Office 2010: the movie

Just watched this video on CrunchGear, what’s more hilarious than the video is the imaginary conversation at Mircrosoft posted under it.

My 5 Things MBA Schools Won’t Teach You

Was just reading OnStartups latest post  Startups: 10 Things MBA Schools Won’t Teach You and getting all excited I started to comment then I felt I had more than one item to share, so thought to just blog it!

1. Its a roller coaster ride, one day you think you are on top of the world; the next day you might be thinking of how to close shop!

2. Having reserves is so nice on an excel sheet, working to actually have some is a totally different story.

3. A two week collection time on an invoice is not as binding as you might think it is. Every client has their own payment policy, prepare to be agile in planning your cash flow!

4. Giving a big discount to get more work from a client in the future, is a hoax. Next time -most of the time – they will demand the same discount for giving you more work! Make sure you know what you are doing!

5. Doing good is great, and if you are as passionate about the stuff you help build as I am, then you need to exert a lot of effort into how many pro bono/at-cost projects you might want to do. This however, they teach you very well in MBA schools!

That’s it for now!

Disclaimer: I don’t have an MBA.

You’d think everyone knows what a browser is!

Think again!

With the tech world busy talking about Google’s announcement of its upcoming Google Chrom OS, on the other hand, here is some answers to the question:

What is a browser?

(form some New Yorkers it seems!)

folowen: find people/organizations’ social web

Wonder why I haven’t been blogging that much lately? Yes, was busy for the past month and a half working on our new web application whom proudly I have codded my self yes, after 10 years of not coding complete applications, its has been so much fun!

So, what is folowen?

folowen is a social media search tool that aggregates social profiles of people and organization’s on several social media sites into one search result.

It simply makes it easy for you to follow a person or organization’s social web; be it a Facebook profile, page, group, a Twitter account, a LinkedIn profile, a YouTube channel…etc.

By simply entering the name of a person or organization you will be able to find their social links across 19 social networking sites!

We are currently in a private beta testing stage, trying out the search and getting feedback on its accuracy as well as getting to know what users want more out of the service in the near future.

I am giving out invitations for the beta for the first 30 people who comment on WEBsessed!

Thank you Gaith from ArabCrunch for writing about us

Thank you Mohammad from StartUpArabia for writing about us as well

Spring & SYNTAX sponsor Chronicles of a Refugee Website

Chronicles of a Refugee is a 6 part documentary series looking at the global Palestinian refugee experience over the past 60+ years.

The documentary was produced and directed by Adam Shapiro, Perla Issa and Aseel Mansour and is currently being broadcasted @ Al Jazeera documentary channel.

SYNTAX and Spring sponsored the design and development for the documentary’s website as its the platform upon which the conversations between Palestinians all over the world would take place after screenings of the documentary. These conversations will take place on the website’s Forum section.

The website was build using Drupal 6.0 as the CMS with a customized video player to play each episode’s trailer.

Wolfram|Alpha launches tonight! @ 7pm CDT

Ok it is one hardcore WEBsessed post. it even has a geeky name.

Wolfram | Alpha, the new product out of Wolfram Research labs (world known for their Matmatica product) is promising to be the real deal search engine. I think Google finally has the prospect of a real competitor.

This search engine is smart, is semantic and promises to use natural language search something we’ve always wanted to have. Most people in semantic search talk about RDF (restructuring the Internet) so machines as people can talk to each other. Wolfram team thought no, that would take a long time. Lets code smart algorithms to get the answers we want.

Well they say its here. Watch the introductory video to understand more and watch a demo.

Watch the countdown video and later live broadcast  here.

Surprise! Arrivals dashbaord in QAIA

Went to pick up my dad from the airport tonight. Mom went in before me to see if we are at the right terminal and if the flight arrived or not (since 4457200 stopped working by the way, ringing endlessly!) She called and said that the arrivals dashboard said that it was delayed. So I parked and went in.

At 11:25 I read the dashboard my self and it said it arrived at 11:21 pm. super cool. 15 min and dad should be out there waving for us! Mom said no its delayed, and i say no it arrived. Turns out she was looking at the Arabic dashboard while i was looking at the English one. Fantastic!

11:40, I call dad and ask him where he is, assuming he’s either at immigration or waiting for luggage. to my surprise he told me he was just walking out of the plane.

I say that’s weird. I go check the dashboard again and this time it says arrived on 11:30 on the English screen. The Arabic screen logged the flight “delayed” at 11:25.

(Dammam flight)

I didn’t for one min ever doubt that the data source for the English dashboard is different than the Arabic one.  What kind of system even if coded some 20 years ago would  log a different schedule in English than in Arabic.

I guess its one of those “only in Jordan/Arabia”  kind of things!

Goodbye Julianna – Rest in peace

Lighting a candle in memory of Julianna, who lost her long battle against cancer yesterday. A battle fought so well until the very end. Thank you for everything. We will be forever grateful.

Technology, going back…then going forward

I happened to watch this funny video earlier tonight about what the pilot of 24 would’ve been like in 1994…

the file is too big, its about 3 floppies!!

Then later as I was browsing I watched this video of Microsoft’s 2019 Future Vision Montage,

don’t you want to read your news papers like that?

I often think that one main reason I would want to live beyond the age of 75 was that I want to experience as many technological innovations as possible. Most important of which is my long time favorite “Beam me up. Scotty!”

Stories of/about love

Alma Khasawnih’s quest for love has been going on for a while, early on with the most active quest on Questler:

What is it about love that makes it the focal point in our lives? Any thoughts on love?

sometime later last year, during her residency in Ramallah (covered here)

I attest to the obsession with the subject Alma has had all this time. Its been mostly one of the greatest learning journeys I’ve taken listening to her talk about that story, that book…her fascination is overwhelmingly beautiful.

Alma now has a regular column with JO magazine on Love, you can read the first one (March 2009) here titled “Love: An introduction”.

The second one is in the April issue titled “Forbidden Love”, where she has a theory I for one, never thought of before!

I might be biased since Alma is one of my closest friends, but don’t listen to me, go read for your self