In the past few months I have been getting requests from Arabs all around the world, some from Egypt some from UAE and many from Europe, in countries such as UK, Germany and even Finland.
All sending in emails asking me to resume my coverage of Qalam Rasas, you see few months ago I used to talk about each episode and provide some videos of the episode too. There was one reason why I stopped doing that, its because I am lazy, who knows me knows this scary fact Anyway, I will try my best to cover each and every episode from now on, that means starting from the episode of the 13th of June 2008.
The reason why I started the coverage is because I felt that Hamdi Qandeel was not given the same interest as other political shows, lets say such as Alqahera Alyaum with Amr Adeeb, I watch all kind of shows, but I see a huge coverage for Alqahera Alyaum, 10 O’clock and those kind of shows.
Forums, Yahoo Groups and many many Facebook Groups cover and discuss and upload videos of those shows, except of Qalam Rasas, although Qalam Rasas is the most daring show of them all, no one, I REPEAT, NO ONE can say on their shows what Hamdi Qandeel says on Qalam Rasas.
MySpace just announced that their developer platform will be lauching on February 5th 2008, developers can Pre-Register now by going to http://developer.myspace.com.
Although late in the game, but MySpace should be able to tackle the dificulties and mistakes of their rivals Facebook easily from the start. The main points MySpace will be focusing on is privacy, monetization, and data ownership. They will also be looking into helping the developers monetize their applications by having a revenue share program. MySpace new developer platform will be supporting Google OpenSocial.
One of the annoying things in Facebook, yes it has many annoying stuff, but I believe one of the most annoying is those application invites we get from friends, especially when you have hundreds and hundreds of friends, you will end up with a clutter that is time consuming to clean out. So if you have been wishing day and night for a way to clear this clutter formed by the hundreds of application requests, today is your lucky day.
IgnoreAll is a JavaScript bookmarklet, clicking it once while the applications request page is opened will automatically choose “Ignore” to all of the application requests, except invites to groups or events or friend requests. Clearing the clutter immediately.
I believe or actually wish that Facebook will eventually create a quick solution directly from facebook, but right now just enjoy using IgnoreAll. No more suffering.
This is good news for some people and really bad news for others. Facebook have listened to the complains and announced that they will be releasing a new service which will allow hiding applications on your profile.
As a user I am happy that there will be an official facebook profile cleanup tool, where you will be able to reduce the clutter of your profile. Just choose your favorite applications and hide the others, clicking on “Show Extended Profile” will show the other Applications on the profile.
As I said this is a Good/Bad news, its specially bad news for the Application developers, as we all know the apps mostly gets more users and become more known after it is spotted on friends profiles, so this will make developing facebook applications harder and more competitive.
And it might also be bad news for users who are always looking for new cool applications, maybe now they will be more interested in reading blogs that review facebook applications. One thing am sure about though is that most users will be very grateful for this new service from facebook.
While I was searching around for different stuff for facebook, I found a website that makes it easy to create FaceBook applications, and yes you guessed it, no need to know programming!, Although I knew couple of other websites that has sort of this kind of service, but it does not come as simple and straightforward as this.
Dapper is not only for creating facebook applications, nope, it has a number of other uses, but I will fully review it soon in a new post. Dapper basically allows you to create facebook applications by using content from the web. So I wanted to try it out, I created this new application that now around 40 people use it in facebook, it is “Amr Adeeb Videos” application.
Pretty simple, I made this application search on youtube for the latest videos for Amr Adeeb, he is a famous Arab talk show host in Egypt, anyway it was simple, I made the settings, created the application, went to Facebook and submitted my new application.
The application basically shows you 3 clickable titles of the latest 3 videos on youtube for Amr Adeeb, you can see more links by clicking the “See All” link to see more videos.
The applications is very small and simple, and the way it was done is also simple. If you want to add “Amr Adeeb Videos” application, just Click Here.
Khairy Ramadan, a very well known Egyptian journalist, until last week he was a co-host of “Cairo Today” or “Alqahera Alyaum” talk show, although lately was a co-host he started by just presenting the journalism segment were he reads the next day’s newspapers with a guest who is usually either a journalist, a poet, a writer or even sometimes an actor.
“Alqahera Alyaum” originally had two co-hosts, Amr Adeeb and Nirvana. Nirvana was fired from the show because of public demand. She was too much defensive of the Egyptian government, in each and every situation. Anyway, later Amr was in sort of a problem, who would be co-hosting with him?, but in the end the chair of the second host was not fixed on one person, and we started seeing a pattern, although a lot of actors and actresses started co-hosting, there are few names that recurred a lot. It was Ezzat Abu 3of, Ahmed Mousa and Khairy Ramadan.
The program usually have a one hour intro, where Amr and the co-host that day will discuss current news and current happenings in Cairo and Egypt in general. The most strongest intro’s were when Amr and Khairy were together, because both of them are journalists and loose they were more fun to watch.
Now I come to the main issue, Khairy Ramadan got a very interesting offer, “Assaa” or “Assa3a” channel offered him to co-host a new show which is sort of a clone of “Cairo Today”, actually there are enough clones already, Mehwer channel has “90 Minutes” and Dream Channel has “Al3ashera Masa’an” or “10 O’clock”, and the official Egyptian satellite channel has “Elbeit Baitak”, but still it seems each and every channel want to have a piece of the pie. Anyway, the program is called “Sa3a B Sa3a” “Hour by Hour”, the other co-host will be Mai Elsherbeeny, who left “90 Minutes” from Mehwer channel.
So Khairy will be a solid part of the program, I don’t think khairy left for the money, Orbit would have paid him what he wants, I am sure of it, but he left because of the chance of being part of something he has more control in and can better contribute to, which is his right, everybody should grab the chance for a better thing in his life, but I will really miss the kind of chemistry that was between him and Amr.
Mei Elsherbeny was ok in “90 Minutes”, but not great thou, I am not sure was that because of her co-host there Mo3taz Eldemerdash?!, I wish khairy will get the best out of her, and I advise him to keep using the tone he had on “Cairo Today”, that is speaking simple Arabic, and not choosing so big and difficult words which most writers prefer to use, because most of your audience are either not educated or had middle education, and with those kind of programs you would want to reach to everybody.
I had a chance to have a very tiny chat with Khairy in his group in FaceBook, he said that he left Orbit in a very professional friendly way and he has no issues with either the program’s administration nor with Amr Adeeb, which is good to hear, he said that his new show in “Assaa” channel is not totally a clone of those kind of shows like “Cairo Today”, he said that parts of it is actually like that, but a lot of parts are new and original.
In the end all what I have to say is good luck in the new show.
Now facebook allows you to organize your contacts into lists, so you can make different groups of friends, such as “Close Friends”, “Colleagues”, “University Buddies” and so on.
Those groups are not shown on your profile, they are only for your own use, to start organizing your friends into groups just click on “Friends” in the menu and click on “Make a New List” then type the name you want to give for the group, then just start typing the names of your friends or click “Select Multiple Friends” to select multiple friends by their pictures. Now you will be able to send messages to specific groups.
The next logical step now is that Facebook would make it possible for us to give access to different groups different parts of our profile, for example you wouldn’t want your work colleagues to see some more personal photos or videos.
This is not totaly new news, Facebook Beacon has collected many critics since it started, it is basicly a new Facebook adverising model. Simply if you buy anything anywhere online this info will be shared on your profile news board.
So now MoveOn the online campaign group is taking action, they created a Facebook group called “Facebook, stop invading my privacy“, the group has 9,724 members until writing this post. And MoveOn also started an online petition.
Here what they had to say :
“When you buy a book or movie online, or make a political contribution, do you want that information automatically shared with the world on Facebook?” the group asked.
“Most people would call that a huge invasion of privacy. But recently, Facebook began doing just that. People across the country saw private purchases they made on other sites displayed on their Facebook News Feeds.”
In the past few months I have been getting requests from Arabs all around the world, some from Egypt some from UAE and many from Europe, in countries such as UK, Germany and even Finland.
Anyway, I will try my best to cover each and every episode from now on, that means starting from the episode of the 13th of June 2008.
MySpace just announced that their developer platform will be lauching on February 5th 2008, developers can Pre-Register now by going to 
One of the annoying things in Facebook, yes it has many annoying stuff, but I believe one of the most annoying is those application invites we get from friends, especially when you have hundreds and hundreds of friends, you will end up with a clutter that is time consuming to clean out. So if you have been wishing day and night for a way to clear this clutter formed by the hundreds of application requests, today is your lucky day. 
This is good news for some people and really bad news for others. Facebook have listened to the complains and 
Khairy Ramadan, a very well known Egyptian journalist, until last week he was a co-host of “Cairo Today” or “Alqahera Alyaum” talk show, although lately was a co-host he started by just presenting the journalism segment were he reads the next day’s newspapers with a guest who is usually either a journalist, a poet, a writer or even sometimes an actor.
Now I come to the main issue, Khairy Ramadan got a very interesting offer, “Assaa” or “Assa3a” channel offered him to co-host a new show which is sort of a clone of “Cairo Today”, actually there are enough clones already, Mehwer channel has “90 Minutes” and Dream Channel has “Al3ashera Masa’an” or “10 O’clock”, and the official Egyptian satellite channel has “Elbeit Baitak”, but still it seems each and every channel want to have a piece of the pie. Anyway, the program is called “Sa3a B Sa3a” “Hour by Hour”, the other co-host will be Mai Elsherbeeny, who left “90 Minutes” from Mehwer channel.
Now facebook allows you to organize your contacts into lists, so you can make different groups of friends, such as “Close Friends”, “Colleagues”, “University Buddies” and so on.
This is not totaly new news, Facebook Beacon has collected many critics since it started, it is basicly a new Facebook adverising model. Simply if you buy anything anywhere online this info will be shared on your profile news board.