Sunday, May 28, 2006

SR120m Tech Institute to Be Set Up in Riyadh With Malaysian Help

SR120m Tech Institute to Be Set Up in Riyadh With Malaysian Help
Mohammed Rasooldeen, Arab News

RIYADH, 27 May 2006 — The Kingdom will set up an Information Communications Technology training institute in Riyadh in cooperation with Malaysia. The proposed venture is estimated to cost SR120 million. The Kingdom has allocated SR3 billion for e-government projects over the next five years.

“The Multimedia Development Corporation and four private sector companies in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia have signed a letter of intent to set up the Information and Communications Technology Training Institute in the capital,” Malaysian Ambassador Ismail Haji Ibrahim told Arab News yesterday.

The letter of intent to establish the institute was signed between the MDeC and four Saudi establishments when a 16-member Saudi delegation headed by Abdul Aziz A. Jasser, ICT committee chairman of the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce and Industry, visited Kuala Lumpur recently. The four Saudi companies that inked the agreement included Malaz Group, Tech Invest Communication and Information Technology and Engineering Applications and the Arabian Advanced Systems.

“Malaysia has a unique experience in developing technical institutions,” the envoy said, pointing out that this is the second e-project that will be carried out in the Kingdom with the cooperation of Malaysian expertise.

Last year, the two countries signed an agreement for eMadinah project to channel government and business sectors to operate using information and communication technologies. Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and Madinah Governor Prince Miqren witnessed the signing ceremony held in Madinah.

“eMadinah is the first of its kind not only in Saudi Arabia but in the whole the region,” the envoy said. The project included five concurrent tracks on business, technology, human resources, program and change management and knowledge management.

“The setting up of an ICT training institute in Riyadh is one of the areas identified by the 16-member Saudi ICT delegation,” Multimedia Development Corp (MDC) said in a statement yesterday.

Al-Jasser said the initiative is expected to attract Malaysian technical institutions to partner with Saudi companies in establishing and running the institute. The joint committee will also look into the establishment of a Saudi-Malaysia ICT Fund to spearhead private sector investments in both countries.

The committee will jointly explore collaborative projects in the areas of ICT and multimedia including data recovery and hosting services, technology park development, public-private partnership collaboration on egovernment projects, content/media and computer-based engineering services.


Friday, May 26, 2006

Mobile web gears up for lift-off

Mobile web gears up for lift-off
By Jonathan Fildes
BBC News science and technology reporter in Edinburgh

Iranian woman using a mobiles phone
There are millions of mobile phone users worldwide
The rush to seize part of the burgeoning mobile internet market has started with the launch of a new domain name specifically for mobile devices.

The .mobi domain is aimed specifically at websites designed to be viewed on mobile phones.

The name was approved by internet regulatory body Icann last year but businesses have not been able to buy one until this week.

Companies like Yahoo and Microsoft have already purchased .mobi names.

However, the inventor of the web, Tim Berners-Lee, does not back the scheme.

"I wrote publicly [that] I thought the .mobi domain was a bad idea. I still do," he told a news conference at the WWW2006 conference in Edinburgh.

Although a supporter of the mobile web, he believes that efforts should focus on making existing content smart enough to be able to recognise what kind of device it is being viewed on, large or small.

Creating sites specifically for the small screen risks fragmenting the web, he argues.

"What's very important from my point of view and from the World Wide Web consortium's point of view is that there is just one web," he said.

Web to go

Backers of .mobi, like Daniel Appelquist, a senior technology strategist at Vodafone, believes both parties have the same goal in mind.

Today's mobiles have the processing power of yesterday's PCs
Sir David Brown, Motorola
"This is not about creating a separate mobile web," he told the BBC News website. "It is about making the web mobile."

At present there are more than two billion mobile phones in use around the world and this number is forecast to rise to 2.8 billion by the end of 2006.

"We have all of these phones but so far they have only really been used for text messaging and voice," said Ronan Cremin from mTLD, the registry for .mobi.

"That really underestimates the capabilities of the device."

Initial attempts to provide web services for phones, such as Wap, have failed to attract a large audience.

This has been partly due to a lack of agreed standards for how Wap pages should look or what domain names they should use.

In addition, when Wap was launched, most phones only had monochrome displays and did not support pictures, so could not recreate the look, feel or content of the web.

However that situation has now changed.

"Today's mobiles have the processing power of yesterday's PCs" Sir David Brown, chairman of mobile phone maker Motorola told the Edinburgh conference.

The great advantage of these devices "formerly known as the mobile phone," he said, was that they are the one device people carry around with them.

Mobile explosion

As prices tumble to below $15 for a handset, sales are expected to top the almost 100,000 phones already sold every hour worldwide.

As more people get connected around the world the rise in demand for mobile web services is expected to follow.

People using mobiles phones
Last year research company Ipsos found that more than a quarter of users browsed the internet on their mobile phones, and this number is expected to grow.

The new domain name is an attempt to make the mobile web experience more user-friendly before this explosion.

The .mobi group has been working with W3C, the organisation responsible for developing standards for web pages, of which Sir Tim is director.

This move does not signal a reverse of opinion from Sir Tim, but rather that if the domain is going ahead, he feels it is better to be involved in the process.

"We've agreed to differ" said Sir Tim.

Different presentation

The use of .mobi will indicate that a website will work on a mobile phone.

Companies that build a mobile site will be required to follow certain technical guidelines and recommended to follow others that have been developed by a W3C mobile web initiative over the last year.

".mobi is a trust mark," said Mr Cremin. "If a user sees a .mobi address, they know that it will work on their phone."

The resulting web pages will be noticeably different from those that are accessed on a PC, with reduced graphics and fewer choices.

"If you're on a phone, you are not sitting in front of a 19-inch monitor with a high speed connection," said Mr Cremin. "You don't want to see all of the options that a normal website has."

Supporters of the new domain are keen to stress that whether you view a website on a PC or a mobile device the experience will be "thematically consistent".

"You are essentially interacting with the same article, even though it may be a slightly different version or maybe a slightly different presentation," said Vodafone's Mr Appelquist, who also chaired the W3C working group that drew up the .mobi guidelines.

"This is the cornerstone of the idea."

This week saw the start of the first round of registration for companies like mobile phone operators to get their hands on a .mobi site.

From mid-June, trademark holders will be given the chance to register before the market is opened up in August to anyone who wants to create mobile site.


Sunday, May 21, 2006

شعوذة "عابرة للحدود" تستخدم الجوال لإثارة الفزع في نفوس السعوديي

شعوذة "عابرة للحدود" تستخدم الجوال لإثارة الفزع في نفوس السعوديين




علماء الدين يحذرون من الوقوع في شرك السحرة والمشعوذين عبر الاتصالات الهاتفية

دبي- العربية.نت

كشفت صحيفة سعودية عن طريقة جديدة يستخدمها بعض المشعوذين من وراء الحدود للايقاع بالسعوديين، وقالت إن بعض المواطنين قد تلقوا مكالمات مشبوهة عبر أجهزة الجوال من مشعوذين يتصلون بهم من بعض الدول الإفريقية يدعون أن الله أراهم رؤيا كشفت لهم بأن هناك من يحيكون المكائد والشرور لهم وأنهم سيقعون في مصيبة، ويدعون قدرتهم على دفع الضرر مقابل أموال. في الوقت نفسه حذر شيخ سعودي من الوقوع في شرك السحرة والمشعوذين عبر تلك الاتصالات الهاتفية أو غيرها من الوسائل.

ووفقا لصحيفة الوطن الأحد 21-5-2006، يقول مسفر القحطاني إنه تلقى اتصالاً من الرقم ( 002216130007)، حيث أخبره محدثه قائلا "معك الشيخ أبو بكر.. قل الحمد لله.. نحن نعلم ما لا تعلمون ونرى مالا ترون.. أخي الكريم عندما كنا في إحدى الغابات انكشف لنا المستور، هناك أشخاص يريدون أن يعملوا لك عملا يصيبك بخسارة، ونحن نستطيع أن نوقف هذا العمل وإنما بمقابل مادي بسبب تعاوننا مع أشخاص آخرين ونريد أن تقوم بتحويل مبلغ من المال ومن ثم يقوم بعض التمتمات غير المفهومة.

وأضافت أم عبد الله أنها كادت أن تقع فريسة سهلة لهؤلاء الدجالين على حد وصفها، حيث قالت "عندما صحوت من النوم وجدت على شاشة الجوال مكالمات لم يتم الرد عليها، وكانت تبدأ بأرقام مفتاح دولي فقمت بالاتصال فإذا الطرف الآخر رجل يتحدث بكلمات منها آيات قرآنية وأحاديث نبوية ويدعو الله بأن يدفع الضرر عني فزاد حديثه الخوف في قلبي من إصابتي بمكروه وفكرت مليا بأن أنفذ له طلباته وأرسل له مبلغا من المال (بالدولار) حسب طلبه، إلا أن أحد إخوتي حذرني بشدة من مغبة الأمر وأكد لي أن الرجل ما هو إلا محتال.

أما فيصل الغامدي فتلقى هو الآخر اتصالا مماثلا من إحدى الدول الإفريقية وكان محدثه يكلمه بلغة فصحى وقال له "إنه أبلغ أثناء صلاة القيام عبر ملائكة جنود من عند الله بأن هناك مكروها سيصيبك، وأنه من خلال التواصل معه هاتفيا لعدة أيام وسوف ينجلي عن الغيب السواد ويتضح كل شيء" .

من جانبه، حذر الراقي الشرعي الشيخ منصور الموسى من الوقوع في شرك السحرة والمشعوذين عبر تلك الاتصالات الهاتفية أو غيرها من الوسائل. موضحا أن هناك علامات وصفات نستطيع من خلالها التعرف على السحرة والمشعوذين منها أن الساحر يقوم بالسؤال عن اسم الشخص واسم أمه ويطلب بتأمين أي أثر من آثار المريض مثل ثوب أو منديل وغيره بالإضافة إلى تأمين حيوان بصفات معينة ليذبحه.

عودة للأعلى

Thursday, May 11, 2006

Phone tune triggers Iraqi MPs row

Phone tune triggers Iraqi MPs row
Iraqi parliament speaker Mahmoud al-Mashhadani
Mr Mashhadani objected to Ms Saadi's chamber protest
A bodyguard of an Iraqi Shia MP has been hit by security staff of the Iraqi parliament's Sunni speaker in a row sparked by a mobile phone.

MP Ghofran al-Saadi said her bodyguard was attacked when the phone played a well-known Shia religious tune while the speaker was being filmed.

The speaker, Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, later stormed out of the assembly when Ms Saadi demanded an apology.

The episode came amid ongoing tensions between Iraq's Shia and Sunni factions.

According to reports, Mr Mashhadani was being interviewed in the lobby of the parliament when Ms Saadi's bodyguard's mobile phone rang twice.

Mr Mashhadani's bodyguards turned on the man and accosted him. One of the guards hit the man with a pistol, a journalist was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying.

Ms Saadi told Reuters the phone had played a Shia religious chant.

The MP, a member of the Shia United Iraq Alliance, protested about the beating to Mr Mashhadani during a session of the assembly.

But Mr Mashhadani said the assembly was not the place to make such a complaint and switched off Ms Saadi's microphone and television cameras, before storming out.

Afterwards, Ms Saadi told reporters she wanted an inquiry into the attack on her guard.

"I want an immediate investigation, " she was quoted by AFP news agency as saying.

"I want all the Iraqi people to know what happened."

Sunday, May 07, 2006

Following Ghana's phone thieves

Mobile phones stolen in Europe are turning up in Ghana in what is proving to be a massively lucrative criminal business - and then being stolen again by local thieves once they are purchased.

A complex network has developed shipping the phones out of British ports and to West Africa.

But once they arrive in the country - and in particularly the capital Accra - they are often re-stolen a number of times as a phone-centred crime wave sweeps the city.

"We identified that mobile phones which had been reported as stolen by customers in the UK - and were therefore blocked by the networks - were being exported throughout the world for resale and use in other countries, and this obviously included Ghana," Superintendent Eddie Thompson, of the world's only dedicated mobile phone crime unit, based in London, told BBC World Service's Global Perspective programme.

One ongoing inquiry is of an individual exporting through ports, and group exporting the phones through a freight terminal, exporting "quite high volumes of phones, stolen in the UK, out to Ghana."

Moto snatches

Many of the stolen phones end up in Accra's Tiptoe Lane, known for its second-hand markets and traders of goods of questionable origin.

Ademan, one of the traders, explained that he receives supplies from Finland, and brand new phones from Dubai. On a good day he will sell four phones, on a bad day none.

Market
The phones end up in the markets of West Africa, where they are sold on
He said, however, that he does not accept phones to sell unless they are accompanied by a matching charger.

But another trader, Alasan, said that he simply sells phones he is given by his brother, who says they come from Italy.

"I can't know whether they are stolen - I can't know that," he admitted.

But the story of the stolen phone does not end there.

The surge in mobile phone ownership in the country in recent years - some of which has been driven by the availability of stolen European phones - has led to a wave of crime focused solely on snatching the phones from their owners.

Gangs of young boys, usually aged 14-16, ride around the city on "motos" - small motorcycles - targeting people who have handsets in plain sight.

They are often able to snatch them swiftly, and at force, before driving off.

"The bike comes, they go behind the car - the driver didn't even see they were coming - and then they got to the passenger side and snatched the phone with some force," explained one victim.

"Then they sped off, and they were gone.

It came to a level where the police needed to act - and we have acted
Deputy director of police public affairs Kwesi Ofori
"It happens a lot - they just snatch your phone, and they are gone."

A former gang leader, Razak, told Global Perspective how easy he had found it to steal the phones.

And if the handset was not clearly visible, they would simply target people's bags which they would usually keep the phone in.

"I was always looking for phones, every time I stepped outside," he said..

"Phones are easier than wallets - and often wallets don't have anything in anyway."

He explained that the reason his gang had stolen was because "we didn't have any education, and our family had no money - nothing."

"But I saw it was a bad life," he added.

This relatively new crime has been working its way up the police priority list in the country.

"It came to a level where the police needed to act - and we have acted," said Accra's deputy director of police public affairs, Kwesi Ofori.

"We have put a lot of resources in. In 2004, there were 209 reported cases - in 2005, 417.

"Our anti-armed robbery unit has taken it very seriously, and has arrested a lot of violent gang members for phone snatching.

"We have reduced phone robbery to a level which is encouraging."

Changing attitudes

Philip Boyfi, one of Ghana's biggest mobile phone retailers, explained that until recently many Ghanaians were not at all careful about concealing their phones.

"They always want to show off the mobile phone they have got," he said.

"All my customers want to be able to scream at the top of their voice that they are on cellphones."

However, following a massive push by the police to educate people of the dangers of using their phone in the street, attitudes are changing.

"You hear of people being threatened at gunpoint for their phone, hit, stabbed with knives," said Fiona Entman, one Accra citizen who lives not far from Tiptoe Lane.

"Now, it is a bit on the low side. Some months ago it was terrible and everyone was scared - some people did not even take their phones to the office, they just left it at home.

"There was a lot of publication on safety with your mobile phone. People are now more alert, and even the people who commit such crimes are more alert, because the police are around."


كاميرا هاتف نقال صورت جريمة قتل الزميلة أطوار

كاميرا هاتف نقال صورت جريمة قتل الزميلة أطوار



حتى معايير القسوة الشديدة التي عرف بها العنف في العراق, فإن مقتل مراسلة قناة العربية -والجزيرة سابقا- أطوار بهجت قد تجاوزها بكل المعاني.
فالشريط الذي حصلت عليه صنداي تايمز وصور بكاميرا هاتف نقال رصد لحظاتها الأخيرة وهي تذبح ويمثل بها, ويظهر لأول مرة عمل فرق الموت العراقية في الميدان, لكن دون أن يعرف من يقف وراءها, رغم بعض الإشارات المتناقضة.
ومنعت الحواجز في 22 فبراير/ شباط الماضي الشهيدة أطوار من دخول مسقط رأسها مدينة سامراء لتتابع لتفجير مرقد الإمام العسكري, وقد بدا القلق واضحا في آخر تقرير لأطوار.
ما من مغيث
وفي ذلك اليوم اقترب رجلان على متن سيارة من جمع صغير من الناس وسألا عنها, واستغاثت أطوار بمن حولها, لكن ما من مغيث.
وقيل حينها إن أطوار قتلت رميا بالرصاص, مع مصورها وفني الصوت, لكن تبين الآن أن معاناتها كانت فوق ذلك.
بهجت قتلت خلال تغطيتها لتفجير مرقد الإمام العسكري بسامراء (الفرنسية-أرشيف)
وتظهر أطوار في الشريط بين يدي رجلين مفتولي العضلات في لباس عسكري, وقد أوثقت يداها خلف ظهرها, وتجمد الدم في وجهها ذعرا, وعندما بدأ التصوير, كانت عيناها قد عصبت بعصابة بيضاء, والدم ينزف من جرح في الجزء الأيسر من الرأس.
من الوريد إلى الوريد
يقترب رجل ضخم بلباس عسكري وجزمة وقلنسوة من أطوار من الوراء ويكمم فمها بيده اليسرى, وقد أمسك في يده اليمني بسكين كبيرة بمقبض أسود وشفرة طولها ثماني إنشات, ويبدأ في ذبحها من الوريد إلى الوريد, وتسمع صرخات أطوار تتعالى فوق صيحات "الله أكبر" التي يرددها حامل الهاتف النقال.
ومع ذلك فليست تلك نهاية أطوار, إذ يأتي رجل آخر يرتدي قميصا أسود ويضع جزمته اليمنى على بطنها ويدفع بقوة ثماني مرات لينزف الدم من جروحها, وهي تحرك رأسها من اليمين إلى اليسار, وحينها فقط يعود ذابحها ليكمل عمله, ويجز الرأس ويلقي به أرضا.
تفاصيل أخرى لم يلتقطها الفيلم, لكن احتفظ بها أحد أصدقاء بهجت لم يشأ ذكر اسمه, متحدثا عن تسعة ثقوب في يدها اليمنى وعشرة في اليسرى, وثقوب في رجليها وسرتها وعينها اليمنى.
إشارات متناقضة
وإذا كانت الملابس التي يرتديها قتلة بهجت هي ملابس الحرس الوطني العراقي فإنها لا تقيم دليلا قاطعا, لأنها قد تكون ملابس مسروقة من أجل التمويه، حسب الصحيفة.
كما أنه رغم أن المصدر الذي زود الصنداي تايمز بالفيلم أكد أن الهاتف عثر عليه مع عنصر من مليشيات "بدر" لقي مصرعه في اشتباك في بغداد, فلا سبيل إلى الجزم بأن المنظمة مسؤولة عن قتلها.
وتواصل الصحيفة "صحيح أنه يحكى في العراق أن المثقاب هو الطريقة المفضلة لدى عناصر بدر لتعذيب ضحاياهم, لكن قطع الرأس يحمل بصمات تنظيم القاعدة في بلاد الرافدين, كما أن بدر حمت عائلة أطوار لحظة تشييعها من هجومين, قتل فيهما ثلاثة أشخاص".
وقالت الصنداي تايمز إن كل ما هناك إذن إشارات متناقضة, والأكيد أن الطريقة التي قتلت بها أطوار شهادة على حالة الفوضى التي نزل إليها العراق, وشهادة على أن الانتماء لهذا الفريق أو ذاك لن يحميك, فأطوار كانت شيعية وسنية, في الوقت نفسه, لكنها جمعت في مقتلها عذابات الفريقين.

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