Mohammed Sameer's Online Aggregator

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Fri, 05/01/2007 - 11:06am
When you follow someone like Anas Tawileh, one won’t be surprised of where he will head next. Never I saw of him anything less than determination and hardware to make it work. “It” here is “Open Source, Open Content, Open Standards” or in one word, Openness. The most recent project he is in, is Arab [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Fri, 13/10/2006 - 9:03am
I noticed it yesterday, and it is confirmed now (Thanks Ahmad), the TRC (Telecommunications Regulatory Commission) reversed their bad decision of blocking Skype. It seems that Skype is no longer a security threat. اللهم احفظ اردننا سالما من كل شر ومكروه وسكايب وياهو وجوجل وماسينجر و…… God keep our Jordan safe from any Harm, or Evil, or [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Thu, 28/09/2006 - 6:57am
A coworker informed me today that few days ago, the site of Skype (http://www.skype.com ) is no longer accessible from Jordan. It seems that they are following the steps of countries that live in the dark ages when it comes to Internet. To confirm that you don’t have a “Network Error” or that the site [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Tue, 12/09/2006 - 11:08am
Being first is nothing new to Maktoob, the provider of the first arabic email service.. Early this morning the Arabic Search Engine Araby.com making it the first arabic search engine. Samih Toukan, CEO of Maktoob announced it in his blog few hours ago. Wait a minute! you are saying first ? there were search engines before.. [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Sat, 02/09/2006 - 10:03am
OK, I had it, I can’t stand this anymore, and I got to spill it out. I love my Macbook Pro, and I can’t imagine how I was computing before it. But, the level and quality of support an Apple user get in Jordan is basically, the worst anyone can get. I bought my Makbook Pro [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Sat, 19/08/2006 - 4:15pm
Is it just me, or there is a big spike in begging in the streets of Amman ? I just took 3 minutes walk, from office, to super market, back to the office, and I was stopped and interrupted by: One Young Man who need 1JD to get back to Gwaismeh (Meskeen, Magtoo3, and can [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Wed, 16/08/2006 - 2:19pm
If there is one thing I hate the most when chatting to someone, that is IF THEY HAVE THE CAPS KEY ON, AND NOT NOTICE HOW ANOYING IT IS. But I never those of having a campaign to ask hardware vendors to remove Caps Lock from the keyboard. But Someone did. CapsOff is a group [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Mon, 14/08/2006 - 8:03pm
I know I haven’t written for a while, but I found a certain piece of news about a new blog for Ahmedi Nejad the Iranian president. It seems that the blog was announced in official news agencies. Now I must admit that the Iranian blog movement had always fascinated me. What amazes me is how [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Tue, 20/06/2006 - 7:00am
I am currently downloading “Elephants Dream” (http://www.elephantsdream.org), which is an Open 3D movie made using only Open Source tools (Mainly Blender for 3D work). It is the result of about 1 year of work, coordinated by Blender Foundation, community-financed, and supported by Netherlands Media Art Institute. “Open Movie” means that is is licensed under [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Mon, 29/05/2006 - 12:11pm
I was reading a story in the Independent about an investigation that is taking place in USA by the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) about having news stations air “fake news reports” about the success of war in Iraq, that was tailored by Bush adminstration, and corporates that have businesses in Iraq. I am not sure why [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Sun, 14/05/2006 - 6:39am
Google introduced the ability to translate from and to Arabic/English. I first heard about it last year, from my friend Basem, and it was until I saw it, and tested it, that I knew it is a good translation tool. To test it, I used a text from BBC (Arabic and English News) about a recent [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Sat, 13/05/2006 - 7:36am
It seems that as Nader got cured from his Draft-but-not-publish syndrome, I caught it up. I discovered that my latest post was more than a month ago, and what’s worse, it was about IE7 :) Now, since then I wrote many drafts for posts, about several topics: Google Arabic translation, how excited I am about [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Sun, 26/03/2006 - 10:42am
A couple of weeks ago, we got a very interesting email from the “Contact Us” in Jordan Planet site: Topic : RSS Feed issue with IE7 Message : I’m a Program Manager for RSS on the Internet Explorer team.  I’m contacting you because we have received a report that your website’s RSS feed is not compatible with [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Wed, 22/03/2006 - 8:03pm
More than a month ago, I got an email from an old friend, Robin Miller (Roblimo) of OSTG checking on me, and asking me if I might be interested in having an interview for one of my daily visits and favorites, Slashdot. Happily I agreed, and I was delighted and overwhelmed by the questions that [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Sun, 19/03/2006 - 7:58am
Every now and then, when I get into a Taxi, and ask them to head to Marj Al-Hamam (7km outside Amman, where I live) I get a “Do you know how to reach it, because I don’t”.. now I am used to being asked that every now and then.. But today, for the first time, [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Mon, 13/03/2006 - 8:37am
Turtles Can Fly

Year: 2005

Length: 98 minutes

Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)

Rating from : PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)

UPC for dvd: 027616928559

ID in Amazon.com: B000A7LR82

Rating: 5 out of 5

I was lucky to meet Yaman the day before, as he brought to my attention that they are screening the movie @ "Makan" in Jabal El-Waibdeh. I first heard about the film in the pilot of JameedKast, and added it to my to-watch list.

As I do all the time, I forgot the time of the screening, and arrived 1 hour before (6:30 instead of 7:30).. after spending an hour walking downtown (which I hadn't for some time) I went back, sat down, and started the journey. The films takes us to Northern Iraq, to a Kurdish village near Turkish borders, with refugee children who are making a living out of digging land-mines, and it starts in 2003 2 weeks before the US invasion of Iraq.

The film is rich with characters, I've rarely seen such moving performances from children. Film had everything, comedy, heart-tearing drama, and even some action. The Only reason that I didn't shed any tear while watching it is because I was in a public place, and I have wajaha to maintain.

I will have to second Jameed's 2 thumbs-up to the film, and encourage everyone to watch it.

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Thu, 09/03/2006 - 10:47am
This morning I heard an interesting report in BBC Arabic about a news report saying that the Chairman of Jordan Television (Warning: An annoying site with parts of it working with a “DLS Connection” as mentioned in the Arabic section) resigned yesterday, and along with him a number of board members resigned as well. What [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Thu, 23/02/2006 - 9:45am
I am currently testing Google Pages which is yet a new beta service from Google.. What I saw is a Online Frontpage, with a publishing ability to your own space at http://googlepages.com. I know about it from Matt Cutt’s blog. I didn’t try before web-based web-publishging sites.. I am sure that there are some hosting [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Thu, 09/02/2006 - 5:48am
It’s 7:30am, I woke up 30 minutes ago to prepare to work, found it is snowing hard. So we had to do it.. Yes we do.. We opened on Jordan Television to see what they are saying and playing. It is part of snow traditions. It seems that the people in Jordan Television were ready. [...]

Isam Bayazidi’s Blog - Fri, 03/02/2006 - 8:16am
The last weeks had been crazy for me. During Eid, I got a job offer to join a company here in Amman, so I dropped my plans to accept an offer I got in Dubai in favour of staying in Amman. Some of my friends called me “habeeleh” or something for turning down a very [...]