Archive for the ‘Egypt’ Category
Wikimania 2008 - Alexandria, Egypt (July 17-19)
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | May 8, 2008 – 4:09 pm |
No Comments
Alexandria, Egypt, will be hosting Wikimania 2008 this Summer in the prestigious newly reconstructed library of Alexandria, Bibliotheca Alexandrina.
Wikimania is a regular conference for all Wikimedians that contribute to one of the many Wikimedia Foundation projects. Past conferences have been held in popular cities around the world, such as Frankfurt, Boston and Taipei, but this is the first time the event is being held in an Arab country.
As in previous years, Wikimania 2008 will include unconferences, seminars, and workshops. The Wikimania 2008 committee, comprised primarily of volunteers, will be organizing the event, and has already begun lining up sponsors. The program is still being planned, you can follow the planning here.
Registration for the event is open now, and details on how to register and attend can be found here: Registration.
Otlob, Free Online Food Ordering Service
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 30, 2008 – 1:22 pm | 3 Comments
Otlob is a free online food ordering service that was first launched in Egypt back in 1999, and which has expanded to three other countries in the Middle East ever since: Saudi Arabia (Riyadh & Jeddah), United Arab Emirates (Dubai) and Bahrain.
Otlob provides its users with the complete menus of their favorite restaurants, enabling them to order meals online easily and quickly; they can even add comments with their order if they need to be specific about certain details.
Users can also save their favorite orders so as to save time the next times they need to order the same meals, they can order from a number of restaurants at the same time, and set the delivery time of their choice.
Restaurants are organized by category and by the neighbourhoods they serve to, and their latest menus are available on the website for users to choose from.
The interface is very well designed, really simply and easy to use; and it comes in two languages: English and Arabic.
Otlob was developed by LINK Development, and manage by LINKonLINE, both subsidiaries of LINKdotNET, an Orascom company.
# Otlob
Almost One Million Egyptians Have Broadband Internet Access
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 28, 2008 – 1:54 pm | No Comments
In a new survey of connectivity among Egyptian urban households, titled ‘Egypt Households Telecoms and Media Survey Report 2008‘, in which the Arab Advisors Group sampled 700 households in urban areas of the country, the results show almost a million Egyptian households have access to broadband connections.
According to official figures from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Egypt had 427,085 ADSL lines by the end of 2007. The Arab Advisors Group estimates that 75% of those are residential ADSL lines, and based on the survey results, 63.4% of Egyptian households share the connection with their neighbours, around 3 other households to be precise, which puts the estimate for households with ADSL connections in Egypt at 956,000 households by end of 2007.
The survey also showed that 81.2% of Egyptian Internet users preferred to browse Arabic language websites, and that Internet cafes remain an important connection point for many Egyptians, with 27.8% responding that they used Internet café services.
E-commerce and online transaction penetration remains very limited though with only 1.3% of respondents saying they have bought products or services or paid bills online.
# Source: ITP
Filaty, Arab File And Photo Sharing Service
Mohamed Marwen Meddah | April 19, 2008 – 2:53 pm | 3 Comments
Filaty (which means ‘My files’ in Arabic) is an online service that gives users the possibility to upload files and photos quickly for online storage and sharing. The service, which was launched by Egyptian Muhammad Abdul-Shakour Arab (Division Designs), and developed with Syrian Ali Jabr (Reverya Web Solutions), is still in public beta.
The service is completely free for everyone, in fact you don’t even need to create an account, you can start uploading right away. It allows unlimited uploads, files of up to 100MB each, photos of up to 15MB each, and to make things even easier, up to 15 concurrent photo uploads.
The main target of this service are bloggers and forum dwellers who need a quick place to upload the photos and files they want to post and share with others, but of course it is not limited to them only.
The interface is only in Arabic for the time being; it is very easy and straight-forward, with a simplistic and clean design.
