Google Hackers Targeted Source Code of More Than 30 Companies

Google Hackers Targeted Source Code of More Than 30 Companies

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Lebanon to host 2010 world newsaper conference

Lebanon's Al-Nahar will host the 2010 annual meeting of the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers. The June meeting will be the first time in its 63 year history the congress will beheld in the Arab world.

"The time is right for the world's press to meet in the Arab world, which has so much influence on world affairs, where the media is developing at a rapid rate, but which continues to struggle with repression of the basic human right to freedom of expression," Timothy Balding, co-CEO of the WAN-IFRA), was quoted as saying.

"And it is particularly appropriate to hold these meetings in Beirut, where the independent press has played a leading role for freedom and the right to speak out, not only in Lebanon, but in the entire Arab world."

• WAN-IFRA multiblog:www.wan-ifra.org/blogs/wanindia2009
  
• World Editors Forum blog:www.editorsweblog.org
  
• Twitter: @WANIndia2009, @NewspaperWorld and the M&G's Trevor Ncube, @3bucn
  
• Twitter Search: WANindia09 or #WAN

Best Buy ad celebrating Eid al-Adha has Right Wing in a tizzy

Apparently the right wing crazies are up in arms again about the fact that it happens to be a Muslim holiday - Eid al-Adha. In fact Muslims have been having holidays for the past 1430 years so perhaps it's not that big of a deal if a store like say, Best Buy, wants to acknowledge the fact.

As it turns out, this is probably the first time a retailer has sent out such Islamic holy day greetings, according to CAIR (Council on Islamic Relations). And what happened?

Vitriolic spewing by hateful narrow-minded people who have no respect for others, such as this Best Buy forum demonstrates. Why is it either Christmas or Eid. Either Hannukah or holiday? This article at Right Pundits pretty much sums up their thinking. In my opinion, exploit them all! On one hand people complain about the commercialization of [fill in holiday here] and on the other, everyone wants a piece of the action. Go ahead, sell your soul. Let companies and corporations exploit your holy day for profit and consumerist values. Of course, they should also have sent out Happy Thanksgiving ones. And maybe they did, it's unclear. I know I haven't seen any Eid flyers but I've seen so many "Thanksgiving Sale" ads that it's hard to keep track of whether I'm supposed to wake up at 4 am or 5 am to get the big sale. What?! Do "they" really want me to get up that early to shop?! Anyway, happy Thanksgiving to all Americans, happy Eid to all Muslims and happy whatever to whomever you are and want recognition :)

* Thanks to John Biggs at Crunch Gear for the picture of the ad

Critical article about censorship in Emirates media

I just came across an interesting article in Al-Akhbar, a Lebanese newspaper, about censorship in the Emirates and the role the governments are or are not playing in improving professionalism and transparency.

Davidson discusses the obstacles to transparency and liberalization as well as the free flow of information posed by the Ministry of Information and Culture, which deals with all sorts of publishing and media distribution. And he points out that although there is a new media law that prevents journalists from being put in jail, the fines are prohibitive and enforces the self-censorship many journalists there were brought up with in the Middle East.

He also notes the inherent contradiction of having the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority monitor and likely spy on internet usage in addition to blocking unknown numbers of sites even as the crown prince is going on and on about the need for transparency.

He offers as examples the anecdote about the failure of the UAE-based media failed to cover the royal family torture video (a 45-minute video in which Sheikh Issa, brother of the ruler, tortures a man by shoving sand in his mouth, beats him with a nail and board, held down by men in uniform etc). Several governments in the region blocked access to the video on YouTube as they did to the site UAE Torture.

In case you missed it, here's ABC's report on the torture video. Obviously I couldn't write about this while I was in Dubai until the official media did, and even when WAM finally wrote about Issa's detention and I wrote an article for Al Arabiya, I could only use the word abuse, not torture.

How do you say "internet" in Arabic?

Egypt has apparently started registering the first Arabic-language internet domain names at dot.msr during the 4th Internet Governance Forum (happening in its very own seaside resort of Sharm el-Sheikh) in a move critics of the regime's perspective on free speech and internet freedom find hypocritical and probably on par with the US or Libya heading up the UN Human Rights Commission. The move came Monday after ICANN, the international organization that handles domain naming, began registration for non-Latin-character domain names.

Arabic domain names could tear down the English-only internet and usher in a a new era of access and participation that could encourage Arabic businesses to engage with the web not to mention the less educated and unilingual Arabic speakers in the 22 Arabic-speaking states of the Middle East.

Or it could usher in a time of cyber-sovereignty, with countries vying for control over who controls which languages. Will Saudi Arabia fight to control Arabic naming? What happens if someone wants to register a curse word (apparently f*ck.me was snatched up as soon as .me was made available) or a slur against Islam? I wonder how (not if) this will be regulated... What is the process for asserting ownership or making legal claims? As this professor noted "If somebody who lives in Vancouver wants to register 'dot Tibet,' what's the process for objecting to that, if the Chinese government feels that's inappropriate? And who decides what's appropriate and what's not?"

But the language expansion also undermines American hegemony over the vast information infrastructure that has so impacted the daily lives of richer nations where connectivity and computer ownership are the norm. Although the majority of web pages may be in English today,this is likely to change in the near future (Chinese is predicted to become the most popular language of the internet).

So what does this mean for the mechanics of the web business? Well, search engine optimization (or SEO in the parlance of the biz as it were) just got a lot more interesting. URLs play a key role in SEO and until now non-Latin languages were locked out of some of the most lucrative aspects of online development. For example, commercialization of the internet and use by businesses in the Arab world lags behind that of the US and Western Europe in part because Arabic is not as competitive as English online. That's about to change.

What do I mean by the last statement? Well, this article describes how Google, for example, determines page rank (which for many business translates into a measure of its existential worth as well as its financial and PR health)

"Google looks at many elements to determine how to rank relevance, but the URL has been one of the most paramount. That's why people spend lots of money buying up heavily searched single- or double-word URLs. Those who jump into the search fray and buy up the new domain names consisting of heavily searched-on words, such as free, games, music, cell phones and sex, will capitalize on ranking for those words in search engines, according to Eli Feldblum CTO and founder at RankAbove, an Israeli-based SEO company."

The Muslim Brotherhood's leadership challenge a "milestone"

The supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Mohamed Mahdi Akef, has decided to step down at the end of his first term in January 2010 in what blogger and activist Ibrahim al-Houdaiby calls "an important milestone for the largest opposition group in Egypt." In his article Brotherhood Faces Leadership Challenge for the Arab Reform Bulletin Houdaiby explains why it's unlikely a reformist will be chosen as a successor and why the MB might just wait until the 2010 parliamentary and 2011 presidential elections since that is seen as a potential turning time for several key leaders who have been jailed following what many human rights observers called sham trials at secret military tribunals. Houdaiby gives two explanations for why this decision marks a milestone:

First, whoever the successor is, he will not enjoy the same historical legitimacy as Akef, who joined the Brotherhood at an early stage and worked with its founder, Hassan al-Banna. All of the potential replacements belong to another generation and lack the gravitas of Akef and his predecessors, which helped them resolve or at least postpone some organizational disputes.

The second reason is that Akef, who presided over a major political opening of the group in which its various intellectual orientations were clearly manifested, has the ability to manage diversity. This has been clear in his relations with leaders of the organization’s different currents and generations and his ability to bridge gaps between them. No candidate for the post seems to possess this skill, except perhaps Deputy Guide Khairat al-Shater, whose chances seem nil because he is currently imprisoned.

Shater indeed would be an interesting choice. His children are very active in the new media realm, and have been at the forefront of cyberactivism as it relates to the Muslim Brotherhood.

His daughter Zahra has led the campaign among bloggers and reached out to journalists and human rights organizations to support her father and condemn the tribunals. Children of the imprisoned leaders created a blog called Ensaa some years ago to track information on the secret trials and other issues related to their fathers' imprisonments. Since only families were allowed to visit the prison or attend the trial, and only sometimes, they were the only ones in a position to provide information and coverage on the trails and thus to the mainstream media.

Al Jazeera becomes leading Mideast sports broadcaster with ART buy

According to Gulf Times, the Arabic satellite news station Al Jazeera is poised to become the largest sports broadcaster in the Arab region with its reportedly billion dollar purchase of the Arab Radio and Television (ART) network. According to the article, the deal has not yet been announced formally, but it will give Al Jazeera exclusive rights that will likely see it become the leading sports network in the region. Last week, the UAE daily the National reported that the head of ART's public relations Nawaf Tamimi, said there was no rights deal, following press reports claiming ART had sold its extensive library to Al Jazeera Sports channel. "Rumors have been swirling around the Middle East media water cooler for a while now that the two pay-TV players that weren't a part of this summer's merger between Orbit and Showtime -- that is, Arab Radio and Television (ART) and Al Jazeera Sports -- are up to some kind of merging of their own," writes Keach Hagey. Looks like they are, just as AJ Sports celebrates its sixth year.

Dubai Media Not-So-Free Zone

This is the notice I get when I try to access the photo-sharing site Flikr in the UAE. Or any site ending in .ir for Israel. And on a host of other sites that Emirati authorities have decided is not acceptable. And I work in Dubai Media City, a supposedly "free" zone. Apparently not a zone for free speech.

I also can't call any Israeli numbers - which of course also cuts me off from Palestinians living in Israeli occupied territories as well as business and government contacts that could be needed to ensure proper, adequate and balanced coverage.

As a journalist I need to track down information and contact details for people all over the world. Yet the Dubai authorities have decided to censor my access to information. How can they call it a Media Free Zone when in fact it is not free at all?

(I originally wrote this post on Sept. 29 but decided not to post until leaving Dubai upon the advice of friends in the media field. Given that TECOM contacted me merely one day after posting this article I am glad I waited!)

P.S. The character above is one of the four grandmothers that star in the Emirati-created cartoon Freej, which I absolutely adore! Too bad she's used for such a negative purpose...