Google doodle for Jordan's Independance Day!

In honor of Jordan's Independence Day, Google designed a special "Doodle" that can be seen on May 25th at www.google.jo.

If you're not familiar with these doodles- are you an Internet user?- they are Google's way of celebrating events and occasions, whereby the plain Google logo that shows up on the home page is replaced by a themed Google logo.

This Independence Day doodle is a nice touch by Google, demonstrating its appreciation towards users of its services in Jordan.

I'd like to think that a couple of high ranking Jordanians I know at Google might have had something to do with this, but it's probably part of a wider initiative to celebrate national or independence occasions in all countries in the Middle East and North Africa region.

Queen Rania is now Twitter-ing too

Her Majesty Queen Rania has been utilizing ‘new media tools’ to communicate her messages regarding topics she adopts such as economic and social development, equality for women, educational opportunities and others.

Apart from the well publicized YouTube Channel, which won Her Majesty plaudits across the world and now boasts nearly 3,000 subscribers and millions of views on some videos, Her Majesty has also had a Facebook profile for some time now with over 30,000 fans and is now also quite active on Twitter too!

The World Economic Forum, held at the Dead Sea last week, attracted global attention to Jordan and to Her Majesty’s Twitter-ing. In fact, Her Majesty conducted an interview on Twitter, with questions and answers being within the 140 character limit that Twitter allows. You can see this interview at Her Majesty’s Twitter profile (twitter.com/QueenRania).

Her Majesty answers questions from the “general public” via her Twitter account (@QueenRania), and seeing as she can’t answer all the questions received, around 40 of them were put to a public vote, of which Her Majesty replied to the top five questions.

The rather frank questions selected touched on somewhat sensitive topics such as Jordanian-Palestinian relations, but mostly covered social equality, education and technology, and promoting greater understanding between East and West.

Her Majesty’s efforts to communicate through social media must be commended. Social media is probably the most efficient means of communication in the 21st century, to promote greater understanding of Arabs and Muslims, in a time when predjudice exists online and offline. What better or more powerful tool is there to convey positive messages, and fight against negative propoaganda. I believe we all have a responsibiluty to utilize such tools. Let’s get started, and follow Her Majesty’s lead!

zanasser@gmail.com

Global losses from priacy exceed $50 billion

For the first time, a rise in losses of 11 percent means that piracy levels have now reached $53bn. These are the latest findings by International Data Corp. (IDC), who perform an annual study on software piracy.

Experts say this is due to unprecedented growth in the IT industry in parts of the world where there were no committed efforts to control piracy.

Overall illegally-copied programmes represented 41 percent of all software sales, three percentage points more than in 2007. Global piracy had increased as a direct result of unprecedented growth in the IT industry in parts of the world where there were no committed efforts to control piracy. The spread of the internet and access to high-speed broadband had contributed to the problem pirated software has moved from the streets to the internet, he said.

The information publicly released by the IDC highlights the status in specific areas of the world, including the Middle East.

A press release issued by the IDC reveals that the biggest disappointment in our region is that losses from software piracy in the GCC has leapt by 48 percent. Gulf states lost $590m to software piracy; yet, the only bright spot in our region was revealed to be the UAE, ranked as a low-piracy country. It was in the 20th spot in the 2007 report, and is at the 21st spot for 2008.

Otherwise, the situation in Arab countries seems disturbing, especially the region’s largest IT market, Saudi Arabia, in which piracy is up a whopping 60 percent in 2008. Details on every country are available to those who obtain this report from IDC.

People take the discussion of piracy lightly. But the reality is that piracy has a significant impact on the economy, in every country.

A previous IDC study estimates that a ten point reduction in PC software piracy in Jordan would deliver nearly 500 new jobs, $14 million in tax revenues, and $47 million in economic growth.

Government who implement strict policies against trading in pirated software and conducted a number of raids can possibly gain some of these benefits.

Additionally, countries who take a serious stance on piracy, experience an increase in direct investment from international software firms, and can develop as regional IT centers. This is something that Jordan seeks to achieve.

But, history has shown, that the education of users regarding piracy, and the establishment of incentives to ‘go legal’ have been the best measures. Delivering value to users, and understanding the economic reality of specific regions is one way to promote legal software use. Amidst this global economic recession, this approach may be the only viable one for the software industry!

zanasser@gmail.com

The IT Graduate Internship Program (GIP) takes off

One of the long-running complaints voiced by IT companies in Jordan has been that graduates of IT universities and colleges are not adequately prepared for careers in the software industry. Universities always countered this arguement saying they wanted to build relationships with the sector and required more on-the-job ‘internship’, for the students.

There seemed to be a bit a deadlock in these positions, mainly because companies didn’t want to spend the time or incur the costs of training students who may or may not return, and who cannot work the hours required to produce; while academics in universities, despite their good intentions, simply could not significantly change curricula and coursework to focus on more practical skills or industry-level training.

Finally, it seems we have a program in place to solve this issue.

The Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (MoICT), in cooperation with int@j, has launched the “Graduates Internship Programme”, whereby the government subsidizes 50 percent of the salary of newly employed graduates in the first 12 months, and 25 percent in the following 6 months, leading up to a total of 18 months of subsidized employment, in addition to providing those graduates with ‘soft skills’ training.

This has opened the way for companies to step in to benefit from this opportunity.
Already, one of the country’s largest software developers, Estarta Solutions has joined the Graduate Internship Program, whereby Estarta will provide a number of interns with on job training in their respective fields of specialization

An agreement signed between ESKADENIA Software, another large software development company, and Princess Sumaya University for Technology (PSUT) even takes matters several steps further.

ESKADENIA will establish working offices within the PSUT campus for the development, management and operation of software products and services, in close cooperation with the students and the academia. The facility accommodates around 30 full-time students and employees. There will also be a number of students and graduates working at the ESKADENIA head office on on-going projects.

MoICT and int@j must be applauded for this program, which will help achieve a national ICT strategy objective of increasing direct employment in the sector reaching 35,000 jobs by 2011.

It’s good to see positive movement in the sector, and such a cooeprative and action-oriented approach can solve other pending issues facing IT deveopment in Jordan. The future look brighter when we all parties work together. Long may it continue! n

zanasser@gmail.com

PC sales drop in MEA region, for the first time

It is now clear that the PC market is not recession proof. Sales figures coming out of our region, the Middle East & Africa (MEA), suggest that the days of soaring growth are over.

International Data Corp (IDC) has revealed that sales growth was flat from quarter four 2008 to quarter one 2009, and have even showed a decline year-on-year during the first quarter. This means that the double-digit growth of the past few years may be over.

The IDC numbers show that a total of 3.5 million units were sold into “the channel” between January and March, this is but 6 percent lower than a year ago. It could have been worse, if there wasn’t such a high demand for portable PCs.

It is important to note that the Middle East and Africa numbers include sales in the huge markets of Turkey and South Africa, which may ‘tip the scales’.

Which brings us to the country level. In the Gulf, shipments of desktops and notebooks in Saudi Arabia increased 10 percent year-on-year during the first quarter, but the UAE contracted 6 percent over the same period. This is understandable, considering how connected the UAE market is to the global economy, whereas Saudi Arabia seems somewhat recession-proof up to this point.

The notes made by Stefania Lorenz, research director CEMA systems at IDC, don’t provide much comfort. She says that the MEA region was negatively affected by a 13 percent decline in desktops, but notebooks saw a 2 percent growth year-on-year, driven by the stronger uptake on mini-notebooks. So, it would seem the Netbook phenomena may rescue overall sales.

She goes on to explain that that IDC had been used seeing much stronger growth in the region, up until the fourth quarter of 2008 when the financial crisis hit.
That’s why IDC’s prediction for 2009 is that we shall have a “flat or slightly negative” market situation.

Although this sounds bleak, it’s better than the worst case scenarios for the Middle East, when there were fears that the PC market was in free fall.

A quick look at the ‘bigger picture’ shows another neighboring region doing even worse. When IDC includes Europe, and looks at the EMEA region, there’s a slump of 10 percent year-on-year to 21.5 million, as units sales in Central and Eastern Europe have crashed 41 percent. So, it seems we’re doing relatively alright.

Regarding the top vendors, IDC reveals that HP continues to maintain its lead in the MEA region, with 21 percent of the market, Acer is second claiming 11 percent, overtaking Dell who now holds third position. Toshiba occupies the fourth position, followed by LG and Fujitsu Siemens. Apparently, brands still matter to consumers, as the top five players performed better than the market average.

zanasser@gmail.com