Sohaib Thiab – The Story of an Internet Entrepreneur

Yeah, my blog was down for almost the past two days, Khalid had notified me 2 days ago right when i woke up that my blog was down (thanks Khalid) which was strange because all the other sites on the server were up and running fine, I reuploaded the index file and the blog was working fine.

Yesterday the same problem happened, however uploading all of the wordpress files didn’t work this time,  my wordpress installation is up to date and all the files are there, after lots of investigation it turned out to be a hard disk issue on the server, it was full! luckily I had ordered a 2nd hard drive a couple of days ago and it was installed today.

This was a scary reminder of the importance of backups, I haven’t made a database backup in a while which would have been a total disaster if I had lost the database or it was corrupted, always back up!

Its been a while since I posted anything, but there is a good reason behind the lack of posting in the past two weeks, I’ve been working on a couple of new projects that I will release more info about real soon, the main reason that got me off posting was the purchase of a new website, www.mafiacorruption.com which is an online RPG mafia game, the game is relatively young but growing at a good rate.

I’ve always wanted to own one of those websites, buying an established website was a logical choice, establishing one from the beginning is lots of work, especially with the lack of reliable scripts for such sites out there.

I’ve got big plans for the website, the 1st thing i did was move the site to its own server for faster page loads, which was one of the things the site members were complaining about, the file and data base move was a bit hectic but we came through at the end.

So that’s basically it, I’ll have more time now to update the blog regularly as before, so keep an eye on the future posts.

The forum’s second day was awesome, I wasnt able to make this post yesterday because we finished late at night and I was too tired, the 2nd day mainly compromised of different startups as well as established companies seeking funding presenting their business ideas, all of them were the ones that participated in the ASTF business plan competition for 2007, the forum ended at around 2pm.

The organizers of the forum arranged for a great dinner in the dead sea panorama which was recently constructed, you basically take a road that goes way up to the top of a mountain beside the dead sea, the view was great from up there and the food at the panorama dead sea restaurant was great, below are some pictures of the forum and later on the view from the top of the panorama.

[tags]dead sea, investing in technology, dead sea panorama[/tags]

Just got back from a very long and hectic day at the forum, but a very productive one none the less, the panel discussions started at around 10am after 1 hour of the opening ceremony, panel discussions and presentations varied in different topics related to investment in technology, sadly thoughI forgot to charge my cameras battery so I wasnt able to take any pictures, but I’ll be doing so tomorrow.

I’ve met a number of interesting people in the VC and investment industry, some are justestablishing VC’s in the region, which was one of the biggest questions in the forum today, how can the region attract VC’s and also help develop the VC industry in the region.

The VC industry in the middle east is in its beginnings, we can even say that there is no VC industry in the region yet! which is bad news for entrepreneurs which have to rely on private investments and bank loans that always require collateral, however, due to the expected growth in the region, VC’s in the US and Europe are gaining more interest in the region, one of the presenters was a gentleman from a German based VC fund that are currently working on establishing a VC in the region, a Korean based VC firm also announced that they are establishing a VC firm in the region with a capital reaching $300 million, local VC startups originating from the middle east also participated in the forum, thats all great news for entrepreneurs in this region.

Today’s sessions ended with the announcement of the winners in the ASTF business plan competetion, I watched the 2 minute pitchesof each of the participants and I was glad to learn that some of them came up with ground breaking new technologies in the fields of search engines, mobile applications, and even in military applications and body armor, one specific invention grabbed my attention which is related to internet security, as in securing your online transactions which received the 4th place in the Intel and UC Berkeley Technology Entrepreneurship Challenge among 1000 other business plans.

This was a quick run down of the forum events, tomorrow I’ll hopefully be able to post some pictures of tomorrows events and post some more details about today’s presentations.

[tags]investing in technology forum, VC’s, Intel, UC Berkeley, ASTF, investment, business plan[/tags]

For the next couple of days I’ll be attending the 5th Investing in Technology Forum that will taking place in Amman, Jordan, this will be a great networking opportunity for us, we were invited (myself and my partner) to attend because of winning the Queen Rania National Entrepreneurship Competition for 2007, Sabeq and ASTF were kind enough to cover almost 90% of the attendance fees.

The forum covers variuos topics related to investing in technology, including things like how to attract VC’s, listing tech companies in the stock exchange, innovation ecosystem and licensing options.

I will be blogging at the end of each day with updates on the details of the topics covered in the panel discussions, hopefully I’ll be including some pictures from the event as well.

Sadly though, we missed the chance of being part of one of the panel discussions which would have been available for us if we registered earlier and shown interest in that, too bad we only learned about the forum lately.

[tags]licensing options. SABEQ, ASTF, investing in technology forum, VC’s[/tags]

There is a debate currently taking place on variouos blogs about this question, do we own our profiles on sites like Facebook, Mypsace and Youtube? if we really own these profiles, are we allowed to place ads on them? Weblo seems to think so, a growing number of Facebook profiles started placing ads on their profiles although Facebook doesn’t allow it, so far the number has increased from 200 to 1500 profiles according to NYTimes.

It seems that Facebook was only recently  aware of these profiles placing ads, and so far they have done nothing against it although they clearly said its not allowed, however Weblo’s CEO says that since we are the content providers for such sites, we should be able to place ads and make money out of our profiles and content,  and I have to agree with him, if it wasn’t for all of this content that people are generating, these sites wouldn’t survive, right?

The question of the owner ship over our social networking profiles is yet to be determined, services such as Weblo and other services that will eventually pop out will force an answer to that question, Ad revenue vs. member satisfaction and in turn loyalty will be the main point those sites have to address and decide what is more important for them.

[tags]profile ads, facebook profile ads, social networking ads[/tags]

A very close friend of mine invited me to a Facebook group that aims to boycott Casper & Gambini’s which is a well known caffe and restaurant in Amman-Jordan, basically the guy (his name is Hussam) was having dinner at the place, and he forgot to take back his credit card from the waiter one hour after leaving the place he gets a call from his bank telling him this has credit card maxed out and that someone is trying to exceed the limit, luckily the limit was set to around $600.

After further investigation, it turns out that there was another incident at the same restaurant, in which another guy lost around $1500, the restaurant denied responsibility and refused to cooperate with the matter.

The matter is currently with the police and its still under investigation to what looks to be a gang working in that restaurant collecting forgotten credit cards.

[tags]Casper & Gambini’s, Casper & Gambini[/tags]

NYTimes is reporting that Facebook has been blocked in Syria and it looks like its been blocked there for about 2 weeks till now, the reason, according to NYTimes based on reporters and residents in Syria is the “fears of Israeli ”infiltration” of Syrian social networks on the Net”

While his news doesn’t come as much of a surprise for me, I wonder how effective such a block is,  people will eventually who want to access FB or any other site that has been blocked will find a way to bypass the block, there were rumors that the UAE has blocked Facebook a while ago but it turned out to be just an ISP error.

Anyone from Syria that can confirm the news? I wonder if sites like Myspace and Hi5 have been blocked as well? they also have user groups that can be infiltrated as well.

The Syrian network on Facebook has 29,313 members, which isn’t a big number considering Syria’s population, but there are probably lots of other members who didn’t update their network information.

[tags]Syria blocks Facebook, Facebook blocked[/tags]

It looks like the increased complaints regarding Facebook’s new advertising offering (Beacon) forced the company to update Beacon’s privacy policy, the clear discontent that spread through the media world surely made an effect and here is how Facebook reacted:

1. You now can say No Thanks to the option of distributing an activity you made on a website that has the Beacon code added to it, selecting no thanks will disallow this news item from being distributed anywhere on Facebook.
2. If you close the notification box or ignore it (it appears in the lower right corner), the story will be sent to Facebook but not published.

In the previuos Beacon version, the news would have been published right away on your website with no notification.

However, even with the new version, and when selecting the 1st option, will Facebook store the data anyways but not display it publicly? this is something that I can’t seem to find an answer for in Facebook’s FAQ or in other blog posts that cover this topic. Such information is worth lots of money, and while I loved the concept behind Beacon, I think its just overdoing it and mainly concentrating on the advertiser’s benefit.

[tags]facebook beacon, social ads[/tags]

Quick post to let you guys know that my father started a blog a couple of weeks ago and its been growing nicely since then, my father has been working as a freelance IT consultant  for several years,I recently advised him that he should start a blog and post about the topics he is currently interested in, such as ITIL and project management and so he did.

He also recently started a Linkedin profile, you can view it here.

The blog can be found here:

http://www.mohammedthiab.com

I don’t have to go through the positives of  having an online presense in the form of blogs and social networking profiles, you guys probably already know it, right?