Stravinsky's Sizzlin' Shack

Moved On.

2012-02-23T20:46:00.002+03:00

I left the local blogging scene in Bahrain years ago due various reasons (work / time / food).

This blog is no longer updated and has not been over the past 6 years at the very least so the links will be stale. I am still a very happy Batelco customer though contrary to my rants in the past :)

But if you need to get a hold of me for something you think I can help out with, then please head over to linkforchange.org or you could get my attention with a tweet @iange.

When words fail.. pictures don't..

2006-11-27T00:14:00.000+03:00

Is it blogger's bloc, or life's love getting in the way? Not quite figured that one out yet, but moods vary just like the weather does. Been raining over here for the past week, usual traffic jams, an orchestra of award-winning horns. and the rush of it all. Getting away can be nice, so i point and shoot what i see. Moods, storms, the moments afterwards...

Loved the natural patter of rain drops teasing the glass gently, constant probes of tickling vibes trickling down the panes.

The incomplete world trade center and it's twin towers standing abreast after the storm has passed and beauty in the sky.

The HSBC sinage messed up the picture of the sunset and the rays peeping out.

But i enjoyed taking in the sights of motivation (land) sailing along with depression (clouds) while meeting up with self-actualization, a point one would always dream about, but is it just a dream?

rejection rocks at times... and sometimes desperation sets in, what W/we do in non-existience is pure emotional bliss. Getting lost in the crowd is all too easy and getting out doesn't make much sense..

Something so beautiful, yet so sad

2006-11-07T21:17:00.000+03:00

Life! Have been spending some time with a couple lately, a husband and wife, very loving, down to earth folks with generous souls.. always wanting to give. The other day i was over at their appartment, just getting ready to get out for dinner and we just got around to talking about opportunities. They come, they go, some are exciting, some aren't.

And then the wifey got irked a bit because her hubby kept trusting everyone way too much than they really deserved that he kept getting taken advantage of, the hubby just shrugged it off for it was his way of life. So this lady would do anything to meet ends, but her love didn't want her to, two extremes as some have it in their book, from Forbes to Google, but here was soemthing very touching, trying to make ends meet by doing whatever it takes from killing one's self to selling your artisitic concepts away to predators while another misunderstood her motives.... so innocent, so heart-warming, yet all they both wanted to do was to keep each other happy in whatever way they could. Moments of bliss that they would spend together, a loving peck on her cheek, a tight squeeze of his hand and the times their eyes would wash away the pain in this world.

Life is so sad, yet so beautiful.

Dependance is easy to grow into, escaping into something like another state or sub space is all too great an emotional mind fuck, now i wonder whether they both are the same in their own disguises...

Our Journey...

2006-10-31T19:14:00.000+03:00

she never intended to make such a journey in the beginning. They met purely by accident, and she became familiar with Her ways, becoming interested as a moth to a flame so she tagged along. To maybe be lucky enough to find friendship and acceptance for being who she were, but the longer she followed Her things began to change, She showed her a world he had never been part of, one of darkness, acceptance and the ability to be human and to feel as individual as she needed to be. she believes in the darkness of human nature where she has found a small flicker of light that she wants to kindle into a fire.

... it has been some time since i blogged here. i've not left here to die out but a break that was really needed while time took it's course. Life is just so beautiful when W/we let go.

Thank You Dina, Nancy & Neha!

Unoffical Kosmix Plugins for New Verticals

2006-06-25T15:11:00.000+03:00

Kosmix which is an up and coming search engine focused on niche markets, is an interesting player to keep watching because they keep releasing nifty search verticals based on some reliable algorithms. They started out with Travel, U.S Politics & Health and quite recently they've silently expanded last month to include Video Games and Finance. The smart kookies behind Kosmix are Venky Harinarayan and Anand Rajaram who are graduates (PhD gaga!) of Stanford University and they're the same guys who were considering on buying Google when it first appeared in the late 90's. If you're interested in getting to know the juice behind Kosmix and it's freshness, you should definintely listen to Kamla Bhatt's podcast show with Venky done a few months ago and get to know Kosmix straight from the horse's mouth!

According to a blog posting at Silicon Beat, the dazzling folks at Kosmix have raised $7.4 million (USD) in funding thanks to Accel and Lightspeed Venture Partners, increasing the total amount of funding for Kosmix to $25.7 million, nearing the same mark by Google way back then. It's also interesting to note that Accel have pumped $11.5 million into Kayak who's seems a likely Kosmix competitor and the best travel search engine according to Mark Johnson who's a product manager at Kosmix. But despite all the glitz and glamour, Kosmix still haven't launched the new plugins at their labs for the new verticals, Video Games and Finance. So I've taken the opportunity to do a bit of tweaking this morning and have come up with unoffical plugins for the new verticals over here. And as this press release rightly states, Kosmix is now powering Gazerk which is the new game site launched by the Ziff Davis Media Game Group.

Being an early fan of Kosmix, I'm disappointed that they don't put more power into pushing out related plugins and extensions at their labs, and it's high time that they get their official blog kicked off! Anyone listening at Kosmix? (hope so :-) Your fan base is waiting ... All your Kosmix belong to us!

Google Opening a Middle East Regional Office!

2006-06-23T14:49:00.000+03:00

Most of us Google fans in the Middle East and much of the Arab world always thought that Google would be launching their regional office in Dubai, but the leader in the search engine industry worldwide has looked way past the hyped-gorgeous city of buildings and have decided to base their Middle East regional office in Egypt. Google Israel already has a RnD lab for the region in Haifa and it looks like their marketing and sales operations for the rest of the Middle East will be located in Cairo.

According to some sources, a few months ago, Google Egypt hired a Country Manager (Sherif Iskander -- mentioned here) who also serves as a regional manager and is now looking around for suitable candidates to fill the posts of Associate Product Marketing Manager and Product Marketing Manager. An unofficial Google page at Wikia.com details why Google should choose Egypt as their Middle Eastern base for regional operations and at the Wiki's talk page, someone also notes the hiring of the regional manager for the Middle East and points to the vaccant positions. BrandRepublic's latest take on Google selling their stake in China's leader in the Search Engine Industry -- Baidu, also confirms that Google is expanding their operations in the Middle East and North Africa while another tagline in the same article states that:

"Google is set to challenge any government approach to censor its search results in the Middle East and Africa"

It seems that although the official Google jobs site lists the vacancy for a product marketing manager for their office in Egypt, the listing fails to mention that posting may require travel between London and Cairo, the same job posted on monster.com states that the job is located in London although it is for Google Egypt. I'm guessing here, but I think that Google is planning on pushing Arabized/localized versions of their enterprise solutions like the OneBox & Google Earth. One of the reasons as to why Google might have chosen Egypt for their Middle Eastern regional office over Dubai, is since Yahoo already has a footing in terms of advertising sales & marketing operations for the region over at Dubai's Internet City.

And it's also fascinating to note that, Egypt were recently the center of a Google Bombing campaign initiated by the Eqyptian blogosphere and supported by many editors and authors at Global Voices Online in a move to free a detained Egyptian Blogger -- Alaa Ahmed Seif al-Islam, Alaa was released from prison late last night after being held for 46 days by Egyptian Authorities for taking part in a protest.

These are no doubt some interesting times where Google decides to launch themsleves in the Middle East :-)

Citizens Weep While Money Talks

2006-06-21T11:24:00.000+03:00

Eversince I read the harrowing experience of what two citizens have had to endure for the past couple of years due to internal corruption in their residential area at Dina's blog, I couldn't help but wonder whether the law in South Asia does protect fools. Ideally, the law does not protect fools but realistically, in Mumbai, you have the son of India's former Defence & Foreign Secretary, Siddharth Bhandhari, breaking almost every municipality law in the rule book and being protected for doing so by the very people who are supposed to be upholding the law, i.e. the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai or the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

Let me give you some background here: Aparna Chawalla who lives along with and her mother, aged 62 and 92 respectively have been fighting Siddharth Bhandhari to get justice for the past 15 years. So what did Siddharth Bhandhari do to be the center of such distaste and disgust? According to Aparna, while Siddharth rennovated his place which he and his wife owns and resides at Vijay Appartments (owned by the Shipping Corporation of India) on Carmichael Road, he enlarged his bathrooms which are over the Chawalla's bedrooms, constructed a staircase over the senior citizens' kitchen, from the 8th to the 9th floor - cutting through the slab (even though the flats are in different names) and placed in a drainpipe next to Aparna's balcony which brings torrents of water gushing into Chawalla's flat. Despite a High Court ruling which ordered the BMC to carry out necessary actions based on the outcome of an earlier investigation into the illegality of Bhandari's rennovations, the BMC have yet to act upon the court's directions.

When I commented on Dina's blog posting I felt that Siddharth Bhandhari was no different to IIPM's Chicken & Egg Dean, Arindam Chaudhuri, who was torn to pieces online by desi blogosphere and bloggers elsewhere in the world, I strongly believed that Siddharth Bhandhari deserves the same fate as of IIPM's goons. Awareness as to who is Siddharth Bhandhari really, and what kind of cowards the BMC really are, is the key here.

Aparna then wrote me to say that there had been some other developements after Dina's blog posting:

"I had filed a petition under the Right to Information Act on the 19th of May and another on the 24th of May.These have to be replied to within one month but no reply has come from the BMC so far even to the 19th one. Another thing which has happened is that the ceiling of our kitchen over which Bhandari's illegal staircase is located, is giving way. I have written to the building Society and BMC but apart from sending someone supposed to be a stuctural engineer, the managing committee has done nothing, not even submitted a report. As for Umesh C. Grovere, he is being transferred in a couple of months and someone called Mr. Bhalla has taken over as the Secretary and posesses the same attitude towards my siutation - (deaf to my pleas for help)."

While looking around, I stumbled upon a NGO called the Praja Foundation which is a non-partisan, voluntary organisation that was started in Bombay (Mumbai) in 1997 by a group of 8 individuals committed to the re-establishment of accountability and transparency in public governance through people’s participation. Apparently, Praja operates an Online Complaint Management System (OCMS) which is a joint initiative with the BMC and as Praja prases it: "is perhaps a world's first in citizen-government partnership for solving public grievances."

So after filling in all the required info about Bhandhari's illegal rennovations and the like, I emailed Aparna to let her know that I've filed a complaint on her behalf at the BMC-Praja OCMS and she mentioned that she's been to Praja's office previously but they haven't shown the slightest interest and despite a Praja staff member named Sachetan who is aware of the harassment being caused by Siddharth Bhandari they have yet to step in and rectify the issue. After reading the article in the Mumbai Mirror about the problems caused by Bhandari, it seems that he has only money and uses his influential contacts to flout the law.

To all Readers, Commenters, Bloggers, Podcasters, Vloggers, Forum users: If you agree that whatever Siddharth Bhandari has done and is doing to Aparna Chawalla and her mother is outrageous & unfair, please spread the word out about it via your blogs, podcasts, forums, vlogs and whatever other way you could find to raise awareness about the pain being inflicted upon 2 senior citizens due to no action being taken by those responsible at BMC, the Shipping Corporate of India or Praja.

It would also help if you could write to the following people and let them know that Aparna Chawalla and her mother deserves justice, and should anything fatal happen to both senior citizens, the responsibility and blame will definintely fall upon the shoulders of the officials and those concerned at BMC, Shipping Corporate of India and Praja for their role in turning a blind eye to Siddharth Bhandari's illegal renovations at the cost of other's lives:

Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (BMC)
Johnny Joseph (Municipal Commissioner)
irw@mcgm.gov.in & ccrs_ho@vsnl.net

International Relations Wing
mcgm_irw@vsnl.net

Shipping Corporation of India
Sabyasachi Hajara (Chairman and Managing Director)
s.hajara@sci.co.in

G.N. Shetty (Public Relations Officer)
gn.shetti@sci.co.in

Mr. Umesh C. Grover & Mr. Bhalla (Society Secretaries)
uc.grover@sci.co.in, dirtos.sect@sci.co.in & tandos@bom8.vsnl.net.in

Dipankar Haldar (Compliance Officer)
dipankar.haldar@sci.co.in

Praja
Yazad Jal (CEO of Praja Foundation) -- he is also a blogger & KGAF member of Caferati
yazad@praja.org & mail@yazadjal.com

Kanchan Pamnani
info@praja.org

[[ To check out what exactly Praja is doing about Siddharth Bhandari's illegal rennovations and how they're responding to Aparna's complaint, you can track it via the OCMS by going here and in the field where it says "complaint tracking number", enter: AZ-70239549 ]]

Some Favorite Pics from Googlers this Week

2006-06-19T10:39:00.000+03:00

Some of the following pictures were recently clicked by Googlers during the past week in France (Paris office), Ireland (Dublin office) and google's interns at Mountain View. Well they say that pics are a thousand words. A few things I found interesting from the pics were:

In Dublin, Google uses Dell desktops, I believe the GX type and googlers there are allowed to decorate their flatrons/flat screens however they want to and in Mountain View, interns at Google just have a very thick security card consisting of their pic and encryption within a huge green bloc that covers the mid half underneath the person's pic.

While Googler's in Paris which seems to be mostly a sales & marketing office have a nice games room.

The second Google mini-fridge of it's kind seems to have been awarded since March this year to an AdWords client and Google's cafeteria has a nice sign board upon its beverage cooler.

Well we're almost there...

2006-06-18T15:21:00.000+03:00

I've finally got around to tweaking the archives here and uploading them. so now when you click on the archives tab above you'll be taken to the root of all archives from 2004 onwards. Sadly the blog postings before that aren't available any more due to a blogger glitch that occured towards the mid of June 2004, I've tried to retrieve postings since 2002 from blogger via archive.org but it didn't work :(

But all that aside and I've added a google sitemap to this blog as well as a mobile one, so I keep my fingers crossed as I await the wonderful things in the pipeline.

With that said, I need to go get done with some Flickr-ing :) Sorry Web Picasa, time isn't right for you just yet, it might be many moons back in the labs and a dash of brilliance before we're know it's fine ;-)

Links for 16-06-2006

2006-06-16T18:48:00.000+03:00

Organic HTML

Web pages transformed into weird plants. (Check out Global Voice's Managing Editor -- Rachel Rawlin's Blog as OrganicHML then and now / here's what Global Voices Looks like)

(tags: HTML Tags Visualization )

Web 2.0 Validator

Key in a url and determine whether it's WEB 2.0 friendly! (most that claim they are, really aren't)

(tags: Web 2.0 Validation community )

Flickr Leech

By entering in your Flickr username, or a Flickr url of one of your buddies into this nifty lil app, all photos uploaded will be pulled up, also is a useful way to view all your pictures if you're on a free regular Flickr account. (Free flickr accounts are set to display on 200 pics that you upload, there's no space limit however a bandwidth restriction of 20mb/month is enforced)

(tags: flickr free photos creative )

Blog Graphing Global Voices Online

2006-06-15T18:29:00.000+03:00

Today, I took some time off to experiment with a couple of Web 2.0 mashups as I'm putting together the first part of my final research paper on Social Networking Analysis (SNA) for my thesis and some of the stuff I found exciting were Site Graphs , aka Blog Graphs and a Flickr Graphing tool which is flash-based. I point you towards an energetic lady who keep spreading much Skype love -- Dina Mehta where she's already blogged what the Flickr Graphing tool does and believe me it's amazing! I like to call it the Flickr Gene Pool.. but then thats just me :)

Site Graphs defines the structure of websites and blogs as defined in HTML while visualizing the hierarchy of HTML tags in a graph. Salem who's based in Swizterland developed this lovely visualizer as a Java applet and I decided to test-drive it by graphing the Global Voices Online blog along with some of the GV co-founders and editors. On a side note, after having my desktop processor hang on me a couple of times especially while the GV blog was being graphed (took like 20 minutes), I'd suggest that if you're going to be graphing something like Technorati, Bloglines or a search engine like Google, then make sure you have atleast a 512 RAM and run the process on a latop. With that said, let's go straight to blogs I got graphed (click on the images to view a larger version):

GV's blog in all its glory:

the co-founders of GV: Ethan Zuckerman Versus Rebecca Mackinnon

the managing editor of GV: Rachel Rawlins

2 of GV's Regional Editors: Neha Viswanathan for South Asia & Georgia Popplewell for the Carribean

Here's the key to the tag colors:

blue: for links (the A tag)
red: for tables (TABLE, TR and TD tags)
green: for the DIV tag
violet: for images (the IMG tag)
yellow: for forms (FORM, INPUT, TEXTAREA, SELECT and OPTION tags)
orange: for linebreaks and blockquotes (BR, P, and BLOCKQUOTE tags)
black: the HTML tag, the root node
gray: all other tags

I found that Neha's blog was just second to GV's blog in terms of the penetration of links and we're talking some major link clusters! Rachel's blog was more unique in that she uses more block quotes than anyone else I've compared, Neha's blog and Georgia's use block quotes but not as much as Rachel's, now what sets Georgia's blog apart from all the other blogs is that she's got a higher image tag count. It seems that Rebecca's blog uses a complex tag structure and no tables while Ethan has a fine set of link clusters than anyone else! I'd like to run more graphs on their feeds and those of other GV editors and authors in the days to come, more patterns I have and the better results I achieve. One of the main reasons I like using Site Graphs to analyze blogs although its got a downside (explained below) is that I'm more interested in block quotes, links and images than any other tag. ;-)

The downside of using Site Graphs for graphing blogs is that although it displays the patterns of sites one links to, the nodes are missing some detailed SNA information. I've tagged the GV blog graphs on flickr along with a host of other blogs as "blogsasgraphs" and "websitesasgraphs" and encourage you to do the same and share your blog graphs with the rest of the world :) You can find more site and blog graphs on flickr over at the graph-site-blog cluster. Feel free to drop in your analysis of the above graphs as a comment here.

a troubled past & a new look

2006-06-14T04:11:00.000+03:00

Well as you might see, I've revamped the template here to something more child-friendly while keeping in line with my love for abstract art -- lights! The other template just was long past its time of being chucked away, people weren't able to comment here, the script kept getting choked up during blogger outages, some parents were complaining about the frontal nudity And Tommy Edwards photos, others were bothered by the fact that my shack just promoted erotic art.. and well a change is always good.. :)

I'm still having some teething issues with the new template which i hope to have soon sorted out, the archives and categories are a bit messed but considering I'll be using a delicious tagging tool to help me out.. it should all be good as new :) Mucho gracias to Neha for kindly coughing up a photo she took in London of her reflection in a window facing a busy street, I liked how the lights painted a classic yet retro scene.

At the moment, Feed Burner is down.. so i really can't hook up the world wide help alerts like the global voices one.. but I've been told by a support team at Feedburner that there server should be working fine tomorrow... hope so. I'd appreciate you dropping me a line if you come across any bugs or problems here so I can have it fixed asap. thank you for putting up with me through all the rennovation.

looking forward to some unpublished poetry from my teenage years and the relief conflicts that I experienced in the field and online during post-tsunami, katrina and the other disasters that came out way for the past couple of months. I've turned on anon comments along with comments verification in order to trash the spam, so please respect others when commenting here and YES i dont put up with hate speech or racial/sexist attacks from folks :)

People and feelings

2006-06-13T12:46:00.000+03:00

There are some people in blogosphere that I've still to meet. Very talented folks, so sweet and tender. Understanding them would probably take me a life time, but to me some people are like a fusion of abstract art.

When I think about chocolate, I realize that there are some bloggers who could be coined as "emotional chocolate". Emotions are erratic at times, not something that can be relied on, very soft and tender.

Stubborn faces mingle with my tea sometimes that I suddenly have these visions of SEA-EAT swivel my head around. Collaborative work is sometimes very hard to be seen within main stream corporates and this is one of the reasons as to why I dread working in one. It s all about emotional understanding!

A fusion of people :)

Links for 2006-06-12

2006-06-12T10:29:00.000+03:00

Robert Scoble says goodbye to Microsoft and invests his time and knowledge in a Silicon Valley startup where the main business model is vlogging and podcasting. Robert blogs about his move from Microsoft in order to set the record straight from the rumours and speculation MSM were running of his jump to PodTech.net from the Redmond firm

(tags: tech, podcast, vlog, microsoft)

Finally, someone found an easy way to install RubyOnRails on Windows. Here's a tutorial on how to quickly install Ruby with Ruby on Rails on Windows using InstantRails. It also includes ways how to test your installation and a list of common pitfalls when installing using InstantRails.

(tags: opensource, coding, platform, testing)

And at Bad Corp, we can now stop funding our own opression and add those evil corporations to the shitlist. At present, it's Nike, McDonalds and GAP that are among the top 9 evil companies and I propose that we should add Batelco & Microsoft to that list!

(tags: corporate social responsibility, evil)

An Open E-Mail to BBC's Kevin Anderson

2006-06-10T11:22:00.000+03:00

Hi Kevin,

I was delighted to be on BBC World Have Your Say last Wednesday, however I was very disappointed that I was only given less than 90 seconds to highlight the aid problems in Java. I believe that the focus of your request was that I'd be given reasonable time within a 15-20 minute window to discuss the logistical/political barriers affected aid ops in Java, however, I was made to hand on for over 20 minutes and the presenter just introduced me to the programme/discussion about 5 minutes towards it's end.

Secondly why does World Have Your Say try to fit in many speakers than it can manage? I really don't understand why I was called on, if it was to hear my out observations or relay what aid organizations or victims on the ground were experiencing, then you should have at the least given me 5 minutes, which your team failed to do. In the 60 seconds of time that I was given, or probably less, the audience listening in wouldn't have been able to obtain the real scale of the disaster response.

Thirdly, you told me that a rep from a local aid agency in Indo would be on the session as well, just who exactly was the aid agency that you had on? Let me give you some background here. Within hours of the tsunami hitting Sri Lanka in 2004, I was on the ground as a relief volunteer with the UNDP and the CHA (Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies). The CHA was in effect way before the tsunami, and within about 3 weeks of post-tsunami there was a national order in place which prevented any more aid agencies from springing up. Throughout the entire 9 months while I worked on post-tsunami relief and rehab projects in Sri Lanka, never have I heard of the aid agency that you had on Wednesday's programme.

Considering that the agency's rep mentioned that his agency was formed in Sri Lanka, I've checked up with the folks at CHA and they had no records on the agency. I'd just like to say that it takes me at least 3 months to study how an aid agency operates, up to 6 months to evaluate their transparency of ops before I endorse it, by putting on an aid agency which one has never even heard of let alone not being involved with the disaster scene in Indo raises issues of credibility and the agency's transparency, both of which were visible during the on -air session. Seems like Anu Anand was trying to plug in an aid agency and have others involved with on the ground efforts indirectly endorse the agency.

The aid agency that you had on air hadn't even a clue of what was going on in Indo, he was just on about the tsunami and katrina... Kevin, it wasn't about donor fatigue, I know you guys have got it all wrong, it's about governmental confusion during an aid response. In Indo, I've seen that the international community have all generously given and keep giving, it's the local govt there that have placed in road blocks and thus, the aid doesn't get through. Usually it's the UN who screws up in the field, this time it was a government screw-up, the search and rescue/aid teams I've been talking to and the survivors we've been in touch with reveal a lot more than donor fatigue -- the theme of your Wednesday's show! You could've easily touched base with the OXFAM crew in Java or even Save The Children UK, and have them on the show instead of having an unknown agency who hadn't the slightest idea of the situation in indo.

And this isn't the first time it's happened to me, the BBC have screwed up previously as well during the first week of the Tsunami where they quoted me all wrong on a news channel in Thailand, I've come to expect this of MSM! However, I expected better from your programme Kevin.

I'd like some answers please!

thank you,
angelo.

Relief Blogging & Mid Year Madness

2006-06-03T14:09:00.000+03:00

No! I haven't abandoned this blog, more like everytime a disaster strikes I get busy along with the others at the World Wide Help group in coordinating relief efforts with on the ground teams and overseas relief agencies mainly with resource handling. Early May it was relief assistance with flooding in Suriname and as of a week ago it's been providing aid online via the Java Quake Help wiki for the quake relief efforts ongoing in Indonesia.

Thanks to Dina Mehta for pointing out this nifty lil tool modelled around Flickr, I put together the following words:

It's really sad that whenever a disaster occures you have this media hype with inaccurate information being published without proper pointers for assistance needed by victims more like MSM in intrested with pledges than actual donations. So sad! And the fact that ISAR (International Search And Rescue) teams not getting deployed despite the need because of the unavailability of funds by the affected country is seens as something having to do with red-tape lipped officials at key bereaucratic posts without the least idea of what is really happening on the ground, that is the situation as of 3 hours ago in Bantul. You don't have to look very far, just flip open the GDN (gulf daily news) and look around for something on Indonesia's quake relief efforts or something about the disaster and you'll find out that your favorite local newspaper has gone from major reporting overnight to a small piece past the middle of the paper....

And... these fault lines running about are giving everyone the shivers, where atleast a few hours ago, Southern Iran was hit by a quake with a magnitude of 5.5, so far there is just 1 ISAR team and relief agency monitoring the situation, most likely as it has been done in the past, the emmergency may be dealt with locally and classified as international assistance not requested as seen initially in Suriname and Indonesia, although both countries later appealed for help.

Red tape, bereaucracy and bizzare MSM reporting.... all of which can easily be swept under disaster relief tourists. How pathetic!

An Interesting Week in Bahrain

2006-05-17T21:42:00.000+03:00

Does anyone remember way back in June last year how Kenyan athletes were defecting to Qatar and lotta' people weren't happy about it? Anyways, today, Kenya's former athletics coach, Mike Kosgei, signed a 2 year coaching contract with the Bahrain Athletics Federation. Interesting Eh! Considering that the article also mentions that 10 Kenyan runners have settled down here in Bahrain. I guess this could mean some good traning for Bahrain & better chances at clinching lotta' Gold medals at the Olympics next time.

Bahrain get's mentioned or quoted rather in an immigration debate published at UPenn where the Director of the Center for uman Resources in Wharton says that says he has witnessed the effects of immigrant workers on wages and working conditions in other parts of the world, including the Middle East.

"In Bahrain, for instance, where guest workers from Bangladesh are frequently used on construction sites, a visitor can see them using picks and shovels instead of machinery"

Why do illegal immigrants force down wages? "That's how markets work," responds Cappelli.

And Arcapita just bought over a company that invented the integral geogrid, which is used primarily for soil stabilization and reinforcement in road construction. I didn't recall seeing that in the Business News today although that deal happened today....

And while the whole Batelco saga continues with a relaunch of BoycottBatelco.com, the Bahrian News Agency reports on an exciting meeting today -- The Internet Cafe Committee which held 4th meeting today. I never knew Bahrain had such a committee -- very interesting! Batelco placing thresholds must sound deligthful to the Internet Cafe Committee because according to the following, the underaged youth technically won't be able to download or view "sites"::

Moreover, the meeting advised that under aged youth be prevented from using internet cafe facilities during late hours. The committee affirmed to place important mechanisms to limit navigating websites that do not suit the culture and ethics of the country.

This has been an interesting week in Bahrain :) Tomorrow, I'll start wardriving about the place, checking out on hotspots and 802.11n accessibility. Any tips?

Batelco Takes Us Back to the Stone Age!

2006-05-14T22:53:00.000+03:00

All they ever gave us at today's meeting was a whole bag of "TRA needs some good people and we need some good approvals", "We can help you control what you view", "telecom industry in Bahrain is very complex, you don't understand unless you're in Telecom world". "We spend about over a billion for our infrastructure in Bahrain and about 5 million over the past 3 years for community projects in Bahrain, now we can just put that 5 million into making it all unlimited packages but then we would not be socially responsible!" Over a billion on infrastructure and only 5 million for community projects over the past 3 years -- Cripes! who's doing your CSR initiatives? They got the math all wrong! Anyways, I don't subscribe to your TOS or FUP and I'm out... you claim to not sleep well Peter and you're sad at seeing customers go but when will the truth ever dawn upon you, when will you see the light? You're not thinking out of the box Peter! "Never do business with Batelco without reading their terms and conditions!" ... well in short Batelco may lead you up the gum tree but as many people pointed out tonight seems like there's going to be a legal battle our lovable ISP is gonna' get subjected to.

More than 250 people showed up today, the hall at the convention center was packed! Lot of legal action against Batelco seems to be in the fray by some consumers. Outsourcing their research and inaccurate stats. Oh Batelco, you hit a hard one this time! Do the numbers of the bandwidth usage and go figure! And the solutions you came up with in trying to combat StealthNet where people share their connections was very poor in my opinion, this is a miscalculated remedy you're trying to implement! It's going to backfire and you're going to realize it all so late. Oh well so be it...

Goodbye Batelco, I'm pulling the plug on you in 4 days, countdowns have always been a nightmare for me but this one is pure fun! I'm definitely going to enjoy moving away from your spotty service, the fake picture you present to your customers and hey you really need to come to terms with your residential clients! Till then it's adios amigo!

** tomorrow I'll blog a complete coverage on what happened at the meeting today, nothing special I assure you! Read Mahmood's blog posting and you'll know why ;)

I'm Disconnecting My Internet Connection

2006-05-13T18:21:00.000+03:00

Yes! I'm disconnecting my Batelco Internet connection in 5 days from now.

Why?

Although I've been a Batelco SpeedNet customer for more than 3 years having, signed up for the 256kbps broadband package for BD40/month (approx. $105 USD/mo), on Thursday this week I'll be canceling my net connection due to Batelco's unethical pricing policies on their latest broadband Internet packages.

Previously, Batelco was charging me 40 dinars per month for 256k download and 64k for upload with an unlimited bandwidth usage, ie. no threshold, despite that, the service they were providing was very spotty with frequent speed and connectivity issues, instead of getting the real deal, it was just about 180k download, Batelco definitely wasn't giving me value for my money, and I'm not the only one, there were plenty of other people getting ripped off on Batelco's 256k speednet package, but I stayed on hoping that Batelco will improve as the years go by.

3 days ago, Batelco rolled out their new broadband Internet packages, all of them with gagging thresholds, the package I'm currently on has been reduced in price to 10 dinars/month (approx.$26 USD) which is wonderful but instead of complementing their offer with unlimited usage, Batelco have placed a major restriction -- 2GB threshold! Once I pass that threshold, Batelco will slash my browsing speed to 64k -- as good as dialup plus for every extra MB that I download, I'll need to pay 10fils, so supposedly if I were to download an extra 100MB/day, that would mean a dinar for Batelco, say an extra 100mb/day for a month equates to 30 dinars (for 3GB extra) + 10BD = 40BD, so we're back to square one, even worse than before because Batelco will be exploiting me in 2 ways, ie - making me pay twice or thrice the offered price and all of that with low speed in the middle of the month.

I'm a university student and I can tell that for starters I do consume a lot of bandwidth each month, let alone every week. Apart from surfing online to research for college projects and the like, I also podcast for disaster relief blogs/wiki s overseas, stream interactive tutorials as well as listen to live broadcasts online and am involved in various DVB/VOIP-folksonomy initiatives for non-profit purposes. Being an open source application developer means that I need to download extensions and patches for the Linux platform -- all of which are what Batelco may refer to as "Bandwidth-Hungry" customers. The above may somewhat fall within the WEB2.0 category and it would be wrong to say that Bahrain is not yet exposed to WEB2.0 because I know many students, educational institutions and some companies who are using, developing and currently integrating WEB2.0 into their everyday life, it might be that Batelco haven't done proper or enough research into the use of WEB2.0 here in Bahrain, that has led to them to slap all their internet packages with thresholds.

Furthermore, Batelco have completely decided that they know what's best for me and other customers and without any prior notice have simply switched us to the new Internet packages with their relevant pricing policies and thresholds, in my view this is totally unacceptable and I do not condone what Batelco have done! I'm disgusted, angry and sad at the crooked steps Batelco have adopted and implemented in the past few days with regards to their new ripp-off internet packages and pricing models. Apparently, Batelco switched my internet connection to that of the 1Mbps one in the past 72 hours and it was just today that they sent me the following letter, more like a general announcement: In English & In Arabic

Several bloggers in Bahrain have written about Batelco's latest Broadband Internet Packages in the past few days. I first came to know about it when I read about it on Mahmood's blog here, here as well as here and that led me to checking out BoycottBatelco.com which contains some really good research and updates via email exchanges with Batelco's CEO -- Peter Kaliropolos, whose latest reply to the BoycottBatelco.com team and broadband internet users can be found here. Haitham says he considers himself lucky as he no longer uses Batelco's services eversince he started working at MTC-Vodafone. Moody explains to net surfers from the UK and US as to why internet connections keep lagging in Bahrain while The Daily Qassooms alerts us all that the 25th of May is the last day to disconnect from Batelco's internet connection if we prefer to do so because after that Batelco will charge us as per their new packages.

Emoodz brings us another perspective on the whole Batelco issue by mentioning that he is happy with the latest prices and packages considering that his sources in Batelco have revealed that he has only been using 6GB in the past 3 months alone, and last but not least, Mahmood blogs his reply to the email sent to the team at boycottbatelco.com by Batelco's CEO and requests him to reconsider his current Internet offerings and tells him that bloggers in Bahrain are concerned that they will suffer due to the changes:

...As bloggers we do use the internet heavily, we know too for a fact that our visitors and guests most probably are heavy users too. We are concerned that we are part of those disenfranchised 14% who will suffer due to this change. You must realize that the a sizable portion of these 14% could also be regarded as the bleeding edge occupants of the internet, the very people who have harnessed the power of the internet and use it as service pioneers, using services other users have not woken up to: IP TV, file synchronization between computers and servers, video chat, entertainment, news, radio, streaming applications and the various other high-end applications which we have come to take for granted, it is some of these 14% who your company should befriend and solicit their input for future services and packages which you might consider introducing....

Although I'll be soon disconnecting my Batelco broadband Internet connection, that does not mean I'll stop blogging, podcasting or any of my daily tasks online, but instead I will be switching to another ISP either based in Bahrain or overseas. This may mean that I may have to put up with a 2-way VSAT connection, ie. an internet connection via satellite which am sure will have latency issues, but I'm prepared to go through that rather than subscribe for a limited broadband Internet service and hidden charges from Batelco. Eventually, I will also be switching all my cell phone lines to MTC-Vodafone and soon will discontinue the Batelco land line I've been paying for, for over 25 years to move on to a better and enhanced VOIP telephony service being offered soon by LightSpeed Communications. Moreover, I will encourage my family, relatives and friends to do the same.

I'll be there at the Bahrain Internet Society meeting where Batelco's CEO has been invited to have an open discussion regarding their Internet packages and pricing models and will be taking suggestions on their pricing and net offerings. This is happening on Sunday (tomorrow), May 14, 2006 at the Crowne Plaza hotel at 7PM in the Bahrain Convention Centre. Looking forward to seeing you there as well!

tag: boycottbatelco

Aid Bickering and Relief Politics -- so SAD!

2006-05-06T16:24:00.000+03:00

Another sad state of affairs along with the suffering during the aftermath of disasters is relief politics in the field. Usual suspects are USAID, CARE and of course, we can't forget the UN. The UN, unlike the other lovable INGOs (International Non Governmental Organizations) have begun cleaning up their act from within since the tsunami of 2004, it'll take more time for sure.. but we've seen a start there. USAID -- nice organization to work with... so nice that I remember during post-tsunami all these folks ever did in Sri Lanka and Thailand were sit on their bottoms, blindly approve funding for various relief project proposals and drive around in their air conditioned jeeps, flying high the stinking NGO (Non Governmental Organization) flags and touring the country.

And hey! it gets even better (and uglier) when it comes to CARE who decide to relocate MOST overseas staff to a crisis scene by playing the lame line of "no expertise available locally" and on to top it off use folks' donations to do so. No wonder most people are hesistant when it comes to donating to INGOs if it means 75% of aid gets spent on operations (staff relocation, entertainment, air conditioners, banquets and luxuries of all sort) and just 20% or less actually goes down to the ground where it's really needed. Major issues is transparency for most of these non-profits when it comes to donations, so easy for them to slap out a picture of a crying kid or destitute mother or a starving person for that matter but when it comes to accountability, most INGOs and certain NGOs are zero!

But then what about the crap operational relief workers need to endure from the top -- all the relief political games, who gets which project first... who uses influence over decision makers to scoop the loot from from either the World Bank or the Asian Development Bank - some of who are also confidential crooks. Nice.. so it all comes down to position, power and greed -- none of which are uncommon, i've seen most of these types during the tsunami, katrina, South Asian quake last year and even the ongoing H5N1 lab test approval agencies -- most of which are a farce!

And it's not surprising that one finds the same thing happening here in Bahrain with some non-profit organizations who seem intent on wasting donations on unecessary expenses like: RGBan Satellite Phones for about 25 staff members, when only a team of 7-10 are sent in on urban search and rescue operations overseas, moreover the amount of money being spent on training by foreign donors is amazing -- but so sad to learn that the controlling agencies here simply miss the dates! So while everyone in Bahrain is complaining about how careless the government is in financing, no ones seems to realize that there are thousands if not millions of dollars being squandered each week by some NGO. IS ANYONE QUESTIONING THE NGOs HERE? NO! Is there some sort of Transparency organization in Bahrain apart from the Bahrain Transparency group to monitor the funding sent in by foreign donors? NO? NGO world is hell! There's no one who has the balls to question these folks... some of them are using the UNDP as a cover for other things... very messed up...but then it's not just Bahrain as I found out.. it's all over the Middle East.. atleast this is being looked into in Kuwait at the moment as for Dubai -- Who Knows!

Sadly.. it looks like the majority people are giving generously not based on where their donations will end up or what they will be used for but rather on the pathetic picture the NGO sells via their interactive mass media PR vehicle.

The crap that goes on within INGOs and NGOs is another ball game by itself, makes good for another blog posting, nex time ;-)

Buzz from the 18th Bahrain Bloggers Gathering

2006-05-05T13:14:00.000+03:00

Ok, for starters.... It took me around 20 minutes to get where the cafe was... I figured it would be some where near the Crowne Plaza like Mahmood mentioned... and when I finally found the place... plus parking... it was 9pm. Not bad.. considering there were still people when I got there. I gotta' say it was a nice meetup place, Cinabon Cafe.. hi-speed wifi net and its only about a dinar per hour, atmosphere is nice as well.. very retro!

There might not have been much folks this time.. but it was a very lively discussion with Tariq, Emoodz, Mahmood (of course!), Mishkah & BinShehab (he now sports a nice bumper sticker on his car of binshehab.com -- way to go!!). Lots of perspectives and the laugh of the day is when Tariq told us a story about eating Camel Ghozi in Saudi where there was a hump on a table, and when one poked into it with a fork, macoroni poured out. :-D The conversation then took a U-Turn with how arab hospitality these days can sometimes be deemed as stupidity where both Mahmood and Tariq shared their experiences.

BinShehab, our expert on security, came up with idea of educating people on what blogging is, Miskhah kept the convo going by adding creativity to it all and eMoodz was on about how to get more people to start blogging. I personally think Bahrain's bloggers have the content.. maybe we need to start exploring better ways to channel the content, an interactive channel rather than just text... maybe podcasting and vlogging as Mahmood has shown us in the past.... Podcasting.. well I can't really think of anyone who's doing it in Bahrain at the moment, i've done a few but not bahrain-centric.. more like google focused, but am willing to give it a try. There was also mention about collablogging - remind me of Global Voices and the various World Wide Help projects i've co-blogged at. Definintely worth digging into for Bahrain - collablogging - i'm up for it -- any takers? Check out Mahmood's post on the bloggers' gathering last night... points worth looking at! a free bloggers platform service -- NICE!~

Oh yes.. as usual I got lost in Bahrain.. last night got stuck in traffic on exhibition road.. clearly there are some folks from across the causeway who have no clue on how to drive properly.. anyways i ended up in some place called Janussen some place near Saar I think... people say Bahrain is an island, I think not.. this place is huge... when you actually take time to drive around. Anyways... this blog is set to see some major revamping as Google will be releasing some addons to their free blogspot offering here... since they haven't made it public yet I will be hacking this blog into a wordpress alternative. Looking forward to more blogger-related progression in Bahrain - believe me it's all there.... just waiting to be tapped at the right time and by the right people!

Tsunami warning For Tongo to be downgraded soon

2006-05-03T20:28:00.000+03:00

We're blogging at WorldWideHelp, check there for updates, from the background.. it looks like the tsunami warning which was issued a while agofor NZ ans Fiji will soon be downgraded (i hope), contact at pacific warning center liasing with monitoring center in Bangkok will be issuing a bulleting in an hour or so.

Blogging from CETME 2006 in Bahrain

2006-04-20T17:01:00.000+03:00

Well here I am in one of the conference rooms at the Bahrain Exhibition Center where CETME 2006, a career, education and training conference which is currently taking place, blogging parts f the event live.. well there is so much happening that I really am finiding it hard to provide voerage on everything. This 3-day conference which kicked off on Tuesday this week has loads to offer potential undergrads, job seekers and there are loads of head-hunters around here.

Of course, there's the world's largest mortar board on display at the center of the exhibition floor - just past the Economic Development Board booth. And lots of useful seminars at no cost - poor attendance though / but here's the thing... lots of the exhibitors are staying in Bahrain till sunday over at the Mecure Hotel in Seef... ;-)

Monash South Africa just started their speakers session, so am off to that! But if you haven't checked out CETME 2006 yet, you should come down and have a look, you might see something you like... opportunities galore.

Microsoft's Presentation Glitches & Bahrain's Internet Connection

2006-04-05T21:19:00.000+03:00

Last Saturday, when Microsoft hosted their 2006 Security Management Road show in Bahrain (blogged here), they suffered some serious technical glitches during a Windows Virtual Server 2005 R2 presentation where the Microsoftie from Dubai was trying to remotely boot up machines running Windows 2k and XP at the UAE office. While he was trying to demo the remote connection from the conference at Sheraton Hotel, Windows kept kept freezing over and over again. Everyone present there kept wondering whether the gliches were caused by the R2 server and Windows on the whole or was it really something beyond their control? Well.... I shot the following footage of it happening live and uploaded it to Google Video so you may all see what really happened:

Later on in the day, I talked to the Microsoftie who did do the demo finally and managed to successfully connect to the machines int he UAE office, and I asked him what went wrong: Why did Windows and R2 freeze while remotely connecting? He stressed that the internet connectivity from Bahrain was very weak, in fact the connection speed that was available during the glitched presentation was only 7kbps!! And it was simply impossible to remotely connect at that speed. It was mentioned that MTC Vodafone was the ISP supplying Sheraton Hotel with the wireless broadband connection and it was something to do at their end, another reason which was given to me was that Sheraton Hotel have a very restrictive way of allowing notebook users to connect to the internet in wireless fashion.

Apparently, anyone wanting to use the Wi-Fi net connection at Sheraton need to either pay 9 Dinars for 24 hours of net connectivity or 5 Dinars per hour or 3 Dinars for 30 minutes + once the card is activated, you can only use their internet connection for 60 minutes from the time it's activated by the front desk! To me this pricing policy that Sheraton practises traps the user completely. On top of it all, Sheraton forces the user to connect to the internet via their gateway page called 'Sheraton Wayout' and they just have one Access Point for all the 4 conference rooms on the ground floor. Which meant that at the time, due to all 80 notebook users using the WiFi connection at the same time from Sheraton's ground floor, the speed reduced to 7kbps.... how weak is that? In the end, Microsoft went ahead with their demo using a wired broadband connection, so much for WiFi net connectivity in Bahrain! At the end of the day, the Microsoft folks from Dubai insisted they weren't going through the product demos in Muscat or Kuwait without having either broadband connections of atleast 512 kbps or wired broadband connections.

What does all this tell us about Microsoft, MTC Vodafone & Sheraton Hotel?
Future solutions and applications from Microsoft need Hi-Speed broadband internet to function, MTC Vodafone need to get their connectivity act together with Sheraton Hotel, and Sheraton Hotel on the other hand need to revamp the way they operate their WiFi connections and increase their access points plus revise their internet pricing packages to wireless net users or they'll loose corporate clients in the near future.

10 Minutes With Microsoft's Desmond Nair ...

2006-04-03T20:21:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, when I went over to checkout Microsoft's Middle East Security Management Road Show 2006 at the Sheraton Hotel in Bahrain, I grabbed the opportunity to get one-on-one with Microsoftie - Desmond Nair who's the Server and Tools Business Group Manager for Microsoft Middle Eas t. Desmond who was a Microsoft Product Marketing Manager in South Africa and now is based in Dubai, took some time off the conference sessions to answer some 'interesting' questions and also fired up his take on Vista, Firefox and Open Source. Read on!

Angelo: In your presentation a few minutes ago, you mentioned that Microsoft (MS) just got honored in the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) a month back for being the most trustworthy company in an opeinion poll. Could you please tell me what rank you guys got placed at, because according to Forrester Research, of the 4,732 US households surveyed in September and October 2005 to determine users' trust in 48 technology brands, MS ranked 20th out of 22. Any ideas Desmond?

Desmond: Well am being awfully honest whenI say that I’ve no clue about that survey, but when it comes to trusted computing, Microsoft (MS) did get honored by WSJ for being the most trustworthy company in the world and for example in in Japan, the most trustworthy company was Toyota.

Angelo: Why did MS introduce tabbed browsing in Internet Expl orer 7 (IE7)? Had Firefox anything to do with it?

Desmond: We introduced tabbed browsing in IE7 mainly to increase productivity. I mean today, it's all about browsing and searching online and no one likes to keep opening new windows to view content, it's time-consuming and that's why we came up with tabbed browsing for IE7 in order to enhance a user's browsing experience online. Secondly, it's not a question of Microsoft going head-to-head with Firefox, competition will always exist. Now I've heard a lot about Firefox, and been meaning to install it but never got around to doing so. I think Firefox is loosing it’s community these days due to the management and people who designed the browser.

Angelo: You mean Blake Ross who's the creator of FireFox?

Desmond: Well not really but I do know that there’s a lot of complaints going in against them from their very own forum users as I’ve been reading in the past few months.

Angelo: Ok, and here in Bahrain, do you think that MS has been getting the expected response from customers that are using some of your products or do you think that the Middle East & Africa user base has a long way to go in utilizing MS solutions to it's true potential?

Desmond: I'm very impressed with what I'm seeing in Bahrain, the clients here simply amazing and are adapting to MS-powered systems where it's really needed especially in the Oil & Gas industry, and now with the availability of Windows Virtual Server 2003 R2, our clients can take advantage of the benefits of combining R2 with what they currently have in place and we know the possibilities are endless!

Angelo: What about those students who use MS products? How exactly is MS in the Middle East tapping into the potential that students can offer towards building the MS brand? Are there any projects or programmes that can be run for them? Or are any being run as of now?

Desmond: Well at MS, we have taken a keen interest in students because that’s one of our target markets and as you would know, students are better at playing with our stuff and coming up with a better way to do things. That said, MS in the Middle East, strives to build uppon students' skills in using MS solutions and we also develop them on the whole while simultaneously running traning programmes which specialize in various tracks. The guy in charge of this whole project is based in Dubai. And every year, MS Middle East hosts a code competition between students out of which, the best make it to working at MS. This is a project which we've been running for the past 3 years, and it's been very successful since.

Angelo: Can you please tell me about Microsoft's relationship with Linux?

Desmond: We have a stong relationship with Linux that exists at the customer level which means we support all kinds of client environments, may they be Linux, Solaris, etc., there's no differential treatment as such given Linux users and all those stories you've heard about Microsoft throwing over a damp blanket on users who are currently operating within a Linux environment is totally false, what we do is work with people to get the best out of their user environment, and tomorrow you'll know why what I'm telling you right now is true, MS in Redmond are coming out with an exclusive press release on R2's flexbility with other platforms. ;-) [PressPass came out with the MS Exclusive release 5 minutes ago (03/04/06) - Microsoft delivers Linux support and makes Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 available to customers as a free download]

Angelo: Windows Vista is set to release in November this year as stated by MS in various news outlets, could you please tell me if this would be the same release date for Bahrain and the rest of the Middle East? I'm sure you know how this region usually is the last one to recieve some tech products, are we going to see a repeat here by MS?

Desmond: Yes and No really:-), YES! Vista WILL be released worldwide at the same and in all languages as well. So you can count on it being released in Bahrain during November 2006! And NO the region won't get Vista late.

Angelo: Well Desmond, I've also heard that although Vista is set to release in November, MS will be releasing it to just corporate clients and not home users, could you confirm this?

Desmond: Your're right Angelo, MS corporate clients will get Vista in November and somewhere in January 2007, home users will get their hands on Vista.

Angelo: Do you know what the reason might be behind this delay of releasing Vista to non-corporate users? To me it sounds a bit unfair, don't you think so, it's like saying if you got the $$$, then you're getting Vista!

Desmond: Well, this is one of the hardest decisions that MS took, because originally we wanted to release Vista to home users in December, as that month in the US is when sales hit a peak due to major price drops, but due to the fact that computers are manufactured in China and there's a 4 weeks wait on shipping and the like, MS decided that we’ll sit on it and work together with the hardware folks and release Vista in the New Year to home users. Now, you've talked about fairness and big bucks but realistically speaking, corporations aren’t going to sit around until computers are shipped, which is why they get vista before home users do, we’re looking more at quantity of computers being used by a corporate client than by a home user, I think we’re talking about the difference of 2 computers purchased by a home user in comparison to possibly more than a thousand by a corporate client.

Angelo: In early 2005, just after the tsunami aftermath, a source with MS Belgium stated during a relief operation, that MS would be going open source in the last quarter of 2007, Can you please confirm that as actually happening given that it's been more than a year since that statement was mentioned?

Desmond: To my knowledge, MS has no plans to go completely open source, however, we already have certain code released as shared open source under something called the MS Shared Community License. And let’s not forget we just offered developers the full version of MS Visual Studio Dot Net 2005 Express Edition free for a year.

Angelo: Right, but that’s not the same as open source now....

Desmond: Well all I can say is that, there defininitely is a place for open source, but what is really needed is support for products that do go open source and this isn’t something that we’re seeing much of right now. Regarding MS going open source, I guess the right people to to talk to are the guys at MS Dynamics.

Angelo: Desmond, a final question: have you got any advice for the geeks out there? Any more MS road shows hitting the Gulf region in the near future?

Desmond: Well, this information isn’t released yet on the MS website, but yes there’s a major geek conference in Dubai on April 30th called the Gulf Developers Conference 2006 (GDC 2006) which is a completely free event, a whole day sorta’ thing, where it’s going to be patronized by developers, coders, hackers, I'm saying a major coder event and details of it is going to soon be live on the website, not released to the press yet. You will practically be seeing geeky t-shirts flashing around you and if you’re into coding, web services and know or think you’re a geek, then this is one conference you can’t afford to miss out on!

See you at GDC 2006 in Dubai!

(I'm in the center pictured with the Microsoft Security Management Road Show 2006 Crew - from left-to-right: Desmond, Yousif, me, Sharid & Hasif )