Twitter, the pioneer in micro-blogging which now have hundreds if not thousands of clones all around the globe, was always blocked in UAE, don’t ask me why, while other clones like Pownce and Rejaw stayed available. Twitter is not the only blocked website that puzzled people, many other websites that got blocked had alternatives which was accessible and not blocked/banned such as Flickr and Photobucket.
It has been reported few weeks ago that more than 1000, yes ONE THOUSAND, websites will be unblocked/unbanned, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) will be instructing Etisalat and DU to unblock the websites as part of a new “Internet Access Management” policy. For full info on this matter you can check this article from The National. Until now there is no list of what websites will be unblocked but I guess eventually we will be having a list either official or non-official during the next few days.
Redlasso which allowed bloggers to search and clip footage aired from the major American networks like NBC, FOX, CBS and Cable Channels such as MSNBC, Comedy Central. so basically if I wanted to show a clip of a part of an episode of Countdown with Keith Olbermann, I can just go to Redlasso search by date and channel and keyword obviously and then edit the footage and create a clip where I can embed on my blog.
While most of the channels now do have most of their shows videos online, and embedable on any blog but its not editable, Redlasso gave control for you to crop the segment you want from any show. NBC and FOX have filed a lawsuit against Redlasso on the 23rd of July 2008, and on the 25th of July 2008 Redlasso suspended their service. You can read their Press Release for full details. Although they still say they will try to come to an agreement with the networks, I really don’t see that happening.
The thing that really confused me and I would be thankful to anyone out there who can explain this for me, they say that the clips created by paying customers will still be working fine, so isn’t that adding more risk on Redlasso showing that they are profiting from others copyrighted materials? I donno but does this have any other meaning?! please help and enlighten me.
I got my beta account on Redlasso back on March 2008, and only started using it for my blog on July 2008, and only for two of my posts, why? I HAD A FEELING THIS WILL HAPPEN
It all started with Twitter, an easy cool new way for social networking and micro blogging. After a while it became the most famous thing , in case you don’t know, and I really really doubt that you do not know, Twitter simply allows users to send updates on themselves, those are called “Tweets” they are text based posts (140 Character long) submitted to Twitter and displayed on the user’s profile pages. What made Twitter so famous in my opinion is the ability to send those text based posts using either the web, Instant Messengers, PDA, Mobile SMS or 3rd party applications such as Twitterrific.
Since then, more and more Twitter clones came out, claiming they can do a better job, some of those clones are Pownce,Jaiku, Cromple, Tumblr. And the latest of them all is MessageDance which is still in private beta. The main difference between MessageDance and Twitter is that on MessageDance you are not limited to a number of characters per post and you can actually add images and videos. Actually Tumblr allows users to post long posts and include images and videos too.
But its not all good news, MessageDance requires you to install a widget on your blog or website to make your friends know what you are posting and to see what they are posting?! What I cant get is why it is a MUST to install the widget. Installing widgets should always be an option not a requirement.
The way I see it, Twitter is still the best, because none of those clones have the portability Twitter has, they simply depend on posting directly on the web, while on Twitter as said earlier users can post using either the web, Instant Messengers, PDA, Mobile SMS or 3rd party applications.
A Russian media company called SUP has bought "LiveJournal", the very famous blogging platform. The Russian company has opened a local US company named "LiveJournal Inc." to manage it.
SUP has been managing "LiveJournal Russia" for a while now, so its not totally new to LiveJournal. The previous owner "Six Apart" will for a around a year still play a role in LiveJournal, in representing it to advertisers, but nothing more.
In regard to the current users of LiveJournal, it looks like things will only get better, some new features and enhancements will be introduced. The same thing actually happened when "Six Apart" bought LiveJournal from its founder Brad Fitzpatrick.
Yup! I moved from wordpress.com, and I have my own domain now www.ibrahimo.com, I still need to change some things around, but the main stuff is done.
In the last post I told you that I am bouncing between bluehost and lunarpages, but after researching I went with hostgator, which until now seems the right choice, I had couple of issues early today and their tech support was very good.
I will resume full activity in posting within couple of days…
Well since around a week now I became less active in the blog because I was shocked when I found out that blogs on wordpress.com don’t really have full control, so to advance my blog I have to get my own hosting, and that what I am doing now, it still going to take couple of days to set things up the way i want.
In the mean time i would be happy to get your feedback on which is the best hosting companies for blogs. I am still bouncing between bluehost and lunarpages.
As you know there is a number of social news/bookmarking websites such as Reddit, Digg, Del.icio.us and StumbleUpon. People share articles, websites, photos, videos and so on. Digg already announced that they will be having a special section only for images but it still didnt happen.
Here comes PICURLS, basically this website pulls all the top photos of the day from Digg, Reddit, del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Flickr, Simpy, Furl, Boing Boing and Wired. You can also subscribe to the RSS feeds for the pictures from each website or from all of the websites.
But PICURLS still have space for improvement, the 2 main drawbacks that i can see is that there is no community, none of the images has any comments, at least for the past few days, all what i can see is the number “0″ beside each image. The second thing is that when you click on the link it sends you to the source not the page of the website such as Digg and Reddit, i am not if this being done out of fear that maybe Digg or Reddit wont allow this to happen.
Anyway, in general this is a very nice website, and one day it could become something if it kept on developing.
Hi. I debated the issue of creating a blog between me and myself for a long time now. I kept saying to myself one thing, whats new that i can offer in this vast blogosphere? I realized later that I can only answer this question by going through the experience. So here I start.
Ok. Here how it goes. I surf the net for at least 16 hours daily. I read tech news, sports news, read all sorts of blogs, follow politics all around the world, watch allot of TV, watch allot of movies and play games.
Oh and i want to press on one thing, i watch alllllot of football. Not American football, football who some people might call it soccer.
I am a fan of Arsenal, Real Madrid, Inter Milan and Alahly(Egypt).
So as you can see I watch allllllot of football.
Alright then, the only remaining thing that you should know about me now is that my name is Ibrahim Hussein, and that i am Jordanian from Palestinian roots and that i live in dubai - United Arab Emirates.
Looking forward to fill this blog with allot of useful and good quality posts.
Twitter, the pioneer in micro-blogging which now have hundreds if not thousands of clones all around the globe, was always blocked in UAE, don’t ask me why, while other clones like Pownce and Rejaw stayed available. Twitter is not the only blocked website that puzzled people, many other websites that got blocked had alternatives which was accessible and not blocked/banned such as Flickr and Photobucket.
It has been reported few weeks ago that more than 1000, yes ONE THOUSAND, websites will be unblocked/unbanned, the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA) will be instructing Etisalat and DU to unblock the websites as part of a new “Internet Access Management” policy. For full info on this matter you can check this article from The National. Until now there is no list of what websites will be unblocked but I guess eventually we will be having a list either official or non-official during the next few days.
It all started with 
Yup! I moved from wordpress.com, and I have my own domain now www.ibrahimo.com, I still need to change some things around, but the main stuff is done.
