie. Our security in the information age is threatened by a ‘super-worm’, which has Microsoft so worried that its offering a quarter of a million dollars to anyone who gets information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for unleashing it.

The "Conficker" worm is now public enemy number one, thanks to Microsoft’s recession-busting award. You can imagine that a massive, wide-scale collaboration of web users is now coming together to hunt down the perpetrators. Apart from level-headed, concerned bodies like industry organizations, academics and Internet policy groups; there’s going to be an electronic mob ravaging the Internet, like bounty hunters once ravaged the Wild West!

Maybe, if this sudden, collaborative flurry of dealing with Conficker actually succeeds, then it will provide a clear path to the best way to deal with such future ‘digital pandemics’: unleash everyone by promising money!

The bounty award is understandable if Microsoft is set to lose more money the longer this problem goes on. Industry estimates suggest that Conficker, which exploits Microsoft Windows PCs, may have hit up to 10 million machines. For now, it appears Microsoft has reports on 3 million PCs worldwide being infected.

What Conficker does is use a mathematical algorithm to tell infected systems to regularly contact a list of 250 different domain names each day. If just one of those domains is registered by the virus writer, it could be used to download a secondary component to all infected systems, such as malicious software.

This is quite advanced functionality, and the fact no one knows who created Conficker, and what the malicious software could do makes it even more worrying!

So, in the absence of this knowledge, there’s a growing hysteria as commentators call it a ‘super-worm’ which could be “lethal weapon in the hands of whoever controls it.”

Conficker first surfaced in November, and the anti-virus community began studying it. Researchers were then able to begin registering the 250 domains sought daily by Conficker-infected systems to monitor the instructions Conficker is sending.

Apparently, a number of the domains in the names of the FBI and Microsoft.

So, the FBI is already investigating individuals who own some domains sought by Conficker. Another interesting twist is that it turns out that many of these domains belong to researchers and anti-virus companies that put them up to gather intelligence about the worm.

It’s now becoming a wild goose chase, and taking on 21st century science-fiction proportions. It’s painfully entertaining too. Keep an eye on the Conficker phenomena, and maybe you can make a bit of money too!

zanasser@gmail.com

Apple Macintosh celebrates 25 Years

Twenty-five years ago, in SuperBowl weekend, Apple unleashed the Macintosh, with a TV advertisement that has gone down in history as a classic. Based on the George Orwell novel 1984- a fitting choice as that was the launch year- it featured an athlete runner carrying an axe amidst a sea of zombie-like citizens watching a screen with ‘big brother’ on it giving orders. The athlete- presumably being a renegade Mac owner- throws the axe at the screen to destroy the rule of big brother- presumably IBM and compatibles; and the rest is history.

The Mac was the first personal computer to capture the imagination of the masses, to introduce the mouse and incorporate a graphical user interface, relying on images instead of text. It lived up to Apple’s mantra of “Think Different”. Starting with a small, all-in-one box with a monochrome screen, the Mac grew to dominate the graphic design and desktop publishing markets, and become the pick of the cool and trendy.

I had the pleasure of using a Mac as a teenager back in 1991, to produce the page that houses this column in The Star!

It was quite a hit at the time in Jordan, after Ideal Systems brought the Mac to town in 1987, and they did well to put an Apple Computer in hundreds of Jordanian businesses and homes.

Still, the Mac remained somewhat out of the mainstream, till bigger models launched like the Mac II, Mac Performa, Mac Quadra and then the Mac PowerPC range. It managed to grab around 15 percent of the US market. But market share dwindled as PC’s got Windows, and dropped in price eating up the Mac’s share throughout the Nineties till the Mac hit a rock bottom of around 2-3 percent of computers sold.

Then, in the new millennium, a transformation at Apple was led by Steve Jobs who went ‘i’ on everything. Starting with the iMac, then the iPod and iPhone.

Apple’s new clout propelled the iMac range to where it is today, stunningly back to a double digit share of the market, over 10 percent.

The Mac has extreme fans. They blow away their annual vacation savings to visit Macworld conferences, travel to the opening of every Apple store in their country, or shave Apple logos into their heads, have Apple tattoos. Here in the Middle East, we have many Mac fans too.

An interesting example is Emirates Mac (emiratesmac.com), run by Magnus Nystedt, which is a vibrant community that has now spawned a dedicated Arabic/English Apple products magazine called Shufflegazine. Check it out!

Happy birthday to the Mac and all it’s lovers. Stay creative and passionate!

zanasser@gmail.com

Tech customers seek lower-specs in a recession

The lay-offs continue among the world’s top IT companies, some of which have reported a slow down in growth or even a loss for the first time in their history.
It’s all going horribly wrong for the ‘brave new world’ we live in and no one really knows where it will all end.

Microsoft has announced that it will cut up to 5,000 jobs, after posting a drop in net income of 11 percent, for its second quarter to end of December. Yahoo announced that it will cut 1,000 jobs as part of a realignment of its 14,300 staff to focus on growth areas. IBM’s “restructuring” will lead to up to 13,000 redundancies worldwide, and the aim is to make the company more focused in the long-term.

Still, conflicting reports emerge eveyrday. Some seemingly good news, like a projection that 35 million ‘netbooks’ will be sold in 2009, then a piece of news reporting a 34 percent drop in the sale of graphics processors (GPUs).

A quick deduction that could be made from these two particuar pieces of news is that people want to buy cheaper notebook PCs, ones that don’t neccessarily have graphics processing power. And that’s exactly what you would expect in a recession!

Go ahead, examine the news coming out of the IT indutsry and you shall see a trend that suggest users will still want to buy products, but they want them to be lower-end, lower-spec, just about enough features to get by.

This trend will have devastating ramifications to all companies who only have a high-end or luxury offering, and do not allow customers to drop down a level or two in the product range.

Here’s more proof. The switch from regular (analog) TVs to fully digital TVs is being halted, or rather postponed, in the US. For several years now, all the TV networks have been gearing up for digital transmission that would render the good-old roof antena obsolete. And, would require households to acquire digital-transmission ready TV sets.

Considering the drop in the prices of the latest LCD TV units, which now adorn almost every home I go to- except mine- it would seem perfectly reasonable that the switch to digital can continue. Wrong. The US government has decided to relieve the average American of the burden of having to buy a $500 TV! So, high-spec technology suffers again, waiting for the world economy to improve!

So what technologies or products will be recession prrof? A couple of weeks ago we predicted that mobile phones, digital cameras, game systems and laptops would still grow in sales. The question now is which models and at which compromise to overall quality and performance. We’ll see.

zanasser@gmail.com

Arab bloggers mobilize for Gaza

Israel’s war on Gaza has been the main news story for three weeks, and it had generated significant activity in the ‘blogosphere’ with Arabs and Israeli’s posting their views on blogs, commenting on blogs and news sites, creating Facebook groups to support Gaza or Israel and even intensive Twitter-ing!

There has also been a lengthy discussion of other, sub-topics, such as a critique of the response of Arab countries- with some defending their leaders and other attacking them- and a discussion of how to best help the people of Gaza.

This all proves that the Internet is another frontier in the ‘public opinion war’ being waged by all sides of a conflict. Israeli propaganda organizations have been hiring bloggers and a regular Internet users to defend Israels’ position, and to counter the tidal wave of anti-Israeli content on the Internet.

Clearly, Israel realizes it’s at a disadvantage in cyberspace, when the sheer numbers of active Arab and Muslim users are considered.

To monitor these ‘blog wars’, go to Technorati.com, and see the ‘hottest topics’ or just conduct a search for the word ‘Gaza’ and you’ll get an idea on how many posts there have been worldwide on this issue in the last day, week and son on.

Another, more analytical and less numerical, source to check is Global Voices (globalvoicesonline) which delivers the most controversial or active discussions on the Middle East, and Gaza tops the agenda this month.

Jordanian bloggers are playing a major role in the conversation, and it’s not possible to mention each one and what they’ve done, but let’s point out the best local effort for mobilization led by 7iber.com- an independent citizen-media news outlet from Jordan. 7iber has generated a ‘blog-buzz’ to gather volunteers to help Aramex in the handling of all the aid that arrives in Jordan, from across the world, which needs to be sorted and packed then sent to Gaza. The updates and blog posts featuring pictures and videos of the response from local youth is truly inspiring, and still continues. Check it out and lend a hand!

In general, news, images and videos from this human tradgedy are circulating the globe, ensuring that the war crimes being committed are fully documented and not forgotten.

In a new world were individuals are empowered through the Internet to communicate, Israeli propaganda in cyberspace cannot win.

If only our numbers accounted for more influence in the offline world!

zanasser@gmail.com

Is the age of the desktop PC over?

It appeared in the 1970s, and was called the micro-computer, and was popularized in its current form in 1982 when IBM released its PC (personal computer).
Also appearing the eighties, were the first portable computers, which were chunky and too expensive.

Portables became notebooks (big ones), then laptops, then ‘netbooks’ and ‘palmtops’.
Today, it’s fair to say that these portables, are killing desktops. Apparently, a smaller percentage of personal users are buying them. Apart from corporations and specific user groups, the desktop is now, officially, dying as a mainstream computing option.

Laptops crossed a milestone in the third quarter of 2008, passing desktop PC sales in the US for the first time, according to research group iSuppli. And laptop makers are eagerly awaiting this era.

Here’s a frightening piece of information that demonstrates the trend continued in quarter four of 2008; not a single desktop model showed up on Amazon.com’s top ten selling PC and hardware list during Christmas, while seven laptop models were in the list.

What’s driving this? Apart from lower laptop prices and higher specifications? The answer is the Internet. The ability to surf the Internet wirelessly at public places and the ability to take your office out with you when you travel. And the variety available suits almost every user group. You can get notebooks at every screen inch size from 5-inch to 20-inch.

Another interesting piece of information is that 80 percent of the world’s laptop PCs and made in Taiwan. So they will be happy for sure!

So, which groups of users may keep buying desktops? Hardcore computer gamers, because desktop systems offer greater processing power for memory-intensive applications.

On the other side of the user spectrum there will be ‘hardware geeks’, who covet processing power, experimentation and ‘modding’.

In our part of the world, or in any poor or under developed country, desktops will retain their appeal as they remain, generally, cheaper than laptops. Especially when you consider the fact that anyone can ‘slap’ a motherboard, a hard drive and a few chips together to get a desktop. However, even that is all set to change though with ‘netbooks’ coming in at under $300 complete with screen!

So, is the age of the desktop PC over? Well, the sun is starting to set on it, but I personally think that desktops have so much more staying power than industry commentators and journalists would have you believe.

Call me old-fashioned, but I plan to hang onto my office desktop PC for a couple of years to come!

zanasser@gmail.com

A quick look back at 2008

Another year in computing, another set of incidents, product launches and controversy.

The year kicked off with the damaged under-sea Internet cables (and seems to be ending with a similar problem). Throughout late January and early February, users across the Middle East suffered from slow Internet services and there’s been a lot of talk since then regarding the reliability of the cabling systems. There doesn’t seem to be a solution going into 2009.

On the topic of Internet, this year was marked by an impressive increase in user numbers, and a wide-scale site blocking and banning, across the Middle East. The main victims were YouTube, Facebook and Twitter in countries like Kuwait, UAE and Saudi Arabia. An outcry followed, and authorities have since applied methods of ‘selective blocking by page’ rather than a whole site.

Also, various Arab sites got blocked too, like Jeeran.com in Saudi Arabia. Telecommunication service sites like Skype, remain blocked, of course, as long as government owned telecom companies have a say. From the looks of it, however, most of the site blocking problem could ease next year.

Back to the user numbers, it is estimated that there are around 40 Million Arabs online. Broadband has taken off, and Arab activity on social networking sites is peaking with reports suggesting that the number of Arabs on Facebook has grown 66% in one year!

2008 was also the year when sales of portable computers exceeded desktops, across the world, and in some Middle Eastern markets. Manufacturers attributed this to dropping prices of laptops, and the Internet revolution whereby people want to work on the move.

Google continued it’s all-conquering spree, releasing Arabic versions of every product- even recently including a Hijri calendar- and giving every local or regional website a run for their money. The company’s commitment to the region was increased, and attention to Jordan grew with several visits of top staff.

The IT sector as a whole in Jordan grew in 2008, although it will take some time for numbers to emerge. This occurred in spite of a local ‘economic contraction’ earlier this year, which was followed by the hammer of the global recession later in the year. So, looking to 2009, Jordan’s IT sector has much to worry about, but we won’t be the only ones in the region, or across the world to suffer.

As the year draws to a close, it is somewhat depressing that all the technology developments, massive growth in Internet users and the advancement of IT services across the country and region will now face up to the harsh reality of a global economic slowdown.

Every year, I look into my crystal ball and make predictions. This year I won’t. I’ll settle for hoping for ‘limited damages’ next year! Happy New Year.

zanasser@gmail.com

What the recession could mean to the Middle East IT sector

It is now clear that the world is in an economic recession. What does it mean to the IT sector in Jordan and the Middle East?

If you’re the technology head at your company, obviously management will ask you to make cuts.

You’ll have to ‘eliminate’ redundant hardware and software assets, large maintenance contracts and excess capacity of any kind.

Operation efficiency will become the focus, and you will have to achieve the business strategic objectives at a lower budget, and sometimes argue against cuts because of the mission critical nature of some IT operations.

A good way to start, unfortunately, is by ‘squeezing’ your vendors. The rates for the software services they offer must come down, and the maintenance contract will be re-negotiated, and investment in hardware might by put off for a while.

This leads us to the impact on hardware and software suppliers, who will feel the pinch but should, in turn, plan for the downturn by cuts of their own, that will enable them to relay the savings to clients, who will be demanding discounts.

If a company employs ‘project teams’, these people will have to go when projects dry up, and if top marketing and sales people have big salaries and commissions, they’ll suffer from cuts or will just be let go as sales dry up.

It’s not a pretty picture, but it’s already started across the world and, although the Middle East seems like a cash rich region, the effects are beginning to be felt.

In Jordan, we’re used to tight economic conditions, but the last few years have seen an expansion in IT and Telecom services to such a degree that makes us vulnerable too.

An IT manager I talked to summed it up nicely, saying that there are always some excesses which are the first things that must go, that’s easy, then there are slightly painful decisions that make it challenging to deliver the same levels of IT services, but can be managed with better efficiency and resource optimization, then we cancel part of the of the IT services!

Will it get to that? Depends how long this recessions last!

zanasser@gmail.com

Google’s Ta3reeb and anti-competitive practices

Google has taken another step in its Arabization efforts, launching Google Ta3reeb at Gitex Technology Week.

It is a transliteration tool.This means it allows users to use their Latin keyboards to type in Arabic text.

But, Google is not the first to do this. A product launched by a couple of Arab entrepreneurs in the US did it first. Yamli.com is a startup that has gathered substantial publicity for a couple of years and seems to now be going head-to-head with the industry giant!

It creates a situation where entrepreneurs should be concerned about Google’s involvement in every field of Arabic Internet applications and services, possibly making it impossible for local or regional initiavtes to compete!

Although it’s an ‘open market’ and anyone can launch a product, there’s also the matter of Google using ‘anti-competitive’ practices. For example, when you conduct a search on Google for the term ‘Yamli’, you get Yamli.com in the search results but also get an advertisement link about Google Ta3reeb!

This, as I understand, is illegal in the United States and Euorope where Google cannot target it’s advertising for in-house products at searches for intellectual property rights protected brands. I discussed this matter while in the UAE with a senior Arab Google official, and he agreed that such concerns regarding such practices must be reported to head quarters, and both he and Google management ‘support Arab software and Internet development efforts.”

With Google’s continued roll-out of Arabic products, you would hope such a sentiment is demonstrated.

Anyway, according to the blog StartupArabia.com, “Google had launched transliteration services before. Mianly, services that offer transliteration from English to Indian languages like Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, and Telugu on Blogger and through Google Talk bots over the past year.”

So, this Arabic product was a ‘natural evolution’. It’s still too early to judge Google’s Ta3reeb service as it appears that “Yamli is faster and offers more relevant transliterations and word suggestions”, according to StartupArabia.

Let’s wait and see how both products evolve.

zanasser@gmail.com

Watch out for the ‘Nigerian email scam’

For many years now, Internet users across the world have received scam emails. The most famous ‘series’ of emails, which we’ve all seen and continue to get almost every week, originate from Nigeria, with a story on how you can make a lot of money fast by helping a wealthy foreigner “move millions of dollars from his homeland”.

Usually there are stories of this person being a prince or a minister in a country that has witnessed a change in political power, and he no longer has access to his millions. And, incidentally, from among all the computer users in the world, he has chosen you to help!

This scam is also known as the Advance Fee Fraud or 419 Fraud. Police and legal authorities across the world are quite aware of it, having dealt with many gullible people who have fallen for it. Yet, so far, the police have been unable to actually catch the Nigerian fraudsters, but instead put the poor victims in prison as accesories to fraud. The logic behind this is that the victim chose to obtain money ‘illegally’ by dealing with a crime organization, even if he/she thought there would be no harm done.

I’ve heard of a couple of Jordanians who have fallen for it, but I don’t have details, so it was very interesting to recently read about an Eastern European lady, a resident of Abu Dhabi, who has also fallen for this scam.

The lady runs a dental clinic. Her unfortunate story told in the Gulf News explains that she got an email from a Nigerian man who claimed he had inherited $5 million and needed to store it in her account until details were sorted out. In return, she would be rewarded for her gesture.

After corresponding through emails, the woman agreed to meet with two Nigerian men in April who carried a briefcase filled with $50,000 worth of counterfeit notes. Before the money was handed over, she was asked to pay a 6,000 fee. After paying the amount and taking the briefcase, she headed to a currency exchange the next day. The notes all had the same serial number, were immediately found to be counterfeit and the woman was arrested.

The Federal Supreme Court in Abu Dhabi sentenced her to one year in prison, after which she will be deported. The emails she exchanged with the Nigerians and phone numbers could not be traced to anyone.

So, beware! If you get an email that promises you money, remember the Nigerian scam gangs, and how this lady’s greed made her lose everything!

zanasser@gmail.com