After the Nilesat signal issues Al Jazeera Sport Channel suffered today they announced theri new frequencies on Arabsat, Hotbird and Nilesat:

So basically there were signal issues during the South Africa VS Mexico match on all Aljazeera Sports channels on Nilesat, both the free-to-air and the subscription based channels except the HD channel which is actually on on Atlantic Bird 4A.

So that is why I did not have any issues as I was watching the HD channel, but after the match I realized that people are angry and that Aljazeera Sports announced that viewers have to switch to either arabsat or noorsat.

So what really happened?

The word going around is that Aljazeera Sports Channels has ruined the deal the Egyptians had to show 22 matches from the 64 matches of the world cup, and it is said that it cost them $120 million, so when Aljazeera Sports Channel announced that they too will be showing those 22 matches on their free-to-air channels “they” decided to cause damage to Aljazeera channels on the nilesat.

Now thats what is being said, and it seems Aljazeera Sports Channel is on the safe side here and nile sat will end up having a big problem, cause Aljazeera which already had tensions with Egypt on both the news and the sports channels will most likely be going to the court with this.

You did not miss much, the opening ceremony was not as impressive as it should have been, I do not usually care much for opening ceremonies but this was seriously a very very poor opening ceremony, it took me back to the old days. Even back then hosting countries would try their best to impress.

I was expecting more spot light on the african culture and generally a good show that reaches to the level of the event, this was a trainwreck.

I know that World Cup opening ceremonies are not like the Olympics opening ceremonies where it is more complex and amusing, yet this is was bad at so many levels.

My interest in Gold and the US Dollar grew in the past couple of weeks, as a person who is not that much into the financial world I didn’t care much when a friend started talking about the gold rise and how the dollar will become worthless soon. Well as much as that seemed a bit over the top and a very very far fetched thought yet the whole scenario intrigued me and I started reading more and educating myself about how things are playing out in the markets worldwide.

Between the truth and lies and the conspiracy theorists and the opportunists I had a huge struggle in really fully understanding how is this thing working, but the big picture got clearer day after day.

The Gold reached record highs in the past 9 days, and every day you would read the same kind of headline “Gold reaches a record high”. Every Day!! Yesterday it reached $1195 USD, but then news broke from Dubai stating that Dubai requested debt ‘standstill’, that lead to fears in the worldwide markets, this caused a sell-off in commodities and stocks, while the U.S. dollar gained against its rivals.

The Gold dropped to a $1130 USD an ounce after reaching $1195 USD, as of the time of writing this post the gold is at $1176 USD. So this seems to be just a temporary drop that wont last long.

Did Max Keiser predict this back in February 2009 ?

Max Keiser Comments on the current events:

More to come soon ……

Barcelona have officially announced that the deal that will see Zlatan Ibrahimovic move to Barcelona and Eto’o to Inter Milan is complete. This transfer started with a rumor and kept growing with speculation on the price and who is in the exchange too, as it was reported earlier that Hleb will go on loan to Inter Milan and that Barcelona is going to pay 40 million.

In my opinion Ibrahimovic is CURRENTLY better than Eto’o, and he will do well in Barcelona, while Inter Milan will struggle for a bit with Eto’o as the player will suffer injuries from the tough defense style in Italy. I hugely doubt it would be able to perform as well as he did for Barcelona.

I watched Eto’o while playing in his National team and he does not seem to be as effective as when he has the kinds of Messi and Xavi and Iniesta behind him. We need to wait and see, this season is very very interesting in the three leading European leagues.

After being bombarded with FOREX ads all over the internet, it seems you cant dodge those ads anywhere you go even if you have any kind of Ad Block, I finally caved and decided to try this FOREX thing using virtual money (Practice Account).

One of the easiest and friendliest user interfaces seemed to be ETORO, having both novice and advanced modes. So long story short I tried it for few hours and gave it a long thought and I decided that its an interesting thing to learn more about before jumping on with real cash. Yet I later caved again and wanted to deposit some money but not to go crazy and try to take it slow.

The next day I get a phone call from ETORO middle east customer support, and I was amazed that he spoke Arabic, although talking about FOREX in Arabic was awkward but I had a long chat with him, and he kept going on and on how etoro is the best invention on the net (ya right), I didn’t mind it as I was eager to know more although I knew he just wants to make a sale.

Everything was fine until I asked him a question about money transfers via credit cards and PayPal and if they support it and so on, the second I mentioned PayPal he went crazy, and asked me what’s my nationality I told him “I am Jordanian”, so he went mad again and started insulting all Jordanians!!! that we are cheap and etoro is not for “my” kind of people!! So I taught him a lesson on how to treat future customers and ended the call.

Just minutes before his call I was thinking seriously to deposit $500 dollars to try it out, and also to try the “Islamic” accounts, but after that unprofessional rude unacceptable treatment how can I do so?? Few days later I am chatting with a friend and FOREX came up and he told me nearly the same thing happened to him too!!

What is wrong with these people? Are they expecting FOREX professionals to talk to them? or are they expecting new users to deposit thousands of dollars from the first try? Their whole pitch is that they are user friendly and that their system is “EASY” for beginners?! Actually their minimum deposit is $50 US Dollars. Although I think etoro is an attractive and simple system yet they really need to seriously filter their customer support employees for the middle east and employ those who are pro and who knows how to effectively and respectfully communicate with their customers.

A while ago Facebook allowed their users to choose usernames which is going to be used in a url linking to their profile, after the username was chosen it cannot be changed. So just like when you buy domains (at least for me) sometimes people can go crazy and choose usernames that they might regret later.

Facebook is now giving its users one last chance to change their usernames, no more changes after this time (ya right), so if you want to choose a new username you can do that by going to “Settings” then “Account Settings”.

But after millions of Facebook users already chose a username, finding a good one might be difficult, and I advise you to choose your name rather than any other thing you might think is clever or funny.

After Klaas-Jan Huntelaar move from Real Madrid to Stuttgart have fallen, it looks like Arsenal is interested according to “The Sun” and ready to get him for €19 million.

Real Madrid wants to sell and Arsenal has a limitted budget, so although this report from “The Sun” is believable, I still have my doubts, as an Arsenal fan I watched wenger season after season getting linked with many players and I cant yet put my hands on it but this deal does not seem right. I think Huntelaar might move to Tottenham.

The latest promo on MBC:

I can see the MBC network executives pulling their hair now, but no one can blame MBC, no one could have predicted this kind of chaos. Fight after fight year after year and it never ends, an actor/actress is leaving or being removed, some even being offered big bucks to move to other series !!! The fighting even reached between fans who are now in two or more teams, those who blame the director who is controlling everything now as a producer and those who accuse the actors to be troublemakers for asking more money, Yes this is the level it reached to?!

Bab El 7ara is the series that was reminding us of the beautiful old simpler times, pressing on going back to  traditional values, good manners and bravery in a society that is so polluted in our current days. How can I believe the actors in their roles any more now after seeing all what is happening in behind the scenes??

Yet MBC will still be profiting hugely from “Bab Al Hara 4” this year and the 5th season next year. I believe even if MBC just show a black screen with the words “Bab El 7ara” written in Arabic on it will be enough to catch millions of gazing glued eyes.

The first two parts of “Bab El 7ara” were too good that anything coming after that would find a gigantic audience, we all know if “Bab El 7ara 3” was shown first no one would care to follow it. It is being speculated that this season is well written and will avoid amateur mistakes that happened in the third season. I guess we can only wait and see.

And here is the “Making of” segment in the MBC Morning Show:

No one was enthusiastic about Al-Libiyah, yet the people wanted to listen to Hamdi Qandeel in any possible way, even if it was audio files being downloaded via the internet. But the show did start on Al-Libiyah and although there was always technical problems with the sound and color, but people watched, a huge number of audience the new born channel would never ever have dreamed of.

But problems keep following Hamdi, for unusual reasons the General Manager of Al-Libiyah channel was jailed for couple of days for reasons related to Hezbollah (don’t ask me am as clueless as you are), and since that day “Qalam Rasas”  never aired. Only five episodes were aired since the comeback in March. We later knew that Al-Libiyah channel which was a private channel, was nationalized by the president of Libya Muammar Al-Qathafi.

And here the same Mona Elshazly announcing this on her show “Al3ashera Masa’an” “10 O’clock”:

Now I have been hearing that a deal is in the making between him and Al-Manar channel, funny enough, that is the TV channel of Hezbollah. Will the deal work out? Will it get cancelled few weeks later? Who knows? we shall wait and watch.

Here is the last episode of Qalam Rasas on Al-Libiyah for those who missed it: