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.
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August 26th, 2008
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.
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January 30th, 2008
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.