Saudi TechView

Rails-KSA, Ruby on Rails group in Saudi Arabia

Khaled A. — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:40:04 +0000

A new Google Group for Ruby on Rails developers/enthusiasts in Saudi Arabia has been started by Abdulaziz.

Ruby on Rails “is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language. It is intended to be used with an Agile development methodology that is used by web developers for rapid development.”

The group is named Rails-KSA and you can find it here.

Blocked in Saudi Arabia: Google Help Group

Blocked in Saudi: Arabic Android development: Ardroid (update: unblocked)

Khaled A. — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:00:27 +0000

Update: It got unblocked fast! According to my inside source this post triggered an auto block. My guess “الجنس” caused it .

Now here’s something you don’t see getting blocked: a development website. Oh wait, you do see stupid blocks all the time! ArDroid.com is an Arabic website dedicated development of Arabic applications for the Google Android platform. It’s a well known site and I blogged about their efforts on my personal site.

Only reason I can think of is stupidity … either that or that it’s a mistake.

To help getting it unblocked as soon as possible fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.

Blocked in Saudi Arabia: respectq.net (a Saudi blog)

Khaled A. — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:19:42 +0000

Respectq.net (Google cache) looks like a normal blog and hardly any content worth blocking.

Most likely blocked for this post (Google cache) which talks about “We Hate CITC” website.

To help getting it unblocked as soon as possible fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.

Updated a bit.

Avoid Viaddress, they hire spammers (updated)

Khaled A. — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:59:07 +0000

This is interesting. I noticed a surge of spam comments on posts that mention online shopping services on the site whenever I mention a service like myus, myusabox, Aramex, etc. The latest surge were from a site named Viaddress. Here are a few screen shots from my control panel:

Same IP address, an Arabic name and even a link to an Arabic forum post about Viaddress (on ADSLgate, a well known Arabic forum). Where some “new” members joined the forum just to defend Viaddress.

I urge everyone to avoid Viaddress at all costs, hopefully these points will convince you:

They hired spammers or spam bots to advertise their “service”.
Viaddress facebook page have over 1600 members and no customer interaction at all. Wall posts have no comments but if you look at the links section you will notice a few comments saying that Viaddress is a fraud.
Over 72 complaints about Viaddress on “Complaintsboard” and the comments on each one is vicious. Many are accusing Viaddress of hiring people.
Another example on suspected “hiring” to “get a good word”.
Viaddress twitter page is also empty, with many followers and no interaction with their followers. Found this tweet talking about Viaddress scam and this tweet about Viaddress hiring people to review them!

I simply won’t trust a company that hires spammers *edited my tone here*.

Update: So I get these messages from a “Misty Sparks”:

Message 1:
Subject: Your offensive comment about http://www.facebook.com/l/38928;Viaddress.com

We have received a comment on our Viaddress Facebook Fan page of an offensive nature, could you please tell us what is the reason behind your offensive comments?

Message 2:
Subject: Your blog about Viaddress

Dear Khaled,

It was brought to our attention that you have posted a an offensive blog about Viaddress where you have made some false accusations about Viaddress and you pointed to complaints on the complaintsboard.

Please note Viaddress has not paid anyone to post on your website and if you read the complaints on the complaintsboard, you can clearly see that they were all posted by http://www.facebook.com/l/38928;Shipito.com, a competitor to Viaddress.

We have served many customers in Saudi Arabia and we have never had a single problem with any customer in Saudi Arabia.

Our goal when start serving a particular country is to accumulate friends and not make any enemies. We certainly want to make you a friend rather than an enemy.

We would like to solve this issue in a timely manner so we ask you to kindly remove the blog that you posted about Viaddress.

Message 3:
Subject: Blog posting about Viaddress

Hi again,

One of your readers informed us that the posting pictures of the comments on your site were posted by IP http://www.facebook.com/l/38928;64.134.232.34 which has no relation to our IP http://www.facebook.com/l/38928;67.20.121.126.

Please remove your offensive blog about Viaddress as it offers misleading information to your readers by making false accusations about http://www.facebook.com/l/38928;Viaddress.com

I would like to see proof to that. My Facebook page comments were deleted instead of answering them publicly.

I should note that we received spam comments from Myuspostoffice.com as well.

Latest Telco Tech: Team Logo on Modem

Khaled A. — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 22:35:25 +0000

This is the latest innovation in the field of Mobile Internet telecommunications: print your team flag on it! That’s what STC and Mobily think is a good idea.

Here’s the STC “Quicknet“, sounds a lot like Quakenet.

And Mobily’s “Connect AL-Zaeeem” for Hilal, that’s too many eees.

My advice to the 2 companies: Mobily, just make sure you have enough iPhone 3GS in stock and STC, improve your DSL lines and allow me to use BeejiveIM, open these ports!

Anime News Network and Manga Fox suddenly blocked in Saudi Arabia

Khaled A. — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 18:57:17 +0000

Anime News Network (www.animenewsnetwork.com), a very popular Anime news website was suddenly blocked in Saudi Arabia sometime last week according to @Shinryoma.

Anime News Network was never blocked in the country. Anime is not porn, CITC.

Update: Thanks @Turke and @Missice81 for telling me this. Manga Fox ( www.mangafox.com ) a Manga source, as been blocked as well! What’s next? One Manga? Manga Stream?

To help getting it unblocked as soon as possible fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.

Google isn’t working for some STC subscribers (update: might be DNS)

Khaled A. — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 21:47:50 +0000

Update: More people are having problems (here and here). The problem is apparently caused by using any external DNS (Google DNS for example). This is very weird.

This is not surprising. Some STC customers (including me, Muneeb in Dhahran and Abdullah in Riyadh) are having problems accessing Google. This appears to be random because others told me that it’s working properly.

This is not only effecting searches but Google Reader, Google Analytics, Youtube and other services! This is the error message by the way:

Network Error (tcp_error)

A communication error occurred: “Operation timed out”
The Web Server may be down, too busy, or experiencing other problems preventing it from responding to requests. You may wish to try again at a later time.

For assistance, contact your network support team.

Please, STC: fix your servers already.

DHL slowing myus shipments to push DHL EasyShop?

Khaled A. — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 10:53:49 +0000

Update: on Yousef’s shipment: finally in Jeddah, again. Wanna see something funny? Here’s the shipment mapped.

DHL EasyShop is another US forwarding services similar to MyUS. I didn’t get the chance to try it but if you’re interested read this first impressions post on 2:48am and this site dedicated to comment about how bad it really is.

With my many MyUS shipments I noticed that some shipments stay idle in DHL Bahrain for a long time (2 or more days some times). There was no reason for that delay, they simply chill out in Bahrain. I call it “the DHL black hole in Bahrain”.

I talked about it a lot on twitter, but what happened to me can’t be matched by what Yraffah experienced. He complained about it on twitter (here, here, here, here and here). Basically his shipment went from the US to Bahrain then went to his city Jeddah, stayed there for a week then shipped to Bahrain, stayed there for a few days, currently it is in Riyadh!

So here’s the theory: DHL is deliberately stalling shipments from MyUS to discourage MyUS customers and promoted their own EasyShop service. A historian friend suggested this theory and I agree with him.

Please remember that this is a Conspiracy theory with no evidence to prove it except user experiences.

STC/Mobily/Zain 3G Band

Khaled A. — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 16:03:22 +0000

I am about to purchase a Novatel MiFi 2352 or 2372. The MiFi shares a 3G data connection as a wireless access point and it’s battery powered. The difference between the 2 models is this:

MiFi 2352 uses the following bands: Tri-band HSUPA/HSDPA 900/1900/2100 MHz and Quad-band GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz. The MiFi 2372 however is: Tri-band HSUPA/HSDPA 850/1900/2100 MHz and Quad-band GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz.

According to this page: STC, Mobily and Zain all use the 2100MHz band for 3G.

Blocked in Saudi: Domain Tools’ WHOIS (update: unblocked!)

Khaled A. — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 15:14:31 +0000

Domain Tools (not blocked) is an online tool for webmasters. Their WHOIS service (formally known as whois.sc) is now blocked. The blocked URL is:

whois.domaintools.com

WHOIS is a harmless protocol used to look-up domain names, etc. There is no reason what so ever for having it blocked. Read more about WHOIS on Wikipedia.

To help getting it unblocked as soon as possible fill the form at internet.gov.sa, write an email to unblock@internet.gov.sa or send a fax to +966(1)2639290.