Convincing Arabic Wikipedians to Write in Arabic
Written on July 22, 2008 – 11:30 am
Joop Dorresteijn, Contributing editor
It turns out that the Arabic language is not really represented Wikipedia, a problem in two ways. Here’s why: First, the people that can’t speak English have access to limited resources, and second: those who actually have Internet are usually the rich, well educated people that have no problem to talk English on the web, which creates a gap between the Arabic and Western countries.
Knowledge is power
The Herald Tribune reports about a group of Egyptians that are a little bit embarrassed about the size of their Arabic Wikipedia base. One of the organizers of an Egyptian Wikipedia conference explains: “The gap between the Arab world and the Western world is not about money or politics. It is about knowledge. There are many examples of Egyptians who travel to Europe or the U.S. and become successful. If people had access to the same knowledge …” As he underlines the importance of knowledge sharing. The Internet can play an important role in bridging this gap.
Not much Arabic content
The Arabic online Wiki content is little, in comparison: the English Wikipedia consists of over 2.5 million articles which is a fair number with over 400 million native speakers. However, the Arabic version consists of only 65.000 articles but counts a whopping 300 million native speakers. At a news conference last week, a reporter asked Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, if there was a sort of Bias against Arabic.
Wikipedia accessible for the poor
Wikipedia, with its open nature and lack of proper sources can be considered unreliable for many, but its often the only source available for the poor. For Egypt and other countries, there is little information available for some of the people. A possible reason for Egypt is that less then 10 percent of 80 million Egyptians are online, and those who have it are well educated and usually express themselves in English.
The Internet opens Egypt open to the world
The visa procedure is very difficult for Egyptians, no matter which country you want to go. Web applications such as Facebook and Wikipedia enables Egyptians to connect abroad. Nahla Ghoneim, a 23-year-old computer engineer at IT Works, said at the conference that young people in Egypt need to get involved in information technology “not just as consumers.”
English is the language on the web
The issue addressed by the Egyptians at the conference probably apply to more countries. In my opinion, the language of the web is English. The fact that everyone speaks the same language makes the Internet as powerful as it is today. However, one can’t expect the poor to talk English overnight.
I hope you like that post!
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Tvosz.com: watch like an Egyptian
Written on July 15, 2008 – 9:44 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Every week we publish an interview with a start-up. We ask five questions, hoping the answers will give you inspiration and new views.
This time we’re interviewing Ahmed Samir from Cairo-based video site Tvosz.com. Sometimes European entrepreneurs complain about not working a flourishing start-up culture like Silicon Valley’s. Well, they should try Egypt, where the start-up culture is even worse. Partly because the regular tech press doesn’t really pay attention to this country.
The Next Web is to blame too, from the 374 posts we wrote the last couple of months, only once concerned a Egyptian start-up. This was a review about MeOwns - a site where you can show off your belongings. So when Amhed Samir and his business partner Osama Awwad (left in the pic) mailed me with some news, I gladly offered him to participate in this start-up series. Here we go.
Tvosz.com is a video site, revolving around the same idea as YouTube: share your videos with the world. This would, according to their tagline, be a “great web experience”. Let’s dive a little deeper in that.
How did you come up with the idea of Tvosz.com?
“When I sat along with my two partners Osama and A.Abdel Aziz, we thought what would happen if our government suddenly banned YouTube. Would there be an alternative for young Egyptians? In addition, when thinking abroad, we wondered how we could compete with YouTube.
So we’ve decided to take a quick look at YouTube to see if there’s an essential feature that they’ve missed, so we could introduce it to our clients. We found that many users would love to be able to download some videos to their computers. So if we allowed them to download movies directly from our servers, they might find that amazing.
Another important issue was the content. We want Tvosz.com to have nice, updated and family-friendly content. That means a lot of extra work for us, since we have to approve every single video before streaming it to our servers.” (more…)
Facebook & Youtube help the fight for democracy in Egypt
Written on July 8, 2008 – 9:37 am
Steven Carrol, Next Web WebTipr France
Young activists are organizing rallies, strikes, and protests using Facebook in Egypt. Others are using YouTube to distribute videos showing torture and oppression.
For over 27 years, President Mubarak has ruled Egypt with an iron fist. Now amidst threats of imprisonment, activists are risking their liberty to fight the regime using high tech applications which the despot politicians haven’t quite worked out how to control (like they do the national media).
A growing swell of dissent is rising in the country, with more and more people willing to risk their liberty in order to get their voices heard. Many, however, are too scared to speak freely as protests are illegal and many fear being ‘disappeared’. The following short documentary outlines the struggles that those fighting for democracy in Egypt are facing and the new tools they are using to organize themselves. Click on the image to watch the documentary provided by Journeyman.tv.
MeOwns, because we’re living in a material world
Written on June 6, 2008 – 3:45 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Madonna already taught us years ago, we’re living in a material world. Well, good news for all you material girls and boys out there, I’ve just find a place for you to brag about what your bling bling, 1000+ vinyl collection or designer tiys. This service, that goes by the correctly 2.0 misspelled name of meOwns, makes it possible to showcase your belongings on their site, Facebook, and blogs. Here’s their motivation for that:
Can you tell what kind of person someone is just by the way he looks? Not necessarily, but you can by looking at what he owns!
So after you’ve registered to this utterly materialistic service, you can create collections and add items to them. The Egyptian software company behind meOwns kept the features simple. You only have to fill in a title, description, and tags, and add an image. Simplicity is good, but maybe they took it too far, as you can’t rate an item. And rating stuff is what makes a service like this interesting. OK, we’re all narcissists, but after a while, even showcasing your own stuff becomes boring.
When I blogged about Blippr - collect and review your media - a while ago, the whole office here went wild and started to use the service. The most important reasons? Creating a personal overview and getting recommendations via the ratings you’ve made. And although meOwns allows you to showcase more than just media, it lacks those killer features.
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