Who can do a better commentary on the Israeli American relationship in the context of the American Presidential Elections 2008 than a Jew (Jon Stewart).
Thanks @mohamed
ABC News: ABC Exclusive: Pakistani Bomb Scientist Breaks Silence
Though expected but interesting developments. Now that President Musharraf of Pakistan has had his powerrs curtailed significantly, all those who were silenced and blamed will stand up, slowly but surely and claim their glory back. Particularly while growing up, I remember Dr. Abdul Qadir Khan to be somewhat of a hero for advancing Pakistan in the field of nuclear science, and was quite dismayed to hear of his confessions of leaking secrets to other countries.
On the flip side, many heroes of Prez Musharraf’s era will close up shop and shimmy over to other lands (PM Shaukat Aziz).
Internet viewed more than TV: report from Australia | IBE Web
We’ve been using stats similar to the ones as in the above article for a while to sell New Media internally in Al Jazeera. The above report certainly marks a major milestone where Internet usage surpasses TV viewership (in Australia). Chalk another stat for the Powerpoints.
News - CNN, Newsweek editor launch international show
“Fareed Zakaria - GPS” will look at world problems through an American perspective, a take Zakaria also believes will interest people overseas.
As well, a point of note that the first key guest is Tony Blair, just as he was the first guest for the show “Frost Over the World” on Al Jazeera hosted by David Frost. Seems like a good career for Tony, help otherwise ill fated talk shows, take off.
Its been a long time coming but finally Al Jazeera Arabic now will be podcasting 4 of its most popular weekly programs.
Knowing the intricate details of this project, partly because having worked on it, and partly because of sitting next to the guy working on it, I must say that the project took a lot longer than anybody ever expected.
Reflecting on the (long) life of this project implementation, I think our team has learned some valuable lesson which I think would useful to pen down:
Al Jazeera’s chief executive Wadah Khanfar has been revealed as the most powerful Arab in the media sector, according to ArabianBusiness.com’s Power 100 list for this year.
Khanfar, a 39-year old Jordanian who heads up the Qatar-based network, was at number 8 of the Power 100 list, the most comprehensive compilation of the world’s most influential Arabs. He dropped five places from 2007, though Khanfar runs the entire Al Jazeera network - including its live English and Arabic news channels, its sports channels, its website and a new documentary channel.
Read the full story at ArabianBusiness.com
Wow, so that makes me, … 1, 2, 3 .. 5 management levels away from the most influential man in the Arab media world.
Tags: 2008media
Today, Tuesday the 11th of March 2008 BBC Arabic will launch as a free to air 24 hours news channel. The channel is head quartered in London, UK and its aiming at the hearts and minds of the Arab lands of the middle east and as well the ever increasing Arabic speaking diaspora.
The channel will be going head to head in terms of target audience with Al Jazeera.
The count down has just completed and their first report has just started. My Arab colleagues are excited but initial reactions are “looks like crap”.
Nonetheless, this is an exciting development and it would be interesting to see how this will change the media landscape of the middle east.
Personally I am more excited to see how or whether this would affect the New Media landscape in the region. Traditionally Arabic broadcasters have been very slow to adopt new trends. This could change now that there is a potentially more agile competitor targeting their audience.
A point of note on the BBC Arabic website, it seems strange that it is left aligned though Arabic websites traditionally are right aligned as the script runs “right to left”.
Beyond the obvious lack of any oratory skills making the experience of listening to our dear dictator Musharraf excruciating, the subject this time was even far worse. A “State of Emergency” has been called and indeed it truly is such a state, the General has finally totally gone bonkers.
The declaration comes neatly before the Supreme Court rules on the legality of the recent Presidential elections. Reasons stated for his actions:
1. Extremism is spreading in the country
2. Judicial is getting in the way of Executive and the Legislative
Talk about getting two birds with one stone. Particularly when one of the birds lands you in power for another couple years.
Blogged with Flock
Matt Biddulph - Dopplr
social network for people who travel around the world a lot.
idea behind this service is that you should never have to visit the site
built on ruby on rails
sharing data - xml feed
- where you’re going
- calendar information
takes this feed and puts it into yahoo pipes
mash it with yahoo maps
user identity
portability between sites
but first you must be able assert your identity
openID is not only for login, it allows for portability between social graphs that you are a part of
social network import functionality follows
mofo library (ruby on rails) for identity import
oAuth - an open protocol to allow secure API authentication in a smiple and standard method from desktop and web applications
widgets & plugins
utility computing
using s3 as db backup, mysqldumps and then transferred to s3 zipped
ec2 as mysql slave, all metric reads are done on the slave
