As Makan is turning 7, SYNTAX & Spring sponsored the design and development of their new website.

Check it out @ http://www.makanhouse.net

This was one of the projects we had most fun in doing, the design was inspired by Makan’s space with its welcoming atmosphere, simple interiors and clarity so comes the chairs and the sofa.

Makan really wanted to turn the website into a virtual space people can visit to learn more about the projects in the archives, get to know the artists who have participated in Bait Makan residency program as well as other programs.

Makan staff as well as residents have a blogging space to document their daily activities, so the blog section should be quite an interesting space to visit in the next few months.

One of the major needs Makan had was the ability to get feedback on exhibitions held at Makan after the even. In the new website, all events have a space for visitors to comment and give feedback to the artists after they have seen the exhibition.

Shatana, Makan’s flagship event has a section of its own where artists can apply for the workshop -held every year- as well as check the previous workshops; the participating artists and their projects as well as a photo gallery of the whole event.

enough talking, now go enjoy surfing the website

Yes, finally Spring has a real website!

Check it out @ http://hellospring.net

Though we love the one pager Ahmad did almost 2 years ago; yet, telling people the old saying in Arabic translating to “the carpenter’s door is broken” got really embarrassing lately.

And since spring 2009 is almost here; we thought this is the time to get our website out!

A detailed list of our services is there plus a showcase of some of our projects. Also you can follow us on twitter.

mmonaa just tweeted this very informative presentation on the next 10 years, what marketing to youth should be all about. Done by Graham Brown from MobileYouth.

Platforms over pipelines.

I like it and i think its how things are today.

[slideshare id=1002156&doc=thenext10-1234036385982686-2]

The latest tool from Google, Google Latitude sounds partly very very cool and partly very very scary. It seems to me as location-based mobile social networking at its best. You use your Google Maps enabled phone and you get to see where your friends are and what they are up to!

Here is a cool introductory animated video from Google:

Too bad it doesn’t support Jordanian operators yet But I was able to add it to my iGoogle homepage where you set your own location. Not that fun since Amman Map isn’t so advanced.

Some are calling it the jealous girlfriend/boyfriend’s best friend!  But I think like all technologies, if used well and you are able to set your privacy settings you will have so much fun using it.

If there are no loans; there will be no money.

Banks do not lend money, they actually create money everytime someone signs a loan contract.

More insights into the corrupt banking system in a very informative 5 part documentary/presentation with many quotes for leading economists, ex central bank executives….

“Money as Debt”

Britain form Above is a documentary done by the BBC giving viewers a bird’s eye view of the nation. The following amazing visualizations on how Britons communicate and transport by sea and air are on BBC’s YouTube Channel:

My friend Duha was watching the news of what the Israeli killing machine is doing in Gaza and got reminded of this amazing song by Ultravox “All Fall Down” and she sent it to me.

Never heard it before but the music and lyrics says it all to me. Strong amazing visuals in the video too (watch till the end to see it).

Mad Sad World.

Yes, it has come! Some call it Lifestreaming as well.

Two great tools to turn your blog into a lifestream of everything else you log on the web are here, Swurl and Storytlr.

In both with -some differences- you can aggregate your online life being your blog, twitter account, facebook status, or any RSS feed of any service you choose into a blog like website.

And soon I will move thewebssessed.com domain into one! I’ve tried both but I seem to like storytlr more, simply because they allow you to group different posts from different services into a story which is a very powerful tool Swurl doesn’t have. Also, with storytlr you can import any other RSS feed as well not just stick to the supported services available with storytrl/swurl. However, swurl looks up your friends where people visiting can see what they are up to, also they provide a calandar looking timeline of your online life.

See for yourself:

razano.storytlr.com

razano.swurl.com

Finaly, a review of an Arab-related startup Yamli (previously reviewed here) at TechCrunch today, read the full article Yamli Makes It Easy To Use Arabic On The Web.

The article also mentions Maktoob!

Congratulates to the Yamli team!

Yammer.com a company which has just launched at TechCrunch50,  offers a service similar to twitter but aimed for business answering the basic question of “What are you working on?”

You can use your work email and invite other colleagues who have the same company domain to yammer together.

I think this is an excellent idea and I think it will be a huge success because it might be much more useful than twitter, people knowing what others are working on in the same company is very useful. Yes, I am more for “serious” apps! It will be great if in the future, Yammer can allow companies to befriend each other as well so you yammer with other teams you work with.

A hilarious song by Ben Walker about the evolution of the web up until Twitter!

check it out at: http://5090.fawm.org/songs.php?id=2303

(Click play on the player on top of the page!)

Lyrics

You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter
And if you aren’t there already you’ve missed it
If you haven’t been bookmarked, retweeted and blogged
You might as well not have existed

In the old days it was all about achievements
Collecting all your trophies in a shrine
Then everybody came across the internet
And suddenly you had to be online

A home page was all you really needed
To seem like a success but not a geek
As long as you updated semi-annually
And checked your email once or twice a week

You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter…

Technology was moving rather quickly
And the next thing you needed was a blog
With intimate and detailed press releases
And now and then a photo of your dog

More recently the students brought us Facebook
And everybody has a hundred friends
The parties in the photos look amazing
They’re not so great but everyone pretends

You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter…

Now you need to publish every movement
And every single thought to cross your mind
I’m told the Twitterverse is full of rubbish
But most of us are actually quite refined

We validate each other’s insecurities
And brag about the gadgets that we’ve bought
We laugh out loud at every hint of jolliness
And try to self-promote without being caught

You’re no one if you’re not on Twitter…

I have stumbled upon two new developments that tackle the future of books and of course the two have the web at the center of the experience.

The first is Amazon’s Kindle, the wireless reading device is more like the iPod for books, where you can buy a book at a cheaper price and get it delivered wirelessly to the device it self so you can read it.  You can also read magazines and newspapers.

The second is the Unbook experiment by Jay Cross and Dave Gray (who I know of), the concept lies in trying to make books into living objects and not timestamped into versions that become obsolete when the next one comes along. Books that evolve.

The concept is explained better in this slide show:
[slideshare id=569866&doc=theunbook0012003-1219747524880688-9&w=425]

(Jay’s book is called “Learnscape Architecture“)

The Kindle enables me to take as many books as I want anywhere without worrying about weight I have to carry. mmmmm but i love the feel of real books, turning the pages…

While the Unbook enables me -the reader- who’s interested in the subject help bring the next version through discussion over blogs and still be able to read the paperback version!

Anyway, being the web 2.0 geek I am, I had to Google “Books 2.0″, and found a blog -shockingly- called The book is dead with a post about Books 2.0! Turned out to be the online blog associated with a book called “The book is dead” by Sherman Young. The post is about an article on BusinessWeek called Book Publishers: Learn From Digg, Yelp—Even Gawker where the author talks about how publishers need to embrace Web 2.0 concepts.

Guess I am going to buy Jay’s and Sherman’s books before I go and say anything more on this subject!

I got a new laptop last week and it was just amazing how fast I could transfer all my stuff to it, it was fully ready in less than 3 hours. Nope it didn’t have to do with what “transfer” method I used or what was pre-installed on it.

It was simply how the move into webware instead of software made things much easier.

Things I didn’t have to move:

1. My emails were all stored on Google Apps (except for SYNTAX since it has 20MB limit)
2. My project data was all stored on Basecamp
3. My tasks were all listed on HighRise/Basecamp
4. My RSS feeds were all on Google Reader.

In the old days, you had to worry about installing all the software you use over again, but thanks to webware that also speeded up how fast I set up everything I needed which came from two main suppliers Microsoft and Adobe!

The things I had to move were:

1. Pictures, which I could put on Flickr or Ikbis but i still worry about privacy issues.
2. Documents, which I could have put on Google Docs (Part of Google Apps) or acrobat.com. But still I somehow can’t make the move to web office tools yet.
3. Music, which I could have Synchronized with my iPod (had i had one).
4. Contacts, will since my i-mate (mobile) can’t sync with my laptop anymore I had to copy them.

Yep, you can tell very easily that I love webware Wonder when will I be able to use the term more often like we say software!

We went to the Ministry of Industry and Trade and registered a trade name for Questler, since it had to be Arabic and we couldn’t use “كويستلر” then we had to come up with a unique name and we didn’t want it to take ages to check against their database. Our first option was “Blue Star” – “النجمة الزرقاء”, and oups, it was taken.  The next option was Blue Lemon – “الليمون الأزرق”  and the registrant lady wents into a big laugh, sayine “come on guys, Blue Lemon!!! what kind of software company gets called Blue Lemon. Then she made sure we sign that “we will not translate that name when we write it in English” Here is to you lady, a blog post called Blue Lemon!

So the company behind questler is -so far- called “Sharekat Al-laymoun Al-azraq lilbarmajeyat” – “شركة الليمون الأزرق للبرمجيات”.

And much to our surprise later, is our icon!

We got very excited today with the number of blog posts that sprung out of Jane’s post yesterday, the more exciting thing was the great number of users that joined and are growing!

Here is the chronological order of things:

1. Jane’s post on July 28th UK morning time. http://janeknight.typepad.com/pick/2008/07/questler.html

2. Someone submits Questler to SimpleSpark.com,  gets on review queue.

3. Glen Gaten writes about us on his blog. http://ggatincritped.blogspot.com/2008/07/informal-aspects-of-everyday-learning.html

4. Questler gets listed officially in  SimpleSpark.com. http://simplespark.com/catalog/questler/

5. Questler gets selected as one of the 15+ web reviews at KillerStartup.com, a great review! http://www.killerstartups.com/Web-App-Tools/questler-com-find-answers-and-share-knowledge

6. Ajay Tripathi writes about in his Visionwiz blog http://visionwiz.blogspot.com/2008/07/questler-is-informal-learning-network.html

7. ROTOR blog writes a great review of Questler, http://www.rotorblog.com/2008/07/29/questler-tries-to-make-the-world-an-active-learning-space/

Hope I didn’t jinx it by a pre-mature post but I had to mark this day!!!

——-

Update, July 30th

8.  Questler review on KillerStartups.com is published @ The Online Life Knowledge http://www.jaimeviniciusbarros.com/2008/07/questlercomfindanswersandshareknowledge/

9.  The briefest mention ever (yet powerful!) @ the English Education Professor http://www.eeprof.com/blog/?p=3209

10. Questler briefly reviewed at a mini blog post by Sigalon http://sigalon.posterous.com/an-informal-learning-network

11. Questler @ ZEPY http://www.zepy.net/archives/find-answers-and-share-knowledge-with-questlercom.html

I know, Not really a new discovery and not only in high-tech BUT its still a bugger, YES!

While I think Amman is the Silicon Valley of the Arab world, we don’t get that much attention from the real Silicon Valley. And my previous post on this proves it.

Yet our infamous neighbor,  gets soooo much attention as if they are actually there. This might sound like a very confusing and highly debatable subject, but can we at least the people in the high-tech industry in Jordan learn few lessons from the Israelis or is this yet another wall we create to alienate our selves from the fact that that although they are successful but they are the enemy and we just don’t want to learn anything from them?

Viewzi.com is a great new experience in searching the web, that is very engaging, visually attractive and cuts browsing time.

You simply type in your search query, and then you get to select a specific view to see your results, for instance the Web Screenshot View will look like this:

You can browse easily from one search result to the next and view a screen shot of the resulting page, right from where you are, instead of the back and forth you do with the regular search interface.

Even their Simple Text view includes thumbnails of each search result, the more you scroll down the more results they fetch!

Another amazing view is 4 Sources view, where they bring search results from Yahoo, Google, Ask and MSN in one screen! You can filter between  the 4 sources and select which ones to show…

I personally enjoyed checking Site Information View that gets you traffic information, recent tweets, search results…etc. associated with the site you are inquiring about

It seems that each view was made by a different person, but I couldn’t find information related to any API or tools that enables outside developers to create a view, maybe they just want to share the product team identities who worked on each view.

Try it its fun!

I just checked Wordle.net, a service that allows you to create cool looking tags of any text you post, also you can type in a URL of a page or an RSS feed.

Its powered by a Java Applet that allows you to print the resulting image, or save it to their gallery .

here is a link to the tag picture of the WEBsessed feed:

http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/65754/WEBsessed

I was wondering why I keep reading posts about startups from everywhere in the world at the most popular tech/web blogs, but none come to mention Arab ones. So I did a search on the following keywords in TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and Mashable:

Arab, Arab startups, Middle East, arabia, Maktoob, d1g, yamli, ikbis, watwet, and of course my own startup questler.

and here are the results:

In comparison, there was a long post on ReadWriteWeb the other day about German twitter clones as a phenomenon. Korean startups, Canadian ones, China of course, Philippines, Spain, Portuguese.

So I tell you, cloning or lack of real innovation is definitely NOT the problem here, So is it because of:

• That the words “Arab” and “Middle East” are synonymous with Internet censorship?
• No interest?
• Not many startups to make the news?
• Bad marketing?
• Worse of all, low self worth, that many Arabs suffer, thinking that they won’t make it big anyway so they don’t contact these people?

Well after taking two days to recover from the three day IMCL 2008 conference, I would like to talk about my experience there.

The conference was really small in size not the bigger one I anticipated it to be, though i was part disappointed at first then became to appreciate the intimacy of smaller conferences, the chance to meet and talk to many people as well as to attend more sessions!

Our presentation attracted several good discussions with other attendees/presenters (some good ego boost ) several people were very excited about the site and appreciative of what we are trying to do in an attempt to encourage and capture informal learning while few were suspicious of the real value community websites could bring to “deep” learning.

The general talk at the conference was concentrated into 2 main topics, the need for platforms that could connect informal learning to formal learning, the second was the non-existence real change eLearning has made to traditional learning environments. Some experts were talking about eLearning serving to be yet another content delivery channel with content being the same traditional content that was delivered in class.

Some participants shared experiences they had at the class room, like ability for students to send questions by sms to the instructor while in class, another one ability for students to send geology field trip photos by MMS to the class’s blackboard eLearning system.

In general, I believe many educational systems are confusing new technologies as a goal instead of a mean for better teaching and largely ignoring the power of informal learning. And eLearning vendors are supplying tools to enable accessibility of content instead of new ways to teach and learn. Focus is always on the teacher and what he/she needs with little attention being given to the learners and what they need.

All in all it was a great learning experience for me, to see what different people in the Learning “industry” are talking about!