Archive for the 'Digital life' Category

Is Nokia trying to attract app developers or scare them away?

Saturday, August 14th, 2010

Be warned. It’s time for another long Nokia post on 360east!
Last week ago I was in Beirut to attend the first Nokia Levant Developers Forum.

The fact that Nokia actually holds such local events and goes through the trouble and cost of flying people to Beirut shows you how hard the company is trying to stay [...]

Nokia X6 Comes with Music: All you can eat, but with a wooden spoon

Saturday, July 3rd, 2010

It sounds like an offer no true music lover in Arabia can refuse: Buy a very capable touch screen smartphone from Nokia and get access to an all-you-can-eat music library of 4 million tracks for free for 12 months. And you get to keep the music you download for ever too.
That, in a nutshell, is [...]

6 interesting usages of Ikbis.com

Saturday, April 10th, 2010

Over the past few years, Ikbis.com has grown in size and in depth. Ikbis Channels, in particular, have been multiplying in number and are being used by a wide variety of users and organizations: from people sharing a an interest to global broadcasting organizations reaching out to Arab audiences.

Here are 6 examples of what I [...]

ArabNet, Beirut and ‘Being Arab’

Monday, March 29th, 2010

Visiting Beirut is always a bitter sweet experience. My last trip to Beirut to attend ArabNet, the region’s first web business conference was my third trip to the city in 8 years, each of which had the duration of 48 hours. Each time I visit beirut I leave with a book, always from Librarie Antoine, [...]

ArabNet 2010, Day 1: the Arab web industry emerges

Thursday, March 25th, 2010

Photos stolen from Andfaraway
With a ballroom full of participants during all sessions, buzzing networking activity during coffee breaks, inspiring talks from both older web hands and young ones, startup demos from all over the region, not to mention very active tweeting and live blogging, we can say that day 1 of the ArabNet [...]

ArabNet: Ten years late, the Arab web industry gets its conference

Monday, March 22nd, 2010

Here is one of my favorite anecdotes about the Arab web industry: the web advertising spending of the whole Arab region, including the rich Gulf region and Saudi Arabia is less than the revenue of a single niche web marketing agency (which you never heard of) in Seattle where one of my friends works. Now [...]

The iPad is so 2010. Say “hello?” to the ePad..

Saturday, March 6th, 2010