Saudi TechView » Web Sites & Services

Temporary fix for Google Reader in Saudi Arabia

Khaled A. — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 22:40:30 +0000

For the last 2 weeks Google Reader hasn’t been working properly. You try to view the items but it just never syncs, anything you read will immediately be marked “unread” again.

Based on the many comments on Twitter I can only conclude one cause: STC. But I guess they don’t care about their customers or they should have fixed it already.

The possible solutions are: 1) Visit the secure https version of Google Reader. 2) Use a Google reader client instead of a web browser. 3) Change your DNS.

I hope that STC will fix this issue as soon as possible.

Check flight stats via SMS using Qanawati

Khaled A. — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 10:58:51 +0000

Qanawati (my channels) is a new service from Saudi Arabia based company Remal IT. The service allows you to check your flight reservations status via SMS.

You can check for available flight reservations on the following airlines: Saudi Airlines, Nas air and Sama. You can also check for reservations on all airlines using IATA, check the status by flight number and check the arrival/departure activity in Saudi airports.

The service is charged by each individual SMS message. Currently only works with Mobily and Zain cell networks. STC is “coming soon”.

Via Saleh at Saudi Geeks.

Find the latest Saudi Geeks news & events

Khaled A. — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 08:14:20 +0000

Covering technology event and everything of interest to the Geeks of Saudi Arabia, SaudiGeeks website was launched with that goal in mind.

Best of luck to Jalammar and everyone else at SaudiGeeks.com, make sure to follow them on Twitter as well.

Google’s homepage celebrates Saudi national day

Khaled A. — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 21:17:43 +0000

To celebrate The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s National Day, the Google Saudi Arabia homepage has changed the logo to the following:

The logo was previewed on Google Arabia’s facebook page hours before the beginning of September 23rd.

Additionally, Google has launched a Saudi Arabia edition of Google news a few days ago (via ArabCrunch).

Yelp for Saudi Arabia alternative

Khaled A. — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 13:59:35 +0000

Yelp is a database of locations and reviews. It started covering San Fransisco then the rest of the country. Now it’s in Canada and UK. You can use it to find and review restaurants, shopping centers, and many more. Their database is accessible from an iPhone app as well.

It’ll take them forever to expand to every country so don’t expect “Yelp Saudi Arabia” anytime soon. I am aware of one alternative, it is called Qaym (Arabic for “to rate”). Currently it’s Arabic only and limited to restaurants. I hope it expands into more categories soon.

YoutubeIslam is now tubeislam, Google doesn’t want to “steal”

Khaled A. — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 07:57:00 +0000

Update: YoutubeIslam.com is now down. There was not anti-Islamic conspiracy. Youtube didn’t use the site to push inappropriate content. So these statements “والذي تحاول جوجل أن تستولي عليه لعرض مقاطعها الرديئة” and “وحسب ما ذكر بأنه سيتم تحويل الدومين إلى أحد صفحات يوتيوب التي لا ترضي المسلمي” were just wrong.

YoutubeIslam.com has been renamed to TubeIslam. I am not really sure what’s this talk about “Google trying to steal youtubeislam”. The owners claim that Google will replace the site with “Google ads & videos against Islam”.

“Youtube” a Google trademark and they have the right to protect their trademarks. Microsoft didn’t allow a developer to name his program “Windows Commander” for example. I am sure Google just don’t want them to use the name.

From the ICANN blog:

Google has a trademark in “YouTube”, the very well-known video site, and it argued that the current registrant did not have rights in the name and that it was using the site in “bad faith” – which is a legal term interpreted by the arbiter, but in this case might mean using the site to attract visitors by appearing to associate yourself with someone else.

Found the news about the rename from tech-wd. Read mroe about ICANN.

Saudi Twitter users: take this survey

Khaled A. — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 20:44:58 +0000

Spot On PR is looking for Twitter users from Saudi Arabia to take this survey.

The survey is about Twitter users in the Middle East and he would like more responses from Saudi users. Thank you!

STC mirror server for open source files

Khaled A. — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 08:39:28 +0000

STC have opened a mirror server for hosting open source files. The server currently have mirrors for CentOS, OpenSuse, FreeBSD, Ubuntu, CPAN, MySQL and OpenOffice. This is not the first mirror of it’s kind in Saudi Arabia, The Internet Service Unit have one as well (mirrors.isu.net.sa).

Mirrors are regular file servers (HTTP or FTP) that provide a copy of a file that is closer to the person. Basically increasing the download speed and reducing the load on the main servers.

Via Yousef Raffah.

Update: There is another mirror, thanks to Abdulhadi for showing me this mirror download.net.sa provided by Bayanat, a Mobily company.

Untiny founder aquires twtbase

Khaled A. — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 18:16:26 +0000

Twtbase, a website dedicated for listing and rating Twitter applications was acquired by Saleh Alzaid, a Saudi web developer. Saleh is the creator of untiny (short url parser, initially created to bypass Saudi Arabia’s ongoing block of tinyurl).

Thanks ArabCrunch for the heads up.

gdgt, a social site for gadget users

Khaled A. — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 22:41:58 +0000

Ryan Block and Peter Rojas (formally from Engadget and Gizmodo) has opened their new site, gdgt, today.

It is a social website aimed for owners of gadgets. Just register and add the gadgets in 3 lists: Gadgets you are currently using, gadgets you used to have and gadgets that you want to have. The content is user generated and more gadgets are added by the users. Gdgt also includes reviews and discussions for each gadget as well.

I am interested to see if gdgt will add multi-language support otherwise I expect a similar Arabic site to emerge. Gdgt’s website was facing difficulties when they first opened but a few hours later I have finally registered on gdgt.

Update: Peter Rojas has commented on this post and said that multilanguage is built into the system and non-English language versions will be available in the future.