Muslim Tech Digest

Outbound Linking Issues

2007-04-01T01:17:00.000+03:00

For a while now I've had many issues I've wanted to report, but most of the time I will have to link to the originator of the information. Whether it's because of plagiarism issues or because of the Search Engine penalties for duplicate content.. I've always found myself to be reluctant to link to an outbouding link.

Another issue, is the fact that most websites on the internet don't share the same values as me or many of my readers. So it might contain advertisements to lewd sites or other sites unbecoming of a Muslim who fears his Lord to visit.

What do you do then?

With Search Engines, if I don't necessarily agree with a site or I don't want to give my link to it any value, I can easily add a rel="nofollow" tag within the link tag. That way the Search Engine will know that I am not related to the site and won't count my linking to it as a voucher for its credibility or relevance to my site.

I sometimes will copy the whole article's text and then throw a link at the bottom showing the credits, but that's really rare like I did for a post on my Migraine Blog about the Migraine Gadget but it was not an issue since the site I was linking to was the manufacturer of the gadget and thus wasn't really offensive in any way.

If any of you have any ideas, let me know... especially if you're a web developer or admin a website.

My websites are mostly informational and they do make me a very small amount of money (mainly just to ay the phone bill I guess) but thats from the Google Ads that show up on the top and bottom of the page.

Advertisements

Another piece of feedback I would like, is if anybody sees an ad that is un-Islamic or offensive (as sometimes there are links to Christian Da`wah sites or Personals /Dating sites) please let me know of the URL (website address http://www.BlahBlahBlah.com) that way I can put it through the ad filter and it won't be shown.

Help Searching Authentic Sites

2006-06-15T05:11:00.000+03:00

Google Search

For those of you that have had some trouble searching the SalafiTalk Forum, or have found that the built in Search feature at SalafiPublications.com or FatwaIslam.com is not finding everything possible, try the search form below. It uses Google's Search Engine and is very simple to use.

If you find any functionality problems, drop me a comment and I'll try to figure it out insha Allaah.

Note: The code was provided by Google, and I hacked it up a bit, take care people...

Busy times for busy people

2006-06-06T05:42:00.000+03:00

I been so busy these days with finals and school and events in Madinah, that it's just rediculous.

Insha Allaah, I'll have a few new posts up soon, it's been 40 days since the last post, thats sad.
I opened a new site, just to give my personal blog a little breathing room.

Also, I changed my migraine blog's address, but as soon as I did, in about hours, somebody else took the old name before I could re-register it and put up info that I moved my site. It caused a BIG traffic toll, but oh well.. Lamers will be lamers... retards will be retards.

Peace out people.

Submit your blog to Blogwise?

2006-05-11T21:48:00.000+03:00

I just submitted my blog to BlogWise, thinking it would be like any other Blog Directory. Too bad they have too few HUMANS to administer the World Wide Wasteland:

Your site has been added to the submission queue. Thank you for adding your site to Blogwise.

It is important to us that all entries are checked for consistency before approval, however Blogwise is run by volunteers contributing their spare time. There may be a small delay before your blog is added to the directory.

There are currently 41012 blog(s) in the queue. Your blog is expected to be added within 136 day(s).

If your blog is accepted by the reviewer, you will receive a notification by email. Due to the high number of submissions being processed, we cannot respond to or discuss rejections in detail.

Is "Sawafi" the Google Killer??

2006-05-09T19:05:00.000+03:00

New search engine could boost Arab Internet usage
Tue Apr 25, 2006 12:10 PM ET
By Andrew Hammond

RIYADH (Reuters) - A Saudi-German plan to launch a dedicated Arabic language search engine for the World Wide Web could revolutionize the moribund Arabic Internet market, a senior official in the project said.

"Sawafi", planned for the last quarter of 2006, could also set a tough challenge for international search giants such as Google, MSN and Yahoo, which offer a basic Arabic search facility at present.

"There is no (full) Arabic Internet search engine on the market. You find so-called search engines, but they involve a directory search, not a local search. There's nothing available for overall Internet search," Hermann Havermann, managing director of German Internet tech firm Seekport, told Reuters.

"If you look at the international search engines, their functionality is non-existent. This market really lacks the support of an Arabic search engine," he said.

Seekport unveiled the project with Saudi partner Integrated Technical Solutions in Riyadh this week. The company, Sawafi, is registered in the Gulf Arab business hub of Dubai.

Sawafi is hoping to copy the success of local Chinese language search engine Baidu, which has made huge strides in a market with over 100 million Web surfers.

Everything is to play for in the Arab world of 280 million people, where Internet penetration is low. There are also large expatriate Arab communities in Europe and North America.

"There are only 100 million Web pages right now in Arabic, and that's nothing. It's only 0.2 percent of the total worldwide," Havermann said.

Research commissioned from Dubai-based Internet researcher Madar shows the number of Arabic Internet users could jump to 43 million in 2008 from 16 million in 2004, Havermann said.

According to Madar, 65 percent of Arab Internet users in 2005 could not read English, which accounts for 70 percent of the material on the Internet.

Better search engines are key to a turnaround.

"There is not enough Arabic content available on the Internet. But there's no motivation to put more Arabic content on the Internet as long as you don't have a system to find the content," Havermann said.

Saudi Arabia, with an affluent population of 24 million, and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates would be key places for winning online advertising to fuel Arabic search engines.

"Search engines are dependent on income from advertising, and for this you need partners and marketing agencies. They are in Dubai," Havermann said. "On the other side, the Arabic user market is in Saudi Arabia."

The Arabic online advertising market could grow to $150 million in 2008 from $10 million at present, he said.

So, is "Sawafi" the Google Killer?

I don't think so... in fact with their recent translation software I believe that if google wanted to it could easily apply its technology to the arab market as it recently did with the chinese. Also, given the conservative nature of (some) Arabs, Google could also voluntarily filter and censor controversial subject matter as it did with the chinese market.

Sawafi heralds itself as a copycat of baidu , a homegrown chinese search engine, and will be funded by partners in dubai and saudi, expect it later this year.

Muslim Tech News: Praying in Space (?)

2006-05-04T13:50:00.000+03:00

How would a Muslim astronaut pray in space?

It's an interesting question and one which may soon be facing the fledgling Malaysian Space Agency, Angkasa. In an agreement with the Russian Space Agency, two Malaysian astronauts will be trained and sent into space by the Russians. They will also visit the International Space Station.

Angkasa conducted a nation-wide search of the mostly Muslim population to find potential astronauts. Of the final four astronaut candidates, three are Muslim, leading to the question of how they will conduct their five daily prayers, which require the individual to turn towards Mecca. Working out which direction to face is just one of the problems.

According to the Independant Online (Cape Town, South Africa), Angkasa will be holding a conference to consider such questions. "The two-day Islam and Life in Space seminar will begin next Tuesday and brings together 150 scientists, astronauts, religious scholars and academics."

Now whatcha think about that!?

Update: May o8, 2006

When you're in Space, which way is Makkah?

NewScientist.com news service: Kelly Young

Malaysia's National Space Agency is trying to determine how its astronaut candidates will practice Islam in space. Three of its four astronaut candidates are Muslim, and two will be selected for a future Russian space flight.

Once in their orbiting spacecraft, they will circle the Earth once every 90 minutes. Traditionally, Muslims pray five times per day, at times connected to the position of the Sun in the sky. This will make prayer observance a challenge if they accept a "day" as being just 90 minutes long.

A similar problem occurs for Muslims who live close to Earth's polar regions where there are long periods of daylight or darkness. Islamic legal scholars traditionally say that in such situations, a Muslim should pray as they would at a particular, relatively high latitude, even if they venture nearer the poles.

"Any legal scholar advising these astronauts would have to simply pick various times that would roughly correspond to their morning, noon, afternoon, sunset and night prayers," says Alan Godlas, a professor of religion at the University of Georgia, US.

Minor ablutions

Additionally, Muslims turn toward Makkah when they pray. Zooming around the Earth at 28,000 kilometres per hour might make pinpointing the exact location of Makkah pretty tricky. Godlas says that orienting oneself toward Earth might be good enough. "There are instances where the prophet indicated a wide swathe; kind of a general direction," Godlas says.

And Muslims have a cleansing ritual, known as ablutions, before prayer. But water is used sparingly in space. Godlas says astronauts could force water between their two hands and then moisten the body during a minor ablution.

On Earth, it is ideal to have water running along the arms from the faucet, but water does not flow downward in microgravity. Godlas says that when water is not available, scholars have determined a pure rock could be used to wipe the hands. The hands could then clean the forearms, face and feet.

Saudi Arabian astronaut Prince Sultan bin Salman Al Saud flew aboard the shuttle in 1985. He was scheduled to look out the shuttle's window to see the crescent of the new moon to mark the end of Ramadan.

Talk about confusing!?

Saudi Arabia Tech News: Mobily

2006-05-03T18:34:00.000+03:00

It seems that Mobily, Saudi Telecom's only REAL competitor, is not piggy backing their towers anymore. During the last two weeks, I've been seeing Mobily towers going up all up and down the Makkah-Madinah Road.

This means, firstly, that Mobily won't be having to pay Saudi Telecom any more percentages to piggy back their frequencies. That means, that all you Mobily customers will finally have TWO very long awaited things:

Better reception, since Saudi Telecom allegedly used to lower Mobily's frequency strength.
Better rates, since they no longer have to pay Saudi Telecom to use their towers.

In general, Mobily is WAY better than Saudi Telecom, they have better service and more efficient payment plans and are generally "Cooler". For example, Mobily plans, whether prepaid or monthly bill plans, all come with MMS and Web services. For Saudi Telecom's customers, you have to go the extra mile (or kilometer?) to get those services operational on your phone.
Also, Mobily's acquire quite a substantial amount of foreign GPRS (MMS sending/receiving ability) and GSM (voice call sending/receiving ability) contracts with foreing countries. Meaning you can send an MMS to almost any major developed country in the world. With Saudi Telecom you can only send MMS within the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
As for the "roaming" ability to send and receive calls when abroad, then they both supply that.

I hope this little rant, and possible advertisement for Mobily has been beneficial, I don't keep up a lot with Mobily news since I am not a customer, so comments and crticizms are welcome.

Take care people...

P.S. There is another service out there that is available to mobile phone users, but I need to gather some more information on it before blogging about it, insha Allah.

GOOGLE arabic to english and english to arabic BETA

2006-04-30T19:45:00.000+03:00

Well, its not that accurate right now, it is machine translation. It uses a statistical method to map from one language to another, the more words they add the better the translation.

arabic to english
english to arabic

Here are a few real examples.

Umm-ul-Qura university in KSA

Bakkah.net from Makkah

Tech Alert: Warnings over USB memory sticks

2006-04-29T19:47:00.000+03:00

Smart phones, iPods and USB memory sticks are posing a real risk for businesses, warn security experts.

Just over half of companies take no steps to secure data held on these devices, found a UK government-backed security survey.

Now security firms are developing ways to help firms control access to the confidential data held on the gadgets.

They are also working on ways to stop the devices being used by viruses as a way to bypass other digital defences.

Data deluge

Figures from the Information Security Breaches Survey, which is backed by the Department of Trade and Industry, reveals how firms are struggling to control the growing use of USB flash memory sticks.

The survey found that 33% of firms tell staff not to use such devices but rarely do anything to change the configuration of PCs and laptops to stop people moving data around with USB sticks.

Only 10% of those companies interviewed for the survey encrypt the confidential data stored on these portable devices.

Dennis Szerszen, spokesman for security software firm Secure Wave, said in some sense the risk portable storage systems pose has been around since the emergence of the floppy disk.

"But," he told the BBC News website, "that was just 360 kilobytes of risk not four gigabytes that can be transferred in five minutes."

The popularity of MP3 players and digital cameras was also driving the development of a culture that is happy to carry around lots of data with them.

Few companies were mandating use of USB sticks but their usefulness was leading many people to carry and use them, said Mr Szerszen.

As a result, many USB sticks and other portable media devices now carried both private and business data. Vital business information, such as drug recipes or blueprints could easily be stored on a USB stick, he said.

Recently it was discovered that USB sticks full of US military secrets were being sold on market stalls in Afghanistan.

Mr Szerszen said Secure Wave has signed a deal with flash memory firm Lexar so that certain potentially dangerous uses of the hardware are logged and flagged by its security software.

Swapping sticks

Different ways to manage and monitor USB flash devices so they stay secure were on show at the Information Security trade fair held at Olympia in London from 25-27 April.

Some security measures encrypt data put on removable drives such as flash memory sticks and others just keep an eye on what is being transferred back and forth.

Matt Fisher, spokesman for Centennial Software, said USB sticks could also become an attack vector for viruses and other malicious programs largely because they are swapped between many different computers.

"Everyone expects a virus to come through the [e-mail] gateway," he said, "No one expects them to come in on a USB stick."

An informal survey by Centennial showed that 66% of people mislay USB sticks and that 60% of those devices have business information on them.

Mr Fisher said firms needed a way to manage the information being stored on these devices to ensure they keep copies of important data and to guard against it going missing by accident or malice.

By Mark Ward
Technology Correspondent, BBC News website

Google is down?

2006-04-26T16:26:00.000+03:00

It seems this is becoming a normal thing.

Blogger was down a few days ago, and today Gmail and AdSense are down. What's that about?
Perhaps google is integrating something else into its already alarming amount of services. Have you been having any problems with Google Services? Have you checked out Google Suggest yet? It's a pretty leet tool that helps suggest possible search terms. Since the Google Search Engine is not down, why not go google it up?

Heh.

Testing Adsense Ads Within the Blog Entry for RSS Feeds

2006-04-20T12:31:00.000+03:00

I just wanted to test the adsense ads to see if they show up in rss feeds so here goes:

Muslim Tech News: Madinah Quran for Computer Publishing

2006-04-20T00:55:00.000+03:00

The Secretary General of the King Fahd Complex for the Printing of the Qur'an, Dr. Muhammad ibn Salim ibn Shadid Al-'Aufi, announced that a unique software has been produced for researchers, students, and others, called: The Madinah Qur'an for Computer Publishing.

The Secretary General explained that the new software: The Madinah Quran for Computer Publishing, is the fruit of more than three years of diligent work, under the supervision of the Computer and academic departments of the Complex, in cooperation with Harf Information Technology. The project was initiated on a directive from the Minister for Islamic Affairs, Endowments, Dawa, and Guidance, the General Supervisor of the Complex, Sheikh Salih bin Abdul Aziz Al Al-Sheikh, to benefit the work of the Complex from new technologies and computer software, and to utilize them in the service of the Qur'an and its sciences and also the purified Prophetic Sunnah.

Dr. Al-'Aufi reviewed the advantages of the new software, which include the option of entering and inserting Qur'anic verses directly into text design and editing programs, such as MS-Word, Photoshop, and others, in a font that matches the handwritten calligraphic style used to write The Madinah Qur'an. This is an important feature that is not available in many other similar programs.

Dr. Al-'Aufi added that some other unique advantages of the program are the speed and accuracy of the search results from the whole Qur'an, its ease of use even by non-specialists, and its simple elegant design. There are also many other options that facilitate its use, such as the option to control the font size and color, to control where references for quoted verses are inserted, and the ability to enclose the Qur'anic text in decorative brackets, and many other useful features.

The software can be used to connect to the website of the Complex for continual updates and improvements, and also to avoid any technical problems or errors that may appear in the future.

There is a version of the program that operates on Mac operating systems, which includes most of the features available on the Windows version, as few programs offer this service for Mac computers.

Muslim Technology (Geek) Blog

2006-04-16T02:00:00.000+03:00

This is where me and some of my friends will be ranting on different Technology Maters that concern the Muslim Ummah, insha Allah. Some of the topics to be covered, insha Allah are:

Islamic Software
Islamic Programs
Islamic Code Development (for all you programmers out there)
Muslim Gadgets
Product Reviews
Related technological news

Stay tuned...