Month: June 2008

Cisco, World Bank Support Silatech To Help Arab Entrepreneurs

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SilatechSilatech is an initiative that was launched by Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al Missned of Qatar, to develop employment and business opportunities for young people in the Arab region.

Global networking heavy-weight Cisco, which is one of the founding members of Silatech and its global strategic technology provider, has just announced that it is extending its support for the social and economic development initiative, through working to deliver a technology platform for young entrepreneurs and businesses, primarily in the Arab world, to help them to drive programs for economic growth.

They will be developing a collaboration platform including services such as video conferencing and blogging, that will help individuals, businesses and other concerned organizations to collaborate on projects. They also aim to deploy a mix of traditional and social networking tools to connect today’s youth with other entrepreneurs and established businesses across the region.

The two companies also plan to co-operate on the establishment of entrepreneur centers for young people in the region, which will offer training courses on building and growing business and using IT to enable business success.

On the other hand, the World Bank Global Partnership for Youth Investment announced that they would support Silatech through two of its strategic pillars – Thought Leadership and Investment.
They will be offering financial products and business development service support to encourage financial intermediaries to invest in the youth micro enterprise market across the region; in other words, the aim is to  establish a scheme, which would see young people with new business ideas helped when seeking loans from commercial banks.

The Global Partnership will also assist Silatech to reach across the World Bank Group to support youth investment across the Arab World and participate in country-level missions and strategy development that could lead to co-financed and scaled projects and knowledge products based on global best practices.

# Sources: ITP, Zawya

New Deal To Launch Free Arabic Encyclopedia Online

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Emirates Internet Group has signed a cooperation agreement with Abu Ghazaleh Group to establish a free Arabic encyclopedia on the Internet.

The encyclopedia will cover a lot of applied science, and the human, economic and technology aspects will be addressed to the Arabic user, to enrich the electronic content of the Arabic language and to build a scientific referenced academic site with high quality.

A specialized committee of academics and scientists will insure the control of articles, and monitor and evaluate them from the perspective of academic and research centers. The enrichment of the encyclopedia will depend on the participation of knowledge specialists in specific fields, as the participants can correct and discuss and also to add more information in the encyclopedia, without violating the rights of the author or any other rights .

Two thoughts cross my mind in response to this piece of news: one is a very positive one; it’s great to see these Arab groups investing in knowledge and working to create more Arab content online.

On the other hand, I’m not too sure about the approach; instead of launching a whole new encyclopedia from scratch, with all the difficulties and costs that will entail, why not support the little groups of people from all over the Arab world who are passionately working on growing the Arabic version of Wikipedia?
I mean the platform already exists, it’s open, it’s easy to use, and it already has a head start, the teams are there already inputting information, and many people already trust it and use it, so why not just use that?
Is it so that it can be labeled as an Arab project? But isn’t the goal what’s most important? To share knowledge and get more Arab content out there?

I personally think this project would have more chances of success if it were to go with enriching the Arabic version of Wikipedia instead of creating a whole new encyclopedia, and I fear that if they don’t it’ll only end up like every other previous Arab initiative.

# Source: BI-ME

Why I Don’t Trust Arab Online Services

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This guest blog is by Qwaider of Memories Documented.

I just can’t get my self to trust the Arab online services for many reasons. They’re emerging, they’re growing, but this one area that I fear that I’m never going to venture to.

And here is why…

Privacy
Privacy is the next big buzzword that you’re going to be hearing about from now on. It will by synonymous with security and is a great concern for great deal of researchers and experts mainly because the world as we see it today. Is going to continue to morph to depend more on alternate methods of identity. With Privacy as it’s cornerstone. Someone who has your information has the ability to steal your identity. Which will be catastrophic in the future. But that’s not all.

Lets face it, for Hotmail, I’m just a figure, no one is going to be interested in what I have in my inbox. But I sadly can’t say the same about Arabic services… That’s just the way it is. All you have to do is cross the wrong people. Who may not even be the decision makers or the admins themselves but they know a friend of a friend of their girlfriend, and now …. they know everything about you.

When I establish an account at Google, Facebook or even my space. I know that my private information is going to continue to be my private information. Someone accessing it illegitimately might be subject to very harsh disciplinary actions, and might do jail time.

I can’t feel the same about my information on ANY Arabic social or online server. So I stay away.

Quality
The Quality of a service that is pumping millions into their online presence is something you can feel. Even though the services grow and prosper. Their quality usually gets better as economies of scale starts kicking in. Sadly, this is not the case for Arabic online services and the results are disappointing.

Accountability
When something goes wrong. I know where to go to normally when dealing with an international company. I deal with a company and not an individual. So I know that even if someone is not there, things will still function. But sadly that’s not the case with Arab online services where accountability is really not that clear, and knowing people is the only way to get things done.

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