A look to the present from the past.

As a part of Rasha's Good Old Blogging Days, I just miss those days, where the blogs were your own kingdom, before Social Networks came to steal this genuine spirit.

People shared their very fine personal details to people they don't even know. Online people knew each other for long, just for the heck of friendship. Looking for truth and warmth they didn't find in the real world. Expressing their views to people who are like-minded, or who are open-minded, or both.

Blogging was a place of acceptance, a place they can be free and wild, were they can virtually dance with the whole world watching, a place where all their dreams come true. A Utopia where every one believed in. I once read, maybe it was in the Bible, that the Kingdom of Christ is not on this land, it is in Heaven. So is blogging, our Kingdom was on the virgin Internet.

I wish I can express myself more in blogging, I miss those old days, I miss the friends I made through blogging. I miss much of the warm feelings I felt before.

I want to thank everyone who made me happy for even once, thank you very much.

Happy Birthday Global Voices!

So, it has been a while since I joined Global Voices, first as a translator, then author, then Editor for the Arabic Lingua project. I always found the time I spent contributing to Global Voices rewarding, in every way possible.

It has been almost 2 years since I was first introduced by Eman AbdelRahman who joined the community previously. She told me about it several times but back then I was satisfied by being only a reader. It was until I found a post of mine referred to by Amira Al Hussaini in one of her updates, I can’t deny I was impressed by being noticed at that time, never expected that.

In the same time I was impressed by the Lingua project, how can a website constantly updated be translated to 20+ languages only on volunteer based efforts. I never even saw a commercial project with this size and this diversity in languages, people from all around the world contributing and meeting every now and then for organizing all the work, and in the same time everything is just transparent, no “hidden agenda”, and almost with no bias.

After that I applied to join the volunteer translators team in the Arabic Lingua project. With every post I read, every one I translated, I always learnt something new. I discovered how can this world be the same in many parts of it and still stay very diverse.

Then I became an author, though not very active, but seeing my posts translated to languages like Russian, Italian and Bengali and that things I write can be read by people who don’t speak my language, who speak languages I don’t even know, and live in countries I never visited…it is just amazing.

I enjoyed meeting people from every corner of the Earth. It is awesome when something happens anywhere and you know a person from the same place who call tell you more about it.

One of the best things I really appreciate is attending the Global Voices summit which happened last May in Chile. Enjoying my first 27 hours flight (my last flight was in 1998 and it only lasted 100 minutes), meeting people I knew online for a long time before meeting them in person. Enjoying a beautiful country far away from home. Realizing that knowing English doesn’t guarantee that the language bar is not there. It gave me a passion to know about the Spanish speaking culture and Latin America in general.

So…Happy birthday Global Voices, it's six years old now. Good luck for many years to come in making more voices more reachable, and in facilitating more conversations between different corners of the world with all the diverse languages. Don't forget to donate to Global Voices if you want to support how it removes barriers to make more conversations between different parts of the world.

Denied visa

So today I was denied entry visa to go to Spain.

I got a scholarship to attend the Mozilla drumbeat festival 3 weeks ago, taking place in Barcelona, Spain. The festival is taking place from 3 to 5 November. After preparing all the documents according to the consulate website, went to the Spanish consulate in Alexandria after a call for booking an appointment, was kept there for 3 hours waiting for handling the visa application and the papers to the Spanish Consul.
Then I called them today to be informed that the visa application is cancelled. Why? The personnel who replied said that he is not authorized to state the refusal reasons. I’m not sure if anything can be done, but this is totally ridiculous. This is a well known event hosted by Mozilla in Spain, they should be more careful to use such kinds of events to improve the Spanish image in the field of digital media.

Kindle2 guide and review

So, last month I got the Kindle, the second generation one. I’ve been thinking of writing this post since sometime now, but was just too buried in researching about the Kindle and, of course, reading by it.

It is an outstanding experience, reading with no painful LCD screens, screens which do not go blind in bright light. You have to turn on the light to read, unlike most (if not all) the rest of standalone readers (oh please don’t mention the iPad, will say why at the end of the post).

I was shocked at first that Amazon didn’t ship the Kindle directly to the Middle East, so I got it from a friend of mine, who happens to be living in the States, and then hand-delivered it to me during his visit to Egypt.

So for people who are not lucky as me, maybe you can give Shop&Ship a try, I’m not sure if Amazon will accept Egyptian credit cards, but just in case, you can buy Amazon gift certificates and use it for buying the Kindle (Shop&Ship provides a US/UK address, I highly recommend the US address since the Kindle UK is a whole different website, with its own limitations).

The Kindle has two sizes, the normal has a 6" screen, while the other (called Kindle DX), has a 9" screen. The 9" one is nearly double the price, double the weight. So won’t be very portable to move with.

The 6 inch is light, 250g, with a slick design as shown below.

Kindle 2 de Amazon by Dekuwa under by-nc-sa license

I got a leather case, from Amazon too, for 34 dollars (a must buy if you are going portable and for protection).

And this is how it looks when you are reading:

So it really looks like you reading a book while commuting, only people close to you will give you the what-is-this-gadget look, which is something very convenient.

The Kindle2 support a micro-USB cable, with a small electric plug-like charger inserted in the USB end of the cable. You can’t charge using your computer/laptop, you HAVE to put it in the wall, which was my second shock, though still, the battery can go on like a week without turning Wireless on if you are a heavy reader (official duration is two weeks).

It also comes with 2 speakers in its metal cover as below for playing background music and also for reading aloud (for books with this option enabled) or for playing audio books. It also supports 3.5mm earphones on the top edge of the device)

Photo from Wikipedia under by-sa 3.0 license

When you open your Kindle for the first time (by sliding the top button instantly) you will find a guide. Read it till the end before you continue using the device.

Kindle has an amazing feature, which is the Whispernet option. This is a 3G wireless network covering most of the world for:

1. Purchasing from the Kindle Store and delivering purchased books to you device where coverage is available in less than 60 seconds.

2, Your purchased books will stay in your account archive even if your Kindle is stolen, or if you deleted your items by accident. Upon deletion the books move automatically to your online archive where you can download again by moving the book to your main space then open it (wireless must be on during opening)

3. Surfing online through the basic web browser (Wikipedia and the Kindle book store are for free, other than that it will cost you depending on where you are)

4. Writing reviews and putting them on the book Amazon reviews the moment you publish it.

After reading the guide, you should register your Kindle with your Amazon account to be able to purchase. Here comes the third shock, Amazon does NOT deliver Kindle books to Africa (apparently for books copyrights issues, since they have to sign deals with the publishers, or else the publishers will sue Amazon for every book available).

I tried to change my country for a few times, through the “Manage your Kindle” link in my Amazon account, once to France, once to UK, using random address and numbers. It was painful because actually Kindle “knew” that I’m not in those countries, not until I used proxies. Free proxies were also a pain since they were not always available.

Finally I changed my country to US, found a software called HotShield for safe surfing through free VPN in the US, all was OK until the program went crazy for a while. I uninstalled it, but all went normal. Seems like Amazon doesn’t monitor IPs theoretically coming from the US.

So currently Amazon treats me like any other American customer.

Going to the Kindle store, you have an option to either download the Kindle book format to your PC then transfer to your Kindle via USB, or download directly, for free, using the WhisperNet 3G network. I strongly recommend the second, it will save you all the fuss of connecting and disconnecting. Just turn on your Kindle wireless, Sync for new items, and then all your purchased items will be downloaded. This means a lot to me since this way I can read the book I want without spending centuries searching for it.

The Kindle2 6" can hold around 1500 books, so you can pack as much as you want during a long trip. There is an option called collections where you can group books on whatever basis you like, this is really effective when you have a large collection. You can also sort your books according to the Title, Author, and Most Recent First.

Bookmarks are unlimited, and when you continue reading the book is automatically send to the last read page.

There are a lot of free books (and word games too) in the Amazon store. You can also find a lot in other places as well. Amazon has a page for where you can get free books. But non-Amazon books do not enjoy the free wireless delivery, but still you can email it to your Amazon mail to be delivered wirelessly for a fee, usually for 99 cents per document. You will have to transfer it via USB.

While reading, you will discover the importance of the 5-way button:

1. Pressing it enables highlighting.
2. Scrolling to a specific word enables an instant dictionary for the word.
3. The highlighted text can be shared via Facebook / Twitter (you can connect them through Settings)

Kindle has a basic browser as mentioned earlier, its main use for me till now is finding out about people I didn’t know instantly without reading.

There is ability for converting your PDFs to the Kindle using MobiPocket creator (the PUBLISHER edition) and Stanza, I used the first since Stanza for Windows is still in beta. Side effects: equations are not displayed correctly, complicated images are colour-inversed, sometimes the images are not shown at all.

You can read PDFs on the Kindle, but on the 6" version the font will be too small (Fonts can be changed in Kindle format, but not in PDFs) KindleDX has more PDF support, but still, it is too expensive.

Finally I want to talk two things.

First: The kindle will be a real reading device for you when you stop considering it as a hi-tech gadget, it should feel like a real book, a usual everyday thing.

Second: iPads are laptops without keyboards, for people who want to surf. The Kindle is for heavy readers. If you are not a heavy-reader, the Kindle is not for you.

Open for questions.

Can you just think for a minute?

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Why do people put so much energy in blaming and trying to find who is responsible for a certain problem instead of thinking for a minute to find a way to fix it?!