Sunday, November 22, 2009

Dinner with Yahoo! founder, Jerry Yang

It’s not everyday that you get to meet a founder of the world’s largest portal. In fact, in my case, it was the first time I ever met an ‘Internet-era legend’.

Jerry Yang, co-founder of Yahoo!, was in town as part of his Middle East tour following Yahoo!’s acquisition of Maktoob.com. It was expected that top Yahoo! executives would fly into the region, and they did.

But, undoubtedly, Mr. Yang’s presence generated a different level of excitement and interest in Cairo, Amman and Dubai last week. So, when I got an invitation to an ‘informal dinner with Jerry Yang’, it was an honor indeed.

I arrived early and had the pleasure of welcoming Mr. Yang, who warmly said hello and then gave me his business card, and that’s when I had to say “well, surely I know all about you sir, but thanks for the kind gesture of presenting your business card.” He carries the title of “Chief Yahoo!”. The other side of the card is Arabized, which demonstrates that Yahoo!’s has arrived in Arabia.

Clearly this was not an interview, but a relaxed and joyful evening, therefore the conversation drifted from light business talk to Arab food and customs. I must say that Mr. Yang was humorous, pleasant and he was curious to know more about our region and how Arabs go about their lives. Being originally Chinese, he mentioned to me how similar our cultures were.

I made a concentrated effort to explain to Mr. Yang why Jordan was an interesting country, that there were breathtaking sites to see and that he must come back to town again soon. He mentioned Petra and the Dead Sea, and seemed to know a fair amount of information about both. So it appears an Internet search on Yahoo! yields good results for these two destinations.

Towards the end of the dinner, I asked Mr. Yang if we could have our photo taken together and he kindly obliged. It also started a wave of photos with everyone else at the dinner. Mr. Yang kindly smiled through the whole thing.

Inspiring thinkers and ground-breaking business leaders are a pleasure to meet. As a technology journalist, and as a web entrepreneur, it felt like I was meeting one of my heroes.

A key thought Mr. Yang left me with was the importance of courage and creativity. He said most people you talk to about a venture, won’t necessarily think it’s a great idea, but that’s expected. If they thought it was, they’d think of it first and you wouldn’t be the only one who created it and succeeded!
Indeed, this is probably the story behind the success of Jordan’s best Internet ventures. It’s also the philosophy continuously driving success within organizations when they ‘dream up’ a new service or feature. It’s probably one of the things that made Yahoo! great.

Talking to Mr. Yang re-affirmed that big dreams, hard work and charismatic leadership work. They propelled Yahoo! to success and we can all learn from that.

zanasser@gmail.com

Saturday, November 14, 2009

The debut of Microsoft’s “new efficiency”

The Windows 7 launch road-show came to Amman last week, under the slogan of “The New Efficiency”. It generated considerable enthusiasm with hundreds of attendees. The presence of top Microsoft executives from Redmond and across the region underlined the importance of the occasion.

The press conference featured the guest of honor, Kevin Turner the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Microsoft. After hearing the opening remarks, I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Turner a couple of questions.

After commending Microsoft’s demonstration of commitment to the Middle East, I stated the general consensus is that Windows Vista was a dissapointment and said that we were all hoping that Windows 7 would be ‘the solution’, but will it be and why? And, what’s Microsoft’s view regarding the emergence of online office applications, some of which are free?

Mr. Turner first acknowledged that Vista had its problems and that it generated negative publicity for Microsoft, but he said that Microsoft has now built its greatest operating system in 35 years.

“We’re thrilled and pleased with Windows 7, and the feedback so far has been excellent. We expect to sell over 300 million copies of Windows 7,” he said.

Addressing the ‘online software’ question, Mr. Turner explained that Microsoft has its own strategy to deliver online applications, and was focused on the ‘cloud computing’ future. Regarding paid vs. free online software models, he said that “Nothing is actually free, as it may be supported by advertising, but the beauty of what Microsoft offers is the combination of software and services and the resulting savings gained by businesses.”

Next up was a public launch event, in which Mr. Turner spoke again and was followed by Samer Chidiac, from Microsoft’s Lebanon office, who summed it up well when he said: “People have told us that they ‘just want their computers to work’.”

The user desperation is quite evident in that statement, and the willingness of Microsoft to admit that fact is commendable. And, from the looks of it so far, Windows 7 is a product geared towards making computers ‘work again’ the way we want them to.

Maybe there will still be some security holes, and some glitches here and there, but it appears that ‘the new efficiency’ is coming with a leaner OS, faster start-up, more user-friendliness and much more.

Those of us who are Windows users want the new operating system to be great. We want to stop envying our Macintosh-using friends, before we end up jumping ship and joining them!

Windows 7 has a lot of expectations to live up to, and Microsoft is probably at a real cross-road at this point in time, when switching to other operating systems has never been easier. In the coming weeks, early adopters of Windows 7 around the world will deliver their verdict. Let’s wait and see.

zanasser@gmail.com

Wednesday, November 04, 2009

Arabic language web addresses to be available


The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) met in Seoul a few days ago to discuss the proposals to allow web addresses in non-Latin script, opening the way for Arabic and other web addresses.

This is big news, and could impact all Internet businesses in the Middle East, who will first have to acquire the names of their sites in Arabic letters, then decide wether or not to use these domains as their main site addresses, following many years of providing users with sometimes complex latin letter names like “kooora.com” or “D1G.com” or even just long words like “alarabiya.net”.

It is expected that there will be an approval for initial limited use of "International Domain Names" before the end of the year.

Rod Beckstrom, ICANN's president and CEO, said: “In Seoul, we plan to move forward to the next step in the internationalization of the Internet, which means that eventually people from every corner of the globe will be able to navigate much of the online world using their native language scripts.”

The regional manager for, Baher Esmat, spoke to the press saying that this move will be a a factor in bringing more people in the Arab world online.

ICANN's Internationalised Domain Name (IDN) program is expected to allow the use of characters from other languages such as Chinese, Arabic and Japanese for the complete internet address, instead of just parts of addresses as it is presently.

Baher added that IDNs won't be a solution to all the internet access problems in the region, but will deal with part of the problem and will enable more Arabic content online. Baher goes on to say that certain countries, where people use the Internet mostly in Arabic such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt, the governments are strong advocates for the language, and there would be a pressing need to have IDNs.

According to the latest figures by Internet World Stats, there are nearly 48 million internet users in the Middle East, representing slightly fewer than 3% of the world's online population.

Some commentators and analysts say this is like finally liberating the Internet, as ICANN ends the exclusive use of Latin characters for addresses tomorrow.
This action comes during the week in which the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of the internet's creation in a computer experiment by researchers at the University of California.

This week could also mark the actual birth of the “Arab Internet”.

zanasser@gmail.com