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).
Western Digital is my favorite hard drive brand. Their drives are the most reliable I have ever used. I have contacted their email support many times and they always respond in less than 24 hours with useful information, something other companies should learn from them.
Western Digital has a strong presence in Saudi Arabia thanks to their only distributor in Saudi Arabia: Nahil Computers. I estimate over %95 of OEM 3.5″ hard drives sold in Saudi Arabia are Western Digital drives. Other hard drive makers: Seagate, Samsung, and Hitachi are missing from the Saudi market.
Seagate’s authorized distributors’ list shows Saudi Arabia as an option but no distributors are available. Even though they have a “Collection Point In Saudia Arabia”. Seagate, it’s Saudi Arabia.
The Collection Point processes Return Material Authorization (RMA) disc drives at one central location, speeding up and simplifying the return procedures for Seagate disc drives.
You can buy those brands online or from the specialty store Softland in Riyadh.
As for Western Digital’s distributor in Saudi Arabia, Nahil Computers. I’ve heard good things about their support services for hard drives. However their site is another example of inferior websites for Saudi companies. Their latest news is from 2006 and clicking on products will open an IFRAME with the other company’s website inside! If you visit their hard drive page you will notice it will just open Western Digital’s homepage in a frame (view source code and look for the IFRAME tag), so sluggish.
Apparently Western Digital also made a deal with Jarir Bookstore (not my favorite bookstore). From AME Info: “This strategic partnership with Jarir Bookstore demonstrates Western Digital’s commitment in KSA. We can now service the growing Saudi market with an established, reputable partner that will offer our customers not only the best products and technology but the best end-to-end customer experience”. The offers are on Jarir’s website, they even have the WD TV HD Media Player for 449SR.
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.
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!
Great achievement for Saudi students from King Saud University, the “UT” team will represent Saudi Arabia in the 6th Sixth Scientific Conference for the care of the talented in Jordan.
Read more about it on Riyadh newspaper and Sabq (Arabic site).Forget about these links! Read actual info about it (in Arabic) on Abdullah Driaan’s site.
The odd thing is the website for “Sixth Scientific Conference for the care of the talented” apparently expired? The domain won’t expire until 2010 but now it’s only showing ads unlike this cache.
The news source didn’t mention what UT stands for I would assume “Ultrasonic testing”? Can someone clarify? The sites did mention Dr Man-Gon Park. Anyone knows please tell me.
Update: Thanks Abdullah for posting this. “UT” stands for Ubiquitous Technology which is actually Ubiquitous computing, a form of human-computer interaction (HCI). Now it makes some sense.
Update 2: Thank you Dr. Man-Gon Park for posting your comment on this entry:
I am Prof. Dr. Man-Gon Park with department of the IT Convergence and Application Engineering, College of Engineeing, PuKyong National University, Rep. of Korea.
I was Director General and CEO of the Colombo Plan Staff College (http://www.cpsctech.org) which is an international organization for HRD in Asia and the Pacific region with its 29 Member governments. Also I was the president of Korean Multimedia Society.
Jarir “bookstore” is having a promotion on Dell Inspiron 15.
The specs are: Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53GHz, 4GB DDR2 (according to Dell, it’s dual channel), 320GB hard drive (I assume 5400rpm), 15.6″ (WLED with 1366×768 resoultion according to Dell), dedicated 256MB VRAM (more on that later), DVD+R/RW (8X DVD+/-RW Drive with DVD+R DL according to Dell), High Definition Audio 2.0, Wireless (802.11n from Dell’s site), Bluetooth and WebCam.
Video card is not specified on the ad, but looking online I found that the video card is ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD4330 with 256MB and you can read more information and benchmarks about it here.
The deal includes a 3.5G HSPA USB modem, one month data subscription with STC (1GB bandwidth, includes the free SIM card), a notebook bag (a bit obvious really) and a “Learn Windows Vista & Office” training DVD.
The deal costs 3,999SR which is very good for the specs. Of course you should be eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7.
That model “Dell Inspiron 15″ with that CPU “Intel P8600″ were not available in the US so you cannot order it online. It is available from Dell Singapore for $1,878.45 which is 4,853.76SR so it is a decent deal.
SaudiMac has a price list of the new MacBook Pro models. But should you buy them from Saudi Arabia or just buy them online from Amazon.
Quick overview on your Apple choices in Saudi Arabia: stores “authorized” by Arab Computers stores and “independant” stores (itechia, ADAM, apparently Global Store and others). AC Macs appear to be European based on the power adapter while the others import from the United States.
The other choice as I said earlier is to buy from Amazon then ship using MyUS or similar services. You should assume paying for shipping as well as paying the Saudi Arabia custom fee (%5 if you are lucky, they once considered my 3rd gen iPod a computer!). You will need to add Arabic letters yourself and warranty is a bit sketchy.
Here are the prices for the MacBook Pro models from Apple compared to the Saudi Arabia prices, assuming a convert rate of $1 = 3.80SR. Remember that you need to add shipping and custom fees:
MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.26GHz: on Amazon: 4,405SR. Here: 5,649SR.
MacBook Pro 13-inch 2.53GHz: on Amazon: 5,677SR. Here: 6,899SR.
MacBook Pro 15-inch 2.53GHz: on Amazon: 6,480SR. Here: 8,399SR.
MacBook Pro 15-inch 2.66GHz: on Amazon: 7,480SR. Here: not available.
MacBook Pro 15-inch 2.80GHz: on Amazon: 9,268SR. Here: 10,199SR.
MacBook Pro 17-inch 2.80GHz: on Amazon: 9,344SR. Here: 11,299SR.
A BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences. The first Saudi BlogCamp will be held in Jeddah tomorrow July 2nd 2009 in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and starting at 10am (7am GMT). It is organized by the Saudi BarCamp.
Saudi BlogCamp 2009 will include presentations by Saudi bloggers Khaled Al-Nasser, Ahmed Al-Omran, Essam Al-Zamel and Fouad Al-Fahran.
There will also be a live blogging as well as a ustream page on this page (sorry for the long URL, Arabic permalinks should be avoided).
Update: Microsoft has updated the Windows 7 Upgrade Options page with information on participating vendors. You can change the region but Middle East – Arabic page is not available until now. Now the Middle East website is up. No real information though but if you bought a Windows Vista machine after June 25th then you are eligible for the “free” upgrade, keep the receipt.
You know how much I love Microsoft Zifta … I mean Vista. Windows 7 is a service pack for Windows Vista, it is the operating system that Longhorn/Vista was supposed to be.
As long as you purchase a Windows Vista based computer starting today June 26th 2009 you will receive a free upgrade to Windows 7. The actual details of this upgrade offer is “anyone who buys a PC from a participating OEM or retailer with Windows Vista Home Premium, Business or Ultimate on it will all receive an upgrade to the corresponding version of Windows 7 at little or no cost to customers.”
Via the Windows 7 blog, that offer is available until January 31st, 2010 and is global! Hopefully Microsoft Saudi Arabia will offer free upgrades to Windows 7.
Windows 7 is very cheap (ha ha). Upgrade editions are: Home Premium $119.99, Professional $199.99, Ultimate $219.99. The full versions of Windows 7 cost: Premium $199.99, Professional $299.99, Ultimate $319.99. That’s cheap compared to a regular Mac OSX price of $129.99 for all different editions.
One last point, Vista machines sold in Saudi Arabia (an Arabic speaking country) only offer 1 interface language (English) with no option of installing a free Arabic language file (LIP). The only options to get Arabic interface on a Windows Vista machine are: Buy another license of Windows Vista with Arabic interface, buy the Vista Ultimate for MUI support (Arabic MUI for Vista SP2 is not even out yet) or just pirate it. I have found another semi-legal method and if you are interested then feel free to ask me.
Strategy Analytics released their list of global penetration of broadband households. Surprise surprise, Saudi Arabia is ranked 49th on this list with only %7!
So when we look at the percentage of total households in any given country in which broadband is available (ie paid for and used), we find, not surprisingly, that Asia-Pacific countries lead the way, with Korea out in front, as it has been for many years. At the end of last year 95% of Korean households took broadband service, compared to 88% in Singapore and 81% in Hong Kong. But one or two European countries are edging towards the top of the list, led by the Netherlands (85%) and Denmark (82%).
Saudi Arabia is way behind the United Arab Emirates at 15th with 65%. This is disgraceful.