Etisalat Unblocks Stumbleupon After Blocking it Couple of Days Ago

To those who do not know, Stumbleupon is a website that allows users to rate websites and share them with their friends and with other users who have the same interests as them. Just by installing the Stumbleupon toolbar on Internet Explorer or Firefox the user sets his interests and by just clicking “Stumble” he will be able to jump from one website to another, so for example if one of his interests is gardening he will come across gardening websites, then he can rate it and like that Stumbleupon will understand what the user likes and dislikes to refine choice of websites to be stumbled.

Web surfers in the United Arab Emirates got the bad news two days ago that Etisalat the largest Telecom Company in UAE have blocked access to StumbleUpon and users were getting errors when clicking on their StumbleUpon Toolbar. People were angry, mad, and all kind of bad feelings you can think of, all sort of people from your regular web surfer to the Web Developer, all did not like the news and tried to contact Etisalat and ask why is this happening, but you always would get your regular answers. Some Web Developers and Bloggers actually use StumbleUpon as a way to promote their websites.

But today morning, and like every morning (I know am addicted ) I clicked on “Stumble” button of the StumbleUpon Toolbar and was shocked that it worked, I tried again and again and it worked, then just to confirm it I went to www.stumbleupon.com just to check if the homepage would load fine and it did. So I hope this comes as good news to all stumblers in UAE .

2 comments July 8th, 2008

MoveOn fights Facebook for lack of privacy

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.”

CNN made a story about this conflict…

Add comment November 22nd, 2007

Microsoft buys a piece of Facebook, an expensive piece…

Well there were signs all over the net that there is a huge bidding war between Microsoft and Google and it seems Miscrosoft just wanted it more than anybody. The speculation was that who ever wins the bidding in the end will buy around 10% of Facebook, but the war ended with Microsoft paying $240 Million for a 1.6% stake in Facebook. Which makes Facebook overall value goes up to 15 freakin BILLION Dollars, $15 Billion, wow, although this year they have made only around $150 Million in revenue.

So what is the deal exactly, well Facebook gets allllot of cash, employ some new employees, expand to other countries and so on, for Microsoft, it will be selling ads that show up on Facebook outside the U.S and share the revenue with Facebook, btw Microsoft already sell ads for Facebook in the U.S.

Who should we congratulate? who is the real winner here ? only time will tell.

Add comment October 26th, 2007