Printing Wikipedia, An Inverse Google Print

"Entries from Wikipedia, the popular free online encyclopedia written and edited by Internet users, may soon be available in print for readers in the developing world, founder Jimmy Wales said on Monday. He said content from the Web site may also be burned onto CD's and DVD's so computer users in places like Africa, who lack access to high-speed Internet, could consult parts of the reference work offline", CNN But do you really think that printing it is a good idea? I believe that one of the major advantages of Wikipedia is that it can be live updated with the most recent topics every day. Also since it is edited by anyone at any time - which helps in correcting any error s soon as it is detected - it needs to be error free before publishing it on some static media like a printed books, or CD's. Finally, I don't think that publishing it on paper can be cheaper than a Dial-up Internet connection in most of the developing countries. Tags: Internet, Wikipedia, Gr33n Data

Palestinian Child's Spirit, Alive Peace Maker

"The father of a Palestinian boy shot dead by Israeli soldiers said Monday he believes his son's spirit is alive in every Israeli after donating the boy's organs to Israelis waiting for transplants", CNN Tags: Political, Social, Israel, Palestine, Gr33n Data

Mysterious Eve, and The Mysterious Arabic Text

In a previous post I was talking about how writing in Arabic on the PC can be really annoying.

"When you try to put a full-stop or an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, the computer will put it at the beginning of it instead", Arabic Enabled @ Gr33nData

Then a nice Lebanese blogger called Mysterious Eve - she has a wonderful blog by the way - has sent me a comment there that solved most of the problems I was facing.

"the solution is easy. When you write in Arabic, align to the right, then insert dir="rtl" between div and right. plz email me if I wasn't clear enough.", Mysterious Eve.

In English; put dir="rtl" in the div tag to look like this:

<div dir="rtl">SOME ARABIC TEXT</div>

So I'd really like to thank her for her help, and hope that this may help other Arabic bloggers as well. Tags: Arabic, HTML, Technology, Gr33n Data

Arresting Abdul Kareem: Defending Islam or Offending It?

An Egyptian blogger - Abdul Kareem Nabeel Soliman - was arrested on Wednesday 26 October 2005 by the Egyptian State Security (Amn El Dawla). According to his family, his arrest might be a result of his writings that are attacking Islam. His brother said that Abdul Kareem has a tense relation with Salafis in his hometown of Alexandria. He added that they might be the ones behind filing a complaint against his brother. Sources: Manalaa.net , Miss Mabrouk, and Amr Gharbeia.

I've visited his blog before and I do really disagree with his writings about Islam; however I still cannot find any reason for arresting someone for what he says or writes. And for those who think that he should be arrested for offending Islam, I believe that arresting him is more offending to Islam. Because by arresting him you are just telling everyone that Islam is in a real danger because of a couple of blog posts. And finally I do believe that Islam is great enough not to need any security forces to defend it, and will never be in danger because of a couple of blog posts, or even millions of them. Tags: Egypt, Abdolkarim, Detention, Blog, Gr33n Data

Microsoft's Life Era

About every five years, Microsoft holds an event to introduce a "big bet" that Bill Gates is making in hopes of changing computing as we know it.

On Tuesday here at the Palace Hotel, Bill introduced what he's calling the "Live era," in which software and online services and applications work together, portions paid for by advertising and subscription revenue. Microsoft showed two online platforms, Windows Live and Microsoft Office Live. Windows Live looks like a cross between MSN and SharePoint. It's a customizable home page, with new features to be added as the beta continues.While Microsoft Office Live is a set of small business services, including Web hosting and e-mail that is built largely atop SharePoint and incorporates the old bCentral hosted services. Source: eWeek

The first (beta) iteration of Windows Live is now available at live.com. The website, which currently works only with Windows Internet Explorer — support for Firefox and other browsers is forthcoming — has a search engine like Google, access to news and information services like Yahoo and MSN but one more thing — a great deal of customization. When you first visit the site you see a sidebar with headings such as “My Web,” and “Gadgets” as well as information categories including Business, Entertainment, Health News, Science & Tech and Sports. Gadgets is a series of mini-applications such as e-mail, customized stock quotes, horoscopes and a ticking clock that all run from within the browser (unlike Apple’s Widgets, they do not run from the computer’s desktop). You can select a gadget from the list and drag it to any portion of your personal live.com page. “Office Live” is targeted to the estimated 28 million small businesses worldwide with fewer than 10 employees. The basic free ad supported service will include a domain name, a web site with 30 MB of storage and five Web e-mail accounts — each email account gets up to two gigabytes of storage. For a fee, Office Live will also provide access to 22 business applications to “help automate daily business tasks such as project management, sales and collateral management, customer management, expense reports, time and billing management, and secure internal and external collaboration.” While this initiative marks a step forward for Microsoft, it is hardly a revolutionary concept. Sun and Oracle, for years, have been talking about using the Internet as the nexus for future computer operating systems. Google has been marching steadily forward launching many new services that go way beyond its original search function and Yahoo is continually expanding its offerings. Even AOL, which has traditionally been a dial-up access provider, is repositioning itself as a web services provider with free e-mail and other services. Source: CBS News

Tags: Microsoft, Technology, Gr33n Data

Manalaa.net: Position On Top Time Trick

Since you can change the time tag when creating a new blog post. You can write it now, but set the date and time to two hours later, or even the following day. So the point is that many people just change their posts time and/or date to make them appear on the top of Manalaa.net - or any blog aggregator they are member of. That's why I think that blog aggregators shall discard the time tag that comes with the posts, and use the time when they crawled to the blog instead. Tags: Blog, Technology, Gr33n Data

February 29, 1980.

I've successfully made a post with a date prior to 1990. Just see this post.

Publish Now, Or Save It For Tomorrow !?

Sometimes you find yourself having too many topics to talk about in your own blog and some other times you can't find anything to say. So do you think that saving posts for the future is a good idea? Just write the ideas in your blog and save them as draft and publish them later so that your blog users will find your blog being updated frequently. But on the other hand, do you really think that your mind can run out of ideas and new topics? Why not just publish whatever is in your mind now and sure you'll find something to write about tomorrow? As for me I prefer the "Just post what is in your mind now" more than the "Save some posts for tomorrow", as I think that the more you write and the more comments you recive on what you wrote, the more ideas you get in your mind. Tags: Internet, Blog, Gr33n Data

Arabic Enabled

In a previous post I've asked people if they prefer my English blog or my Arabic one more. Actually I myself prefer writing here in the English one, as I hate writing in Arabic on the PC. One of the reasons is that I can find the English letters more easily than the Arabic ones, also because when I want to say something I prefer to say it in Arabic but when it comes to writing I prefer it in English. Other than these previous reasons, the main reason to hate writing in Arabic on the PC, is that I believe that those programmers who are responsible for arabization are really bastards. And when you ever try writing in Arabic you will always see freak stuff like the following ones.

• When you try to put a full-stop or an exclamation mark at the end of the sentence, the computer will put it at the beginning of it instead.
• When there is a sentence of both Arabic and English letters, the computer will just makes its best to rearrange the letters so that no one will be able to read it.
• Brackets and braces are real pain in the a**. (Where '*' = '*')
• Trying to use the backspace and delete button will delete any letter but the one you really want to delete.
• Sometimes copying and pasting a paragraph may result in rearranging the sentences there.

Tags: Arabic, PC, Gr33n Data

Happy Eid

It's been announced that Eid Ul Fetr - End of Ramadan Feast - will be next Thursday here in Egypt, and I think many other countries as well, so I'd like to wish you all the best and a happy Eid.

Tags: Eid, Ramadan, Gr33n Data