Double the effort.

Every while I remember my ex-manager words: "We are in a developing country and we are behind the rest of the world by hundreds of years. To catch those in the front, we need to do double their effort. period."

Also, in another situation, a friend told me: "They (the customer) can not accept a single mistake from us, on the other hand they produce hundreds per day. This is because we are Egyptians."

No comment.period.

From iPhone to Blackberry

With blackberry ads flooding the Egyptian TV and press, I cannot stop my self to buy one and try it. As a mandatory background, I changed three mobiles this year alone (geek??! may be). I started the year with E71 phone, switched to iPhone 3G and finally Blackberry curve 8900. I bought the blackberry curve from Etisalat Egypt.

First impression
The package of the curve is no way like the iPhone package. Those guys at apple are doing very good job in packaging and making their products looks more valuable. Despite the poor package, the phone itself looks very professional and details are taken into considerations. It looks very nice.
The box contains power adapter with different plugs for US, UK and Europe power, headphones, cover, 1 GB MiniSD card and manuals. In my opinion, the only drawback is the 1 GB SD card - I think it should be  4GB minimum.

Interface
My feelings towards  the curve interface is mixed. Mainly the interface looks very nice with all those very good icons. With every step deeper into the applications or the menus, the interface looks very primary and reminds me of 90s operating systems and mobiles. Comparing the curve to the iPhone
makes the curve looks as a very old toy. 

Menu Screen

An example to a setup screen

On the other side, the simple interface makes the menus and the applications load faster which make it a great phone for anyone who wants the functionality more than the interface.
A great simple feature that made my happy is the red LED that blinks for any missing notification - email, SMS, MMS ...

Mail
The mail client in the blackberry is very powerful and it is also nice to use. It integrates greatly with Gmail. It allows you to star a mail and show conversations the same way you did in Gmail. From the mail application, you can choose multiple mails, forward, reply and do all other mail tasks. You can also customize the mail to check for spelling mistakes every time you send an email.

One of the best features that is unique in Blackberry is the single inbox that collect all your mails, SMS, MMS, applications notification to a single place.

Calendar
The calendar also in the blackberry is very strong with a lot more options than the iPhone but - as usual - with a very simple and less attractive interface. If you had installed the blackberry facebook app,  you can integrate your Facebook events calendar to your main calendar.
You can even sync your Google Calnedars with the curve using Google sync applications.

Web Browsing
Comparing BB web browsing to the iPhone, is like comparing a 1920s car to a Ferrari. The BB browser - even it supports scripting - is very hard to use except if you are going to browse the mobile version. In my opinion, it is the same as E71 browser.
Pages are rendered correctly but very slow. Also there is no flash support.

Maps
Simply the least attractive feature in the Curve. Yes you can install Google Maps application but comparing blackberry maps to Nokia maps made the blackberry maps looks like a joke. Also using Google maps over edge is very slow.

Applications
Number of Blackberry applications are very small compared to iPhone applications but in general there are a number of useful applications out there specially from Google.

Best of all, you can install applications on Blackberry without installing the App world. This means that you can install any application as you like and these applications can integrate very well with the phone - like Google voice for example.

Installed Applications

Final thoughts

The Curve 8900 is not for everyone. It is for anyone who mainly handle mail, chat and any text based communication via mobile. If you want more advanced web browsing or thousands of non-sense application to spend your spare time with, then iPhone is your destination. 

Another thing you should take into consideration: the only unlimited mobile internet in Egypt is only offered for Blackberry phones.

Zain and Mobinil to join forces to expand the One Network

Zain - the mobile operator announced today that it is expanding its "One Network" to Egypt by a strategic partnership with Mobinil.

The deals insures that customer of both networks (Zain 27 Million and Mobinil 24 Million) will be treated as local customers when visiting any of the countries in the One Network. The service includes making calls, sending SMS and data services.

List of countries in the One network are:
Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait (partially), Saudi Arabia and Sudan.

via telecoms and Zain

Egypt to apply for first Arabic domain name

The Associated Press and AFP reported that Egypt will be the first Arabic country to apply for the new Arabic domains. The domain will be (.مصر) - pronounced .Misr.

This announcement  was a result of last month decision by the ICANN to end the exclusive use of Latin characters for website addresses, allowing Internet users to write an entire website address in Chinese, Arabic, Russian and several other scripts.

iGoogle Themes now for Arabs

Google is approaching Arabs with steady steps with almost a new announcement every month. The latest one was the announcement of arabized iGoogle themes. This might not be a huge announcement but it means a lot for some people.

Here are some snapshots for the new themes:

 

It is noticeable that Google provides special themes for the top IT countries in the region (excluding UAE!!).

Read the announcement here.

MyChildGuide.Net: Value added services for mothers and fathers

MyChildGuide.Net is the user interface of a team of doctors in Egypt. It provides and online tips, chat and phone consultation. According to the site:

"The hallmark qualities of this system are personal care and continuity. Each child has his/her own doctor created personal digital file and/or parent created personal digital file. Doctor created personal files include all the relevant medical data acquired during his/her parents phone call and/or during his medical examination at My Child Guide clinic or at Dr.Wael Lotfy's clinic. Data are saved under the child's name as well as his birth date. This data can shorten your next phone call and help the doctor guide you better whenever you need 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (24/7).
On the other hand, parent created personal digital files are available.  Each parent can create, free of any charge, personal files for his/her children that are retrievable, free of charge, through this website 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (24/7), from any where in the world.  All what you need is the free registration. You can follow your child's growth over the standard growth chart, receive alerts for immunizations or other important notes as well.
These files are saved over our secured server and back copies are daily produced and synchonized in case of any untoward events. This freely access system should maintain and indeed increase the "horizontal" investment in whole person care rather than "vertical" investment in treating symptoms and diseases widely applied."

This service offer complete integrity with the doctor's network. If you phoned the 2356 number asking for consultation and then you visited one of the network doctor's, he will knew a summary of the phone conversation.
This service represents a very good internet usage example. You can contact your doctors anytime through the day and get a fast advice or even you ask for a medicine. It also notifies parents with the time of their children vaccine.

Note: The phone service is available in Egypt only

ArabCrunch lunches online social site focued on start-up companies and technology

ArabCrunch today announced the launching of ArabCrunsh.NET, a social site focused on start-up companies and technology industries.
The new ArabCrunch site is mainly funded by Bassel Ojjeh, former senior vice president and head of Yahoo!’s strategic data solutions group who has invested an undisclosed amount of capital in the new site.

Talking about start-up companies reminds me of yallastartup.com, the organization that was founded by the founders of three successful start-up internet businesses in the Middle East to support technology entrepreneurs in the Middle East.

Both organizations are trying to link start-up companies with investors and other interested people in the region.

via ArabCrunch.

Hello World!

This might be my thousand blog. Almost every couple of months I create a new blog and then just stop updating it. My problem is always the inertia of creating something new, I hate copying others stuff and at the same time I don't have a lot of stuff to say.

This blog is different. It is about technology in Egypt and Middle east. I really like blogs like ArabCruch and StartupArabia but they are not what I really want. I want more comprehnsive coverage for news in Egypt and Arab world. I need news analysis, not just news listing. Of course I am not going to do this alone but I am trying to start.

So why is the noise.cafe name?
The reason is very simple, I always consider information as noise that need to be handled and filtered out to extract the good info out of it and Cafe stands for a break for me. So simply noise.cafe is my information gathering break.

Enjoy.