I noticed it yesterday, and it is confirmed now (Thanks Ahmad), the TRC (Telecommunications Regulatory Commission) reversed their bad decision of blocking Skype. It seems that Skype is no longer a security threat.
اللهم احفظ اردننا سالما من كل شر ومكروه وسكايب وياهو وجوجل وماسينجر و……
God keep our Jordan safe from any Harm, or Evil, or Skype, or Gtalk, or Yahoo Messenger, or MSN Messenger, or…..
A coworker informed me today that few days ago, the site of Skype (http://www.skype.com ) is no longer accessible from Jordan. It seems that they are following the steps of countries that live in the dark ages when it comes to Internet. To confirm that you don’t have a “Network Error” or that the site is down, and that the site is actually blocked, try to use any of the Internet Anonymizer services (http://www.freeproxy.ru/en/free_proxy/cgi-proxy.htm ) and see how you will be able to access it.
What really aches me the most, is that Jordan was really one of the countries that have the highest level of freedom of access in the Internet, and even daring to block sites to protect the commercial interests of few companies is the worst thing that could happen to our Internet industry. I really hope that some reasoning and sanity get to the heads of the decision makers in Jordan. The Internet is Free, I can still get the skype client from 10s of other sources, and I can make calls using 100s of applications, the only way I would use licensed services by companies in Jordan is if they give me same level of service with lesser price, and we know that this will never happen.
UPDATE: the block seems to effect the ability to download Skype client, and not using it for those who already downloaded it. So, for those who are already using Skype, it seems that they can continue to do so, but without the ability to download, or update their Skype Client.
UPDATE2: Thanks Omar, here is the official letter confirming that the block was requested from the Telecomunication Regulation Commission:
OK, I had it, I can’t stand this anymore, and I got to spill it out. I love my Macbook Pro, and I can’t imagine how I was computing before it. But, the level and quality of support an Apple user get in Jordan is basically, the worst anyone can get.
I bought my Makbook Pro as soon as it was available, and I was from those unlucky ones with a defect in the battery, where the machine randomly shutdown when it was getting near being empty. As well, a dent or a swallow in the back of the battery appeared, looked like it is gonna explode, and dangerous to use. So I stopped using the battery, and went looking for Apple support in Amman. That was around the 1st of June 2006.
First stop was a shop in Swaifiyeh, that identifies itself as an Apple Reseller, and Support provider. Went to them, they checked the laptop serial number, and they reported back “Your laptop is not covered with support, replacing the battery will be 200JDs” (That is 300$USD), WHAT ! I asked “Is my laptop less than 2 months old”, they answered “Yes”, I asked again “Is there an Apple Laptop that is sold without Warranty”, they said “No”, “So How-come my Laptop isn’t covered with support” .. no answer.. So, I left the shop, and went to the other Apple Provider located in Abdali.
There was a totally different experience, it seems to me that the people there know what they are doing, but the package (offices, dress-code, etc..) isn’t as pretty as the shop in Swaifiyeh, but it didn’t matter, I wanted the battery replaced. The guy there entered the laptop serial number, saw the same message that the other store saw about coverage, and smiled “It seems that the shop you bought your Laptop from didn’t fill your purchase information, or it didn’t sync yet with Apple Database” and they asked me for the contact information for the shop I bought from, and photo copied the invoice, and told me “It will take 6-8 weeks to have the battery arrive”.. that was June 5th.
Since then I had been using the laptop without a battery, I can tell you that the MagSafe works.. I lost count of the number of times that my laptop went dead because the power connector popped up and disconnected because of a movement near the laptop, it is supposed to “protect” the laptop from being cough up with the power wire if someone or something pull it off, but it ended up as the reason I have countless improper shutdowns for the machine.
Now, I had been emailing the Apple Agent in Amman almost weekly, asking them with an update, and getting answers such as “We made the Order”, “We are waiting for Approval”, “It is being shipped”, “It reached Dubai”, “it should come next week”, “it didn’t come with this shipment, maybe with the next one in few weeks”, etc… It had been 3 months now (13 weeks), and I am still waiting.. What bugs me the most, is that a client in USA, who probably have double my income, and payed for the same Laptop half the price I payed, is getting his battery exchanged in 2-3 days using mail, or immediate if he heads to one of the Apple stores or authorized service centers. Why is that ? Is the problem with Apple, focusing on US? and leaving their customers in this region under the mercy of bad service, or it is our problem for asking for a premium service when paying premium prices ? Tell you what, I don’t want premium service, I just want a service, any service.
UPDATE: After 4 months 9 days, and more than 50 follow up call, I got the battery, at Oct 16th.. At last, my Apple Portable is portable.
Is it just me, or there is a big spike in begging in the streets of Amman ? I just took 3 minutes walk, from office, to super market, back to the office, and I was stopped and interrupted by: One Young Man who need 1JD to get back to Gwaismeh (Meskeen, Magtoo3, and can only use taxis it seems), 2 ladies ( separately) – each with a baby- asking me for money to feed the baby, and last, one lady without a baby (maybe it is not her turn to use the baby today).
If there is one thing that I believe in more than Open Source, then it is that those beggars are big manipulative liars, every and each one of them, no exclusions.. and they come in different packages:
There are many other derivatives and mixtures of the above basic-types.. it can differ according to location, such as in front of a mosque, or near the burier places at funeral times, and so on.. and they are all big “thin” liars.. call me cruel, but I would never give a penny to any of them. If one is to help, then there are trusted organization, that take donations, and take the extra effort of checking the illegibility of those asking for money, and it is those organization that should be given money regularly, and not those pretending to wipe your windshield at a traffic light.
Allah ywafegko, don’t give money to any of those..
PS. to check the street I got 4 beggars in less than 100 meters, it is near the fifth circle, in front of the Sheraton.. Near Hotels .. mm.. interesting coincident ..
I was reading a story in the Independent about an investigation that is taking place in USA by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) about having news stations air “fake news reports” about the success of war in Iraq, that was tailored by Bush adminstration, and corporates that have businesses in Iraq.
I am not sure why I wasn’t surprised, when I first read it I thought “so, where is the story?”, doesn’t this really fit with the consperency theory that we all believe in ? Anyhow, for some unknown reason I remembered a certain article that I read some time ago in Alghad (Arabic).
Every now and then, when I get into a Taxi, and ask them to head to Marj Al-Hamam (7km outside Amman, where I live) I get a “Do you know how to reach it, because I don’t”.. now I am used to being asked that every now and then.. But today, for the first time, when I got into the Taxi from Marj Al-Hamam, and asked him to head to Second Circle, I got a “So you know how to reach it, because I don’t”..
For those who do not know Amman, part of the core of West/Mid Amman, is Zahran Street, which have 8 circles in it, and it is as if Western parts of Amman are built around them.. Now it seems it was the driver’s first day, and he is from Naur (which is 10 km away from Amman) and have no experience in Amman’s roads. But what was he doing in a Amman Taxi?
I read once (had been looking for it in the internet, without luck) that Taxi drivers in london take a long course (2 years?) to learn the streets of the city. Now I am not asking for magic here, I do not expect to be able reach home by telling a driver to go to “16 Qatar 3 st. Marj Al-Hamam” (at least not in the next 30 years) .. but when I say “second circle” I shouldn’t get a “where is that?” from a Taxi driver.
This morning I heard an interesting report in BBC Arabic about a news report saying that the Chairman of Jordan Television (Warning: An annoying site with parts of it working with a “DLS Connection” as mentioned in the Arabic section) resigned yesterday, and along with him a number of board members resigned as well.
What surprised me, is that while many think that Jordan TV need to be more open, our elected parliament thinks that it is “too free” and through accusations that it have open discussion program that criticize the government, and that it have entertainment programs that are inappropriate.
I started to believe that this is my fault, I choose not to vote in the last elections thinking that there is no one that is worthy. Maybe this attitude is what lead to us having such parliament. I am Sorry ..
It’s 7:30am, I woke up 30 minutes ago to prepare to work, found it is snowing hard. So we had to do it.. Yes we do.. We opened on Jordan Television to see what they are saying and playing. It is part of snow traditions. It seems that the people in Jordan Television were ready. They had the regular snow program prepared:
Now all what you see above are symprtoms to a day off. No one said it is off, but once we see the TV staff hitting with each other with snow in the TV garden we can tell that that’s it. Once the Prime Minister see this on TV he must declare the day off to make us watch Jordan TV.
Since I learned about Google Local now covering in Amman, I started to look and check places. It is very semilar to Google Earth, except that I didn’t really get to use Google Earth since there is no Linux version of it. Anyhow I compiled a list of buildings, sights, and places in Amman, with links to them in Google Maps. I will continue working on it when I have time, if you have places that you suggest, please leave them in a comment. Enjoy
As soon as I read the recent google post about their Local service, I rushed to try it. with so much ease, I found Amman fully covered in detail, while it did not before. Google had updated their Google Local service with the most recent images, and detail level, as the application Google Earth. Now this is major for us in Amman, as the older version (until a couple fo days ago) did not cover Amman in detail. Now we can lead people to places in Amman by the image. So maybe the next announcement of a JP meeting at Wild Jordan will come with a Google Local Link to it.
This morning I read an article in Al-Ghad (Arabic) about sacrifices made for the Adha Eid, and the hygiene problems and the scenery associated with it in the city of Amman. Living in Marj Al-Hamam made me associate the Adha Eid with the bad smell and blood on the street (sheep blood) that I saw for years at the entrance of Marj Al-Hamam, where there is a butcher store, and a temp cattle and sheep pound is set.
The good news is, this year, the 2 buildings and stores at the entrance of Marj Al-Hamam are brought to the ground, as part of the construction of the “Royal Village” that is taking place at the land of Amman International Exhibition (where Global Village was held for the last couple of years). So no blood spilled on the streets on our way to visit relatives in the Eid. Infact, I hope I won’t see any of those places around, I really can’t understand why do they insist to have them in open places where people can see it. Why not in some remote areas? Anyhow, I hope I won’t have a bloody Eid.
Yesterday I was at the Ministry of Trade to query about starting a non-profit establishment or company, for one of the organizations/projects I am involved in. Entering the ministry was a nice shock, it was my first time there. The design is very customer-service oriented, around 50 counters, with LED displays above each stating the status of the counter, and the number of the ticket it is serving, and seats. There was 2 ticket machines, with touch LCDs for different categories and so on. I was impressed. Read more…
Jordan will be hosting the second edition of the World Culture Forum next week, from 4th-7th of December. The event’s program and speakers list is extraordinary, which attracted me to the event since I knew about it, and so I registered to attend it. The speaker list is so full of key and known speakers, some of which are bloggers by the way.
Speaking of blogging, Lina initiated contact sometime few weeks ago with Shannon Riley from MECCAD and talked about the presence of Jordanian Bloggers in the event. Last night, Shannon talked to me about it, and it was proposed to have an Event Blog, where speakers, participants and organizers could blog about their views and recordings of the international event. It was offered to have Jordan Planet hosting and managing such blog, and so it happened.
Few hours later, World Culture Forum Blog was created, with the blessing and support of the MECCAD, and sponsorship, maintenance, and support of Jordan Planet. We hope that the event attendants will register and post on this blog during the forum, and that those who didn’t blog before, will find it as a chance to get into blogging.
This event blog, could be considered the first of a kind for events in Jordan. It serves double goals of promoting the event, and reflecting the opinions of it’s attendants. As well, it is to furtherly promote blogging in Jordan, and introduce the Jordanian bloggers community to the world.
Your feedback and input on the blog are very welcomed (you can use Contact Us form for that as well)
I wasn’t able to blog or access the internet much while I was in Tunis, so I will start in the next days blogging about the event, and the last days.
As soon as I was in the ICT4ALL Exhibition, I started to look for the societies and people I know. I met Ethan who introduced me to Hivos people in the event. As well I met Hossein Darakshan, and Isaac Mao whom I met in the Wikimania last August.
There I knew about a session that will take place on the 17th-18th Nov, titled “Expression under Repression”. It was a joint effort between Hivos and Global Voices. The seminar had some very interesting panel speakers, and discussions about freedom of expression and censorship on the internet.
Cases from Zimbabwe, China, Iran and Malaysia were introduced, giving a picture of the status of freedom and censorship in those countries as an example. There was supposed to be a blogger from one of the Arab countries present as well, but certain “censorship” efforts made it impossible. Read more in Ethan’s blog.
As well, Internet filtering and censorship was introduced, explaining the methods, technologies, and giving examples of sites censored in different arab and non-arab countries. After the session I tried to get more information about Internet censorship in Jordan, and basically they are aware of only one site that is censored from Jordan, which is a US-based e-newspaper that is almost censored in all arab countries, as it’s editor is known to be attacking all rulers and governments of the Arab world.
For me, attending this session was worth going to Tunis, I am glad that light is being shed on Freedom of expression in the internet, specially for bloggers.
Pictures:
Next: Wikimedia in WSIS
Today when I passed around 2pm in front of the 3rd circle I saw a stage being set up. After 2 hours, I got a call from a friend telling me that Rum is performing at the 3rd circle. Minutes later I was there. It was a performance by Rum, Amer Al-Khaffash, Osama Jabour, and other Jordanian singers. it was a short, yet emotional. Pictures below:
