Monthly Archives: September 2008

Google doesn’t allow Chrome browser in Syria?

Written by jessica. Posted on September 21, 2008. Filed under Uncategorized. Tagged , , . No comments.
I read in Joshua Landis’s Syria Comment today that “Google has blocked the use of its new web-browser, “Chrome”, in Syria.” A tiny bit more searching brought me to Global Voices and a link to a post from Yaser Sadeq in Syria, who tried to download the browser and got an error message, but then [...]

Gmail Speaks Arabic!

Written by jessica. Posted on September 18, 2008. Filed under Uncategorized. Tagged , , . No comments.
Remember when we used to copy and then paste Arabic paragraphs while chatting on the internet? Those days are long gone. Google just launched an inbuilt Gmail Chat application that fully supports instant messaging in Arabic. In addition to the introduction of chat, Arab users will see some other changes. Because Arabic language speakers may [...]

Defending Free Speech in the Arab World, and Around the World

Written by jessica. Posted on September 13, 2008. Filed under Uncategorized. Tagged , . No comments.
Last month I attended a meeting of Arab bloggers, sponsored by the German Heinrich Böll Foundation, at Zico House in Beirut. Listening to them I was struck by the notion that these individuals—empowered blogs and other social media tools and the undammable information streams that flow on the Internet—are evolving into defenders of the freedom [...]