UPDATE: Everything sold.

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Apple will be launching their iPhone in Egypt in the near future, and everyone thinks that I’ll be one of the first to get it as I’m a Mac/Apple freak. They are wrong.

There are several reasons that I will not get the iPhone.

GPS: Being in Egypt, GPS will be disabled in the iPhone. To get to this conclusion, I have compared the iPhone - Egypt page, with the iPhone - Qatar page. In the Egypt page it says;

iPhone combines Multi-Touch — the most innovative user interface since the mouse — with some of the most advanced software ever. The three-axis accelerometer senses the orientation of iPhone and adjusts the display. The proximity sensor saves power by turning off the display when iPhone is lifted to your ear. All of this — together with its 3G, Wi-Fi, and EDGE capability — puts iPhone years ahead of any other mobile device.

However, in the Qatar page, it goes;

iPhone combines Multi-Touch — the most innovative user interface since the mouse — with some of the most advanced software ever. The three-axis accelerometer senses the orientation of iPhone and adjusts the display. The proximity sensor saves power by turning off the display when iPhone is lifted to your ear. All of this — together with its GPS, 3G, Wi-Fi, and EDGE capability — puts iPhone years ahead of any other mobile device

Also, on the Egypt page is says just “Maps”, whereas on the Qatar page it says “Maps with GPS”.

App Store: What can one do with an iPhone, that you can’t buy/install Apps on. Ofcourse you can Jailbreak it, but if I wanted to go in that direction, they I could have bought from anywhere else, Jailbroke it and waited like a loser until they Jailbroke every new release of the iPhone software.

So guys, before you go throwing your money on a phone whose features has been raped, make sure that you get all the features that the iPhone should provide.

Personally, I will not even think of buying unless they start selling it as it should be sold - with all the features.

UPDATE: The iPhone does not support Arabic yet. The characters show, but you can’t read anything.

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So what’s Ping.fm?
Simple, it’s a FREE service, where it helps you update most of your social networks effortlessly.
Ping.fm supports, twitter, Jaiku, identi.ca, FaceBook, Tumblr, friendfeed delicious and many more with just one post.

You can either use their website, mobile wap site, email, IM and even SMS.

After you create your account, you will discover that it’s very easy to add your services, and in the meantime update via all of the above mentioned, except maybe the SMS. But don’t get pissed yet.

Googling about it a little will land you to Dan Lane’s blog post on how you can achieve that wish. With three easy steps, you are ready to SMS your updates via Ping.fm.

This is almost perfect excpet that you can’t get updates via SMS…

So there you go. Enjoy it, and hope you find this useful.

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Inspired by …

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The truth is you can, but not through the authorized dealers.  Here is the story.
Back in April this year, I was in Dubai, where they had just launched the N82. For Moblogging and Photoblogging purposes, the N82 is a great companion, packed with features like Wifi, 3.5G speed, 5MP camera and a GPS. However, the GPS is the feature that killed my excitement, not that I hate the feature, or that I’m allergic to it, but GPS enabled telephones are banned in Egypt. I was even got more shocked when I called one of the main distributors in Egypt and learned that not only they are banned to be sold in Egypt, but also the dealers are not allowed even to fix a telephone that has GPS built in - Beautiful (The H Dabour Way).

So, ladies and gents, I am sarcastically proud to announce that Egypt is one of the two nations in the world (The other being Syria) who have the GPS enabled mobile phones banned, now isn’t that beautiful? But wait it gets better.

Devices like the HTC and the Blackberry all also have GPS built in. I know for a fact that GPS featured (but disabled) HTCs are being sold through legal distributors in Egypt, and that you could enable the GPS by simply flashing the phone, but I’d rather be seen dead than use a Windows Mobile device.

A future victim to this technological rape (or should we call it circumcision, as a piece of the device is removed for a definite purpose :P ) will be Apple’s iPhone. Considered to be one of the sexiest phones out there, with an outstanding user interface, simple to use, an oh shit, GPS. A few weeks ago I was talking with one of the responsible at Apple in Egypt, he said that the phone has to be launched as there is a solid contract with both Vodafone and Orange (Mobinil) to launch and sell the iPhone in Egypt, but most probably, the GPS will be disabled. Of course our friends back in Apple International do not get the logic of why Egypt are requesting GPS disabled iPhones, well the logic is quite simple.

Some intelligent (actually very intelligent) people in this country are with the belief that GPS in phones will be used for spying, and that anyone will be located anywhere in the country. For the love of God, already being on a GSM network you are being easily tracked (even when your phone is switched off), it’s not disabling a GPS in the phone that will make you invisible. Besides, with the massive satellites up there, rest assured that the color of your poop is also being monitored, so just leave the GPS systems out of it.

For this reason, I am happy to know that we are stuck with outdated telephone models for quite some time, until someday, the logic gets reconsidered.

Ta7ya Masr!

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Beginning today, Twitter is no longer delivering outbound SMS over our UK number.

Oh wow, now that’s a sweet joke. They also added;

Updating via our UK number remains fully supported and these changes do not affect users in Canada, India, or the United States.

Wow, so that means that the rest of the world should find another way to post their tweets. Entrepreneurial ideas like tweetsms were born in the blink of the eye, whether it will be effective, or just die it’s something we should wait and see.

Frankly speaking, this did not change anything as both Mobile operators I am subscribed to were already not sending any SMS nor receiving any from Twitter, and I have been already using either Fring, or Twitter’s Mobile page to check and update my Tweets.

The reaction to Twitter’s blog post were mostly negative. The twitterers I follow were seriously thinking of going to Jaiku, although they hated it’s guts when they first tried it out in April this year, but it seems that the rule of the microblogging game has changed. Although I do like Jaiku’s as an overall service, and the fact that it sends notifications to all three Egyptian mobile operators and recieves only from two (Etisalat does not send SMS to Jaiku), I feel that both it’s web interface and their Nokia S60 application lack the simplicity and sleekness many users look for. This is just my mere point of view, and I truly respect that many of you might see otherwise. Jaiku is now owned by Google, and I don’t think  there has been any improvements to their service ever since the acquisition.

For example, I have been requesting the activation code for my mobile for more than five times, and to this moment I did not get it. Not to forget that I even sent and email to their support address, and it returned by a mailbox full delivery error - now isn’t that sweet. Jaiku does have a lot of potential, but they have some bad joints which need to be sorted out really soon, specially that this could be their major opportunity. One more thing, Jaiku is still an invite only service, so you’d better know someone who uses Jaiku and has got invites to spare.

Another great alternative that OpenSource enthusiasts are calling out is identi.ca. A service which is simple to the bone, open source and runs on Laconica microblogging software. What I like about identi.ca that it does have IM updates service via GTalk/Jabber, email update service and also SMS. The SMS notification does not yet work for any of the operators in Egypt. If you are aware that any of the Egyptian providers support SMS over email, please let them know by dropping a line to admin@identi.ca and they will make their utmost to add it. I wonder why twitter never thought of doing this instead of just cutting the connection. Regarding identi.ca’s support, I sent an email to them asking something about the SMS service, and recieved their reply in less than two hours - impressed :)

So which one will it be? Will Twitterers Stick with Twitter, or jump onboard the Jaiku Wagon? Or are we going for open source solutions like idetni.ca? Personally, I prefer Jaiku on all three, but the simplicity of identi.ca is pulling my leg. I will however continue microblogging with twitter until I make my final decision, specially that I never used an SMS to tweet.

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I asked my friend who also use Macs if they were facing the same issue, and it was a yes, until I asked a friend in the States who said that he had no issues at all.

It clicked to me right away, that it had to be a regional problem. So, the minute I switched my time zone to anywhere else in iCal, the issue was resolved and there, I had August 29 again. Now that’s the good news. The bad news is that the problem was still there when I switched back to Cairo.

To this moment I still winder what the heck is wrong with it and how it can be resolved.

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iCal Screenshot on my Mac

Something seems wrong on my iCal, I found out today that August 29 does not exist, I have two August 28s :) I really don’t know if anyone else has this problem. Luckily the rest of the year is fine.

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