issa's blog

If you want to know the state of the Arabic Linux User Groups just have a short visit to their websites. They are not only unwilling/unable to have some community activities, but -even online- they are not able to create a virtual space for Linux fans, professionals or newbies.
These are some screenshots of the home pages of these groups, ordered from the biggest #FAIL to the biggest #OK :)

Linux Arabia (http://www.linuxarabia.com)

Dinar after Dinar the poor Jordanian citizen is paying money to big multinational Software vendors; companies that provide most of the times proprietary and closed source software to our government and public administration.

(CC-BY stuartpilbrow)

Finally, Jordan's Arabic country code top level domain (ccTLD) has been approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Until recently, domains of the websites were restricted to Latin characters.

The new Arabic Internet address for Jordan will be ".الاردن", and will not replace the more famous ".jo" but Jordanian websites that will have Arabic domains (if any) can use the new ccTLD. Some examples: الملكة-رانيا.الاردن for queenrania.jo and الغد.الاردن for alghad.jo

Back in 2007, the USA, EU, Switzerland and Japan started the negotiations to create an international agreement on intellectual property rights, the claimed goal was to reduce the trade of counterfeit goods and pirated copyright protected works through a legislative framework. The agreement is now known as Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement or ACTA.

First of all, congratulations to Minister of Information and Communication Technology on his new blog and Twitter account. After fifteen years the same person who first invented "Ask the Government", a web service which allowed citizens to ask questions to government officials and public administration, is focusing again on the social impact of technology.

Back in October 2009, the tech-savvy US administration decided to switch their website to Drupal, the most famous open source content management system. The step was seen as a triumph for the open source community, and the Obama's administration played this card very well and put the www.whitehouse.gov transition to Drupal as a milestone of its Open-Government initiative.

Source Forge has banned downloads from Syria, Iran, Sudan, Cuba, and North Korea. Funny enough, the decision came after US Secretary of State speech on Internet's freedom.

These are ten points I think are good to check when you do some testing for your website. Actually I write them down with no extreme thinking and in five minutes, so if you want to add some points or you believe some of them are senseless just leave a comment! ;)

(Illustration by DGBurns)

Checklist to test websites:

In an unexpected move, new Minister of Information and Communication Technology Marwan Juma met with Microsoft representatives in his office as he asked about the benefits of renewing Microsoft licenses in Jordan's government and public administration, stopping by this the former minister's intention to re-sign a multi-million agreement with the company

"Using pirated software can shut down your business at any time" is the message Microsoft is heavily carrying out on major Jordanian websites. The campaign promoted by Microsoft Jordan is linking to a page which shows a list of resellers in Jordan in addition to a link to report cases of software piracy.