songs for Iran

Beautiful things can come out of the tragedy that is now Iran…

Dust in your Eyes

We shall Overcome by Joan Baez

Stand by Me by Jon Bon Jovi & Andy

the story of my life

via Geek and Poke

when Iran’s voice died

While I mused over
sweet and sour chicken
or beef with green pepper
in a restaurant in suburban Cairo,
thinking to myself, the air conditioning is too cold,

Iran caught fire.

I came home
9pm Tehran local time

to this:

a young woman shot, so much blood on her face
at first,
I did not know if her right eye
was gone
could not tell where the blood
was coming from.

But now, this I know:

she stood on Karekar Street
a Basiji bullet
toppled her
entered her heart,
and there, she died in less than 2 minutes.

This I know:

Her name was Neda
she had brown hair
and never thought
she would be dead today.

And this I know:

Her father cried out one word
in a language I cannot understand,
over
and over,
while her heart pumped blood
out of her nose and mouth.

Now

I sit on my bed,
holding onto green yarn
fashioning a bracelet like we used to
when we were 13

3 strands,
hold two, knot
and pull.

Over
and over.

It is not much.

But it makes me feel
like I am doing

something.

[Neda means 'Voice' or 'Call' in Farsi]

Comparison of Web-Based Twitter Clients

Having recently bought an Acer Aspire One Netbook with Windows XP – I’m always on the lookout for lightweight software. The more popular twitter clients like TweetDeck are huge memory hogs, so I decided to go down an alternative route. While I do spend a lot of time on twitter, I don’t want that time to affect my netbook’s performance so I started looking into web-based solutions, and found a few options that all offer something to its users.

TweetVisor is one of the first web-based solutions that I tried out but couldn’t use it for more than a day. TweetVisor is cluttered, takes an age to log in and to refresh, and its main downfall is that it tries too hard to do everything – and falls short in just about every aspect.

It includes everything I could ask for – real-time sreaming of tweets, saved searches,
a dedicated column each displaying replies and direct messages, a choice of two different templates (one that leans towards the original Twitter website, and one that seems to borrow heavily from TweetDeck’s appearance) in-built support for TwitPic, TwitPic, TweetShrink, Mr Tweet, TwtTask, groups, trending topics and a choice of over 10 url-shorteners. And it would be great if less than half of all that actually worked. But it doesn’t.

And for my purposes – trying to find something lightweight to use on a netbook – TweetVisor was just frustratingly slow.

TweetLens

(They are so minimalistic they don’t even have a logo)

First off – using TweetLens, you have to bear in mind that it is in an Alpha Preview stage. TweetLens is very very barebones, and will appeal to people who prefer to use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the website. That is probably the main feature that sets it apart from any other client. And if you prefer a clean, minimalist look – then TweetLens will also be very appealing.

Like all other clients, TweetLens makes it easier to reply and retweet. It also allows you to collapse specific tweets to take up less space on the page and you can also add the tweet to your favourites. Other features include saved searches and for some reason you can both add tweets to your favourites – or “like” them – which I’m guessing is specific to TweetLens users only – and seems a bit redundant in my opinion.

TweetLens does not auto-refresh – you have to update it manually. One bug I spotted was that after logging out and back in again, I checked my replies, and had to manually refresh them to see the new replies, and even switching between the main stream and replies did not trigger a automatic refresh.

I like the keyboard shortcuts, but the lack of an url-shortener and having to manually refresh puts TweetLens at the bottom of the pack – especially considering this is one of my main gripes with the Twitter website itself. I’d be interested in coming back to see what they’ve done with the site after a while.

TwitIQ is one of two web-based clients that I prefer. My only gripe with TwitIQ is that it doesn’t auto-refresh. Other than that it includes all the main features that I would ask for in a client.

It has a simple easy-to-use set-up, and the website itself doesn’t stray far from the original Twitter website. It supports multiple accounts, has a tabbed menu for your main stream, replies (or as they call them ‘mentions’), direct messages, people that you follow/follow you, and saved searches (’channels’). It makes it easy to reply or retweet but doesn’t allow you to add tweets to your favourites.

A unique feature I haven’t seen anywhere else is a tag cloud of keywords from the tweeple that you follow, along with other commonly seen features like an url-shortener and trending topics. Another unique feature is, that at a click of a button, you can see all tweets in your stream that include urls, that are retweets and that contain questions. It also has a heavy focus on the conversational aspect of twitter, including the original twitter, below any replies – and it manages to pull this off without cluttering the screen.

I’ve been using TwitZap for about a day now – and so far it’s proven to be my favourite of all the web-based options. Like TwitIQ, it has an easy-to-use et up, and the one feature that really puts it at the top of my list – auto-refresh that works like a charm! Auto-refresh works for your main stream, replies and direct messages.

It also has a tabbed menu for your main stream, replies, direct messages and favourites. You can also add saved searches (’channels’) to the tabbed menu – but there seems to be some sort of glitch with the search function at the moment and is a known bug on their website. Other features include trending topics, an in-built url-shortener. TwitZap doesn’t make it easy to follow conversations on twitter directly within its website. Checking the original tweet in a reply takes you to the original status update on Twitter. It does however make it much easier to reply, retweet, favourite and send direct messages. It also features small thumbnails of pictures uploaded to TwitPic.

Conclusion

While TwitIQ includes many more features that I would like to use, until they incorporate auto-refresh into the website, TwitZap remains my first choice

(For a feature comparison chart on the four websites go here)

she just wants…

via: Found Magazine

The Sorry State of Egyptian Journalism

A few days ago, an Egyptian newspaper, saw fit to run the following story on it’s front page:

For those of you who don’t speak Arabic, I will attempt to translate as best as I can. You have been forewarned that my Arabic sucks, and that my translation will probably skip half the article (but don’t worry – you don’t need those bits to appreciate the utter stupidity that is displayed in this tiny tiny piece).

So apparently, one of the most newsworthy stories last week was the fact that while addressing congress, Barack Obama finding himself flooded with praise, held out his hand to bring the praise to an end, at which point this badly-timed photograph was taken:

To any sane, logical person, the instant assumption about Obama’s intentions would be as follows – he was simply putting out his hand in a show of (faux?)-modesty, so that he could go on.

But not to us Egyptians! Our creative journalism skills (and our desperate need to align ourselves with Obama in any way) have led us to this conclusion – he was, in fact, holding out his palm, fingers spread, in the typically Egyptian gesture that is used in the more sha3by* parts of the country when warding off the Evil Eye. Yes Ladies and Gentleman, not only does Obama believe in the Evil Eye, he is also an avid believer in the power of the open palm, or ‘Khamsa We Khemessa,‘ when warding off said Evil Eye.

Can I take this moment to reiterate how very proud I am to be a member of this great nation that is Om El Donia?

(Footnote: *Sha3by is (to me) an impossible word to translate as is proven by the list of incongruous words which google translate provides in an attempt to explain what it means. The best way I can describe it is, it’s everything you’d see in those parts of Cairo where expats probably go to for an “ethnic” experience. And that does not include Khan Al Khalili.

In an attempt to translate Khamsa We Khemessa google told me it means “Five Khamisp.” Even I did a better job translating it than that.)

Choosing who to follow on Twitter

It seems that every other blog post I come across these days is about Twitter so why not jump on the bandwagon – after all I have my own modest twitter account right here.

As a person who originally sung the praises of Jaiku, but gradually found myself logging into twitter more often, and eventually not logging into Jaiku at all, I can’t get enough of twitter. So much so that at one point, I created a second account to use for little snippets of poetry, which I aptly named, Onelinepoetry.

As is my nature with most things, I was excited about it for about 3 and a half minutes, and posted a total of two updates, before I forgot all about it and moved on to something else, the list of which includes Mafia Wars (yes I’m one of those) and a project on Flickr where I planned to take photos of the Cairo phenomena that is 3 or more people on a motorbike, which I aptly named, Familiesonbikes. (The account currently is home to one lone and not very good picture).

So today, I found out all about one of the many fads that is making the rounds on Twitter, Haiku Thursday, which reminded me of my second twitter account with the two lonesome posts, and I thought it might be worth reviving.

Imagine my surprise when I logged in and found that I had a total of 80 followers. (It has since gone down to 79, following my most recent tweet, which, when I get to the point that I’m trying to make – you’ll find is pretty ironic).

Finding that many people following an account which has been inactive since April 2008, and has a total of 2 updates, it got me wondering what motivates people to actually follow someone on twitter.

What do you take into consideration before you decide to follow someone on twitter? Besides actual content, I do have to admit I take the ratio into account. If someone is following thousands, and is only followed by a few hundred, I tend to assume there’s either spam involved, or this person really isn’t interested in what other people actually have to say. And if they have a website, I check it out. I also take into account how often they update, usually just to be sure that I won’t be flooded with tweets from one person. And I thought this was a given, but I guess it isn’t, but a tweet or two in the past few months doesn’t hurt.

And now that I’ve revived my second account, one hour within finally posting an update after a 10 month silence, I lose a follower.

US celebrities criticised for visiting the Mid East

Am I missing some sort of sarcastic hilarity in Gawker’s post about US celebs jetting off to Dubai while their country goes up in flames?

Since when is visiting the Middle East such a crime? Oh how critical they must be of the thousands of Americans currently in Iraq. (Ah there’s a bit of sarcastic hilarity of my own. Not very funny is it?)

And neither is Gawker stereotyping an entire city, an entire region, with their oh-so-intellectual and witty commentary describing Dubai as “Terrorist Disney World”:

While the country burns—literally and figuratively—these folks spent how much on dresses (and, um, banana-yellow suits in the case of Mr. Snipes), to go fete it up in the Middle East and had the audacity to smile?? Well I hope they like it over there in Terrorist Disney World, because they aren’t allowed back here.

I wonder if they had flitted off to Brazil or Japan, would their inability to stay within the borders of the Good Ol’ US of A been subject to such a viscious reaction.

Saudi’s First All Female Rock Band

Saudi Arabia officially has their first all female rock band – The Accolade.

They cannot perform in public. They cannot pose for album cover photographs. Even their jam sessions are secret, for fear of offending the religious authorities in this ultraconservative kingdom.

But the members of Saudi Arabia’s first all-girl rock band, the Accolade, are clearly not afraid of taboos.

The band’s first single, “Pinocchio,” has become an underground hit here, with hundreds of young Saudis downloading the song from the group’s Web site. Now, the pioneering foursome, all of them college students, want to start playing regular gigs — inside private compounds, of course — and recording an album.

Via New York Times.

iPhone launching in Egypt tomorrow?

According to the Vodafone Egypt website, the much anticipated launch of the iPhone is tomorrow. Can the website be trusted? No one seems to have a clue as to what is going on, and the Mobinil website has switched the wording from “coming soon” to “is finally here,” but who knows what that means. And the registration forms have disappeared – although probably by now, everyone and their mother has registered.

Just got off the phone with Vodafone and apparently I have no powers of persuasion because they said that all the details (prices, exact launch date etc.) would be available on the website at midnight tonight, and she wouldn’t budge. Then again, the woman has no idea that their very own website had announced the launch for tomorrow so maybe she really is clueless. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…

Update:

Mobinil have announced their prices 3800EGP ($687) for the 8GB and 4450EGP ($800) for the 16GB. Nothing has been said about contracts or the phone being locked. Either way, I’m not entirely surprised. I was told that Apple had some sort of control over how much the phone would sell for all over the world – but of course that doesn’t apply to Egypt. What a joke. I can only hope that Vodafone does things differently otherwise I’m not buying the damn thing on principle. I refuse to be ripped off.