On some STC Afaq DSL connections you may encounter an error message on some websites combined with a lot of DSL disconnections. The error is:
Access Denied (license_expired)
A license has expired on the Proxy, and your request is not permitted: “The SGOS license has expired”. A new license must be obtained.
For assistance, contact your network support team.
image removed by request of owner
SGOS is a proxy server operating system by Blue Coat Systems. STC is supposed to be the leading telecommunications and Internet company in Saudi Arabia and a company of that scale shouldn’t allow important software such as SGOS to expire.
That image was found while searching for stc.com.sa on google images.
Tracking multiple shipments can be a pain. I usually use a Mac OS X Dashboard widget named Delivery Status. But I also found about an interesting method to track shipments using Twitter!
First of all you need a Twitter account. Follow @trackthis, it will auto follow you immediatly. While you are at it, follow us @sauditech to receive website updates. Then send a direct message to @trackthis in this format:
d trackthis 123456789123 New PC
Where the number is the UPS, Fedex, USPS, DHL, etc tracking number and the text after that is the label for that shipments. Now you will receive direct messages from @trackthis whenever there is a change in the delivery status. You can learn more about trackthis at their website. They also offer tracking using a Facebook application or though an e-mail message.
Sony Gulf FZE has launched the Sony BRAVIA WE5 LCD TV in the Middle East. Sony labeled at as their “first eco-friendly LCD TV”
It has several features that together will help a household that watches about six hours of TV per day save around AED100 per year on their electricity bill, according to Sony. For a country the size of the UAE this would amount to about AED50 million saved over a year, the company stated.
It will be available for AED5,999. Sony WE Series – KLV-40WE5. Via Shufflegazine.
The tinyurl untiny bookmarlet that we talked about was now updated. The new update was a response to a change in the Saudi Arabia Internet block of tinyurl.
You can get it here, just drag the “UnTiny” link to your bookmark toolbar. You can still resolve a tinyurl manually by visiting untiny.
Low price Windows Home Server from Acer
Acer have an affordable way for you to backup and store your media files. The Acer easyStore is a $400 (1,500SR) Windows Home Server system with 1TB of storage, 3 hot-swappable 3.5-inch hard drive bays for up to 7TB of storage. It is powered by 1.6GHz Atom CPU.
We hope this reaches the Saudi Arabia market very soon.
Acer bypasses Dell and becomes number 2 notebook maker
Acer has beaten Dell in the global notebook market, becoming the second notebook maker after HP. HP have a worldwide market share of %24.1 and Acer is now %18.8. Netbooks was an important factor, %31.6 of Acer’s notebooks are netbooks.
Intel Pine Trail platform for Netbooks
Intel has announced the “Pine Trail” platform which will succeed the current Atom on netbooks. The CPU “pineview” as well as the GPU will be on the same die so it won’t need a graphics processor.
This means Pine Trail will be a two-chip solution, one less than Intel’s current netbook platform. In theory, this should result in cost savings and lower power consumption.
It should be released by the end of this year.
AMD Catalyst 9.5 drivers released
AMD released version 9.5 of their Catalyst video card drivers. It promises performance improvements “Performance gains of up to 11 percent for single GPU and ATI CrossFireX configurations with AA enabled in Unigine Tropics DX9″ on these Radeon cards.
You can read more and download it from AMD’s website.
Toshiba has announced the Toshiba Mini NB200 netbook. It includes a 9-cell battery (most current netbooks include a 3-cell or 6-cell battery and most netbooks sold in Saudi Arabia only include a 3-cell battery).
Other features include a choice between Intel’s Atom N270 (1.6GHz) or N280 (1.66GHz) processor, a 160GB had drive, WiFi, Bluetooth, 0.3MP webcam, and Windows XP. The Mini NB200 can also withstand a bit of abuse thanks to its 3D-accelerometer monitoring system. A small chip on the motherboard detects acceleration from all directions and will remove the HHD head from between the HDD platters when the netbook goes into a freefall.
It will be released in the UK for $465. No information about when will one of Toshiba’s Gulf distributors will release this netbook.
Via Ubergizmo and Maximum PC.
Hewlett-Packard announced a voluntary recall of about 70,000 lithium ion batteries. The potentially defective batteries can be found on a number of both HP and Compaq branded notebooks. These include the following:
- HP dv2000, dv2500, dv2700, dv6000, dv6500, dv6700, dv9000, dv9500, dv9700
- Compaq A900, C700, F700, V3000, V3500, V3700, V6000, V6500, V6700
- HP G6000, G7000
- Compaq 6720s
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says the recalled batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers. So far there have been two reports of overheating and ruptured batteries, which resulted in flames and property damage, but no injuries.
You can check your battery’s serial number on this website. Many stores in Saudi Arabia import some notebooks from the United States so there is a possibilities that some of these notebooks might end up in Saudi Arabia.
Image and news from Maximum PC.
The Western Digital TV HD Media Player is now available in Saudi Arabia. You can can buy it at Jarir “Bookstore” and it cost 449 SR. I have seen the media player in other stores in Riyadh’s Olaya computer market.
Maximum PC reviewed the TV HD media player and gave it 8/10.
The device delivers much higher video resolution than most media players, all the way from 480i using the composite video port to 1080p using HDMI (576p, 720i, 720p, and 1080i are also supported via HDMI). The WD TV supports a host of video formats, codecs, and containers, including AVI, H.264, QuickTime, VOB, and Matroska.
Update: I should have known that Jarir Bookstore links expire so fast.
If you want to redirect within a website there are many different methods. But what if you wanted to redirect from the root folder of your website to a specific folder. For example our website’s root sauditechview.com redirects to sauditechview.com/en. You can do that by creating an .htaccess file in the root folder and enter the following:
RedirectMatch permanent ^/$ http://site.com/php/
Remember to have a second empty line in the file. Replace http://site.com/php/ with whatever page you want to redirect to. Please note that it only works on Apache servers and to be honest, who doesn’t use an Apache server these days. Thanks Carl.
A tweetup is “n. A real world meeting between two or more people who know each other through the online Twitter service”. You are welcome to attend the second Riyadh Tweetup:
This is the second Riyadh Tweetup meant to gather people located in Riyadh who use twitter to socialize and meet face to face.
Location is still under consideration and any recommendations are welcomed.
Due to local laws we will have a sexes separated with a female and male gatherings.
This is the second meetup after the success of our first meetup.
If you have any recommendations or ideas for the meetup let me know by emailing me saudi AT asaudilife net
Depending on the event location we may or may not have an hour of lectures and discussions.
If you are interested in sponsoring the event please don’t hesitate to contact me.
Follow us on Twitter for the latest in regards to the Tweetup @TweetupRiyadh
هذا تجمع مستخدمي تويتر الرياض الثاني.
موقع التجمع سيحدد فيما بعد ونرحب باي اقتراحات بالنسبة للموقع.
تطبيقاً للقوانين المحلية سيكون هنالك فصل بين الرجال والنساء ولن يسمح بالاختلاط.
هذا هو التجمع الثاني بعد نجاح التجمع الاول.
اذا وجد لديكم اية اقتراحات فضلاً ابلاغي بها على بريدي saudi AT asudilife net
اعتماداً على موقع التجمع قد نقيم او لا نقيم ساعة من المحاضرات والمناقشات المفتوحة.
اذا اردتم رعاية التجمع لا تترددوا بالاتصال بي.
Thanks Turki for arranging it.