Cultural relativity is an amazing thing. While American parents worry about their kids being on Facebook, Egyptian parents are naming their kids “Facebook” to commemorate the events surrounding the #Jan25 revolution.
According to Al-Ahram (one of the most popular newspapers in Egypt) a twenty-something Egyptian man has named his first born daughter “Facebook” in tribute to the role the social… → Read More
We were in Cairo the week before Tunisia fell, meeting with dozens of Egyptian technology start-ups on behalf of the US State Dept’s Global Entrepreneurship Program. The quality of their ideas thrilled us, as did their skill sets, vision and quiet resolve. It did not surprise us to hear that many of those we met shut their laptops in recent weeks to march through the streets throughout… → Read More
Social media’s role in the Egyptian revolution has been picked apart, but what do people in Egypt think about it? Meet Alyouka, the 21-year-old Egyptian who was the first person to Tweet out the #Jan25 hashtag which, along with #Egypt, became a rallying cry and loose way to organize communications around and about the protests. Twitter found Alyouka (no last name given) and asked her to write a… → Read More
While you can debate about the exact role of social media, specifically Twitter and Facebook, in Egypt’s revolution, there is no question about its role as a new global media channel. Where once people tuned into CNN to watch governments collapse, this time around they tuned into Al Jazeera on the Web (at least in English speaking countries lie the U.S. where Al Jazeera English is not widely… → Read More
A lot of people like to bitch and moan about how in the age of realtime information, the stream moves too quickly and as a result, there’s a decent chance of inaccurate news being spread. There’s no question it’s an issue, but with the situation in Egypt, we’re once again seeing the overwhelming upside of this realtime data spread that makes services like Twitter so powerful. And just look at the… → Read More
Much like 1000Memories with its online memorial to Egyptian protesters, group-texting app GroupFlier realized that its users were clamoring for an #Egypt-related feature, specifically one that provided curated Twitter and other content relating to the anti-Mubarak protests.
GroupFlier founder and Harvard Cyber-security expert Morris Penner thought this was a good idea. Following tweets about a… → Read More
Toronto entrepreneur Mahmoud Hashim had seen 1000Memories, a free service that builds profile pages for people who have passed away, on YCombinator’s Hacker News and thought that the product could be utilized to build a group memorial for those killed in Egypt’s #Jan25 protests. He offered to build the memorial himself.
Moved by the Mahmoud Hashim’s plea, the 1000Memories co-founders instead… → Read More
CNN’s Hala Gorani is reporting that Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq has announced that Google Middle East Marketing director Wael Ghonim will be released tomorrow Monday at 4pm. This is in line with Egyptian telcom mogul Naguib Sawiris’ O TV statement that he would be freed on Monday as well.
Missing since Thursday the 27th, Wael is thought to have hosted the first Facebook page that… → Read More
We’re hearing reports on Twitter that the coverage of Noor Group’s DSL service, Egypt’s last standing ISP which powers the Egyptian Stock Exchange as well as sites of major brands like Coca-Cola and Exxon Mobile, is being shut down, meaning there is a risk of Egypt losing all Internet coverage.
According to Jacob Applebaum the shut down is occurring in stages and certain sites are still… → Read More
How much good will Twitter and Facebook do your revolution once the government completely shuts down Internet access? “Not much good” is the correct answer. (Can something similar happen here in the U.S.?) That’s why it’s high time we pay homage to some of the old technology that’s really making this Egyptian situation tick: ham radio, fax machines, and good ol’ fashioned dial-up modems. → Read More
Back in November, Reuters published an article titled “Twitter co-founder hopes to create news network” where Biz Stone mulled over the idea that Twitter could create a social news firehose based on verticals. While the erroneous headline ended up being debunked by Twitter, some hypothesized that this could work if news organizations were given access to all tweets on a given topic as well as the… → Read More
At this point most of us are feeling pretty cool about ourselves for at least retweeting the #Twitterrevolution, first in Tunisia and now in Egypt. But only when us Internerds watch mainstream television do we realize that pundits are trying to give the Bush administration and the Obama administration credit for events which might irrevocably change the landscape of North Africa and the Middle… → Read More
Inspired by the recent Tunisian demonstrations against corruption, protesters are filling the streets of Cairo. And like the protests in Tunisia, the Egyptian ones were partly organized on Facebook and Twitter. And now Twitter appears to be blocked in Egypt, according to various Tweets and tips we’ve received. However, so far only the Twitter website itself is blocked (including the mobile… → Read More
Wikipedia Good news for those of you in North Korea! (That must be, like, zero of you. I can’t imagine the North Koreans allowing our silly, subversive site to be easily readable.) You’ll have a 3G network up and running tomorrow, thanks to Egypt’s Orascom Telecom‘s $400 million investment. The network will initially cover Pyongyang, North Korea’s capital, and other… → Read More
The Egyptian government GPS ban is locking down the country’s borders from the latest technology. This ban prohibits consumers from owning and operating GPS-capable devices without a government-issued permit which includes cars, mobile phones, notebooks, and anything else that might have GPS. The government cites security concerns and joins Syria along with North Korea as the only counties… → Read More
Riddle me this… is it 3G? Vodaphone just announced that it will be selling the iPhone — an iPhone — in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey. Man. Now that’s what I call a roll out. None of this pussy-footing around with Germany and the UK. That’s a man’s roll-out, friends. Now about that… → Read More
John is pretty hopped up on this stuff, so I’ll continue the trend. The undersea cables that were cut last week will, hopefully, soon be back up and running. Ships have been deployed to begin repairs and the one nearest the UAE is receiving treatment as we speak. FLAG Telecom, an Indian-owned cable network operator released this statement: “FLAG repair team is operating in extreme… → Read More
Da-dunt! Da-dunt! Da-dunt! I can’t stand it/I know you planned it… Well, it seems ships didn’t break the network cable links to Egypt — now they’re suspecting submarines. Not sure what to make of this development and unless Islamo-fascists have access to undersea vehicles and care enough to keep the devleloping world from connecting to the Internet, I don’t know… → Read More
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